As June had slipped by, so did July and August. On Blue Lake ranch
life flowed smoothly. Men were too busy with each day's work to sit
into the nights prophesying trouble ahead. And in truth it seemed that
if Bayne Trevors had ever actively opposed the success of the Sanford
venture he had by now accepted the role of inactivity forced upon him
by circumstance. He was with the Western Lumber Company, as director
and district superintendent, seemingly giving all his dynamic force to
the legitimate affairs of the company.
But there were those who placed no faith in the obvious. Bud Lee kept
in touch with Rocky Bend and learned that Quinnion had not come back;
that no one knew where he had gone. Carson's man, Shorty, was sought
by Emmet Sawyer and his disappearance was like that of a pricked
bubble; it seemed that Shorty had no actual physical existence or that,
if he had, he had taken it into some other corner of the world.
Quinnion's friends had also gone from Rocky Bend, like Quinnion leaving
behind them no sign to show where they had gone.
Knowing Quinnion as he did, and having his own conception of the
character of Bayne Trevors, Bud Lee said to himself that too great a
quiet portended strife to come. If Quinnion was the man to carry in
his breast the hate that drove him to the murder of Judith's father,
then he was the man to remember the humiliation he had suffered at
Lee's hands, to remember and to strike back when the time was ripe.
Judith had heard of the night in Rocky Bend, a lurid and wonderfully
distorted account from Mrs. Simpson, who had received it in a letter
from her daughter.
"So that was what Bud Lee did after he kissed me!" mused Judith.
She sent immediately for Carson and forced from him the full story.
Dismissing Carson, she remained for a long while alone. Only one
remark had she made to the cattle foreman, and that a little aside from
the issue occupying his mind:
"Keep your weather eye open for what's in the wind," she told him
briefly. "Behind Quinnion is Trevors, and the year isn't over yet."
The ranch was stocked to its utmost capacity. Carson had bought
another herd of cattle; Lee had added to his string of horses. The dry
season was on them, herds were moved higher up the slopes into the
fresh pastures. Carson, converted now to the silos, was a man with one
idea and that idea ensilage. Again the alfalfa acreage was extended,
so that each head of cattle might have its daily auxiliary fodder.
Carson now agreed with Judith in the matter of holding back sales for
the high prices which would come at the heels of the lean months.
The man Donley, who had brought to the ranch the pigeons carrying
cholera, was tried in Rocky Bend. The evidence, though circumstantial,
was strong against him, and the prosecution was pushed hard. But it
was little surprise to any one at the ranch when the trial resulted in
a hung jury. The ablest lawyer in the county had defended Donley, and
finally, late in August, secured his acquittal. The man himself did
not have ten dollars in the world; the attorney taking his case was a
high-priced lawyer. Obviously, to Judith Sanford at least, Bayne
Trevors was standing back of every play his hirelings made.
Doc Tripp had the hog-cholera in hand. And every day, out with the
live stock whose well-being was his responsibility, he worked as he had
never worked before, watchful, eager, suspicious. "If they'll drop
cholera down on us out of the blue sky," he snapped, "I'd like to know
what they won't try."
For the first few days following the dance Bud Lee had within his soul
room but for one emotion: he had held Judith in his arms. He had set
his lips on hers. He went hot and cold with the remembrance. Being a
man, he made his man-suppositions of the emotions that rankled in her
breast. He imagined her contempt of a man who by his strength had
forced her lips to wed his; he pictured her scorn, her growing hatred.
He told himself that he should go, rid the ranch of his presence, take
his departure without a word with her. For, already, he had fitted her
into his theory of the perfect woman, lifting her high above himself
and above the human world. It was a continued insult for him to remain
here.
But, after careful thought, he remembered what Judith had already told
him; he was one of the men whom she could trust to do her work for her,
one of the men she most needed, a man whom she would need sorely if
Bayne Trevors were lying quiet now but to strike harder, expectedly,
later.
Judith did not dismiss him, as at first he had been sure she would. So
he stayed on, remaining away from the ranch headquarters, sleeping when
he could in the cabin above the lake, spending his days with his
horses, avoiding her but keeping her personality in his soul, her
interests in his heart. When the winter had passed, when she had made
her sales and had the money in hand for the payments upon the
mortgages, then he would go. Whereat, no doubt, the high gods smiled.
As time passed, there came about a subtle change in the attitude of the
outfit toward Pollock Hampton, whom they had been at the beginning
prone to accept as a "city guy." It began to appear that under his
lightness there was often a steady purpose; that if he didn't know
everything about a ranch, he was learning fast; that in his outspoken
admiration of things rough and manly and primal there were certain
lasting qualities. Whereas formerly his being thrown from a spirited
mount was almost a daily occurrence, now he rode rather well. With
tanned face and hard hands, he was, as Carson put it, "growing up."
He came to Judith one day serious-faced, thoughtful-eyed.
"Look here, Judith," he began abruptly, "I'm no outsider just looking
on at this game. You're the chief owner and the boss and I'm not
kicking at that any longer. Your dad raised you to this sort of thing
and you have a way of getting by with it. But, on the other hand, I'm
part owner and you've got to consider me."
Judith smiled at him.
"What now, Pollock?" she asked.
"You're the boss," he repeated stoutly. "But I've got a right to be
next in authority. Under you, you know. Why, by cripes, I go around
feeling as if I had to take orders from Carson or Tripp or any other of
the foremen!"
"'By cripes' is good!" laughed Judith. "Go ahead."
"That's all," he insisted. "You can tell them, when you get a chance,
that I am your little old right-hand man. Suppose," he suggested
vaguely, "that you left the ranch a day or so. Or even longer, some
time. There's got to be some one here who is the head when there is
need for it."
Judith mirthfully acquiesced. Hampton's interest was sufficiently
heavy for him to be entitled to some consideration. Besides, she had
come to experience a liking for the boy and had seen in him the change
for the better which his new life was working in him. Further, she
meant to make it her business that she did not leave the ranch for a
day or so, or an hour or so, when she should be there. Consequently,
within a week Pollock Hampton was known humorously from one end to the
other of the big ranch as the Foreman-at-Large.
Marcia Langworthy, visiting in southern California, wrote brief, sunny
notes to Hampton, intricate letters to Judith. The mystery of Bud Lee
of which she had had a glimpse when the artist, Dick Farris, and Lee
recognized each other as old friends had piqued her curiosity in a way
which allowed that young daughter of Eve no rest until she had made her
own investigations. She wrote at length, telling Judith all that she
had learned of Lee. How he had been quite the rage, my dear. Oh,
tremendously rich, with great ranch in the South, a wonderful adobe
hacienda of the old Spanish days, where, like a young king, he had
entertained lavishly. How, believing in his friends, he had lost
everything, then had dropped out of the world, content equally to allow
that world to believe him soldiering in France or dead in the trenches
and to take his wage as a common laborer. Wasn't it too romantic for
anything?
In due course, following up her letters, Marcia herself came back to
the Blue Lake ranch, Judith's guest now. The major and Mrs. Langworthy
were visiting in the East--it seemed that they always visited
somewhere--and Marcia would stay at the ranch indefinitely. Hampton
drove into Rocky Bend for her and held the girl's breathless admiration
all the way home, handling the reins of his young team in a thoroughly
reckless, shivery manner.
"Isn't he splendid?" cried Marcia when she slipped away with Judith to
her room.
Under the bright approval of Marcia's eyes Hampton flushed with
pleasure. Could Mrs. Langworthy have seen them together she would have
nudged the major and whispered in his ear.
During the two months after the dance, Bud Lee and Judith had seen
virtually nothing of each other. When routine duties or a necessary
report brought them for a few minutes into each other's society there
was a marked constraint upon them. Never had the man lost the stinging
sense of his offense against her; never had Judith condescended to be
anything but cool and brief with him. While no open reference was made
to what was past, still the memory of it must lie in each heart, and
though Lee held his eyes level with hers and drank deep of the warm
loveliness of her, he told himself angrily that he was beneath her
contempt. The chivalry within him, so great and essential a part of
the man's nature, was a wounded thing, hurt by his own act. The old
feeling of camaraderie which had sprung up between them at times was
gone now; they could no longer be "pardners" as they had been that
night in the old cabin.
He told himself curtly that he did not regret that; that now it was
inevitable that they should be less than strangers since they could not
be more than friends. That the girl was ready to forgive him, that she
had never been as harsh with him as he was himself, that there was a
golden, delicious possibility that she should feel as he did--so mad an
idea had not come to Bud Lee, horse foreman.
A few days after Marcia's arrival there came to the ranch a letter
which was addressed:
Pollock Hampton, Esq.,
General Manager,
Blue Lake Ranch.
It was from Doan, Rockwell & Haight, big stock-buyers of Sacramento,
submitting an unsolicited order for a surprisingly large shipment of
cattle and horses. The price offered was ridiculously low, even for
this season of low figures due to the fact that many overstocked
ranches were throwing their beef-cattle and range horses on the market.
So low, in fact, that Judith's first surmise when Hampton brought it to
her was that the typist taking the company's dictation had made an
error.
Judith tossed the note into the waste-basket. Then she retrieved it to
frown at it wonderingly, and, finally, to file it. It began by having
for her no significance worthy of speculation. It soon began to puzzle
her. Finally, it faintly disturbed her.
Here were two points of interest. First: Doan, Rockwell & Haight was
the company to which Bayne Trevors, when general manager, had made many
a sacrifice sale. Because the Blue Lake had knocked down to them
before, did they still count confidently upon continued mismanagement?
Surely they must know that the management of the ranch had changed.
And this brought her to the second point: How did it come about that
they had addressed, not her, but Pollock Hampton? Was this just a
trifle?
Long ago Judith had told herself that she must keep her two eyes wide
open for seeming trifles. In spite of her, though she scoffed at her
"nerves," the girl had the uneasy conviction that this offer had been
prompted by Trevors; that Trevors, for purposes of his own, had given
instructions that the letter be addressed to Hampton; that this was the
first sign of a fresh campaign directed against her from the dark; that
trouble was again beginning.
Thoughtfully she smoothed out the letter, impaling it on her file.