Free Corral Nocturne by Elisabeth Grace Foley

dignified.
    “But I am responsible for you. I
promised to take you home.”
    “Well, you mustn’t feel obligated to take
care of me,” she said, feeling more than ever that if she did not
keep her voice sharp she would cry. “I’ll get home all right by
myself.”
    “Yes, in ten or twelve hours, walking like
this! Ellie, what in the name of sense is the matter with you? Are
you sick?” He crouched down beside her, peering into her face.
    “No, I’m not. I’m all right—I’d just rather
go home.”
    “Well, if that’s what you want,” said Cole.
“You could have come and told me. I waited a quarter of an
hour for you before I started looking. And I thought you were
having a good time.”
    This last was almost more than she could
bear, so Ellie said hurriedly and with a suspicious tremble in her
voice, “I’m all right, and I just couldn’t walk on this foot with
my shoe, or otherwise I’d be fine. I’d just like to go home.”
    “Hurt your foot?” He was looking down at
it.
    “Not very,” said Ellie, not very
grammatically.
    “Well, anyway,” said Cole, half rising, and
before she knew what he was doing, he had slipped an arm behind her
shoulders and the other beneath her knees and lifted her from her
rock. Ellie instinctively caught an arm around his neck to keep her
balance as he stood up. As he turned toward the buggy the shoe flew
out of her lap and landed under the heels of the horses. The
chestnuts exploded like practiced sprinters off a mark, as if they
had only been standing waiting for the signal. Cole shouted, but he
had his hands full and the horses had a head start, and he had only
taken a step or two before they were tearing away down the road,
the empty buggy careering behind them in a trail of moonlit
dust.
    Cole stared after them, standing in the road
with Ellie in his arms. He did not say anything until the truant
team had nearly receded from view.
    “Well,” he said, “that about tears it!”
    He glanced about. Then, without further
comment, he began to walk along the road in the direction the buggy
had gone.
    “What—what are you doing?” said Ellie, with
something like dismay.
    “I’m seeing you home, of course,” said Cole.
“We’re about halfway; we might as well go on as back.”
    “But you can’t—I mean, you—”
    “What else do you expect me to do?” said
Cole. “I’ve got to walk, and I’m not leaving you by the side of the
road, even if that’s what you seem to want—Now what’s the
matter?”
    “My shoe,” said Ellie in a small voice.
    Cole, swallowing a rather grim smile that
Ellie did not try to interpret, retraced his steps. He set her down
again on the rock, retrieved the shoe, which was lying on its side
in the middle of the road, handed it to Ellie and gathered her up
again, shoe and all. Ellie did not try to protest; she knew it
would be futile, and argument was something for which she had no
desire. She did not want to speak to Cole; she could hardly look at
him—being stranded here alone with him, not to mention being
carried by him, was the last thing she could have wished for after
her humiliation. She was silent, her throat aching with efforts to
keep back tears.
    Cole walked on for a while without speaking,
and Ellie could not help wondering what he was thinking, though she
suspected it was the last thing she would have wanted to know.
There were still at least two miles of this silent punishment
before her; she did not know how she could bear it.
    Cole’s steps slowed, and he spoke to her.
“Ellie, you’re crying. What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” said Ellie, who was indeed crying
by now. “You needn’t—mind—you don’t have to try and—take care of
me.”
    “That’s the second time you’ve said that.
What is all this about, anyway? What’s wrong, Ellie?”
    She did not answer. They had come a fair way
by now, to a bend in the road where there had once been a small
ranch. The remains of the buildings stood back