Well, his menagerie was hungry and begging for food. He went out again, hurried to the nearest grocery and bought what he wanted, careless of the curious looks he excited. He stopped at Tommy's Place and told Tommy that he wouldn't be needed, close-herding anybody. The auditor had reported to Bill that he could find nothing wrong with the books, and there was not much chance of getting hold of any actual proof of crookedness against either Rayfield or Emmett.
"And are yuh still buyin' Parowan stock, Mr. Dale?" Tommy's soft voice was softer, more plaintive than ever.
"As long as there's a share out, I'm in the market," Bill answered shortly—defiantly too, though there was no reason for defiance.
He returned to his camp and fed Sister Mitchell her lettuce, Luella a cookie, and flung a stale mutton chop outside the door for Hez. He did not cook anything for himself. He was too heartsick to think of food. The whole damnable robbery, the treachery,—and then, Doris!
He tried to recall what words had passed between them; to remember just what Doris had said. But then he knew that it was not the words; she had not actually said anything awful, he suspected. But her tones, the hard, condemning look in her eyes! He could see her again, trembling with anger because he was spending money to keep his name—and hers—above reproach among men. In all the time since they were married, Bill had never seen Doris like that. The months had not been altogether peaceful, to be sure. Doris had frequently found something in her husband that required correcting, had enumerated his faults to him many, many times. She had often hurt Bill, had made him angry, so that he would go away until he forgot it. But there had been nothing like this.
"Damn money, if that's what it does to people!" Bill groaned aloud, when Luella recalled him to his surroundings by crying, "Give us a light! Give us a light!" He lighted a lantern and hung it from the hook on the ridgepole, and for a long while he stood staring at the cased saxophone.
Only two years ago he had dreamed of learning to play that thing,—to forward his wooing of Doris!
"I didn't need music," he told himself bitterly, all her hysteria over money and luxury flooding his mind with a nauseating enlightenment. "She took me, quick enough, when she saw the gold! Money, money! That's all she has thought of, from the day I showed her the vein. Little peacock, strutting around, showing off her finery. What a blind fool a man can be. And it had to wind up this way. She took money from me for her stock—thinking it was my last dollar. Afraid my account wouldn't cover it! If she thinks I'm that near broke, why did she take that check? Sell out, just like all the rest, because Parowan's on the rocks and the stock's not worth a damn, and she stood to lose something if she didn't unload quick. So she unloaded—five dollars a share because I offered it—to me! Her own husband, the man who gave her the claim that put her in the Company to begin with.
"What has she ever done to help? What's she doing now? Looking after her own little dollar pile—that's what. And she didn't need it! I gave her half a million in bonds, last Christmas. My God, even Rayfield wouldn't have done what she did to-night! And the way she's treated her folks. That shows the stuff she's made of. I don't blame Don for turning me down every time I tried to do something for him. They're proud—the right kind of pride. They're proud to make their own way. But Doris—neglecting them and not wanting them in California for a visit—excuses, the thinnest kind of excuses. Ashamed to have them at the hotels, that was why. She couldn't bear the thought of leading her pudgy old mother and her big, awkward dad into the dining room to her table! Afraid they might eat their salad with the fork dedicated to fish! Old Don might possibly put his soup spoon into his mouth front end forward! Snob! Cold-blooded, heartless little snob!"
So he railed at her, lashing his anger with the memory of her foolishness. But when he thought of baby Mary, his heart failed him. Beginning to toddle now, she was. And squinting her nose at him and laughing, and hiding her head in a cushion when he went down on his hands and knees and boo-ooed at her. Holding out her little arms to him and pleading "Take!" when the nurse came to carry her off to bed.