Fire in the Morning

Chapter 8

E I G H T 'AN ARMSTRONG, coming down the dark path for home, stopped to listen. There was someone running on the path ahead, running, yes, toward him. He stood at the top of a rise. Below him, the path broadened, crossed the branch, and went on straight up the next hill. Here the earth was dark and firm. It was getting cooler now and the smell of dew lay heavy in the wood. There she came, running faster down the hill, for what reason he did not know except that she did not run as though she was afraid, but long and smooth, and so as not to stumble looking down at her flat-heel shoes striking the ground. Her blouse, swan-white and moving against the dark wood, seemed almost to shine. He smiled and waited, because he knew that most things can wait to be got to and are perhaps easier for the patience. Then he liked the sight of her free young running. He liked to see her for once without her brother, because together—though he did not speak of it—they would seem to him like two feline creatures, making him and others around them act as clumsyand honest as good dogs. He was reminded pleasantly now of one day long before the brother came, when she was new there and to be wondered at. That was the day that John Henry, Kinloch's part-Angus bull, got between them and the gate. She had gone to meet Kinloch in the field and when they headed for home, there was John Henry, grumbling and circling a little, on his mettle. They should have steered a wide path around the pasture, of course, and come up the far way, but instead Kinloch shoved her behind him and catching his hoe near the blade, swung it toward John Henry like a baseball bat. Dan hurried to open the lot gate. He noticed her watching Kinloch, who was moving steadily ahead all the while the muscles gathered and leaped out 134 D along his arms with the swing of the hoe. Her head was tilted back. He knew she was proud. She gave him a second level of feeling about the business, something he did not often entertain. She made him feel that in addition to driving a bull back through a gate it had got out of, which was a thing necessary to be done, that Kinloch principally , but he and the bull too, were all busy doing something for Ruth. That was the woman in her and it was all right. But what in her was sending her at a run through the wood? She jumped the branch without a pause and was on the hill with him. "Daughter," he called from above. He did not want to frighten her. She drew up sharply, chin up and eyes wide, searching. If she put him in mind of a colt, it would be a colt just grown, out of the long-legged stage where the coat and mane mat easily, just into the sleek trim look, the first day of it, in fact, when you look out and see how the pasture which has seemed so enormously to surround the young thing has suddenly shrunk to no space at all, when the flying hooves cover it end to end and the fence stands scarcely breast-high against the gleaming hide. She climbed up to him. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Nothing," she said, catching breath. "I just came to meet you." Touched, he caught her close to him. "I thought surely the patterrollers were after you." "You thought what?" "I thought something was after you." "Oh, no." She gave him her arm across the branch. Her skin was wet from running. "It's cooled off so, hasn't it?" "You just running to be running, I reckon." "I guess so." "Kinloch comer "Not yet." "How about the brother?" 135 "He's gone over to Justin's." "So you were all by yourself." "Yes." He did not press to ask her whether she had been afraid. 136 ...