“Why!” the girl exclaimed, after a moment or two, “I believe it’s Mr. Westcott!”
The name set Gard’s heart pounding, but he kept his quiet pose in the steamer-chair, and only the faintest flutter of distended nostrils betrayed the emotion that was surging within him.
He had no real fear that Westcott might recognize him. The lawyer, as it happened, had seen him but twice; once at Phoenix, just after his arrest, and again on the occasion of that memorable visit to Blue Gulch. Nevertheless, Gard was thankful that he was warned of the new-comer’s approach.
“Do you know him?” Helen asked, still watching the rider, and Gard answered, promptly enough, that he had heard of him.
“He’s stopping at the corrals,” said Helen, presently. “I hope there’s some one there to take his horse.”
She started off, with a backward glance and a smile for her invalid, and presently Gard saw her going toward the corrals, followed by Wing Chang. She walked with a light, springing step that seemed to him must be peculiar to her alone. He had seen girls, back in Iowa, but they had not walked like that.
“There ain’t anybody like her,” he said, half aloud, replying to his own thought. Then he remembered that happy glance, and smile, and a shiver of pain ran through him.
“Heaven help me,” he muttered, “She wouldn’t have looked like that if she’d known.”
Helen, in the meantime, was greeting Westcott, who walked up to the casa with her, leaving his horse for Chang to unsaddle and turn in. He had come up to Sylvania to see a man, he explained, and when he got where the man was, why the man was not there. He showed his handsome, even teeth in a merry smile at his own jest, and somehow managed to convey to Helen the idea that the man “wasn’t there” for the reason that he was afraid to meet him, Ashley Westcott.
“It’s just a game of bluff some smart Aleck is trying to play on me,” he added, with pleasant carelessness; “It isn’t of much importance, except as it gives me the excuse I’m always glad of, to ride out here. I shall have to wait over, a day or two, to give the fellow a chance to make good, I dare say.”