"I'd never think that," Angus said. "I think you are the finest girl in the world."

She stared at him in amazement, as much at his tone as at the words.

"Why, Angus!" she exclaimed.

"I do," he a.s.severated, "the very finest! I've wanted to tell you so, but I hadn't the nerve. I--I think an awful lot of you."

So there it was at last, blurted out with boyish clumsiness.

"Good heavens!" cried Alice Page. "I never--why, Angus, my dear boy--"

She laughed and checked herself, and the laugh turned into a little hysterical sob, and without any further warning she began to cry.

Utterly dismayed Angus stood helpless. And then, because it always seemed to comfort Jean when in trouble, he put his arm around her. For a moment Alice Page leaned against him, just as Jean did, but somehow the sensation was quite different. Very hesitatingly and awkwardly, but doing it as well and carefully as he knew how, he kissed her. Whereupon Alice Page jumped as if he had bitten her.

"You, too!" she cried. "O Angus! Oh, good heavens, what a night! Let me go, Angus!"

He let her go, feeling all palpitant and vibrant, for he had never kissed any girl, save Jean, who naturally did not count, but glad that at any rate he had stopped her crying. And Alice Page, who had a large store of common sense, did the very best thing possible. Sitting down on the bank of the ditch she made him sit beside her, and talked to him so gently and frankly that after a while, though he still considered himself to be in love, he felt resigned to its hopelessness, and in fact rather proud of his broken heart and blighted life, as boys are apt to be. Indeed, with his knowledge that he had squared the account with Garland, he was almost happy.

CHAPTER VI

GAIN AND LOSS

Alice Page was but an episode in the life of the Mackays, but her influence was far-reaching, at least with Angus and Jean. She stimulated in the former a taste for reading, dormant and unsuspected. She made him see that he was wasting his evenings, and she got him books of history and travel and voyages, with a sprinkling of the cla.s.sics of English fiction. Angus, who had been unaware that such books existed, took to them like a young eagle to the air, for they opened the door to the romances of the world.

Though n.o.body save Alice Page suspected it, the grim-faced boy was full of the romance of youth. At heart he was an adventurer, of the stuff of which the old conquistadores were made.

Jean needed no encouragement to study. Outwardly, Angus was hard and practical. Outwardly, Jean was thoughtful and at times dreamy. Inwardly the reverse was true. Jean was more practical than he, less inclined to secret dreams. She intended to fit herself to teach, and her studies were a means to that end. But most of Angus' reading, apart from technical works, was the end itself. He was not conscious that it was developing him, broadening his outlook, replacing to some extent more intimate contact with the outer world of men and affairs.

Thus time pa.s.sed and another year slid around. Alice Page was gone, teaching in a girls' residential small college on the coast. The ranch was beginning to respond to the hard work. Stock on the range was increasing in numbers and value. More settlers were coming in, and land which had been a drug on the market was beginning to find purchasers.

Angus had grown into a young man, tall and lean, quite unstiffened by his hard work. Turkey was a youth, slimmer of build and smaller of bone than his brother, but wiry and hard and catlike in quickness. Jean had grown from a slip of a girl into a slender, brown-eyed maid. She was through with the local school, and though she never hinted at it, Angus knew quite well that she desired to attend the college where Alice Page taught. It was characteristic of him that he said nothing until he could speak definitely. But one night he told her she had better get ready to go. Jean was startled.

"How on earth did you know I was thinking of that?"

"It didn't need the second sight of old Murdoch McGillivray," her brother returned. "You had better get such things as you want."

"But--can you afford it?" she asked doubtfully.

"Yes. You write to Alice to-night."

So in the early fall Jean went away, and her brothers missed her very much; Turkey, because he had now to mend his own clothes and take a turn at the cooking, and Angus because he had confided in her more than in anybody else.

When the fall grew late and the snow near, Rennie rode the range for stock, which was usually split up into small bands, scattered here and there in valleys and pockets along the base of the hills. Each bunch had its own territory, from which it seldom strayed unless feed got short.

Therefore any given lot could usually be found by combing a few square miles. Before the heavy snows these bunches were rounded up and driven to the ranch to winter there. But this time Rennie could find no trace at all of one bunch.

"It's them three-year-old steers," he said, "that used in between Cat Creek and the mountain. They sure ain't on the range."

"They must have drifted off. Maybe the feed got short."

"The feed's good yet--never saw it better this time of the year."

"Likely they've gone up one of the big draws off the pa.s.s," Angus suggested.

"Well, I wish you'd tell me which. I've rode every draw for ten miles each way, and durn' if I can find a hoof."

This was serious. It was up to them to find those steers before the snow came. Angus had no mind to see them come staggering in in mid-winter, mere racks of bones; and apart from that he had counted on the proceeds of their sale to pay Jean's expenses and some of the interest on Braden's mortgage. Accordingly, he turned himself loose on the range with Dave and Turkey. They spent the better part of a week in the saddle and rode half a dozen ponies to a show-down, but of the missing stock they found never a trace.

"I'll bet somebody's rustled them," Turkey decided.

"Bosh!" said Angus.

"If you're such a darn' wise gazabo, why don't you find 'em?" Turkey retorted. "What do you think, Dave?"

"Don't know," said Rennie. "Blamed if it don't look like it."

"Rustled--nothing!" Angus exclaimed contemptuously. "There aren't any rustlers here."

"There never was no rustlers no place till folks began to miss stock,"

Rennie pointed out mildly.

"But who would rustle them?"

"Well, of course that's the thing to find out."

It was a puzzle. Every steer wore the MK, and mistakes of ownership were out of the question. From calfhood they had summered on that range, coming in fat and frisky to winter by the generous stacks. There was no good reason why they should have left it. Not only had the entire range been combed carefully, but none of the other cattle owners had seen them.

"If they been rustled," Rennie decided, "it's good bettin' it's Injuns.

Some of the young Siwashes is plenty cultus."

"What could they do with them? They couldn't range them with their own stock."

"No, but they could drive them south if they was careful about it, and mix 'em up with the stock of them St. Onge Injuns, and n.o.body'd be apt to notice. I've sent word to a feller down there to ride through and take a look."

In due course Rennie heard from the "feller." The steers were not on the St. Onge reserve. Thus Angus was up against a blank wall. n.o.body would deal openly in stock plainly branded. Garland knew as much as anybody of transactions in stock, but he had heard nothing which might give a clew to the missing steers.

With the pa.s.sage of time Garland and Angus were on terms again, though naturally there was little cordiality. But apparently Garland retained no active ill-feeling. The occurrences of that night were known to n.o.body but the three partic.i.p.ants. As for Garland himself having had anything to do with the steers, it seemed out of the question. He had never been mixed up in any shady transactions, and apart from that, handling stolen stock would be too risky for him. There were only a few white men who were not above all suspicion; and these there was no reason at all to suspect. But for that matter there was no more reason to suspect any Indian. Rennie, however, had a species of logic all his own.

"No reason!" he grunted. "Why, you say yourself there ain't no reason to suspect a white man. Then it's got to be an Injun, ain't it? Sure! On gen'ral principles it's a cinch."

But Angus did not hold with this view. Though he had no special affection for Indians--as few people who know them have--in his opinion they were no worse than other people in the matter of honesty. The older men he would trust with anything. Some of them, especially the chief, a venerable and foxy old buck named Paul Sam, had been friends of his father.

"I'll have a talk with old Paul Sam the first time I see him," he told Rennie. "He's as straight as they make them."

"Well, I guess he's the best of the bunch," Rennie admitted.