"Her holding Ferguson's hand proves nothing. Likely she was trying to get an impression--she's always telling me that. But she's running her own game, and if she is stringing Ferguson that's her business, and if she thinks a good bit of him that's her business, too. If a man ain't jealous, he might be able to see that Ferguson ain't a half bad sort of a man."

An evil light leaped into Leviatt's eyes. He turned and faced Radford, words coming from his lips coldly and incisively. "When you interrupted me," he said, "I was goin' to tell your sister about Ferguson. Mebbe if I tell you what I was goin' to tell her it'll make you see things some different. A while ago Stafford was wantin' to hire a gunfighter." He shot a significant glance at Radford, who returned it steadily. "I reckon you know what he wanted a gunfighter for. He got one. His name's Ferguson. He's gettin' a hundred dollars a month for the season, to put Ben Radford out of business!"

The smile had gone from Radford's face; his lips were tightly closed, his eyes cold and alert.

"You lying about Ferguson because you think he's friendly with Mary?"

he questioned quietly.

Leviatt's right hand dropped swiftly to his holster. But Radford laughed harshly. "Quit it!" he said sharply. "I ain't sayin' you're a liar, but what you've said makes you liable to be called that until you've proved you ain't. How do you know Ferguson's been hired to put me out of business?"

Leviatt laughed. "Stafford an' me went to Dry Bottom to get a gunfighter. I shot a can in the street in front of the Silver Dollar so's Stafford would be able to get a line on anyone tryin' to beat my game. Ferguson done it an' Stafford hired him."

Radford's gaze was level and steady. "Then you've knowed right along that he was lookin' for me," he said coldly. "Why didn't you say something about it before. You've been claiming to be my friend."

Leviatt flushed, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, but watching Radford with alert and suspicious glances. "Why," he returned shortly, "I'm range boss for the Two Diamond an' I ain't hired to tell what I know. I reckon you'd think I was a h.e.l.l of a man to be tellin'

things that I ain't got no right to tell."

"But you're telling it now," returned Radford, his eyes narrowing a little.

"Yes," returned Leviatt quietly, "I am. An' you're callin' me a liar for it. But I'm tellin' you to wait. Mebbe you'll tumble. I reckon you ain't heard how Ferguson's been tellin' the boys that he went down to your cabin one night claimin' to have been bit by a rattler, because he wanted to get acquainted with you an' pot you some day when you wasn't expectin' it. An' then after he'd stayed all night in your cabin he was braggin' to the boys that he reckoned on makin' a fool of your sister. Oh, he's some slick!" he concluded, a note of triumph in his voice.

Radford started, his face paling a little. He had thought it strange that an experienced plainsman--as Ferguson appeared to be--should have been bitten by a rattler in the manner he had described. And then he had been hanging around the----

"Mebbe you might think it's onusual for Stafford to hire a two-gun man to look after strays," broke in Leviatt at this point. "Two-gun men ain't takin' such jobs regular," he insinuated. "Stray-men is usual low-down, mean, ornery cusses which ain't much good for anything else, an' so they spend their time mopin' around, doin' work that ain't fit for any puncher to do."

Radford had snapped himself erect, his lips straightening. He suddenly held out a hand to Leviatt. "I'm thanking you," he said steadily.

"It's rather late for you to be telling me, but I think it's come in time anyway. I'm watching him for a little while, and if things are as you say----" He broke off, his voice filled with a significant grimness. "So-long," he added.

He turned and descended the slope of the hill. An instant later Leviatt saw him loping his pony toward the cabin. For a few minutes Leviatt gazed after him, his eyes alight with satisfaction. Then he, too, descended the slope of the hill and mounted his pony.

CHAPTER XVII

A BREAK IN THE STORY

Mary Radford had found the day too beautiful to remain indoors and so directly after dinner she had caught up her pony and was off for a ride through the cottonwood. She had been compelled to catch up the pony herself, for of late Ben had been neglectful of this duty. Until the last week or so he had always caught her pony and placed the saddle on it before leaving in the morning, a.s.suring her that if she did not ride during his absence the pony would not suffer through being saddled and bridled. But within the last week she thought she detected a change in Ben's manner. He seemed preoccupied and glum, falling suddenly into a taciturnity broken only by brief periods during which he condescended to reply to her questions with--it seemed--grudging monosyllables.

Several times, too, she had caught him watching her with furtive glances in which, she imagined, she detected a glint of speculation.

But of this she was not quite sure, for when she bluntly questioned him concerning his moods he had invariably given her an evasive reply.

Fearing that there might have been a recurrence of the old trouble with the Two Diamond manager--about which he had told her during her first days at the cabin--she ventured a question. He had grimly a.s.sured her that he antic.i.p.ated no further trouble in that direction. So, unable to get a direct reply from him she had decided that perhaps he would speak when the time came, and so she had ceased questioning.

In spite of his negligence regarding the pony, she had not given up her rides. Nor had she neglected to give a part of each morning to the story.

The work of gradually developing her hero's character had been an absorbing task; times when she lingered over the pages of the story she found herself wondering whether she had sounded the depths of his nature. She knew, at least, that she had made him attractive, for as he moved among her pages, she--who should have been satiated with him because of being compelled to record his every word and movement--found his magnetic personality drawing her applause, found that he haunted her dreams, discovered one day that her waking moments were filled with thoughts of him.

But of late she had begun to suspect that her interest in him was not all on account of the story; there were times when she sat long thinking of him, seeing him, watching the lights and shadows of expression come and go in his face. Somewhere between the real Ferguson and the man who was impersonating him in her story was an invisible line that she could not trace. There were times when she could not have told whether the character she admired belonged to the real or the unreal.

She was thinking much of this to-day while she rode into the subdued light of the cottonwood. Was she, absorbed in the task of putting a real character in her story, to confess that her interest in him was not wholly the interest of the artist who sees the beauties and virtues of a model only long enough to paint them into the picture? The blushes came when she suddenly realized that her interest was not wholly professional, that she had lately lingered long over her model, at times when she had not been thinking of the story at all.

Then, too, she had considered her friends in the East. What would they say if they knew of her friendship with the Two Diamond stray-man? The standards of Eastern civilization were not elastic enough to include the man whom she had come to know so well, who had strode as boldly into her life as he had strode into her story, with his steady, serene eyes, his picturesque rigging, and his two guns, their holsters tied so suggestively and forebodingly down. Would her friends be able to see the romance in him? Would they be able to estimate him according to the standards of the world in which he lived, in which he moved so gracefully?

She was aware that, measured by Eastern standards, Ferguson fell far short of the average in those things that combine to produce the polished gentleman. Yet she was also aware that these things were mere accomplishments, a veneer acquired through constant practice--and that usually the person known as "gentleman" could not be distinguished by these things at all--that the real "gentleman" could be known only through the measure of his quiet and genuine consideration and unfailing Christian virtues.

As she rode through the cottonwood, into that deep solitude which brings with it a mighty reverence for nature and a solemn desire for communion with the soul--that solitude in which all affectation disappears and man is face to face with his Maker--she tried to think of Ferguson in an Eastern drawing room, attempting a sham courtesy, affecting mannerisms that more than once had brought her own soul into rebellion. But she could not get him into the imaginary picture. He did not belong there; it seemed that she was trying to force a living figure into a company of mechanical puppets. And so they were--puppets who answered to the pulling strings of precedent and established convention.

But at the same time she knew that this society which she affected to despise would refuse to accept him; that if by any chance he should be given a place in it he would be an object of ridicule, or at the least pa.s.sive contempt. The world did not want originality; would not welcome in its drawing room the free, unaffected child of nature. No, the world wanted pretense, imitation. It frowned upon truth and applauded the sycophant.

She was not even certain that if she succeeded in making Ferguson a real living character the world would be interested in him. But she had reached that state of mind in which she cared very little about the world's opinion. She, at least, was interested in him.

Upon the same afternoon--for there is no rule for the mere incidents of life--Ferguson loped his pony through the shade of the cottonwood. He was going to visit the cabin in Bear Flat. Would she be at home?

Would she be glad to see him? He could not bring his mind to give him an affirmative answer to either of these questions.

But of one thing he was certain--she had treated him differently from the other Two Diamond men who had attempted to win her friendship. Was he to think then that she cared very little whether he came to the cabin or not? He smiled over his pony's mane at the thought. He could not help but see that she enjoyed his visits.

When he rode up to the cabin he found it deserted, but with a smile he remounted Mustard and set out over the river trail, through the cottonwood. He was sure that he would find her on the hill in the flat, and when he had reached the edge of the cottonwood opposite the hill he saw her.

When she heard the clatter of his pony's hoofs she turned and saw him, waving a hand at him.

"I reckoned on findin' you here," he said when he came close enough to be heard.

She shyly made room for him beside her on the rock, but there was mischief in her eye. "It seems impossible to hide from you," she said with a pretense of annoyance.

He laughed as he came around the edge of the rock and sat near her.

"Was you really tryin' to hide?" he questioned. "Because if you was,"

he continued, "you hadn't ought to have got up on this hill--where I could see you without even lookin' for you."

"But of course you were not looking for me," she observed quietly.

He caught her gaze and held it--steadily. "I reckon I was lookin' for you," he said.

"Why--why," she returned, suddenly fearful that something had happened to Ben--"is anything wrong?"

He smiled. "Nothin' is wrong," he returned. "But I wanted to talk to you, an' I expected to find you here."

There was a gentleness in his voice that she had not heard before, and a quiet significance to his words that made her eyes droop away from his with slight confusion. She replied without looking at him.

"But I came here to write," she said.

He gravely considered her, drawing one foot up on the rock and clasping his hands about the knee. "I've thought a lot about that book," he declared with a trace of embarra.s.sment, "since you told me that you was goin' to put real men an' women in it. I expect you've made them do the things that you've wanted them to do an' made them say what you wanted them to say. That part is right an' proper--there wouldn't be any sense of anyone writin' a book unless they could put into it what they thought was right. But what's been botherin' me is this; how can you tell whether the things you've made them say is what they would have said if they'd had any chance to talk? An' how can you tell what their feelin's would be when you set them doin' somethin'?"

She laughed. "That is a prerogative which the writer a.s.sumes without question," she returned. "The author of a novel makes his characters think and act as the author himself imagines he would act in the same circ.u.mstances."

He looked at her with amused eyes. "That's just what I was tryin' to get at," he said. "You've put me into your book, an' you've made me do an' say things out of your mind. But you don't know for sure whether I would have done an' said things just like you've wrote them. Mebbe if I would have had somethin' to say I wouldn't have done things your way at all."

"I am sure you would," she returned positively.

"Well, now," he returned smiling, "you're speakin' as though you was pretty certain about it. You must have wrote a whole lot of the story."