The unmistakable rush of sympathy toward Helen moved Carmody to dramatize the moment. "Miss McLaren," he said, with judicial poise, "I am convinced that you are not a material witness in this case. You are dismissed."

The hearty handclapping of a majority of the auditors followed, and Helen was deeply touched. Her voice was musical with feeling as she said:

"Thank you, sir. I am very grateful. Is my father also excused?"

"Unless the jury wishes to question him."

The jurors conferred, and finally the spokesman said, "I don't think we'll need him."

"Very well, then, you are both free."

Mrs. Brinkley, a round-faced, fresh-complexioned little woman, who had been sitting near the front seat, made a rush for Helen, eager to congratulate her and invite her to dinner. Others, both men and women, followed, and for a time all business was suspended. It was evident that Helen had in very truth been on trial for murder, and that the coroner's dismissal was in effect her acquittal. Hanscom, on the edge of the throng, waited impatiently for an opportunity to present Rawlins. Raines and Kitsong excitedly argued.

Meanwhile the jury and the coroner were in conference, and at last Carmody called for the finding: "We believe that the late Edward Watson came to his death at the hands of one Hart Busby, with Henry Kitsong and Margarita Cuneo knowing to it, and we move that they be held to the grand jury for trial at the next term of court," drawled the foreman and sat down.

No one applauded now, but a murmur of satisfaction pa.s.sed over the room.

Eli and Abe sprang up in excited clamor, and Raines made violent protest against the injustice of the verdict.

"It's all irregular!" he shouted.

Carmody remained firm. "This finding will stand," he said. "The court is adjourned."

Raines immediately made his way to Hanscom and laid a hand on his shoulder. "In that case," he said, "I'll take you into camp. Mr.

Sheriff, I have a warrant for this man's arrest."

Hanscom was not entirely surprised, but he resented their haste to humiliate him before the crowd--and before Helen. "Don't do that now,"

he protested. "Wait an hour or two. Wait till I can get Miss McLaren and her father out of the country. I give you my word I'll not run away."

Carmody, seeing Raines with his hand on the ranger's arm, understood what it meant and hurried over to urge a decent delay. "Let him put the girl on the train," he said.

"I'll give him two hours," said Raines, "and not a minute more."

Hanscom glanced at Helen and was glad of the fact that, being surrounded by her women sympathizers, she had seen and heard nothing of the enemy's new attack upon him.

IX

Helen and the ranger left the room together, and no sooner were they free from the crowd than she turned to him with a smile which expressed affection as well as grat.i.tude.

"How much we owe to you and Dr. Carmody, and what a sorry interruption we've caused in your work."

He protested that the interruption had been entirely a pleasure, but she, while knowing nothing of his impending arrest, was fully aware that he had undergone actual hardship for her sake, and her plan for hurrying away seemed at the moment most ungracious. Yet this, after all, was precisely what she now decided to do.

"Is there time for us to catch that eastbound express?" she asked.

Her words chilled his heart with a quick sense of impending loss, but he looked at his watch. "Yes, if it should happen to be late, as it generally is." Then, forgetting his parole, in a voice which expressed more of his pain than he knew, he said: "I hate to see you go. Can't you wait another day?"

His pleading touched a vibrant spot in her, but she was resolved. "I have an almost insane desire to get away," she hurriedly explained. "I am afraid of this country. Its people scare me!" A quick change in her voice indicated a new thought. "I hope the Kitsongs will not continue in pursuit of you."

"They won't have a chance to do that," he replied, gloomily. "I'm leaving, too. I have resigned."

"Oh no! You mustn't do that."

"I turned in my papers this morning." He suddenly recalled his parole.

"I shall soon be free--I hope--to go anywhere and do anything--and I'd like to keep in touch with you--if you'll let me."

She evaded him. "I shall be very sorry if we are the cause of your leaving the service."

"Well, you are--but not in the way you mean. You have made me discontented with myself, that's all, and I'm going to get out of the tall timber and see if I can't do something in the big world. I want to win your respect."

"I respect you now. Your work as a forester seems to me very fine and honorable."

"The work is all right, but I'm leaving it, just the same. I can't see a future in it. Fact is, I begin to long for a home; that lunch in your cabin started me on a new line of thought."

The memory of his visit to her garden in the valley seemed now like a chapter in the story of a far-off community, and she could hardly relate herself to the hermit girl who served the tea, but the forester--whom she recognized as a lover--was becoming every moment nearer, more insistent. A time of reckoning was at hand, and because she could not meet it she was eager to escape--to avoid the giving of pain. His face and voice had become dear--and might grow dearer. Therefore she made no comment on his statement of a desire for a home, and he asked:

"Don't you feel like going back to your garden once more?"

"No," she answered, sharply, "I never want to see the place again. It is repulsive to me."

Again a little silence intervened. "I hate to think of your posies perishing for lack of care," he said, with gentle sadness. "If I can, I'll ride over once in a while and see that they get some water."

His words exerted a magical power. She began to weaken in resolution. It was not an easy thing to sever the connection which had been so strangely established between herself and this good friend, who seemed each moment to be less the simple mountaineer she had once believed him to be. Western he was, forthright and rough hewn, but he had shown himself a man in every emergency--a candid, strong man. Her throat filled with emotion, but she walked beside him in silence.

He had another care on his mind. "You'd better let me round up your household goods," he suggested.

"Oh no. Let them go; they're not worth the effort."

He insisted. "I don't like to think of any one else having them. It made me hot just to see that girl playing your guitar. I'll have 'em all brought down and stored somewhere. You may want 'em some time."

She was rather glad to find they had reached the door of Carmody's office and that further confidences were impossible, for she was discovering herself to be each moment deeper in his debt and correspondingly less able to withstand his wistful, shy demand.

Mrs. Carmody, a short, fat, excited person, met them in the hall with a cackle of alarm. "I'm awfully glad you've come," she exclaimed. "Your father has been taken with a cramp or something."

Helen paled with apprehension of disaster, for she knew that her father had been keenly suffering all the morning. "Here I am, daddy," she cheerily called, as she entered the room. "It's all right. The inquest is over and we are free to go."

Kauffman, who was lying on a couch in a corner of the office, turned his face and bravely smiled. "I'm glad," he weakly replied. "I was afraid they would call me to the stand again."

Kneeling at his side, she studied his face with anxious care. "Are you worse, daddy? Has your pain increased?"

"Yes, Nellie, it is worse. I fear I am to be very ill."

She took his hand in hers, a pang of remorseful pity wrenching her heart. "Don't say that, daddy," she gently chided. "Keep your good courage." She looked up at the ranger, who stood near with troubled brow. "Mr. Hanscom, will you please find Dr. Carmody and tell him my father needs him?"

With a quick word of a.s.surance he hurried away, and the girl, bending to the care of her stepfather, suffered from a full realization of the fact that he had been brought to this condition by the strength of his devotion to her. "For my sake he exiled himself, for me he has been a.s.saulted, wounded, arrested"--and, looking down upon him in the light of her recovered sense of values, she became very humble.

"Dear old daddy," she wailed, "it's all my fault. What can I do to make amends? You've sacrificed so much for me."