Then, slowly, he raised the handkerchief to his face. For a full minute
he stood with the dainty fabric pressed to his lips and nose. Back
there--when he had first held the handkerchief--he thought that he
imagined. But now he was sure. Faintly the bit of soiled fabric breathed
to him the sweet scent of hyacinth. His eyes shone in an eager bloodshot
glare as he watched Billinger disappear over a roll in the prairie a
mile away.
"Making a fool of yourself again," he muttered, again winding the golden
hair about his fingers. "There are other women in the world who use
hyacinth besides her. And there are other women with red-gold hair--and
pretty, pretty as Billinger says she was, aren't there?"
He laughed, but there was something uneasy and unnatural in the laugh.
In spite of his efforts to argue the absurdity of his thoughts, he could
feel that he was trembling in every nerve of his body. And twice--three
times he held the handkerchief to his face before he reached the rise in
the prairie over which Billinger had disappeared. The agent had been
gone an hour when the trail of the outlaws brought him to the knoll.
From the top of it Philip looked over the prairie to the North.
A horseman was galloping toward him. He knew that it was Billinger, and
stood up in his stirrups so that the other would see him.
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