As by the girls' cabins, so before the Graham house, Lee perceived a
motor car. He brought his own machine to a stop near it and cut off
his engine. At the same instant the door opened in the house, where by
the light shining through the portal he saw Louise's and Charlie
Menocal's figures. Menocal stepped forth.
"You will please go now," Louise was saying. "When you telephoned I
told you then that I shouldn't go with you, or go to the dance at
all."
Bryant had alighted and was arranging the blankets about Imogene.
Charlie's voice spoke, rather truculently:
"I told you I was coming for you, didn't I? Now see what a position
that leaves me in! People think you're coming. I promised to bring
you."
"Then you were too presumptuous," Louise said. "Now go. You're only
making a bad matter worse."
"See here, Louise----"
"You had my refusal and I've repeated it a dozen times," she
interrupted, indignantly. "Must I shut the door in your face to
silence you? And here's another car. Have some regard for my personal
feelings, sir."
Lee by now had lifted Imogene into his arms and started toward the
speakers.
"Be a good sport, Louise," Menocal pursued, in a tone intended to be
wheedling. "Run upstairs and put on a party dress while I wait for
you. You don't understand how much I want you to come along to this
dance." His words were a little thick and stumbling.
"Hush! Don't you see someone has come? You've been drinking; and
you're sickening to me."
"I don't care if someone is there! Let 'em hear, Louise. Let all the
world hear, let your father hear, let anybody hear! Because I love
you, and so you must come to the dance." Suddenly his tone changed to
an angry hiss. "You've been treating me like a cur, refusing to see me
or go with me, and not letting me come here. I came to-night! I've
stood for enough from you; you can't play me for a fool any longer.
And you're going to marry me, too."
Bryant perceived by the lamplight of the doorway that the fellow had
snatched her hand, that the two were struggling. Burdened with Imogene
as he was, Lee was helpless to enterfere. But he went hastily up the
steps toward them. Louise tugged herself free.
"Oh, you contemptible creature!" she cried, in a voice of quivering
passion. "It's only because you know father is out caring for stock
that you dare stay here to insult me." Then looking past Menocal, she
exclaimed, "Who is that?"
"I, Bryant," said Lee. "With Imogene. She's ill, she needs to be put
to bed. There was no time to ask your permission to bring her, but I
knew----"
"Of course! If this beast will stop making a scene and go!"
Charlie Menocal was pulling on his fur cap.
"So here's our swell-headed crook of an engineer butting in again,"
he sneered. "You better be hunting up your own chicken, or Gretzinger
will have her. Who y' say you got there?"
"Stand aside!"
Bryant's voice struck the other like the lash of a whip, and the
half-drunken youth instinctively fell back a pace, so that Lee could
pass with his charge into the house. But as Louise was about to follow
Menocal seized her arm.
"Girlie, you're not going to throw me down? You'll be good to me and
come----"
Louise shook off his hand, darted through the doorway, and quickly
closing the door turned the key in the lock. Then still grasping the
door-knob she leaned with her head against the panels, face white,
lips trembling, and her breast rising and falling stormily.
"Oh, Lee! For you to be forced to see and hear that!" she said, in a
tone of anguish.
"I think nothing of it; you could not avoid him."
After a moment she recovered herself and said, "Wait until I call
Rosita."
When she returned with the Mexican girl, she conducted Bryant to an
upper chamber where he placed Imogene upon a bed, pressed the latter's
hand assuringly, and then left her in charge of the other two while he
went below to telephone to her uncle. McDonnell had already set out
for Sarita Creek, his wife informed Lee. He had started about half an
hour before. Bryant went out of the house and entering his car drove
down the lane to the main road, where he stopped.
Soon far away in the south there was a flash of light, repeated at
intervals, until at length it grew into a steady, powerful glare that
threw his own machine into strong relief, that dazzled and blinded
him. Finally the other car stopped near by.
"What's the trouble, Jack?" McDonnell's voice came, addressed to his
chauffeur.
Bryant went forward to the banker, who was leaning out of the
limousine. He gave the information that neither of the girls was at
Sarita Creek and explained that Imogene was at the Graham house,
comfortable though ill.
"She's too sick to be removed and will probably need a nurse for a
time," he concluded. "I brought her here as soon as I learned her
condition. Miss Graham put her to bed."
"All right; I'll run in and see her. Much obliged to you, Bryant," was
the answer. Then in a vexed strain he went on, "What I expected to
happen has happened. Advice, pleadings, commands haven't prevented her
from following out this crazy affair. You may not believe it, but
she's as stubborn as a mule when she wants to be. My wife has been
almost distracted all winter. Well, I'll send up a doctor and a nurse
both as soon as I return to Kennard, if there's time before this
storm. Still at work?"
"Still digging. Will keep at it till the last minute."
"Supposed you would. That's the lane there, isn't it?"
Next minute the big car had passed Lee's and was moving up the roadway
between the rows of cottonwoods toward the house. But Bryant did not
at once start for camp. His mind was busy with pictures--pictures of
the two girls as he first had seen them at Perro Creek, and at their
cabins afterward, and finally to-night: Imogene, weak and racked by a
cough and huddling in a quilt beside her sheet-iron stove, and Ruth in
her own cabin, standing in the lamplight in her pink party dress with
round arms and throat showing through its filmy gauze, unconcerned and
intent upon her own ends.
At last he glanced up at the impenetrable sky. Something soft and wet
had floated against his cheek. Then he saw here and there in the
funnel of light projected by his car lamps what looked like solitary
bits of white down sinking through the radiance. Snow!