‘You see, he had to have somebody interested in Sonora, and willing to do a lot of riding,’ Elbert answered. ‘You know, he wanted you to have Mamie, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take me to find you--a chance even, that I might not. He didn’t want her to change hands another time. He always thought about her feelings--’ Elbert found himself staring at the little crucifix as he talked. Bart didn’t seem to be troubled as much as he was--about the feelings of the one in this house.... One night after about ten days in El Relicario, Bart turned over and drew his right shoulder clear from its covering to show how the wound was healing. Elbert cleared his throat. ‘I don’t see how you stayed in the saddle from that bridge until daybreak when we got here,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Why, that bullet would have knocked me out of the saddle like--like--’ He had quite forgotten--‘clear through to Nogales.’ A low laugh again. ‘Say, amigo mio--say, Mister, you’re sure nervous as a filly, about being caught makin’ a move like a gamester!’ Elbert conned that all the next day in the hills. XXVI SILENCE MEANWHILE he was learning undreamed-of-matters about himself. No amount of riding such as he had done down in the valleys could have shown him what he was getting now, in the stillness and sunlight and starlight of high country. A hundred times a day, the flick of a lizard over leaf or pebble or twig called his eye; that was the only continual distraction. The days were mainly silent, though the nights were full of sound; the coyotes sometimes a maddening chorus that stirred up unheard-of deeps in the listener, and once as he lay awake at night a muffle-winged owl swept past so close as to fan his face. That shook him like the sounds during his first night out in White Stone Flats. In the stillness, thoughts rose up in him with a power he hadn’t known before; one could get so accustomed to this sort of life, he reflected, that he would be entirely unfit in a little while for the towns again. Here’s where a man reverted to type. What he was at bottom came out. One might sink into being just an animal--eating and drinking and sleeping--or get more fiery alive with the days, more quick and sensitive with strange inner activity. There were times when Elbert’s thoughts carried him along with a clear cool strength that was almost frightening. He knew now that he had never been alone before; that a man isn’t quite alone, even if locked in his own room--that he is only really alone with the sky above and the earth beneath.