"I don't think there'll be a blizzard. Or if there is, she can get along comfortably till her uncle comes."

"Are you ready, Ruth?" Gretzinger asked, impatiently.

"Yes, as soon as I fasten my gloves. Anyway, Lee, you can take her to Kennard if you want to. It's because you're just obstinate. Besides, she didn't have to come up here; I told her so; I could have got along without her--much better, probably, for she's always finding fault; she came on her own responsibility and so can look out for herself; and if you're so anxious for fear she'll freeze, why, take her. It won't make any difference about your ditch that I can see, for you say you'll very likely lose it, anyway. Now you'll have to excuse us; we're going. Blow out the light, please, and lock the door, our hands are full. Give the key to Imo to keep."

Two minutes later Gretzinger's car was gone with a swirl of the headlights as it circled and with a sudden roar of its exhaust. Lee extinguished the light and closed the cabin. To him that little house seemed poignant with tragedy; and he knew, whatever came, his foot would never be set in it again.

He found Imogene sitting beside her sheet-iron stove, wrapped in a quilt and coughing.

"I heard your car come after his; I knew it was you," she greeted him.

Lee regarded her closely.

"You're sick," he said. "You ought to be in bed. Ruth stated that you had a headache and now I discover you in a coughing fit bad enough to take off your head. Is your throat sore?"

"A little."

"Why in the name of all that's sensible haven't you gone to your uncle's? I begin to think you're unbalanced."

"I explained my reasons once, Lee." She coughed again, then continued, "Ruth and I quarrelled Christmas because of actions of hers and aunt said she must leave the house. That's why you were not asked then. But she made it up afterward and so I came when she did, for she was determined to live here where she could be free. I just had to come."

"And now she's leaving you in the face of the worst storm this winter, the ingrate!" Bryant exclaimed. "To-night's work finishes her with me.

She may go to eternal d.a.m.nation so far as I'm concerned. I'm done! She refused, she would have left you here to freeze, she set your life against her convenience! And after you had sacrificed your comfort and undergone hardships to save her good name! There's no limit to her selfishness and miserable hypocrisy. Our efforts and consideration haven't restrained her a particle, and she will tread the road she chooses irrespective of our desires or feelings. What fools we've been! You and I, Imogene Martin, aren't going to chase a will-o'-the-wisp any longer. We've wasted enough time on this delusion of saving Ruth Gardner; if she's to be saved, she must save herself--and if she will not do that, then the whole world together is of no avail. You're never going to come here again, or have anything to do with her, or let her have a part in your life. Nor am I. She walks out of our book, and we draw a pen across the bottom of the page."

Imogene had covered her face with her hands during his terrible denunciation and was weeping softly. She knew it was true. She knew that Ruth had gone out of her life, for such baseness as her one-time friend had shown was not to be forgiven.

"You're right--I can't go on here longer," she sobbed. "I'm sick, I'm really sick. I've been barely crawling about for the last two days.

And she knew it and left me! Oh, Ruth, Ruth!"

"And would have left you, storm or no storm, and whether I came or not! In order to be alone with Gretzinger!" Her heart-breaking sobs went on. "Don't weep, Imogene. Put her out of your mind." He gently placed an arm about her shoulders. "Come, I will take you to Louise."

That she had been "crawling about the last two days" was apparent when she attempted to rise. Her strength suddenly vanished, her knees gave way. Bryant secured her coat and cap, wrapped her in blankets from the bed, and carried her out to the car. Then he put out her lamp and locked the door.

And that turning of the lock, Lee felt, terminated a painful chapter of his life.

CHAPTER XXVII

As by the girls' cabins, so before the Graham house, Lee perceived a motor car. He brought his own machine to a stop near it and cut off his engine. At the same instant the door opened in the house, where by the light shining through the portal he saw Louise's and Charlie Menocal's figures. Menocal stepped forth.

"You will please go now," Louise was saying. "When you telephoned I told you then that I shouldn't go with you, or go to the dance at all."

Bryant had alighted and was arranging the blankets about Imogene.

Charlie's voice spoke, rather truculently:

"I told you I was coming for you, didn't I? Now see what a position that leaves me in! People think you're coming. I promised to bring you."

"Then you were too presumptuous," Louise said. "Now go. You're only making a bad matter worse."

"See here, Louise----"

"You had my refusal and I've repeated it a dozen times," she interrupted, indignantly. "Must I shut the door in your face to silence you? And here's another car. Have some regard for my personal feelings, sir."

Lee by now had lifted Imogene into his arms and started toward the speakers.

"Be a good sport, Louise," Menocal pursued, in a tone intended to be wheedling. "Run upstairs and put on a party dress while I wait for you. You don't understand how much I want you to come along to this dance." His words were a little thick and stumbling.

"Hush! Don't you see someone has come? You've been drinking; and you're sickening to me."

"I don't care if someone is there! Let 'em hear, Louise. Let all the world hear, let your father hear, let anybody hear! Because I love you, and so you must come to the dance." Suddenly his tone changed to an angry hiss. "You've been treating me like a cur, refusing to see me or go with me, and not letting me come here. I came to-night! I've stood for enough from you; you can't play me for a fool any longer.

And you're going to marry me, too."

Bryant perceived by the lamplight of the doorway that the fellow had s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand, that the two were struggling. Burdened with Imogene as he was, Lee was helpless to enterfere. But he went hastily up the steps toward them. Louise tugged herself free.

"Oh, you contemptible creature!" she cried, in a voice of quivering pa.s.sion. "It's only because you know father is out caring for stock that you dare stay here to insult me." Then looking past Menocal, she exclaimed, "Who is that?"

"I, Bryant," said Lee. "With Imogene. She's ill, she needs to be put to bed. There was no time to ask your permission to bring her, but I knew----"

"Of course! If this beast will stop making a scene and go!"

Charlie Menocal was pulling on his fur cap.

"So here's our swell-headed crook of an engineer b.u.t.ting in again,"

he sneered. "You better be hunting up your own chicken, or Gretzinger will have her. Who y' say you got there?"

"Stand aside!"

Bryant's voice struck the other like the lash of a whip, and the half-drunken youth instinctively fell back a pace, so that Lee could pa.s.s with his charge into the house. But as Louise was about to follow Menocal seized her arm.

"Girlie, you're not going to throw me down? You'll be good to me and come----"

Louise shook off his hand, darted through the doorway, and quickly closing the door turned the key in the lock. Then still grasping the door-k.n.o.b she leaned with her head against the panels, face white, lips trembling, and her breast rising and falling stormily.

"Oh, Lee! For you to be forced to see and hear that!" she said, in a tone of anguish.

"I think nothing of it; you could not avoid him."

After a moment she recovered herself and said, "Wait until I call Rosita."

When she returned with the Mexican girl, she conducted Bryant to an upper chamber where he placed Imogene upon a bed, pressed the latter's hand a.s.suringly, and then left her in charge of the other two while he went below to telephone to her uncle. McDonnell had already set out for Sarita Creek, his wife informed Lee. He had started about half an hour before. Bryant went out of the house and entering his car drove down the lane to the main road, where he stopped.

Soon far away in the south there was a flash of light, repeated at intervals, until at length it grew into a steady, powerful glare that threw his own machine into strong relief, that dazzled and blinded him. Finally the other car stopped near by.

"What's the trouble, Jack?" McDonnell's voice came, addressed to his chauffeur.