CHAPTER XXXSO IT WAS ALL SETTLED
“What’s this—what’s this, my boy?” cried the major hastily adjusting his reading glasses. “A telegram? And from the West, eh?”
“A night letter from Bob Douglas. I got it yesterday morning. I’ve been all this time getting here, Major. Believe me! the railroads are badly blocked.”
Major Dale was reading the telegram. His face flushed and his eyes brightened as he read.
“This is authentic, Garry?” he finally asked, with shaking voice.
“Sure. I know Bob Douglas—and Gibson, the lawyer, too. Gibson has been in touch with the poor old man all the time. I expect Uncle Terry must have left the will and all his papers with Gibson when he hiked out for Alaska. Poor, poor old man! He’s gone without my ever having seen him again.” Garry’s voice was broken and he turned to look out of the window.
“Not your fault, my boy,” said the major, clearing his throat.
“No, sir. But my misfortune. I know now thatthe old man loved me or he would not have made me rich in the end.”
Major Dale was reading the long telegram again. “Your friend, Mr. Douglas, repeats a phrase of the will, it is evident,” he said softly. “Your uncle says you are to have his money ‘because you are too honest to ever make any for yourself.’ Do you believe that, Garry?” and his eyes suddenly twinkled.
Garry Knapp blushed and shook his head negatively. “That’s just the old man’s caustic wit,” he said. “I’ll make good all right. I’ve got the land, and now I’ve got the money to develop it——”
“Major Dale! Where is Miss Dorothy?”
“Gone out for a tramp in the snow. I heard her with the boys,” said the major, smiling. “I—I expect, Garry, you wish to tell her the good news?”
“And something else, Major, if you will permit me.”
The old gentleman looked at him searchingly. “I am not altogether sure that you deserve to get her, Garry. You are a laggard in love,” he said. “But you have my best wishes.”
“You’ll not find me slow that way afterthis!” exclaimed Garry Knapp gaily, as he made for the door.
Thus it was that, having traced Dorothy andher brothers from the house, the young Westerner came upon the site of the accident to Roger just as the girl and Joe discovered the disappearance of the smaller boy in the deep drift.
“Run for help, Joe!” Dorothy was crying. “Bring somebody! And ropes! No! don’t you dare jump into that drift! Then there will be two of you lost. Oh!”
“Hooray!” yelled Joe at that instant. “Here’s Mr. Knapp!”
Dorothy could not understand Garry’s appearance; but she had to believe her eyesight. Before the young man, approaching now by great leaps, had reached the spot they had explained the trouble to him.
“Don’t be so frightened, Dorothy,” he cried. “The boy won’t smother in that snowdrift. He’s probably so scared that——”
Just then a muffled cry came to their ears from below in the drifted gulch.
“He isn’t dead then!” declared Joe. “How’re we going to get him out, Mr. Knapp?”
“By you and Miss Dorothy standing back out of danger and letting me burrow there,” said Garry.
He had already thrown aside his coat. Now he leaped well out from the edge of the gully bank, turning in the air so as to face them as he plunged, feet first, into the drift.
It was partially hollowed out underneath—and this fact Garry had surmised. The wind had blown the snow into the gully, but a hovering wreath of the frozen element had tempted Roger upon its surface and then treacherously let him down into the heart of it.
Garry plunged through and almost landed upon the frightened boy. He groped for him, picked him up in his arms, and the next minute Roger’s head and shoulders burst through the snow crust and he was tossed by Garry out upon the bank.
“Oh, Garry!” gasped Dorothy, trying to help the man up the bank and out of the snow wreath. “What ever should we have done without you?”
“I don’t see what you’re going to do without me, anyway,” laughed the young man breathlessly, finally recovering his feet.
“Garry!”
She looked at him almost in fear, gazing into his flushed face. She saw that something had happened—something that had changed his attitude toward her; but she could not guess what it was.
The boys were laughing, and Joe was beating the snow off the clothing of his younger brother. They did not notice their elders for the moment.
“How——Why did you come back, Garry?” the girl asked directly.
“I come back to see if you would let such a blundering fellow as I am tell you what is in hisheart,” Garry said softly, looking at her with serious gaze.
“Garry! What has happened?” she murmured.
He told her quietly, but with a break in his voice that betrayed the depth of his feeling for his Uncle Terry. “The poor old boy!” he said. “If he had only showed me he loved me so while he lived—and given me a chance to show him.”
“It is not your fault,” said Dorothy using the words her father had used in commenting upon the matter.
They were standing close together—there in the snow, and his arms were about her. Dorothy looked up bravely into his face.
“I—I guess I can’t say it very well, Dorothy. But you know how I feel—how much I love you, my dear. I’m going to make good out there on the old ranch, and then I want to come back here for you. Will you wait for me, Dorothy?”
“I expected to have to wait much longer than that, Garry,” Dorothy replied with a tremulous sigh. And then as he drew her still closer she hid her face on his bosom.
“Lookut! Lookut!” cried Roger in the background, suddenly observing the tableau. “What do you know about Dorothy and Garry Knapp doing it too?”
“Gee!” growled Joe, in disgust. “It must becatching. Tavia and old Nat will get it. Come on away, Roger. Huh! they don’t even know we’re on earth.”
And it was some time before Dorothy Dale and “that cowboy person” awoke to the fact that they were alone and it was a much longer time still before they started back for The Cedars, hand in hand.
THE END.