Billy Louise stayed all night. She was afraid to leave Ward until his cold was safely better, and there was no one living near enough to summon; no one whom she wanted to summon, in fact, however close they might have been. She spent most of the night curled comfortably on the wolf-skins beside the stove, with a sack of flour for a pillow and Ward's fur coat for covering. Ward slept more unbrokenly than he had done for a long time, while Billy Louise lay cuddled under the smelly fur and thought and thought.
In the morning, if Ward were well enough, she meant to ask him about those cattle he had mentioned when he thought her Buck Olney. They were the same ones which she had seen in the Cove, she knew. Ward had told enough to prove that. He had, in fact, told nearly all she needed to know—except the mystery of his prosperity. He had not mentioned that, and Billy Louise was more curious than ever about his "wolf hunting."
At sunrise she rebuilt the fire and made fresh coffee and a stew from the pieces of jerky she had soaked overnight for the purpose. She wanted eggs, and bread for toast, and fresh cream; but she did not have them, and so she managed a very creditable breakfast for her patient without these desirables.
"Say, that's great. A fellow doesn't appreciate coffee and warm food until he's eaten out of cans and boxes for a month or so. You're a great little lady, Wilhemina. I wish you'd happened along sooner—about six weeks sooner. I'd have got some pleasure out of my broken leg then, maybe."
"Was it—did Buck Olney break it?" Billy Louise knew he had not, but she had been waiting for a chance to open the subject.
"No. I broke it myself, pulling Rattler off a bank into some rocks. I believe I could walk on it, doctor, if you could rustle me something to use for crutches. That's what held me in bed so long. Beckon you could manufacture a pair for me?" His eyes made love. "You've done everything else." He caught her hand and kissed the palm of it. "Can't the Billy part turn carpenter?"
"I'll see. Say, Ward, do you think you could shave off those whiskers if I got everything ready for you? I don't like you to look like old Sourdough. Or maybe I could do it. I—I used to shave daddy's neck, sometimes."
Ward ran his fingers thoughtfully over his hairy cheeks. "I expect I do look like a prehistoric ancestor. I'll see what I can do about it. I set my own leg; I guess I can shave myself. You're a great doctor, Wilhemina. You knocked that cold up to a peak, all right. But—I don't believe you'd better tackle barbering, my dear girl."
Billy Louise pouted her lips at him. She could afford to pout now: Ward was so like himself that she did not worry over him at all. She also felt that she could afford to badger him into telling her some of the things she wanted to know.
"Where did you hang Buck?" she asked naïvely.
"Huh?" Ward's eyes bored into hers with his intent look, trying to read her thoughts.
"Where was it you hanged Buck Olney?"
"Nowhere. I put the fear of the Lord into him, that's all. How did you hear about it?"
"From you." Billy Louise was maddeningly calm. "You told me all about it yesterday. And about those cattle in the corral up here. I found them yesterday myself, Ward—only it seems a month ago!—down in the Cove."
"Did you?"
"Yes, and I drove them up to the corral and read the riot act to Marthy and Charlie Fox—"
"Huh! What did they say?"
"Oh, they denied it, of course! What are we going to do about it, Ward?"
"Nothing, I guess. What did you want to do?"
"I don't know. I don't want to hurt them, and I don't want them to hurt anyone else. Do you know Seabeck? He's an awfully square old fellow. I believe—" An idea formed vaguely in the back of Billy Louise's mind. "I believe I could persuade him—"
"I believe you could persuade the devil himself, if you took a notion to try," Ward affirmed sincerely, when she hesitated. "What do you want to persuade him into?"
"Oh, nothing, I guess! How do you feel, Ward? We've got to stick to the job of getting you fit to leave here and go on down to the ranch with me. When do you think you could manage to ride?"
Ward looked longingly out of the window, just as he had been looking for six weeks. "I think I could manage it now," he said doggedly, because of his great longing. "I set my own leg—"
"Yes, and I'm willing to admit you're a wonder, and have gotten the stoics beaten at their own game. Still, there's a limit to what the human body will stand. I'm going down to tend the horses, and if you think you can walk without hurting your leg, I'll hunt some forked sticks for crutches. We'll see how you make out with them, first, before we talk about riding twenty miles on horseback. Besides, you'd catch more cold if you went out to-day."
While she talked, her plans took definite shape in the back of her mind. She took Buck Olney's knife that was lying on the window-sill and went in search of crutches among the willows along the creek. Forked sticks were plentiful enough, but it was not so easy to find two that would support even so skinny a man as Ward. She compromised by cutting four that seemed suitable and binding them together in couples.
When she went in with her makeshifts, Ward was sitting upon the side of the bunk, clothed and in his right mind—but pitifully wobbly and ashamed of his weakness.
"You shouldn't have tried to get up yet," she scolded. "Do you want to be worse, so I'll have to cure you all over again?" Then, woman-like, she proceeded to annul the effect by petting and sympathy.
It was while she was sitting in the one chair, padding the sticks crudely enough but effectively, that Ward, gazing at her with the light of love in his eyes, thought of something he had meant to tell her.
"Oh, by the way, I've got something for you, Wilhemina," he said. "Put down that thing and come over here. I want to shave before I take a try at walking, anyway. See here, lady-mine. How would you like these strung on a gold chain?"
From under his pillow he drew out a tobacco sack and emptied the contents into her palm. "Those are your Christmas present, Bill-Loo. Like 'em?"
"Do I!" Billy Louise held up the biggest one and stared at it round-eyed. "Gold nuggets! Where in the world—"
"That's what I'm going to tell you—now you're through being just pals. Oh, I'd have told you, anyway, I reckon, only the play never came right, after that first little squabble we had over it." He put an arm around her, pulled her down beside him, and rubbed his bristly chin over her hair. "That's the wolf joke, William. I did make a lot of money wolfing—on the square. I dug out a den of pups and struck a little pocket of pretty rich gravel. I've been busy panning it out all the time I could spare, till the creek froze up."
"You found a gold mine?" Billy Louise gasped. "Why, whoever would have thought—"
"Oh, I wouldn't call it a gold mine, exactly," he hastened to assure her, before her imagination dazzled her. "There isn't enough of it. It's just a pocket. I've cleaned up about eighteen hundred dollars, this summer, besides these nuggets. Maybe more. And there's some left yet. I found both ends of the streak; it lies along a ledge on the side of a gully. I couldn't find anything except in that one streak of gravel; and when that's gone she's done, as near as I can figure. But it isn't all gone yet, lady mine. There's enough left to pay the preacher, anyway. That big fellow I found along toward the last, just before I quit working." He kissed her gravely. "Poor old girl! She's dead game, all right, and she's kind of had the cards stacked against her from the start. But things are going to come easier from now on, if I'm any prophet. It's too bad—"
Billy Louise read his thought.
"Mommie looked so peaceful, Ward. At the last, I mean. If I could have waked her up, I don't believe I'd have had the heart to do it. She never was very happy; you know that. She couldn't seem to see the happiness in little things. So many are like that. And she looked happier—at the last—than I ever saw her look before. So—I'm happier, too—since yesterday."
"Are you?" Ward dropped his face against her hair and held it there for a minute. It was not his cold altogether that had made his voice break hoarsely over those two words.
"Do you know—" Billy Louise was lifting the nuggets one after the other and letting them drop to her lap—"happiness is like gold, Ward. We've got to pan it out of life ourselves. If we try to steal it from someone else, we pay the penalty, don't you think? And so many go looking and looking for great big chunks of it all—all—whatever they do to it." She laughed a little at her ignorance of the technical process. "You see what I mean, don't you? We get a streak of gravel; that's life. And we can pan out happiness if we try—little nuggets and sometimes just colors—but it keeps us hoping and working."
"Doctor of philosophy!" Ward kissed her hair. "You're a great little girl, all right. And I'm the buckaroo that has struck a mighty rich streak of pay dirt in life, Wilhemina. I'm panning out happiness millions to the pan right now."
Billy Louise, attacked with a spasm of shyness, went abruptly back to padding the makeshift crutches and changed the subject.
"I'm going home, soon as I fix you comfy," she said.
Whereupon Ward protested most strenuously and did not look in the least like a man who has just announced himself a millionaire in happiness.
"What for?" he demanded, after he had exhausted himself to no purpose in telling her that she should not leave the cabin until he could go along.
"I want eggs—for you, you ungrateful beast. And some bread for toast. And I want to tell Phoebe and John where I am."
"You think those Injuns are going to hurt themselves worrying? I don't want any eggs and toast. I've managed all right on crackers and jerky for six weeks, so I guess I can stand it a few hours longer. Still, if you're crazy to go—" He dropped back on the pillow and turned his face away.
Billy Louise worked silently until she had made the crutches as soft on top as she could. Then she hunted for Ward's razor and shaving-cup and after one or two failures—through using too much water—she managed to make a cup of very nice lather.
"Now, buckaroo, don't be a sulky kid," she said, firmly as she could. "You know it's hard enough for me to go off and leave you here like this. But, as you say, you've managed to get along for six weeks without me, so—"
"Sure. I could do it again, I reckon." Ward turned a gloomy pair of eyes upon her. "What's the rush? Do you think it isn't proper—"
"It's always proper to do what is right and helpful and kind," said Billy Louise with dignity, because she had made up her mind and was trying not to weaken. "I've lived in this country all my life, and I guess my reputation will stand this little strain," she went on lightly, "even if anyone finds it out. I've got to go, that's all. Those people in the Cove—" It was eloquent of her stern justice that she could not bring herself to speak them by name.
"You aren't going to turn them over to the sheriff, are you, William? Good Lord, girl! If I can—"
"Your lather is getting cold," Billy Louise said evenly. "I ought to have known better than mention the subject at all. I'm going to do what's right. I believe I have some faint idea of right and wrong, Ward Warren. And I'm not going to do anything that I don't feel is right, or anything that I'll be sorry for. You might trust me, I think. It's early yet—"
"You'll come back before night, won't you?" From his tone, Ward had yielded the point—and was minded to yield with what graciousness he could command. It had occurred to him that he was behaving like a selfish booby. Billy Louise should not call him weak-kneed; whatever happened.
"No, I don't think I can, Ward. I might send John."
"You needn't bother. I don't want John."
"Well, I don't suppose he would be much comfort. I'll make a pot of coffee, Ward, and I'll fill the lantern and fix it so you can heat a cup when you want to; how will that be?" She brightened a little at the idea. "And I'll fix your lungs up again before I go and bake some nice, hot biscuits and put here, and butter, and fix you just as comfy as possible. Or, if you can manage to get around with the crutches, all the better. I'll leave things so you won't have to go outside for a thing.
"And, Ward"—she bent over him anxiously—"I'm going because I must. For all our sakes I must go right away. And I'll come back to-morrow just as early as I can get here. So if you are real good, and take care of your cold, and get a little strong about walking, you can go back with me. And to-morrow night you can sit in daddy's chair before the fireplace, and we'll have chicken and—"
"All right—all right!" Ward laughed suddenly. "Will you give me a lump of sugar and let me look at all the pitty pittys in the album? Oh, you William the Conqueror!" He caught her close, when he saw that he had hurt her feelings a little, and held her a minute. "When I get two good legs under me, Wilhemina," he promised softly, "I'm going to stake myself to the job of taking care of you. Your cheeks are pretty thin, little lady-girl. Damn the luck, anyway!"
"Here's the lather. I'm going down and saddle up," said Billy Louise. "When I come back, we'll see how the crutches work."
"Oh, say!" Ward called after her. "My saddle's behind a buck bush up along the trail where the bank is cut straight. I forgot about that. And would you mind bringing the looking-glass, William? How the deuce do you think a man's going to shave without a glass? And that old paper to wipe the lather on, while you're at it. I see the Billy of you hasn't got to the shaving-point yet, at any rate!"
Billy Louise took down the glass and flung it on the bed, threw the newspaper after it, and departed with her chin in the air to find his saddle and bridle and carry them to the stable.
Ward, sitting up in bed, stared at the closed door remorsefully. When he was convinced that she did not intend to return even for the last word which is so tempting to a woman, he reached for the glass, held it up, and looked within.
"Sufferin' saddle blankets!" he grunted and dropped the glass. "And she could kiss a mug like that!"
Floyd Carson was a somewhat phlegmatic young man, but he swore an astonished oath when he saw Billy Louise galloping along the lane that led nowhere except to the womanless abode of Samuel Seabeck. He walked very fast to the stable, which was the first logical stopping-place, and so he met Billy Louise before she had time to dismount, even supposing she intended to do so.
"Hello, Floyd! Is Mr. Seabeck at home?" Billy Louise was not one to waste time in the superfluities of speech when she had anything on her mind.
"Sure. Get off, and I'll put up your horse. We're just through eatin', but our grub carpenter will rustle something for yuh, all right."
"No, I can't stop this time. I'm not hungry, anyway. Just give a yell for Mr. Seabeck, will you? I want to see him a minute."
Floyd eyed her uncertainly, decided that Billy Louise was not in the mood to yield to persuasion, and tactfully hurried off to find Seabeck without shouting for him—lest he bring others also, who were evidently not wanted at all. He took it that Billy Louise felt some diffidence about visiting a strictly bachelor outfit, and he set himself to relieve her of any embarrassment.
Presently Seabeck himself came from the dirt-roofed, rambling cabin which was his home and strode down the path, buttoning his coat as he came. Floyd's face showed for a minute in the doorway before he effaced himself completely, and not another man was in sight anywhere. Billy Louise was grateful to circumstance; she had dreaded this visit, though not for the reason Floyd Carson believed.
"How de do, Miss MacDonald? Pretty nice day, but I'm afraid it's a weather-breeder. The wind's trying to change, I notice."
"Yes, and so I mustn't stop. Could you ride part way home with me, Mr. Seabeck? I—want to talk with you about something. And I can't stop a minute. I must get home."
"Why, certainly, I'll go. If you'll wait just a minute while I saddle up—or if you'd rather ride on, I'll overtake you."
"I'll ride on, I think. Blue hates standing around, and he's a little warm, too. You're awfully good, Mr. Seabeck—"
"Oh, not at all!" Seabeck stubbed his toe on the stable doorsill in his confusion at the praise. "I'll be right along, soon as I can slap a saddle on." He disappeared, and Billy Louise turned and loped slowly down the lane.
So far, so good. Billy Louise tried to believe that it was all going to be as plain sailing as this fortuitous beginning, but she was aware of a nervous fluttering in her throat while she waited, and she knew that she positively dreaded hearing Seabeck gallop up behind her on the frozen trail. "Why will people do things that make a lot of trouble for others?" she cried out petulantly. And then she heard the steadypluck, pluckety-pluckof Seabeck's horse, and twisted her lips with a whimsical acceptance of the part she had set herself to play. She might smash things, she told herself, but at the worst it would be only a premature smash. "Come, Bill," she adjured herself, pretending it was what Ward would have said, had he looked into her mind. "Be a Bill-the-Conk—and a good one! Shove in your chips and play for all there is in it."
"You must have some lightning method of saddling, Mr. Seabeck," she smiled over her shoulder at him when he came up.
"We learn to do things quick when we've handled cattle a few years," he admitted. He had a diffident manner of receiving compliments which pleased Billy Louise and gave her confidence a needed brace. She was not a skilled coquette; she was too honest and too straightforward for that. Still, nature places certain weapons in the hands of a woman, and instinct shows her how to use them. Seabeck, from his very unaccustomedness to women, seemed to her particularly pliable. Billy Louise took her courage in both hands and went straight to the point.
"Mr. Seabeck, I've always heard that you're an awfully square man," she said. "Daddy seemed to think that you could be depended on in any kind of a pinch. I hope it's true. I'm banking a lot on your squareness to-day."
"Why, I don't know about my being any better than my neighbors," he said, with a twinkle of humor in his eyes, which were a bright, unvarying blue. "But you can bank on my doing anything I can for you, Miss MacDonald. I think I could be even better than square—to help a plucky little girl who—"
"I don't mean just the ordinary squareness," Billy Louise put in quietly. "I mean bigness, too; a bigness that will make a man be more than square; a bigness that will let him see all around a thing and judge it from a bigger viewpoint than mere justice—"
"Hm-mm—if you could trust me enough to—"
"I'm going to, Mr. Seabeck. I'm going to take it for granted you're bigger than your own squareness. And if you're not—if you're just a selfish, weak, letter-perfect, honest man, I'll—feel like—thrashing you." Without a doubt that was the Billy of her which spoke.
"I'll take the thrashing if you think I need it," he promised, looking at her with something more than admiration. "What have you done, Miss MacDonald? If I can help you hide the body—"
"There!" Billy Louise dared to wrinkle her nose at him—and I don't know which of her did it. "I knew you'd play up like a good sport. But what if it isn't a body? What if—what if you found some of your cattle with—with a big D—run over your brand?" She had a perfectly white line around her mouth and nostrils then, but she faced him squarely.
"Hm-mm!" Seabeck gave her a quick, sidewise glance and pulled thoughtfully at the graying whiskers that pointed his chin. "I would have been glad to lend you money, or help you in any way."
"Yes, I know." Billy Louise snapped her reins impatiently. "But what would you do about the—cattle?"
"What could I do? What would you want me to do? I should do whatever would help you. I would—"
"Would you—be as ready to help somebody else? Somebody I—thought a—lot—of?"
Seabeck, evidently, saw light. He cleared his throat and spat gravely into a bush. "I see you don't trust me, after all," he said.
"I do. I've got to; I mean, I'd have to whether I did or not. It's like this, Mr. Seabeck. It isn't the big D brand; of course you knew it couldn't be. But it isn't yours, either. Someone was tempted and was weak. They're sorry now. They want to do the right thing, and it rests with you whether they can do it. You can shut them up in jail if you like; you have a perfect right to do it. Some men would do that and be able to sleep after it, I suppose. But I believe you're bigger than that. I believe you're big enough to see that if a person goes wrong and then sees the mistake and wants to pull back into the straight trail, a man—even the one who has been wronged—would be committing a moral crime to prevent it. To take a person who wants to make a fresh, honest start, and shut that person up amongst criminals and brand him as a criminal, seems to me a worse wrong than to steal a few head of cattle; don't you think so, Mr. Seabeck?"
What Mr. Seabeck thought did not immediately appear in speech. He was pulling a little harder at his whiskers and staring at the ears of his horse.
"That would depend on the person," he said at last. "Some men are born criminals."
"Oh, we aren't talking about that kind of a man. Surely to goodness you don't call Charlie Fox a born criminal, or Marthy Meilke?"
"Charlie Fox! Is that the person you mean, who has been—"
"Yes, it is! And he is horribly sorry, and so is Marthy, and they'll pay you for the cattle. And if you do anything mean about it, it will simply kill poor old Marthy. You couldn't send her to the pen, Mr. Seabeck. Think how she's worked there in the Cove; and Charlie has worked like a perfect slave; and he was trying to get a start so he—could—get married—"
"Hm-mm!" Rumors had reached Seabeck, thanks to Billy Louise's dropped lashes upon a certain occasion, which caused him to believe he saw further light.
"And if you're going to be horrid—"
"Will the—lady he wants to marry give him another chance?"
"Don't you think she ought to—if she l-loves him?" Billy Louise studied the skyline upon the side farthest from Seabeck.
"You say he wants to pay for the cattle and—"
"He'll do anything he can to make amends," said Billy Louise, with conviction. "He'll take his medicine and go to jail if you insist," she added sorrowfully. "It will ruin his whole life, of course, and break a couple of women's hearts, but—"
"It's a bad thing, a mighty bad thing, when a man tries to get ahead too fast."
"It's a good thing when he learns the lesson without having to pay for it with his whole future," Billy Louise amended the statement.
Seabeck smiled a little behind his fingers that kept tugging at his whiskers.
"Did Charlie Fox send Miss Portia—"
"He doesn't know I had any intention of coming," Billy Louise assured him quickly and with perfect truth. "They'll both be awfully surprised when they find it out"—which was also perfectly true—"and when they see you ride up, they'll think you've got the sheriff at your back. I haven't a doubt they—"
"There are a few points I'd like to clear up, if you can help me," Seabeck interrupted. "All this rustling that has been going on for the past year and a half: are Fox and the Meilke woman mixed up in that? I want," he said, "to help the young man—and her. But if they have been operating on a large scale, I'm afraid—"
"I believe Charlie must have been influenced in some ways by bad acquaintances," Billy Louise answered more steadily than she felt. "But his—rustling—has been of a petty kind. I won't apologize for him, Mr. Seabeck. I think it's perfectly awful, what he has done. But I think it would be more awful still not to give him a chance. The other rustling is some outside gang, I'm sure. If Charlie was mixed up with them, it's very slightly—just enough to damn him utterly if he were arrested and tried. He isn't a natural criminal. He's just weak. And he's learned his lesson. It's up to you, Mr. Seabeck, to say whether he shall have a chance to profit by the lesson. And there's poor old Marthy in it, too. She just worships Charlie and would do anything—even steal for him."
Seabeck meditated for a mile, and Billy Louise watched him uneasily from the tail of her eye. To tell the plain truth, she was in a panic of fear at what she had done. It had looked so simple and so practicable when she had planned it; and now when the words were out and the knowledge had reached Seabeck and was beyond her control, she could not think of any good reason for telling him.
Last night, when she lay curled up by the stove under Ward's wolf-skin coat, this seemed the only possible way out: To tell Seabeck and trust to his kindness and generosity to refrain from pushing the case. To have Charlie Fox give back what he had stolen or pay for it—anything that would satisfy Seabeck's sense of justice—and let him start honestly. She had thought that Seabeck would be merciful, if she told him in the right way; but now, when she stole a glance at his bent, brooding face, she was frightened. He did not look merciful, but stern and angry. She remembered then that stealing cattle is the one crime a cattleman finds it hard to forgive.
Billy Louise might have spared herself some mental anguish if she could have known that Seabeck was brooding over the wonder of a woman's love that pardons and condones a man's sins. He was wishing that such a love as Billy Louise's had come to him, and he was wondering how a man could be tempted to go wrong when such a girl loved him. He was laboring under a misapprehension, of course. Billy Louise had permitted him to misunderstand her interest in the matter. If he had known that she was pleading solely for Marthy—poor, avaricious, gray, old Marthy—perhaps his mercy would have been less tinged with that smoldering resentment which was directed not so much at the wrongdoer, as at fate which had cheated him.
"I'm glad you came and told me this," he said at last. "Very glad, indeed, Miss MacDonald. Certain steps have been taken lately to push this—wipe out this rustling and general lawlessness, and if you had not told me, I'm afraid the mills of justice would have ground your—friends. Of course the law would be merciful to Mrs. Meilke. No jury would send an old woman like that— By the way, that breed they have had working for them—he is in the deal, too, I take it."
"Yes, of course. They had to have someone to help. Marthy can't do any riding." Billy Louise spoke with a dreary apathy that betrayed how the reaction had set in. "She stayed in the Cove, in case anyone came prowling down there. It seems there's a wire fastened to the gate, and it rings a bell down at the house somewhere when the gate is opened. And besides that she had a dog that would tackle strangers. I don't believe," she went on, after a little silence, "that Marthy would have turned dishonest for herself. She was grasping, and all she cared for was getting ahead. It—sort of grew on her, after the years of trying to dig a bare living out of the ground. I—can understand that; and I can see how she would go to any length almost for—Charlie. But—"
"Well, let's not think any more about them until we have to." There was a certain crude attempt at soothing her anxieties. "You've trusted me, Miss MacDonald. I'll try and not disappoint you in the matter, though, unless they are quite separate from the gang which is being run down, it may be hard to protect them. Do you know—whether—any other cowman has suffered from their—mm-mm—haste to get rich?"
"I don't think there's anyone but you," Billy Louise replied lifelessly.
"Hm-mm—do you know, Miss MacDonald, whether there was any intimacy between—your friends—and the man we had for stock inspector, Mr. Olney?"
"I—can't say, as to that." Billy Louise, you see, did not know much about details, but the little she did know made her hedge.
"There's a queer story about Olney. You know he has left the country, don't you? It seems he rode very hurriedly up to the depot at Wilmer to take the train. Just as he stepped on, a fellow who knew him by sight noticed a piece of paper pinned on the back of his coat. He jerked it loose. It was a—m-m—very peculiar document for a man to be wearing on his back." Seabeck pulled at his whiskers, but it was not the pulling which quirked the corners of his lips. "The man said Olney seemed greatly upset over something and had evidently forgotten the paper until he felt it being pulled loose. He said Olney looked back then, and he was the color of a pork-rind. The train was pulling out. The man took the paper over to a saloon and let several others read it. They—mm-mm—decided that it should be placed in the hands of the authorities. Have—m-m—your—friends ever mentioned the matter to you?"
"No," said Billy Louise, and her eyes were wide.
"Hm-mm! We must discover, if we can, Miss MacDonald, whether they are in any way implicated with this man Olney. I believe that this is at present more important than the recovery of any—m-m—cattle of mine which they may have appropriated."
Billy Louise looked at him for a minute. "Mr. Seabeck, you're awfully dear about this!" she told him. "I haven't been as square as you; and I've been— Listen here, Mr. Seabeck! I don't love Charlie Fox a bit. I love somebody else, and I'm going to marry him. He's so square, I'd hate to have him think I even let you believe something that wasn't true. It's Marthy I'm thinking of, Mr. Seabeck. I was afraid you wouldn't let Charlie off just for her sake, but I thought maybe if you just thought I—wanted you to do it for mine, why, maybe—with two women to be sorry for, you'd kind of—"
"Hm-mm!" Seabeck sent her a keen, blue, twinkling glance that made Billy Louise turn hot all over with shame and penitence. "Hm-mm!" he said again—if one can call that a saying—and pulled at his graying whiskers. "Hm-mmm!"
Billy Louise led the way down the gorge, through the meadow, and along the orchard to the little gate. The Cove seemed empty and rather forlorn, with the wind creeping up the river and rattling the dry branches of the naked fruit trees. Not much more than twenty-four hours had slid into the past since Billy Louise had galloped away from the place, yet she felt vaguely that life had taken a big stride here since she last saw it. Nothing was changed, though, as far as she could see. A few cattle fed in the meadow next the river, a fattening hog lifted himself from his bed of straw and grunted at them as they passed. A few chickens were hunting fishworms in the thawed places of the garden, and a yellow cat ran creepingly along the top rail of the nearest corral, crouched there with digging claws and pounced down into a flock of snowbirds. A drift of dead apple leaves stirred uneasily beside the footpath through the berry bushes. Billy Louise started nervously and glanced over her shoulder at Seabeck. For some reason she wanted the comfort of his presence. She waited until he came up to her—tall, straight like a soldier, and silent as the Cove itself.
"I'm—scared," said Billy Louise. She did not smile either when she said it. "I—hate empty-feeling places. I'm—afraid of emptiness."
"Yet you are always riding alone in the hills." Seabeck looked down at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes.
"The hills aren't empty," she told him impatiently. "They're just big and quiet. This is—" She flung out a hand and did not try to find a word for what she felt.
"Shall I go first? I thought you would rather—"
"I would." Billy Louise pulled herself together, angry at her sudden impulse to run, as she had run from Ward's quiet cabin. She remembered that unreasoning panic—was it really only yesterday?—and went steadily up the path and across the little ditch which Marthy had dug. Why must sordid trouble and dull misery hang over a beauty-spot like this? she thought resentfully.
She stopped for a minute on the doorstep, hesitating before she opened the door. Behind her, Seabeck drew close as if he would shield her from something; perhaps he, too, felt the deadly quiet and emptiness of the place.
Billy Louise opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. She stopped and stood still, so that her slim figure would have hidden the interior from the eyes of Seabeck had he not been so tall. As it was, she barred his way so that he must stand on the step outside.
By the kitchen table, with her elbows on the soiled oilcloth, sat Marthy. Her uncombed hair hung in wisps about her head; her hard old face was lined and gray, her hard eyes dull with brooding. Billy Louise, staring at her from the doorway, knew that Marthy had been sitting like that for a long, long time.
She went over to her diffidently. Hesitatingly she laid her gauntleted hand on Marthy's stooped shoulder. She did not say anything. Marthy did not move under her touch, except to turn her dull glance upon Seabeck, standing there on the doorstep.
"C'm in," she said stolidly. "What'd yuh come fer?"
"Miss MacDonald will perhaps explain—"
"She ain't got nothin' to explain," said hard old Marthy with grim finality. "I'll do what explainin's to be done. C'm in. Don't stand there like a stump. And shut the door. It's cold as a barn here, anyway."
"Oh, Marthy!" cried Billy Louise, with the sound of tears in her voice.
"Don't oh Marthy me," said the harsh voice flatly. "I don't want no Marthyin' nor no sympathy. Well, old man, you're here to colleck, I s'pose. Take what's in sight; 'tain't none of it yourn, far's I know, but anything you claim you kin have, fer all me. I've lived honest all my days an' worked fer what I got. I've harbored thieves in my old age and trusted them that wa'n't fit to be trusted. I've allus paid my debts, Seabeck. I'm willin' to pay now fer bein' a fool."
"W-where's Charlie?" Billy Louise leaned and whispered the question.
"I d'no, and I don't care. He's pulled out—him an' that breed. I'll have t' pay yuh for seven growed cattle I never seen till yist'day, Seabeck. You can set yer own price on 'em. I ain't sure, but I've got an idee they was shot las' night an' dumped in the river. You c'n set yer price. I've got rheumatiz so bad I couldn't go 'n' put a stop to nothin'—but—"
"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise was shivering and crying now. "Marthy! Don't be so—so hard. It was all Charlie—"
"Yes," said Marthy harshly, "it was all Charlie. He was a thief, an' I was sech a simple-minded old fool I never knowed what he was. I let him go ahead, an' I set in the house with a white apurn tied on me an' thought I was havin' an easy time. I set here and let him rob my neighbors that I ain't never harmed er cheated out of a cent, and soon's he thought he was found out, he—left ole Marthy to look after herself. Never so much as fed the hogs or done the milkin' first! Looky here, Seabeck! You'll git paid back, an' I'll take your figgers fer what I owe, but if you git after Charlie, I'll—kill yuh. You let 'im go, I'm the one he hurt most—and I ain't goin'—" She laid her frowsy old head on her arms, like one who is utterly crushed and dumb.
"Oh, Marthy!" Billy Louise knelt and threw her arms around Marthy's shoulders.
"You've got to come and lie down, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after a long, unbroken silence.
"Mr. Seabeck, if you'll start a fire, I'll make some tea for her. Come, Marthy—just to please me. Do it for Billy Louise, Marthy."
The old woman rose stiffly, and with a feebleness that seemed utterly foreign to her usual energy, permitted Billy Louise to lead her from the kitchen. In the sitting-room that Charlie had built and furnished for her, Marthy lay and stared around her with that same dull apathy she had shown from the first. Only once did she manifest any real emotion, and that was when Billy Louise came in with some tea and toast.
"You take all them books outa them shelves an' burn 'em up," she commanded. "An' you take them two pictures off'n that shelf, of him an' her, an' bring 'em t' me."
Billy Louise set the toast and tea down on a chair and brought the pictures. She did not say a word, but she looked a little scared and her eyes were very big, just as they had been when Ward mistook her for Buck Olney and so let her see into another one of the dark places of life. It seemed to Billy Louise that she was being compelled to look into a good many dark places, lately.
Marthy took the two photographs and looked at the first with hatred. "The Jezebel! She won't git to run it over ole Marthy," she muttered with sullen triumph and twisted the cardboard spitefully in her gnarled old fingers. "She can't come here an' take all I've got an' never give me a thankye for it. I'm shet uh her, anyway." She twisted again and yet again, till the picture was a handful of ragged scraps of cardboard. Then she raised herself to an elbow and flung the fragments far from her and lay down again with glum satisfaction.
Her fingers touched the other picture, which had slid to the couch. Mechanically she picked it up and held it so that the light from the window struck it full. This was Charlie's face—Charlie with the falsely frank smile in his eyes, and with his lips curved as they did when he was just going to say, "Now, Aunt Martha!" in tender protest against her too eager industry.
Marthy's chin began to quiver while she looked. Her lips sagged with the pull of her aching heart. For the third time in her life Billy Louise saw big, slow tears gather in Marthy's hard blue eyes and slide down the leathery seams in her cheeks. Billy Louise looked, found her vision blurring with her own tears, and turned and tiptoed from the room.
Seabeck was gone somewhere on his horse. Billy Louise guessed shrewdly that he was down in the meadows, looking over the cattle and trying to estimate the extent of the thievery. She put Blue in the stable and fed him, with that half-mechanical habit of attending to the needs of one's mount which becomes second nature to the range-bred. She would not go on to the Wolverine; that needed no decision; she accepted it at once as a fact. Marthy needed her now more than anyone. More even than Ward, though Billy Louise hated to think of him up there alone and practically helpless. But Marthy must have her to-night. Marthy was facing her bitterest sorrow since Minervy died, and Marthy was old. Ward, Billy Louise reminded herself sternly, was not old, and he was facing happiness—so far as he or anyone knew. She wanted very much to be with Ward, but she could not delude her conscience into believing that he needed her more than did Marthy.
Seabeck returned after awhile, and Billy Louise, who was watching from the doorway, met him at the little gate as he was coming up to the house.
"Well, how bad is it, Mr. Seabeck?" she asked sharply, just because she felt the imperative need of facts—she who had struggled so long in the quicksands of suspicion and doubts and fears and suspense.
"Hmm-mm—how bad is it—in the house?" he countered. "The real crime has been committed there, it seems to me. A few head of cattle, more or less, don't count for much against the broken heart of an old woman."
"Oh!" Billy Louise, her hands clenched upon the gate, stared up wide-eyed into his face. And this was the real Seabeck, whom she had known impersonally all her life! This was the real man of him, whom she had never known; a flawless diamond of a soul behind those bright blue eyes and that pointed, graying beard; poet, philosopher, gentleman to the bone. "Oh! You saw that, too! And they're your cattle that were stolen! You saw it—oh, you're—you're—"
"Hmm-mm—a human being, I hope, Miss MacDonald, as well as a mere cattleman. How is the old lady?"
"Crying," said Billy Louise, with brief directness. "Crying over the picture of that—swine. Think of his running off and leaving her here all alone—and not even doing the chores first!" (Here, you must know, was broken an unwritten law of the ranch.) "And Marthy's got rheumatism, too, so she can hardly walk—"
"I'll attend to the chores, Miss MacDonald." Seabeck's lips quirked under the fingers that pulled at his whiskers. "You say—over his picture?"
"Yes, over his picture!" Billy Louise spoke with a suppressed fury. "With that honest look in his eyes—oh, I could kill him!"
"Hmm-mm—it does seem a pity that one can't. But if she can cry—"
"I see. You believe too that tears are a necessary kind of weakness for a woman, like smoking tobacco is for a man—or swearing. Well, I can just tell you, Mr. Seabeck, that some tears pull the very soul out of a person; they're the red-hot pinchers of the torture-chamber of life, Mr. Seabeck. Every single, slow tear that Marthy sheds right now is taking that much away from her life. Why, she—she idolized that—that devil. She hadn't much that was lovable in poor old Jase; he was just her husband; he wasn't even a real man. And she never had any children to love, except a little girl that died. And she's worked here and scrimped and saved till she got just fairly comfortable, and then Charlie Fox came and patted her on the back and called her a game little lady, and poor old Marthy just poured out all the love and all the trust she had in her, on him! And she's old, and she had starved all her life for a little love—a little affection and a few kind words. I don't suppose Jase kissed her once in twenty years; I couldn't imagine him getting up steam enough to kiss anybody! And Charlie petted her and did little things for her that nobody had ever done in her life. It meant a whole lot to Marthy to have a man take the water bucket away from her and give her a little hug and tell her she mustn't think of carrying water; oh, you're a man, and I don't suppose you can realize; I didn't myself, till lately—" Billy Louise blushed and then twisted her lips, wondering if love had taught her all this.
"And so Marthy just leaned more and more on him and let him take care of her and pet her; and she never once dreamed he was doing anything crooked. I thought she did, I know, Mr. Seabeck. I thought she was in it, too; but I see now that Marthy has been living the woman in her, these last two years; she'd never had a chance before. And now to have him—to know he's just a common thief and to have him go off and leave her—Mr. Seabeck, I'd be willing to bet all I've got that Marthy would have forgiven his stealing cattle, if he had just stayed. She'd have done anything on earth for him; and the bigger the sacrifice she made for him, the more she would have loved him; women are like that. But to have him go off—and—leave her—and not bother his head about what happened to her, just so he got out of it—Mr. Seabeck, that's going to kill Marthy. It's going to kill her by inches."
"I—see," he assented, looking thoughtfully at the flushed face and big, shining eyes of Billy Louise. (I wonder if Seabeck was not thinking how he had known Billy Louise impersonally all her life and yet had never met the real Billy Louise until to-day!)
"And yet," she added bitterly, "she's going to protect him if it takes every cent she's managed to rake together these last thirty years. You heard what she told you. She said she'd kill you if you hurt Charlie. She'd try it, too."
"Hmm-mm, yes! My life has been threatened several times to-day." Seabeck looked at her with eyes a-twinkle, and Billy Louise blushed to the crown of her Stetson hat. "Do you think, Miss MacDonald, she would feel like talking business for a few minutes?"
"Oh, yes; if she's like me, she'll want to get the agony over with." Billy Louise turned with a twitch of the shoulders. She felt chilled, somehow. She had not quite expected that Seabeck would want to talk about his stolen stock at all. She had rather taken it for granted that he would let that subject lie quiet for awhile. Oh, well, he was a cattleman, after all.
Marthy did not attempt to rise when Seabeck followed Billy Louise into the sitting-room. She caught up her apron and wiped her eyes and her nose, however, and she also slid Charlie's picture under the cheap cushion. After that she faced Seabeck with harsh composure and waited for the settlement.
"Hm-mm! I have been looking over the cattle," he began, sitting on the edge of a chair and turning his black hat absently round and round by the brim. "You—mm-mm—you tell me there were seven head of grown stock—"
"That they shot and throwed in the river, with the brands cut out," interpolated Marthy stolidly. "I heard 'em say that's how they would git rid of 'em, an' I heard 'em shootin' down there."
"Hmm-mm, yes! Do you know just what—"
"Five dry cows 'n' two steers—long two-year-oles, I jedged 'em to be." Marthy was certainly prompt enough and explicit enough. And her lips were grim, and her faded blue eyes hard and steady upon the face of Seabeck.
"Hmm-mm—yes! I find also," he went on in his somewhat precise voice that had earned him the nickname of "Deacon" among his punchers, "that there are more young stock vented and rebranded than I—er—sold your nephew. Fourteen head, to be exact. With the cattle you tell me which were—mm-m—disposed of last night, that would make twenty-one head of stock for which—mm-mm—I take it you are willing to pay."
"I ain't got the money now," Marthy stated, too apathetic to be either defiant or placating. "You c'n fix up the papers t' suit yerself. I'll sign anything yuh want."
"Hmm-mm—yes! A note covering the amount, with legal rate of interest, will be—quite satisfactory, Mrs. Meilke. I shall make a lump sum at the going price for mixed stock. If you have a blank note, I—"
"You kin look in that desk over there," permitted Marthy. "If yuh don't find any there, there ain't none nowhere."
Seabeck did not find any blank notes. He found an eloquent confusion of jumbled letters and accounts and papers, and guessed that the owner had done some hasty sorting and straightening of his affairs. He sighed, and his blue eyes hardened for a minute. Then Billy Louise moved from the door and went over to kneel comfortingly beside Marthy, and Seabeck looked at the two and sighed again, though his eyes were no longer stern. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and wrote steadily in a prim, upright chirography that had never a flourish anywhere, but carefully crossed t's and carefully dotted i's and punctuation marks of beautiful exactness.
"You will please sign here, Mrs. Meilke," he said calmly, coming over to them with the sheet of paper laid smoothly upon a last-year's best-seller and with Charlie's fountain pen in his other hand. "And if Miss MacDonald will also sign, as an endorser, I think I can safely do away with any mortgage or other legal security."
Billy Louise stood up and gave him one look—which Seabeck did not appreciate, because he did not see it.
"I'd ruther give a mortgage," Marthy said uneasily, sitting up suddenly and looking from one to the other. "I don't want Billy Louise to git tangled up in my troubles. She's got plenty of her own. Her maw's just died, Mr. Seabeck. And I'll bet there was a hospital 'n' doctor's bill bigger 'n this cattle note, to be paid. I don't want to pile on—"
"Now, Marthy, you be still. I'm perfectly willing to sign this note with you. If it will satisfy Mr. Seabeck, I'm sure it's the very least we can do—or—expect." Billy Louise, bless her heart, was trying very hard to be grateful to Seabeck in spite of the slump he had suffered in her estimation.
"Well, I'll want your written word that yuh won't prosycute Charlie nor help nobody else prosycute him," stipulated Marthy, with sudden shrewdness. "If me 'n Billy Louise signs this note, we'll pay it; and we want some pertection from you, fer Charlie."
"Hmm-mm—I see!" He turned and went back to the littered desk and wrote carefully again upon another sheet of paper. "I think this will be quite satisfactory," he said, and handed the paper to Marthy.
"Git my specs, Billy Louise—off 'n the shelf over there," she said, and read the paper laboriously, her lips forming the letters of every word which contained more than one syllable. Marthy, remember, was a plainswoman born and bred.
"I guess that'll do," she pronounced at last, pushing the spectacles up on her lined forehead. "You read it, Billy Louise, 'n' see what yuh think."
"I think it's all right, Marthy," said Billy Louise, after she had read the document twice. "It's a bill of sale; and it also wipes the slate clean of any possible—I think Mr. Seabeck is very c-clever."
Whereupon Marthy signed the note, with a spluttering of the abused pen in her stiffened old fingers and a great twisting of her grim mouth as she formed the capitals. Then Billy Louise wrote her name with a fine, schoolgirl ease and a little curl on the end of the last d. Seabeck took the paper from the tips of Billy Louise's supercilious fingers, returned with it to the desk for a blotter, hunted an envelope, folded the note carefully, and laid it away inside.
"I believe that is all, Mrs. Meilke. I hope you will suffer no further uneasiness on account of your—nephew."
"I'm liable t' suffer some gittin' that five hundred dollars paid up," Marthy returned with some acerbity. "I'm much obleeged to yuh, Mr. Seabeck, fer bein' so easy on us. If yuh hadn't drug Billy Louise into it, I'd say yer too good to be human."
"Hmm-mm—not at all," Seabeck stammered deprecatingly and left the room with what haste his natural dignity would permit.
That ended the Seabeck part of the whole sordid affair, except that he remained for another hour, doing chores and making everything snug for the night. Also he filled the kitchen woodbox as high as he could pile the sticks and brought water to last overnight—since Charlie's plan to pipe water into the cabin had remained a beautiful plan and nothing more. Billy Louise thanked Seabeck, when he was ready to go.
"I knew you were square, and you're really big-souled, too. I'll remember it always, Mr. Seabeck."
"Will you?" Seabeck looked down at her, with his hand upon the latch. "Even if you are put in a position where you must pay that note—you will still— Hm-mm! I see. Before I go, Miss MacDonald, I should like your permission to send a man down here to look after things."
"No, you mustn't." Billy Louise spoke with prompt decision. "Marthy might think you were—you see, it wouldn't do. I'll see about getting a man. If you will take this note up and leave it in the mail-box for me, John Pringle will come up to-morrow. We'll manage all right."
"You're quite right. But, Miss MacDonald, there is something else. I—er—should like to give you a little—wedding gift, since you honored me with the news of your approaching—mm-m—marriage. As an old neighbor, and one of your most sincere admirers, who would feel greatly honored by your friendship, I—should like to have you accept this—" He held something out to Billy Louise and pulled open the door for instant escape. "Good night, Miss MacDonald. I think it will storm." Then he was gone, hurrying down the narrow path with long strides, his tall figure bent to the wind, his coat napping around his lean legs.
Billy Louise closed the door and her half-open mouth and let down her lifted eyelids. Standing with her back against the wall, she turned that something—an envelope—over twice, then tore off the end and pulled out the contents. It was the note she and Marthy had signed no longer than an hour ago, and written large across the face of it were the words: "Paid, Samuel Seabeck."
"The—old—darling!" said Billy Louise under her breath and went straight in to show it to Marthy.