Stamford folded his fishing-rod, threw his lunch strap over his shoulder, and started back for the house, forgetting the big sturgeon lying in the sun. His clothes were almost dry already with the warm rocks and sun. He had his first useful clue, and it reassured him. His guiding thought now was that Bean Slade knew the murderer he was after—and if Bean Slade, then the rest of the H-Lazy Z outfit. But how much or how little was Cockney Aikens involved?
He was surprised to find the Bulkeleys already returned to the ranch-house, though dinner was a couple of hours away. It delighted him—and also blotted from his mind the success of his afternoon's work. What he recalled was the scream Bean claimed to have heard. He wanted to verify or disprove that. With a refreshed pride in himself he determined that he would. He proposed a walk; the brilliance of the out-of-doors provided perpetual excuse in the West. Isabel's immediate reply was an anxious look at her brother and Mary.
"I'm not asking your brother," he said boldly.
"Amos and I have to work on his notes," she objected. "That's why we came in early."
"Tut, tut!" protested her brother recklessly. "I've changed my mind. The inspiration is lacking. It's not my day for work. I don't care a hang if the entire carcass of a crested Saurolophus is lost to the world by an afternoon's indolence. I'm—going—to be indolent! There! Whoopee! Hear the cry of independence."
He lifted a foot and kicked the top of the doorway with surprising ease.
"It sounds to me like revolution," said his sister with mock severity, yet with more than a little anxiety.
He picked her up and deposited her outside the door.
"Trot along now, or Mr. Stamford may never ask you again."
"Amos!"
He made a face at her from the doorway and turned his back.
That her annoyance was not assumed Stamford discovered to his embarrassment before they had gone six paces. Once she turned about, to see the laughing faces of the Professor and Mary Aikens regarding them from the doorway. For some minutes their progress was wordless. Stamford was puzzled by her reluctance to leave the ranch-house, for he was convinced that she wanted to come. He knew the wisdom of leaving her to break the silence, of assuming humility, whether he felt it or not.
But he was not prepared for what she did say.
"We shouldn't, Mr. Stamford, we shouldn't."
He heard only the implied partnership, and threw his shoulders back recklessly as he tramped on.
"I don't care what we shouldn't do. If it's naughty it's nice. That's how reckless I am."
Her smile was wan; some anxiety too deep to respond to his banter was there.
"I don't like you serious," she said, "but—but you must be now." There was such innocent candour in it that he knew he wanted only to help her. Always when he was feeling most strongly the thrill of her presence, she disarmed him by throwing herself on his mercy.
"I'm going to be serious with you some time, Miss Bulkeley," he said soberly.
She ignored the warning.
"It's about Amos."
"If Amos isn't big enough to leave alone, he never will be. Anyway, Mrs. Aikens will look after him till we've had our walk. Now I've got you to myself, I'm going to keep you till dinner-time."
She was laughing a little, but shaking her head, as if to reprove him for trying to turn her away from her troubles.
"We mustn't be selfish," she said slowly. "Amos is big ... but he's not big enough, I fear, to resist the—the most powerful thing in life."
The alarm with which he searched her face for a moment changed quickly to annoyance.
"It isn't possible to misunderstand you, Miss Bulkeley, but——"
She laid one hand on his arm, turning to him her troubled eyes. He stood still for fear she would remove it.
"Haven't you seen—haven't you suspected?"
"Miss Bulkeley, I can answer for our hostess. If you can say the same for your brother——"
"I can, I can," she murmured brokenly. "But love, you know——"
"I know that, love or no love, there never was a finer little woman than Mary Aikens. Has your brother betrayed to you that he is less of a gentleman?"
"I could trust Amos anywhere," she replied simply.
"Then why not here?"
Her hands were clasping and unclasping as they walked.
"This is so different. I know what love can do—how it can change things." She was stumbling over it, flushing as she spoke, but continuing brave!
"I hope you do," he breathed.
But the tears brimming in her eyes made him feel the brute for intruding his petty affairs just then.
"Would your brother stay if he knew he was exposing himself to a temptation he could not resist?" he demanded.
She considered the reply for a long time before she made it.
"We can't leave, Mr. Stamford. We have our work to do—it's not mere personal pleasure or satisfaction that forces Amos to continue until he's completed his investigations. It's his duty to stay to the end—he can't help himself."
He frowned. "Please don't make me believe you think digging up old bones a duty that ignores—what you fear. I hope you're not that kind of a girl—I won't believe it."
She turned her face squarely to his, and for several seconds they stood looking into each other's eyes. Her head was thrown back a little proudly and reprovingly, and every barrier of reserve was down. Once more the utter confidence in his manliness forced him to control himself.
"I knew it," he said humbly. "Only I don't understand.... There's this to say for your brother, that the husband of the woman you fear your brother is learning to love doesn't seem to be trying to hold her love. I don't understand Cockney Aikens. I believe he's white, but—but here we treat women differently."
"That's what started it, I think," she said sadly. "Amos pitied her—as you and I did.... And there are other things.... I can't tell you all—everything that worries me."
"Then it's your duty——" He was about to tell her that she should take her brother away, but he was not unselfish enough for that.
"I can't," she replied, as if he had finished the sentence. "He wouldn't come—he couldn't."
They had turned back and were approaching the ranch-house.
"May I—talk things over a little like this with you when I'm worried, Mr. Stamford?"
Even as his heart leaped, he recognised the subtle way she had armed herself against him by the petition. Never was he to permit himself to take advantage of her confidence. When he would say to her the thing which he now knew he would some day say, he must make his own opening.
"I understand," he murmured. "You may say anything you like. If I can help you—that will be enough for me—now."
Mary Aikens and Professor Bulkeley, left to themselves, with cookie in the kitchen fussing over the dinner, looked out to the sunlit silences where the other two had gone, and responded to their appeal. They saw the two lovers sauntering down toward the river, and they chose the trail up the slope. Slowly they climbed the grade, saying nothing. From the cook-house door Imp thrust his nose, sniffed with half-shut eyes into the drooping sun, and decided that one of his half-formed barks befitted the occasion. Then, satisfied that he had done all that could be expected of him, he trotted back and lay on one of Dakota's feet.
The foreman was sneering through the doorway.
"The big boob! He's shore on the wrong trail there, and some sweet day the boss'll lay hands on him and—piff!" He made a movement of tossing something away.
"An' the biggest boob on earth wouldn't have no chance to earn it," growled Bean. "Not with the missus." When Dakota laughed in his nasty way, Bean fired angrily: "An' that little editor'll piff you"—he imitated Dakota's gesture of a moment before—"if you go gettin' funny with the other gal. Anyone can see where your eyes is."
He laughed and strolled outside to avoid the explosion.
Up the trail, over the crest of the slope, the two passed out of sight. She plucked a handful of grass from the centre ridge of the trail between them and began thoughtfully to tear it to pieces. He moved at her side, his great hands gripped behind him, his eyes on the rut at his feet.
"Don't you think they're getting fond of each other?" he said after a long time.
A smile of loving sympathy made her face so beautiful that he looked sharply away and pointed to the vivid colourings of the sunset. She followed his pointing finger absent-mindedly.
"It would be one of the few flawless matches," she said, in a low voice.
"They are all flawless—at first," he returned. "Only some last a shorter time. That's part of life's misery, the legacy of original sin—perhaps the worst.... Some pause to weigh to the merest trifles—and lose their chance. Some ... some don't pause enough. The secret of happy marriage, I'm convinced, Mrs. Aikens, is a complete knowledge of the essentials of each other's lives before the ceremony."
One handful of grass had been pulled to pieces, and she seized another nervously.
"Few of us pause for that," she murmured.
"The agony of it!" His hands were clasping and unclasping behind his back, almost as were his sister's on the other trail. "And ordinarily there is no way out. Divorce doesn't settle it. The most righteous divorce laws cannot supplant conscience—and conscience speaks only in the one Book of all the world.... But this isn't becoming to such a night," he broke in, with sudden eagerness. "Look at that sunset. Only in the West do you find that unbroken spectacle, such clearness of air, such a wonderful sweep of colour. What is it about the Western air that makes a man——"
He paused abruptly, breathing heavily. She looked at him in quick fear.
"—that makes a man feel ten years younger," he went on, with an absurd change of tone. "I think I could grow frisky out here."
Across her face passed a grateful smile of relief and understanding that she did not know she made so plain.
"It's the essence of the West. It makes or mars a man. It does the same, only more swiftly, with the consumptives they send to us from the East. Some it cures—some it kills.... Some it kills when it seems most certainly to be curing them.... That's the West; it does that with everyone—one never knows."
He broke in on her dreamy reflections in a lighter vein:
"Just the same it's the young man's country, don't you think?"
"It's a great blessing—or a great curse.... What was Jim before he came here?"
It startled him; he had no reply ready.
"I fear Jim and I do not fulfil your estimate of the foundation for a happy married life. I never knew his past—I don't now. I never knew his people—he never speaks of them. I took Jim—for himself—a handsome, manly, honest, good-natured——"
The man at her side coughed, and she turned to him with a wan smile.
"I know," she said wearily. "You think I shouldn't talk of my husband to others ... but in all our married life I've never before had anyone to talk anything with.... Jim and I—Jim and I——"
"What I'm thinking, Mrs. Aikens," he interrupted gravely, "is that I'm the last one to whom you should speak of him."
She kept her eyes ahead of them on the dim line of the sand buttes, and they walked on in silence.
Suddenly a cry burst from her lips.
"I must speak, I must. My very heart is eating away with the strain of silence. I'll go crazy with the worry of it. It's about him—Jim. He's different—these days. At first—— Don't think there's any chance of Jim and me not—not sticking to each other. I've fought that out with myself already. He's changed, but I know what he can be—what he was once ... what he won't let himself be now. Why? I don't know. Something—something is crowding between us—crowding harder and harder every day, I see him so little now, and——”
The big man squared his shoulders and lifted his head.
"Mary Aikens, I'd do anything—pretty nearly anything to help you. You know that. But I can't help you in this. Please, please, don't ask me—don't say another word about him—not to me. It doesn't seem heartless, does it? It's as far from that as—as black from white. You've a heavier burden to carry than anyone I know ... and I don't know yet how it can be relieved. But it will be, it will be. I've that much faith in Providence. I shouldn't have said—that about marriage. Had you known—did you know all about him, you would at least bear one less trouble than you do, I'm sure of that. If I were you I wouldn't bother about that—not now. You're his wife. You should know whether he loved you once or not. And"—he ran his hand across his forehead—"as an onlooker with eyes, I can tell you that he loves you more than he ever did. Is that enough.... I believe—at this moment—he loves you better—better than you do him."
She gasped, and her hands tightened convulsively over the grass she carried.
"I still love him," she said deliberately.... "I think I do. What my love lacks is thrust there by—by the wall he is slowly building between us. I think he loved me, yes, but—it probably sounds foolish—I don't feel that he wants me to love him—not too much. He—sometimes seems to toss me aside—you've seen it. And Jim's not naturally brutal."
The Professor spoke with careless deliberation:
"His past is much easier to unravel than his present. You're most anxious about the latter. I can see it—I see it every day. You've undertaken a lonesome task—it's the way a wife has to, but it's as apt to mislead as enlighten. I don't believe that—that the wall is unscalable—or at least the mortar's thin....
"And now," he started again lightly, "let's enjoy that sunset. I have only a few more of them ahead, unless the winter holds off longer than usual. I'm not so bound up in my poking about not to be sorry when I think of having to give all this up."
They had been retracing their steps for some time, at his wordless guiding, and were close to the ridge before the drop to the valley.
"Never," he told her, "no, never, speak to me again of your husband. It won't lighten your burden and it only increases mine. Jim Aikens may be maligned by circumstances beyond his control, and we from the fringes are so apt to misunderstand. When I can help you I'll give the signal. Till then—but there he is now—down in front of the house—waiting for us."
Cockney was standing on the gravel walk, every line grim and accusing. His great legs were apart, his arms were folded across his chest, and he was staring at them under his eyebrows in that thoughtful, disapproving way of his. They could read the angry tossing of his mind far away. Mary Aikens laughed nervously. The Professor bit his lip. But before they came within speaking distance, Cockney wheeled away and disappeared into the house. When they reached the sitting-room they could hear his heavy striding in the bedroom beyond. His wife trembled, started for the kitchen, then changed her mind and passed into the bedroom to him.
It was a grateful relief to an oppressive dinner when Dakota presented himself at the door. A fire was burning in the sitting-room stove, for the evenings were sometimes frosty now, and the cowboy sank modestly into a chair in the corner beside it. Isabel, in an effort to break the embarrassing silence, seated herself near him.
"I hope you're finding all you came for," said Dakota pleasantly.
"Thank you, Dakota. My brother considers the summer well spent indeed. He still has hopes of a more complete skeleton, but we can't remain much longer, can we?"
Dakota scoffed.
"There ain't likely to be snow before November. Sometimes we have a storm in September—mostly, I guess—but it goes as quick as it comes. We're often out riding with the herds into November. It ain't just the weather you'd want to be handling rock in, but you should oughta see October here. It's got creation beat a mile. Don't you go till October. Besides," he added naïvely, "we got some hard work for the next few weeks, and we can't be home much."
"What indefatigable people you cowboys are!" exclaimed the Professor. "Sometimes there seems nothing to do, and then it's night and day for weeks."
"You're right there, Professor," Dakota agreed in a loud voice. "To make a ranch pay like the H-Lazy Z is real hard work—though Mr. Aikens there don't seem to think so. And there ain't many pays like the H-Lazy Z, I tell you."
"What's that you said, Dakota?" asked Cockney, coming out of his silence. "Going away for a few weeks?"
"Yes, and taking the outfit. The fall clean-up. We'll make the round o' the ranges and fix things up a bit. The Indians say we're in for a breezer of a winter. There's that Big Bone Slough we got to fence on the north side—where we lost all them cattle two winters ago. I was saying to the visitors they needn't go for another month anyway—till we're through all that. It's shore been a different place this summer. The Dude was saying that he never got such joy from slicking up and changing his shirt every week."
He grinned with them. It was a long speech to make in public, and he was proud of it. The Professor bowed with a low sweep.
"I'm bowing for Mr. Stamford, too," he chuckled. "I can do it bigger than he can. We appreciate, Mr. Fraley, the many courtesies we have received from our fellow-countrymen. But, no, that couldn't include the little editor; he's only a local product. He doesn't know what it is to thrill to the stripes of Old Glory. We'll always remember you. We hope you'll have equal cause to remember us."
"That's all right, Professor," Dakota replied, with an expansive sweep of his hand. "We're shore pleased punchers."
And having delivered himself with credit to himself and his friends, he backed out, bowing, his angora chaps ruffling in the wind as he opened the door.
His companions greeted him at the bunk-house with eager grins.
"Did she give yer a scented hanky to wear nex' yore heart, ole hoss?" enquired General confidentially.
"Or a kiss on the forehead an' promise to be a sister to yo?" put in Alkali sympathetically.
"Oh, you fellers ain't familiar with the symptoms," said Muck. "Dakota's planned ter 'lope, an' he ain't got his checks cashed."
"G—! I wish I had," muttered Dakota, with sudden fervour. "I'll shore be devilish glad when we get this bunch offen our hands and the equiv in our jeans. I got a spooky feeling about the whole biz. It's a big bunch to get down across the railway and over fifty miles more to the border. And it'll be a deuced sight bigger when the next lot's run in.... But we got to do it. That S-Bar-I outfit'll give us a run for our money. But that's all to the hunky. Got your shooting irons o.k., boys?"
He shifted his eyes slowly to Bean Slade's thin body outstretched on a bunk, his hands beneath his head.
"Bean's funking," he sneered.
Bean lifted an angry head. "Bean Slade's got himself in this thing with both feet, you son-of-a-gun, an' he'll stick.... Just the same, the old H-Lazy-Z outfit's goin' to bust up this winter. This li'l boy's strikin' back fer civilisation—whatever that means."
Imp, resting against Dakota's foot, raised his sharp ears and grunted. In a couple of bounds Dakota had the door open. Professor Bulkeley stood outside, blinking and smiling through his spectacles.
"I'm so glad you haven't retired, friends," he chattered. "I couldn't let you go without a record of the pleasant associations with my estimable and cheery countrymen of the H-Lazy Z. Will you do me the honour of inscribing your names in this little book? My sister and I will look at it for many a year in remembrance of you when we're far away."
He stumbled over the step, a notebook in one hand, fountain pen in the other. Dakota laughed harshly.
"Here, trot up, you low-born Yanks, and scrawl your nom-de's for the everlasting records of the li'l country God made without desecrating it with Mounted Police. Let's make it our second papers o' repatriation. Hurrah for Old Glory—and Professor Bulkeley and his charming and beautiful sister!"
The Professor pompously cleared his throat.
"On behalf of myself and my sister, on behalf of the country we love and respect, I thank you. Ever enthroned in our hearts will be——"
"Ya-as," yawned Alkali, "so they say. Le's take the rest for granted. Sounds like Decoration Day—an' sort o' makes me lonesome. An' I don't cry pretty."
"Don't mind Alkali," apologised Bean Slade. "He allus did get maudlin easy. There's my scribble—Albert Shaw, better—or worse—known as Bean Slade ... so my mother won't rekernise me when I get mine in the way I'm shure to get it. Fust time I've wrote it fer eight years.... Last fer the rest o' my nacherl days, so help me!"
He tossed the book across the table. The Professor picked it up with a beaming smile and bowed himself out.
"Ta-ta!" Bean called after him.
"The sneaking old geezer!" growled Dakota, when the heavy steps had faded into the darkness. "If it ud been anyone else there'd 'a' been shooting, I tell you—that Stamford peanut, for instance. I don't like the look of his ratty eyes. He's just the kind o' unlikely chap ud be working for the Police—if he had a foot more on him. Now turn in, boys. To-morrow's the last round-up for the big vamoose to God's country—and then gold enough to drown ourselves. Bean, hang on for another year or two, and I'll be damnified if I don't flit with you. It's a bit too creepy for me off here at the edge of nowhere."