For a moment he turned his blazing eyes full upon her, and then without a word strode from the room.
She walked to the door and stood uneasily listening in the passage until she heard the clatter of hoofs in the paved patio, and knew that he had ordered his horse.

Then she turned back relieved to her room.
It was already sunset when Demorest drew rein again at the entrance of the corral, and the last stroke of the Angelus was ringing from the Mission tower.

He looked haggard and exhausted, and his horse was flecked with foam and dirt.

Wherever he had been, or for what object, or whether, objectless and dazed, he had simply sought to lose himself in aimlessly wandering over the dry yellow hills or in careering furiously among his own wild cattle on the arid, brittle plain; whether he had beaten all thought from his brain with the jarring leap of his horse, or whether he had pursued some vague and elusive determination to his own door, is not essential to this brief chronicle.

Enough that when he dismounted he drew a pistol from his holster and replaced it in his pocket.
He had just pushed open the gate of the corral as he led in his horse by the bridle, when he noticed another horse tethered among some cotton woods that shaded the outer wall of his garden.