Holy d.i.c.k grinned, his bloodshot eyes twinkling with an evil leer, which was never far from their expression.

"With things sportin' busy as they done to-day, guess you won't need to keep at it long. Say, Fyles has brought you dollars an' dollars."

The old rascal gulped down his drink and slouched out of the bar chuckling. He was always an amiable villain--until roused.

As the door closed behind him O'Brien leaned on his bar, and looked over at the back view of the still rec.u.mbent figure of Charlie Bryant.

"I was thinkin' of closin' down, Charlie," he said quietly.

Charlie looked around. Then, when he became aware that the room was entirely empty, he sprang up with a sudden start.

He looked dazed. But, after a moment, his confusion slowly faded out, and he looked into the grinning eyes of probably the shrewdest man in the valley.

"Feelin' good?" suggested the saloonkeeper. "Have a 'night-cap'?"

Charlie raised one delicate hand and pa.s.sed it wearily across his forehead. As it pa.s.sed once more that eager craving lit his eyes. His reply came almost roughly.

"h.e.l.l--yes," he cried. Then he laughed idiotically.

O'Brien poured out a double drink and pa.s.sed it across to him. He took a drink himself. He watched the other as he greedily swallowed the spirit. Then he drank his more slowly. It was only the second drink he had taken that day.

"Say, I'm runnin' out of rye and brandy," he said, setting his gla.s.s in the bucket under the counter, and picking up Charlie's. "Guess I need 10 brandy and 20 rye--right away."

He was wiping the gla.s.ses deliberately, and paused as though in some doubt before he went on. But Charlie made no effort to encourage him.

Only in his eyes was a faint, growing smile, the meaning of which was not quite apparent.

"I left the order--with the dollars--same place," O'Brien went on presently. "Same old spot," he added with a grin.

Charlie's smile had broadened. A whimsical humor was peeping out of his half-drunken eyes.

"Sure," he nodded. "Same old spot."

O'Brien set his gla.s.ses aside.

"I need it right away. I'd like it laid in my barn, 'stead of the--usual spot. I wrote that on my order. Makes it easier--with Fyles around."

Again Charlie nodded.

"Sure," he agreed briefly.

O'Brien found himself responding to the other's smile.

These whisky-runners meant everything to him, and he felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to display his most amiable side.

"Say," he chuckled, "the bark of the old tree's held some dollars of mine in its time. It's a h.e.l.l of a good thing that tree has a yarn to it. The folks 'ud sure fetch it down for the new church if it hadn't.

I'd say it would be awkward. We'd need a new cache for our orders and--dollars."

Charlie shook his head.

"Guess they won't cut it down," he said easily. "They're scared of the superst.i.tion."

O'Brien abandoned his smile and became confidential.

"Ain't you--worried some, Fyles gettin' around?"

For a moment Charlie made no answer. The smile abruptly died out of his eyes, and a marked change came over his whole expression. He suddenly seemed to be making an effort to throw off the effects of the whisky he had consumed. He straightened himself up, and his mouth hardened. The cigarette lolling between his lips became firmly gripped. O'Brien, watching the change in him, suddenly saw his hands clench at his sides, and understood the sudden access of resentment which the mention of Fyles's name stirred in the man. He read into what he beheld something of the real character of the "sharp," as he understood it.

Charlie's reply came at last. It came briefly and coldly, and O'Brien felt the sting of the rebuff.

"Guess I can look after myself," he said.

Then, without another word, he turned away, and walked out of the saloon.

CHAPTER XV

ADVENTURES IN THE NIGHT

Big Brother Bill changed his mind after all. He did not go to O'Brien's saloon. At least not when he left the Seton's house. Truth to tell, his unantic.i.p.ated visit to Helen Seton's home had inspired him with a distaste for exploring the less savory corners of this beautiful valley. For the time, at least, it had become a sort of Garden of Eden, in which he had discovered his Eve, and he had no desire to dispel the illusion by unnecessary contact with a grade of creatures whose existence therein could only mar the beauties and delights of his dream.

So, instead of carrying out his original intention, full of pleasant dreaming, he made his way back toward his brother's home, hoping to find him returned so that he could pour out his enthusiastic feelings for the benefit of ears he felt would be sympathetic.

As he came to the clearing where he had first discovered Helen, however, his purpose underwent a further modification. His sentimental feelings getting the better of him, he sat down upon the very log over which the girl had fallen, and turned his face toward where the little home of the girls, with its single twinkling light, was rapidly losing itself in the deep of the gathering twilight.

He had no thought for the elder girl as he sat there. Her bolder beauty had no attraction for him, her big, dark eyes, so full of reliant spirit were scarcely the type he admired. She might be everything a woman should be, strong, sympathetic, generous, big in spirit, and of unusual courage; she might be all these and more, but, even so, she was incomparable to the fair delight of Helen's bright, inconsequent prettiness. No, serious-minded people did not appeal to him, and, in his blundering way, he told himself that life itself was far too serious to be taken seriously.

Now Helen was full to the brim of a flippant, girlish humor that appealed to him monstrously. He felt that it was a man's place to think seriously, if serious thought were needed. And he intended when he married to do the thinking. His wife must be wholly delightful and feminine, in fact, just as Helen was. Pretty, laughing, smartly dressed, and always preferring to lean on his decisions rather than indulge in the manufacture of wrinkles on her pretty forehead striving to find them for herself.

He felt sure that Helen would make a perfect wife for a man like himself. Particularly now, as she was used to the life of the valley.

And, furthermore, he felt that a wife such as she would be essential to him, since he had definitely come to live as a rancher.

She certainly would be an ideal rancher's wife. He could picture her quite well mounted upon a high-spirited prairie-bred horse, riding over the plains, or round the fences, since that seemed necessary, at his side. He would listen to her merry chatter as he inspected the work that was going forward, while she, simply bubbling with the joy of living, looked on with a perfect sense of humor for those things which her more sober-minded sister would have regarded as matters only for serious consideration.

Thus he went on dreaming, his eyes fixed upon the distant, lamp-lit window, all utterly regardless of the fall of night, and the pa.s.sing of the hours. Nor was it until he suddenly awoke to the chill of the falling dew that he remembered that he was on his way home to tell Charlie of all his pleasant adventures.

Stirring with that swift impulse which always seemed to actuate him, he rose from his seat on the log and stumbled across the clearing, floundering among the fallen logs with a desperate energy that cost him many more bruises than were necessary, even in the profound darkness of the, as yet, moonless night.

Finally, however, he reached the track which led up to the house and hurried on.

A few minutes later he was wandering through the house searching in the darkened rooms for his brother. It was characteristic of him that he did not confine his search to the house, but sought the missing man in every unlikely spot his vigorous and errant imagination could suggest. He visited the corrals, he visited the barn, he visited the hog pens and the chicken roosts. Then he brought up to a final halt upon the veranda and sought to solve the problem by thought.

There was, of course, an obvious solution which did not occur to him. He might reasonably have sought his bed, and waited until morning--since Charlie had survived five years of life in the valley.

That was not his way, however. Instead, a great inspiration came to him. It was an inspiration which he viewed with profound admiration.

Of course, he ought to have gone at once to the village, as he had intended, and have visited O'Brien's saloon.

Forthwith he once more set out, and this time, his purpose being really definite, after much unnecessary wandering he finally achieved it.