Genevieve suddenly bent down to hide the intense emotion that had struck the color from her face. Yet after a moment's pause, she spoke in a composed, almost casual tone: "Then Chuckie is not your own daughter?"

"Not in the way you mean. Hasn't she told you? I adopted her."

"I see," remarked Genevieve, with a show of polite interest. "But of course, taking her when a young infant, she has always thought of you as her own father."

"No--what I can't get over is that she feels that way, and I feel the same to her, though I never saw or heard of her till she was going on fourteen."

"Ah!" Genevieve could no longer suppress her agitation. "Then she is--I'm sure that she must be--You said she came from the East, from Chicago?"

"No, ma'am! I didn't say where she came from," curtly replied the cowman.

The shock of his brusqueness restored the lady to her usual quiet composure. Looking up into his face, she found it as blank and impenetrable as a cement wall.

"You must pardon me," she murmured. "I myself am a Chicago girl, so you must see how natural it is for me to hope that so sweet and beautiful a girl as Chuckie came from my city."

"Chuckie is my daughter," stated Knowles in a flat tone.

"If you will kindly permit me to explain. My husband--"

"Chuckie is my daughter, legally adopted," repeated the cowman. "You can see what she is like. If that is not enough, ma'am, I can't prevent you from declining our hospitality, though we'd be mighty sorry to have you and your husband leave."

The tears started into Genevieve's hazel eyes. "Mr. Knowles! how could you think for a moment that I--that we--"

"Excuse me, ma'am!" he hastened to apologize. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You see, I'm kind of prejudiced along some lines. I've been bred up to the Western idea that it isn't just etiquette to ask about people's antecedents. Real Western, I mean. Our city folks are nearly as bad as you Easterners over family trees. As if a child isn't as much descended from its mother's maternal grandmother as from its father's paternal grandfather!"

Genevieve smiled at this adroit diversion of the subject by the seemingly simple Westerner, and replied: "My father's and mother's parents were farm people. My husband worked his way up out of the Chicago slums."

"He did?" The cowman could not conceal his astonishment. He looked curiously into the lady's high-bred face. "Well, now, that sure is something to be right proud of--not that I'd have exactly expected you to think so. If you'll excuse me, ma'am, I'm more surprised at the way you feel about it than that he was able to do such a big thing."

"No one is responsible for what he is born. But we are at least partly ent.i.tled to the credit or discredit of what we become," she observed.

"That's good American doctrine, ma'am--Western American!" approved Knowles.

"It should apply to women as well as men," she stated.

"It ought," he dryly replied, and he jerked up the head of his pawing horse. "Here, you! I guess it's high time we were starting in, ma'am.

Kid may think he's to lay over at the ranch until morning. We want to get him out here before dusk. I don't reckon there's any show of that snake coming back tonight, but it's as well to be on the safe side."

He walked up the slope towards the others, unbuckling his cartridge belt as he went.

"Sling on your saddle, honey," he called to his daughter.

The girl sprang up from beside Ashton and ran to fetch her own and Genevieve's picketed ponies. Her father held out his belt and revolver to the engineer.

"Here's my Colt's, Mr. Blake," he said. "I have another at home. You won't need it, but I may as well leave it. We're going to lope in now, so as to hustle Kid out to you before night. Just swap me that yearling for my gun. It wouldn't seem natural not to be toting something that can make a noise."

"Thomas never cries unless he needs attention," Genevieve sought to defend her infant.

"Yes, ma'am. It's a good thing he knows that much already. You have to make yourself heard to get what you want in the world generally, as well as in hostleries and eating-houses."

Blake buckled on the cartridge belt, with its holstered revolver, and went to help saddle the ponies. Ashton watched him and Isobel narrowly. He was far from pleased with the familiarity of their talk and manner towards one another. Twice the girl put her hand on Blake's arm.

In marked contrast to this affectionate intimacy, Isobel was distrait and hurried when she came to take leave of the wounded man. He had risen to his feet, and she could not ignore his proffered hand. But she avoided his gaze and quickly withdrew her fingers from his warm clasp to hurry off.

CHAPTER XXI

MADONNA DOLOROSA

Blake was cooking supper when, shortly before sunset, Gowan drove up to the waterhole, with a pony in lead behind the heavy wagon. Leaving the wagon with the rope and other articles of his load on the far side of the creek bed, he watered and picketed the horses, and came across to the tent with his rifle and a roll of blankets.

"Howdy, Mr. Blake. Got here in time for supper, I see," he remarked as he unburdened himself. "Met Mr. Knowles and the ladies down near the ranch. They told me about the shooting." He faced about to stare at Ashton's bandaged head. "They told me you came mighty near getting yours. You sh.o.r.e are a lucky tenderfoot."

Ashton shrugged superciliously. "The worst of it is the additional hole in my hat. I see you have a new one. Is that the latest style on the range?"

"Stetson, brand A-1.," replied the puncher. "How does it strike you, Mr. Blake?--and my new shirt? Having a dude puncher on our range kind of stirred up my emulosity. They don't have real cowboy attire like his at an ordinary shorthorn cow town like Stockchute--but I did the best I could."

Blake made no response to this heavy badinage. He set the supper on the chuck-box, and laconically said: "Come and get it."

"Might have known you've been on round-up," remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. "According to Miss Chuckie, you're some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn't mind hearing from you direct about that shooting this morning."

Blake recounted the affair still more briefly than he had told it to Knowles.

"That sh.o.r.e was a mighty close shave," commented the puncher. "But you haven't said what the fellow looked like."

"He wore ordinary range clothes," replied Blake. "I couldn't see him behind the rocks, and caught only a glimpse of him as he went around the ridge. His horse was much the same build and color as Rocket."

The puncher stared at Ashton with his cold unblinking eyes. "You sh.o.r.e picked out a Jim Dandy guide, Mr. Tenderfoot. According to this, it looks mighty like he's gone and turned hawss thief. Mr. Knowles says your Rocket hawss has vamoosed. If he's moving to Utah under your ex-guide, it'll take some lively posse to head him. What d'you say, Mr. Blake?"

"I think the man is apt soon to come to the end of his rope--after dropping through a trap door," said the engineer.

Gowan looked at him between narrowed eyelids, and paused with upraised coffee cup to reply: "A man that has shown the nerve this one has won't let anyone get close enough to rope him."

"It will be either that or a bullet, before long," predicted Blake.

"The badman is getting to be rather out of date."

"Maybe a bullet," admitted Gowan. "Never any rope, though, for his kind.--Guess I'll turn in. It's something of a drive over to Stockchute and back with the wagon, and I got up early. You and Ashton might go on watch until midnight, and turn me out for the rest of the night."

"Very well," agreed Blake.

The puncher stretched out on his blankets under a tree, a few yards from the tent. Ashton took the dishes down to sand-scour them at the pool, while Blake saw that everything damageable was disposed safe from the knife-like fangs of the coyotes.

"How about keeping watch?" asked Ashton, when he returned with the cleansed dishes. "Shall I take first or second?"

"Neither," answered Blake. "You will need all the sleep and rest you can get. Tomorrow may be a hard day. Turn in at once."