They wrapped the body in heavy canvas, swathed like a mummy. A coffin was out of the question. Sawed lumber there was none. Except furniture, freighted in from afar, everything about that place was hewn from raw timber with axes. And canvas, Rock thought, was as good as a steel casket. The dead are careless of their housing. Only the living fret over such things.
He piled on the last shovelful of earth and stood aside. The girl looked down at the raw soil. Her lips quivered. She dropped to her knees. She seemed to whisper something like a prayer. Rock stood with bared head in the morning sun that sent bright shafts of light through the crooked boughs above. Then he left her, still on her knees, her head bowed, her fingers locked tight together.
CHAPTER VI—VERY ADROIT ROCK
Some minutes later he heard her stirring in the house. The sun grows hot early on the plains in midsummer. Rock had planted himself on the porch steps, in the shade, debating his next move. Should he ride on about his business? Logically, yes. He had a definite task to perform. It was time he set about it. He was on the ground. This was only an incident, a happening by the way. Yet his mind was full of this woman and child, alone on a ranch in the wilderness. The girl had said there were no other men. But this ranch and equipment spelled men and stock. It was more than the cabin of a settler striving for a foothold and security in a virgin land. A woman with a three-year-old baby had no business alone on a ranch in this waste, without a man in the background.
That problem—which was more a state of feeling than a problem, Rock knew—was solved for him in unexpected fashion. He rose at last and entered the house, specifically to ask her if there was anything else he could do before he departed.
The girl had the child in a high chair and was giving the youngster her breakfast. Silently she poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Rock. When he drank it she said:
“Come outside. I want to talk to you.”
Rock followed her to the porch.
“You told me last night you were a stock hand in search of occupation. Do you want to go to work for me?”
Rock liked her directness. His mind was quick to grasp possibilities. Work to Rock meant activity on the range He was next door to the Maltese Cross. Two birds had been killed before with one stone. Still, he wasn’t fond of mysteries that involved sudden death. He liked to know where he was going when he took a new trail.