There nothing relieved the black, sullen rage of Joel Mazarine.
He had returned to the house where his voice had always been able to
summon his slaves, and to know that they would come--Chinaman, half-
breed, wife. Now he called, and the wife did not come. On the new
chestnut she had ridden away on the prairie, so the halfbreed woman had
said, as hard as he could go. He had scanned the prairie till night
came, without seeing a sign of her.
His black imagination instantly conceived the worst that Louise might do.
It was not in him ever to have the decent alternative. He questioned the
half-breed woman closely; he savagely interrogated the Chinaman; and then
he declared that they lied to him, that they knew more than they said;
and when he was unable to bear it any longer, he mounted his horse and
galloped over to Slow Down Ranch. As he went, he kept swearing to
himself that Louise had flown thither; and anger made his brain
malignant. He could scarcely frame his words intelligibly when he
arrived at Slow Down Ranch.
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