"Ogden Van Lennop."
"Van Lennop?" Kincaid's voice was sharp with astonishment. "Why, girl,
he's here. He just got in and he's raising Cain in Crowheart! I meant to
tell you, but this shopping business quite drove it from my head. The
news has only come out that the Symes's Irrigation Company is going into
a Receiver's hands and the bondholders will foreclose their mortgages.
Look down in the street. There's a mob of workmen from the project and
the creditors of your friend Symes considering how they best can extract
blood from a turnip. For some reason of his own Van Lennop has gone
after Symes's scalp and got it. Don't be too quick to judge him,
Esther." But a glance at her face told him he need not plead Van
Lennop's cause.
"He meant it, then!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "All that he said that
day we rode together. I didn't understand his meaning, but this is it:
'I'll wear your colors in the arena where _men_ fight--and win,' he
said. 'I'll fight with the weapons I know best how to use.'"
"If he's the member of the family that I think he is," said Kincaid
dryly, "it's almost unsportsmanlike for him to go after Symes; it's like
a crack pigeon shot shooting a bird sitting."
"And he said," Essie went on, "'Don't waste your energy in quarrelling
with your enemies, concentrate--make money out of them.'"
"Did Van Lennop say that?"
She nodded.
"They'll pay tribute, then. Van Lennop will put this project through in
his own good time; but let me prophesy they'll be pitching horse-shoes
in the main street of Crowheart first."
The sound of a commotion on the stairs reached them.
"What's broken loose in this man's town now?"
As though in direct answer to Kincaid's question Mrs. Terriberry lunged
down the corridor looking like a hippopotamus in red foulard.
"If anything more happens"--Mrs. Terriberry's voice rose shrill and
positive--"I shall _die_!"
A lunge in his direction indicated that her demise might take place in
Kincaid's arms, but a startled side-step saved him and she sank heavily
upon the red plush sofa. Her teeth chattered with a touch of nervous
chill and her skin looked mottled.
"She choked her! choked her almost to death! She'd a done it in a minute
more only the hired girl broke her holt!"
"Who? What do you mean, Mrs. Terriberry?"
"Dr. Harpe! She choked Gussie Symes because Gussie wouldn't leave her
home and go away with her! Did you ever hear such a thing!" She went on
in disconnected gasps: "Crazy! Jealous! I don't know what--nobody
does--and she's disappeared--they can't find her." Mrs. Terriberry's
shudders made the sofa creak. "And her active in church work, which they
say her langwudge was awful!"
But Essie Tisdale was listening to another step upon the stair and she
trembled when she heard the steps hastening down the corridor.
Van Lennop saw only her as he came toward her with outstretched hands,
speaking her name with the yearning tenderness with which he had spoken
it to himself a hundred times--
"Essie--Essie Tisdale!"
He kissed her, and she yielded, as though there were no need for words
between them.
"But my letter? My telegram? Why didn't you answer?"
Her eyes widened with astonishment.
"Your letter! Your telegram!"
"You didn't get them?"
"Not one."
"Who did then?"
She shook her head.
"No one knew you'd gone but Dr. Harpe."
"Dr. Harpe!"
"You wrote her!"
"I wrote Dr. Harpe?" He stared at her for one incredulous second. "I
wrote Dr. Harpe! She said so?"
"She said you left a letter for her."
There leaped into his steel-gray eyes a look which reminded Kincaid of
the play of a jagged flash of lightning. He spoke slowly and enunciated
very carefully when he said--
"I knew Dr. Harpe had the instincts of a prying servant, but I scarcely
thought she'd go as far as that."
"Essie," Kincaid tapped her on the shoulder, "don't forget that your old
Uncle Dick is here and waiting to be noticed."
He laughed aloud at her confusion and said as he and Van Lennop shook
each other's hand--
"Just as I think I'm fixed for life, by George! I'm shoved out in the
cold again; for I am forced to believe"--his eyes twinkled as he looked
at Van Lennop--"that I am not the only Homeseeker left in Crowheart."