He must ask her.

He wished he knew more of her family.

If he were only older and she younger, or if he had the right kind of a woman friend to whom he might take her, or send her! How horrible that that scoundrel was after her! Such men were not men, but beasts, and should be shot down.
Far off in the distance, it might have been in the air or in his imagination, there sometimes floated a sound as of faint voices or shouts; but they came and went, and he listened, and by and by heard no more.

The horses breathed heavily behind their sage-brush stable, and the sun rose higher and hotter.

At last sleep came, troubled, fitful, but sleep, oblivion.