"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we will not go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river."

"_Si_! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner."

But Jack did not have much appet.i.te, and after dinner he did not amuse Firio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on his clasped hands, looking at the stars.

XX

A PUZZLED AMBa.s.sADOR

A faint aureole of light crept up back of the pa.s.s.

"Dawn at last!" Jack breathed, in relief. "Firio! Firio! Up with you!"

"Oh-yuh!" yawned Firio. "_Si, si_!" he said, rising numbly to his feet and rubbing his eyes with his fists, while he tried to comprehend an astonishing reversal of custom. Usually he awakened his camp-mate; but this morning his camp-mate had awakened him. A half shadow in the semi-darkness, Jack was already throwing the saddle over P.D.'s back.

"We will get away at once," he said.

Firio knew that something strange had come over Senor Jack after he had met Senorita Ewold on the pa.s.s, and now he was convinced that this thing had been working in Senor Jack's mind all night.

"Coffee before we start?" he inquired ingratiatingly.

"Coffee at the ranch," Jack answered.

In their expeditious preparations for departure he hummed no s.n.a.t.c.hes of song as a paean of stretching muscles and the expansion of his being with the full tide of the conscious life of day; and this, too, was contrary to custom.

Before it was fairly light they were on the road, with Jack urging P.D.

forward at a trot. The silence was soft with the shimmer of dawn; all glistening and still the roofs and trees of Little Rivers took form. The moist sweetness of its gardens perfumed the fresh morning air in greeting to the easy traveller, while the makers of gardens were yet asleep.

It was the same hour that Mary had hurried forth after her wakeful night to stop the duel in the _arroyo_. As Jack approached the Ewold home he had a glimpse of something white, a woman's gown he thought, that disappeared behind the vines. He concluded that Mary must have risen early to watch the sunrise, and drew rein opposite the porch; but through the lace-work of the vines he saw that it was empty. Yet he was positive that he had seen her and that she must have seen him coming. She was missing the very glorious moment which she had risen to see. A rim of molten gold was showing in the defile and all the summits of the range were topped with flowing fire.

"Mary!" he called.

There was no answer. Had he been mistaken? Had mental suggestion played him a trick? Had his eyes personified a wish when they saw a figure on the steps?

"Mary!" he called again, and his voice was loud enough for her to have heard if she were awake and near. Still there was no answer.

The pa.s.s had now become a flaming vortex which bathed him in its far-spreading radiance. But he had lost interest in sunrises. A last backward, hungry glance over his shoulder as he started gave him a glimpse through the open door of the living-room, and he saw Mary leaning against the table looking down at her hands, which were half clasped in her lap, as if she were waiting for him to get out of the way.

Thus he understood that he had ended their comradeship when he had broken through the barrier on the previous afternoon, and the only thing that could bring it back was the birth of a feeling in her greater than comradeship. His shoulders fell together, the reins loosened, while P.D., masterless if not riderless, proceeded homeward.

"h.e.l.lo, Jack!"

It was the greeting of Bob Worther, the inspector of ditches, who was the only man abroad at that hour. Jack looked up with an effort to be genial and found Bob closely studying his features in a stare.

"What's the matter, Bob?" he asked. "Has my complexion turned green over night or my nose slipped around to my ear?"

"I was trying to make out if you do look like him!" Bob declared.

"Like whom? What the deuce is the mystery?"

"What--why, of course you're the most interested party and the only Little Riversite that don't know about it, seh!"

After all, there was some compensation for early rising. Bob expanded with the privilege of being the first to break the news.

"If you'd come yesterday you'd have seen him. He went by the noon train,"

he said, and proceeded with the story of Prather.

Jack had never heard of the man before and was obviously uninterested. He did not seem to care if a dozen doubles came to town.

"Oh, yes, there's another thing concerning you," Bob continued. "I was so interested in telling you about Prather that I near forgot it. A swell-looking fellow--says he's a doctor and he's got New York written all over him--came in yesterday particularly to see you."

Though it was a saying in Little Rivers that n.o.body ever found Jack at a loss, he started perceptibly now. His fingers worked nervously on the reins and he bit his lips in irritation.

"He was asking a lot of questions about you," Bob added.

By this time Jack had summoned back his smile. He did not seem to mind if a dozen doctors came to town at the same time as a dozen doubles.

"Did you tell him that I had a cough--kuh-er?" he asked, casually.

"Why, no! I said you could thrash your weight in wildcats and he says, 'Well, he'll have to, yet!' and then shut up as if he'd overspoke himself--and I judge that he ain't the kind that does that often. But say, Jack," Bob demanded, in the alarm of local partisanship which apprehends that it may unwittingly have served an outside interest, "did you want us to dope it out that you were an invalid? We ain't been getting you in wrong, I hope?"

"Not a bit!" answered Jack with a rea.s.suring slap on Bob's shoulder. "Was his name Bennington?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Well," said Jack thoughtfully and with a return of his annoyance, "he will find me at home when he calls." And P.D. knew that the reins were still held in listless hands as he turned down the side street toward the new ranch.

Firio was feeling like an astrologer who had lost faith in his crystal ball. An interrogation had taken the place of his confident "_Si, si_"

of desert understanding of the mind of his patron. Jack had broken camp with the precipitancy of one who was eager to be quit of the trail and back at the ranch; yet he gave his young trees only a pa.s.sing glance before entering the house. He had not wanted coffee on the road, yet coffee served with the crisp odor of bacon accompanying its aroma, after his bath and return to ranch clothes, found no appet.i.te. He was as a man whose mind cannot hold fast to anything that he is doing. Firio, restless, worried, his eyes flicking covert glances, was frequently in and out of the living-room on one excuse or another.

"What work to-day?" he asked, as he cleared away the breakfast dishes.

"What has Senor Jack planned for us to do?"

"The work to-day? The work to-day?" Jack repeated absently. "First the mail." He nodded toward a pile on the table.

"And I shall make ready to stay a long time?" Firio insinuated softly.

"No!" Jack answered to s.p.a.ce.

The pyramid of mail might have been a week's batch for the Doge himself.

At the bottom were a number of books and above them magazines which Jack had subscribed for when he found that they were not on the Doge's list.

There was only one letter as a first-cla.s.s postage symbol of the exile's intimacy with the outside world, and out of this tumbled a check and a blank receipt to be filled in. He tore off the wrappers of the magazines as a means of some sort of physical occupation and rolled them into b.a.l.l.s, which he cast at the waste-basket; but neither the contents of the magazines nor those of the newspapers seemed to interest him. His aspect was that of one waiting in a lobby to keep an appointment.

When he heard steps on the porch he sang out cheerily, "Come in!" but, contrary to the habit of Little Rivers hospitality, he did not hasten to meet his caller, and any keenness of antic.i.p.ation which he may have felt was well masked.