"Sure. That would be the natural thing to keep them quiet, wouldn't it?"

Mayer murmured an a.s.sent and drew himself to the edge of his chair.

"I'd hate to be one of them the way things stand now! The law, when it gets busy, has a pretty long arm."

"I guess it has," she agreed, toying with the bracelet.

"Anyone who has had any sort of dealings, been a friend or a confederate of either of those fellows, is in a desperately ugly position."

She nodded. He leaned still further forward, his elbows on his knees, his glance riveted on her.

"Suppose either of them had a wife or a sweetheart--and it's probable they have--_that's_ the person the authorities will be after."

"Yes," she dropped the bracelet and looked away from him, her expression dreamy, "it would be. They'll start right in to hunt for them. If they got them, what would they do to them?"

"Do?" He suddenly stretched an index finger at her, pointing into her face. "If they find a woman or a girl who's had any acquaintance or intimacy with either Knapp or Garland they'll land her in jail so quick she won't have time to think. Jail, young woman, and after that the third degree. And if she's stood in with them--well, it'll be jail for a home till she's served her term."

She pondered for a moment, then said softly,

"It wouldn't matter if she loved him."

"Jail wouldn't matter?"

Her glance had been fastened in meditation on the shadows of the room.

Now it shifted to him, rapt and luminous. She raised herself to her knees and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing would matter if he was her man. It would be great to stand by him and suffer for him. It would be happiness to go to jail for him, to die for him. There'd be only one thing that she'd be thinking about--that would make her glad to do it--to know that he loved her, Boye."

Eye holding eye, she drew him closer till her black-fringed lids lowered and her face, held up to his, offered itself--a symbol of a fuller gift.

Gathering her in his arms, he rose and drew her to her feet. Pressed against him, shaken by the beating of the heart that leaped at his touch, she again breathed the eternal question, "Do you love me"--words that come from under-layers of doubt in the despairingly impa.s.sioned.

He rea.s.sured her as the unloving man does, lying to get away, soothing with kisses, eager to break loose from arms that are unwelcome and yet tempt. He played his part like a true lover and at the door was genuinely stirred when he saw there were tears in her eyes. He had not guessed she could be so tender, that her hard exterior hid such depths of sweetness.

His parting embrace might have deceived a more love-learned woman, and he left her with a slight, unwonted sense of shame in his heart.

Away from her, where he could think, he pushed the shame aside as he was ready to push her. The fire she had kindled in him died; the woman he had clasped and kissed ceased to figure as a being to desire and became an enigma to solve.

The fate of the bandits had touched no vulnerable spot in her. She had been unmoved by it. Even did she adore Mayer so ardently and completely that his presence was an anodyne for every other thought, she would have shown, she _must_ have shown, some disturbance. He had known women who lived so utterly in the moment that the past lost its reality, was as dissevered from the present as though it had never existed. Was she one of these? Could her relation--whatever it was--with either of the outlaws have been so erased from her consciousness that she could talk of his danger with a face as unconcerned as the one she had presented to Mayer's vigilant eye?

It was impossible. There would have been a betrayal, a quiver of memory, a flash of apprehension--And suddenly, gripped by conviction, he stopped in the street and stood staring down its length.

Night was coming, the gray spotted with lamps. Each globe a sphere of pinkish yellow, they stretched before him in a line that marched into a distance of mingled lights and more accentuated shadows. He looked along them as if they were bearing his thoughts back over the past, every globe a station in the retrospect, stage by stage advancing him toward a final point of certainty.

She didn't know!

It formed in a sentence, detached and exclamatory, in his mind, and he stood staring at the lamps, people jostling him and some of them turning to look back.

Now that he had guessed it everything became clear. It was like a piece of machinery suddenly supplied with a lacking wheel which moved it to instant action. He walked forward, seeing all the disconnected elements take their places, seeing the whole, harmonious, intelligently related and extremely simple. That was what had led him astray. He was not used to simple solutions; intricate byways, complex turnings and doublings, were what he was trained to. Working along the familiar lines, he had overlooked what should have been easily discerned.

The man loved her, wanted to stand well with her and had deceived her as to his occupation. And it was the older one--Knapp's picture had been in the paper, she had seen it and it had meant nothing to her. So it was Garland, the chap with the brains, on toward fifty--but these mountain men with their outdoor life and unspent energies held their youth long.

His imagination, stirred to unwonted activity, pictured him, an outcast, hunted and hiding in the mountain wilderness. As he had smiled at the thought of Pancha's terrors, he smiled now, and again it was a curving of the lips that had no humor behind it. It was the bitter smile of an understanding that has no sympathy and yet has power to comprehend.

As for himself, he was out of it, the mystery was solved and he could go his way in peace of mind. It was a fortunate ending, come just in time.

There was no need now for any more folly or philandering. They were cut off short, romance snipped by Fate's shears, a full stop put at the last word of the sentence. He had no fears of Pancha, she knew too much to make trouble, and anyway there was nothing for her to make trouble about.

He had treated her with a consideration that was nothing short of chivalrous. Even if there had been anyone belonging to her to take him to task he could defend his conduct as that of a Sir Galahad--and there wasn't anyone.

He felt brisk, light, mettlesome. Troubles that had threatened were dispersed; the future lay fair before him. Relieved of all enc.u.mbering obstacles, it extended in clear perspective toward his idea. With keen, contemplative eye he viewed it at the end of the vista, calculating his distance, gathering his powers to cover it in a swift dash, sure of his success.

CHAPTER XVII

THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

One afternoon, a week later, Chrystie Alston was crossing Union Square Plaza. It was beautiful weather, the kind that comes to San Francisco after long spells of rain. Across the bay the distances were deep-hued and crystal-clear, the hills clean-edged against a turquoise sky. Green slopes showed below the dense olive of eucalyptus woods and around the sh.o.r.e were the white cl.u.s.terings of little towns. Where the water filled in the end of a street's vista it was like an insert of blue enameling, and from the city's high places Mount Diavolo could be seen, a pointed gem, surmounting in final sharpness the hill's carven skyline.

Chrystie felt the exhilaration of the air and the sun, and walked with a bounding, long-limbed swing. She was a glad and prosperous figure, silk skirts swept by scintillant lights eddying back from the curves of her hips, glossy new furs lying soft on her shoulders, and on her bosom--a spot of purple--a bunch of violets. Her eyes were as clear as the sky, and her hair, pressed down by the edge of a French hat, hung in a misty golden tangle to her brows. No one needed to be told she was rich and carefree. Her expensive clothes revealed the former, her buoyant step and happy expression, the latter condition.

She was halfway across the Plaza when her progress suffered a check.

There was a drop in her swift faring, a poised moment of indecision.

During the halt her face lost its blithe serenity, showed a faltering uncertainty, then stiffened into resolution. Inside her m.u.f.f her hands gripped, inside her bodice her heart jumped. Both these evidences of agitation were hidden and that gave her confidence. a.s.suming an air of nonchalance she moved forward, her gait slackened, her eyes abstractedly shifting from the sky to the shrubs.

Boye Mayer, advancing up the path, saw she had seen him and drew near, watchfully amused. Almost abreast of him she directed her glance from the shrubs to his face. Surprise at the encounter was conveyed by a slight lifting of her brows, pleasure and greeting by a smile and inclination of the head. Then she would have pa.s.sed on, but he came to a stop in front of her.

"Oh, don't go by as if you didn't want to speak to me," he said, and pressed a hand that slid warm out of the new m.u.f.f.

Standing thus in the remorseless sunshine she was really very handsome, her skin flawless, her lips as red and smooth as cherries. And yet in spite of such fineness of finish there was no magic about her, no allure, no subtlety. Achieving graceful greetings he inwardly deplored it, noting as he spoke how shy she was and how she sought to hide it under a crude sprightliness. There was a shyness full of charm, a graceful gaucherie delightful to watch as the gambolings of young animals. But Chrystie was too conscious of herself and of him to be anything but awkward and constrained.

She was going shopping, but when he claimed a moment--just a moment, he saw her so seldom--went to the bench he indicated and dropped down on it.

Here, a little breathless, sitting very upright, her burnished skirts falling deep-folded to the ground, she tried to a.s.sume the worldly lightness of tone befitting a lady of her looks in such an encounter.

"Do you often go this way, through the Plaza?" he asked after they had disposed of the fine weather.

"Yes, quite often. When it's a nice day like this I always walk downtown, and it's shorter going through here."

"It's odd I haven't met you before. This is my regular beat, across here about three and then out toward the Park."

"That's a long walk," Chrystie said. "You must like exercise."

"I do, but I also like taking little rests on the way. That is, when I meet a lady"--his eye swept her, respectfully admiring--"who looks like a G.o.ddess dressed by Worth."

She moved in her flashing silks, making them rustle.

"Oh, Mr. Mayer, how silly," was the best she could offer in response.

"Silly! But why?" His shoulders went up with that foreignness Chrystie thought so bewitching. "Why is it silly to say what's true?"