He reddened and eyed her with a decidedly crestfallen air. "I ain't so much stuck on monkeyin' with them religious things," he admitted.

Again a doubt arose in his mind concerning her relations with Neal Taggart. The fact that she had not divulged the hiding place of the idol to him was proof that if he had been trying to deceive her he had not succeeded. This thought filled him with a sudden elation.

"Lately," he said, "it begins to look as though you was gettin' some sense. You're gettin' reasonable. I reckon you'll be a bang-up girl, give you time."

Her lips curled, but there was a flash of something in her eyes that he could not a.n.a.lyze. But he was sure that it wasn't anger or disapproval. Neither was it scorn. It seemed to him that it might have been mockery, mingled with satisfaction. Certainly there was mockery in her voice when she answered him.

"Indeed!" she said. "I presume I am to take that as a compliment?"

"But you will be a fool if you cotton up to Neal Taggart," he continued, paying no attention to her question. "I know men.

Taggart's a no good fourflusher, an' no woman can be anything if she takes up with him."

She looked at him with a dazzling smile. In the smile were those qualities that he had noticed during his other conversations with her when he had accused her of meeting Taggart secretly--mirth, tempered with doubt. Also, just now there was enjoyment.

"I feel flattered to think that you are taking that much interest in me," she said. "But when I am in need of someone to lay down rules of conduct for me I shall let you know. At present I feel quite competent to take care of myself. But if you are very much worried, I don't mind telling you that I have not 'cottoned up' to Neal Taggart."

"What you meetin' him for, then?" he asked suspiciously.

"I have not met Neal Taggart since the day you made him apologize to me," she said slowly.

"Who are you meetin', then?" he demanded.

She looked straight at him. "I cannot answer that," she said.

His lips curled with disbelief, and her cheeks flushed a little.

"Can't you trust anybody?" she said.

"Why," she continued as he kept silent, "don't you think that if I had intended, as you said once before, to cheat you, to take _anything_ that belongs to you, that I could have done so long ago? I had the diagram; I could have kept the idol, the money, the ranch. What could you have done; what could you do now? Don't you think it is about time for you to realize that you are hurting no one but yourself by harboring such black, dismal thoughts. n.o.body is trying to cheat you--except probably the Taggarts. Everybody here is trying their best to be friendly to you, trying to aid in making those reforms which your father mentioned. Dade likes you; Bob loves you. And even my grandfather said the other day that you are not a bad fellow. You have been making progress, more than I expected you to make. But you must make more."

The mirth had died out of her eyes; she was deeply in earnest. Calumet could see that, and the knowledge kept him silent, hushed the half-formed sarcastic replies that were on his lips, made his suspicions seem brutal, preposterous, ridiculous. There was much feeling in her voice; he was astonished and awed at the change in her; he had not seen her like this before. Her reserve was gone, the disdain with it; there was naked sincerity in her glowing eyes, in her words, in her manner. He watched her, fascinated, as she continued:

"I think you can see now that if I had wanted to be dishonest you could not have stopped me. My honesty proven, what must have been my motive in staying here to take your insults, to submit to your boorishness? I will tell you; you may believe me or not, as you please. I was grateful to your father. I gave him my promise. He wanted me to make a man of you.

"When you first came here, and I saw what a burden I had a.s.sumed, I was afraid. But I saw that you did not intend to take advantage of me; that you weren't like a good many men--brutes who prey on unprotected women; that only your temper was wanton. And instead of fearing you I began to pity you. I saw promise in you; you had manly impulses, but you hadn't had your chance. I had faith in you. To a certain extent you have justified that faith. You have shown flashes of goodness of heart; you have exhibited generous, manly sympathies--to everybody but me. But I do not care [there was a suspicious moisture in her eyes and a queer tightening of the lips that gave the lie to this declaration]

how you treat me. I intend to keep my promise to your father, no matter what you do. But I want to make you understand that I am not the kind of woman you take me to be--that I am not being made a fool of by Neal Taggart--or by any man!"

Calumet did not reply; the effect of this pa.s.sionate defense of herself on him was deep and poignant, and words would not come to his lips.

Truth had spoken to him--he knew it. At a stroke she had subdued him, humbled him. It was as though a light had suddenly been turned on him, showing him the mean, despicable side of him, contrasting it with the little good which had come into being--good which had been placed there, fostered, and cultivated into promise. Then the light had been as suddenly turned off, leaving him with a gnawing, impotent longing to be what she wanted him to be. Involuntarily, he took his hat off to her and bowed respectfully. Then he reached a swift hand into an inner pocket of his vest and withdrew it, holding out a paper to her. She took it and looked wonderingly at it. It was the diagram of the clearing in the timber clump showing where the idol was buried.

Her face paled, for she knew that his action in restoring the diagram to her was his tribute to her honesty, an evidence of his trust in her, despite his uttered suspicions. Also, it was his surrender.

She looked up, intending to thank him. He was walking away, and did not look around at her call.

CHAPTER XXI

HIS FATHER'S FRIEND

Betty did not see Calumet again that day, and only at mealtime on the day following. He had nothing to say to her at these times, though it was plain from the expression on his face when she covertly looked at him that he was thinking deeply. She hoped this were true; it was a good sign. On the morning of the third day he saddled the black horse and rode away, telling Bob, who happened to be near him when he departed, that he was going to Lazette.

It was fully two hours after supper when he returned. Malcolm, Dade, and Bob had gone to bed. In the kitchen, sitting beside the table, on which was a spotlessly clean tablecloth, with dishes set for one--she had saved Calumet's supper, and it was steaming in the warming-closet of the stove--Betty sat. She was mending Bob's stockings, and thinking of her life during the past few months--and Calumet. And when she heard the black come into the ranchhouse yard--she knew the black's gait already--she trembled a little, put aside her mending, and went to the window.

The moon threw a white light in the yard, and she saw Calumet dismount.

When he did not turn the black into the corral, hitching him, instead, to one of the rails, without even removing the saddle, she suspected that something unusual had happened.

She was certain of it when she heard Calumet cross the porch with a rapid step, and if in her certainty there had been the slightest doubt, it disappeared when he opened the kitchen door.

He looked tired; he had evidently ridden hard, for the alkali dust was thick on his clothing; he was breathing fast, his eyes were burning with some deep emotion, his lips were grim and hard.

He closed the door and stood with his back against it, looking at her.

Something had wrought a wonderful change in him. He was not the Calumet she had known--brutal, vicious, domineering, sneering; though he was laboring under some great excitement, suppressing it, so that to an eye less keen than hers it might have seemed that he had been undergoing some great physical exertion and was just recovering from it. It seemed to her that he had found himself; that that regeneration for which she had hoped had come--had taken place between the time he had left that morning and now.

She did not know that it had been a mighty struggle of three days'

duration; that the transformation had been a slow, tortuous thing to him. She only knew that a great change had come over him; that, in spite of the evident strain which was upon him, there was something gentle, respectful, considerate, in his face, back of Its exterior hardness--a slumbering, triumphant something that made an instant appeal to her, lighting her eyes, coloring her face, making her heart beat with an unaccountable gladness.

"Oh," she said; "what has happened to you?"

"Nothin'," he answered, with a grave smile. "That is, nothin'--yet.

Except that I've found out what a fool I've been. But I've found it out too late."

"No," she said, reaching the quick conclusion that he meant it was too late for him to complete his reformation; "it is never too late."

"I think I know what you mean," he answered. "But you've got it wrong.

It's somethin' else. I've got to get out of here--got to hit the breeze out of the country. The sheriff is after me."

She took a step backward. "What for?" she asked breathlessly.

"For killin' Al Sharp."

"Al Sharp!" she exclaimed, staring at him in amazement. "Why, you told me that an Indian named Telza killed him!"

"That's what Sharp told me. The Taggarts claim I done it. They've swore out a warrant. I got wind of it an' I'm gettin' out. There's no use tryin' to fight the law in a case like this."

"But you didn't kill him!" she cried, stiffening defiantly. "You said you didn't, and I know you wouldn't lie. They can't prove that you did it!"

He laughed. "You're the only one that would believe me. Do you reckon I could prove that I didn't do it? There's two against one. The evidence is against me. The Taggarts found me in the clearing with Sharp. I had the knife. No one else was around. I buried Sharp. The Taggarts will swear against me. Where's my chance?"

She was silent, and he laughed again. "They've got me, I reckon--the Taggarts have. I fancied I was secure. I didn't think they'd try to pull off anything like this. Shows how much dependence a man can put in anything. They don't look like they had sense enough to think of such a thing."

He stepped away from the door and went to the table, looking down at the dishes she had set out for him, then at her, with a regretful smile which brought a quick pang to her.

"Shucks," he said, more to himself than to her; "if this had happened three months ago I'd have been plumb amused, an' I'd have had a heap of fun with somebody before it could be got over with. Somehow, it don't seem to be so d.a.m.ned funny now.

"It's your fault, too," he went on, regarding her with a direct, level gaze. "Not that you got me into this mix-up, you understand--you're not to blame for a thing--but it's your fault that it don't seem funny to me. You've made me see things different."

"I am so sorry," she said, standing pale and rigid before him.