“Maybe. But I’ve said it. If it worries you I won’t talk no more. But you know what I think. Yes, it sure makes it different,” Robin muttered. “I’ll go see Ivy an’ ride on.”
“You better——” Mayne began, but Robin had turned his back and was striding toward the house. The old man stood leaning against the stable wall, twisting his scraggly mustache, poking absently at the soft earth with the toe of his boot. His expression was not precisely a happy one.
Robin stalked through the kitchen. Whether driven by eagerness or anxiety he did not consider. Of old Ivy would have run across the yard to meet him. He found her in the living room sitting beside a window which commanded the yard. He knew she had seen him. She rose as he entered but there was no welcome in her eyes. They were darkly sullen, a little frightened.
Robin didn’t speak. He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders, looked searchingly into her face. What he saw there troubled him with a sudden heart heaviness. To be near her stirred him deeply. Yet as he looked at her he knew that something which had linked them close was gone, extinguished like a burned-out candle.
“You don’t seem noway glad to see me,” he said gently.
“Did you expect me to be?” she returned. “You never wrote.”
“How could I, the way things were?” he asked. “You know I would have sent word. It never struck you I’d either do that or come back because I couldn’t stay away from—from everybody and everything?”
“You ran like a scared coyote,” she said tensely. “An’ you didn’t shoot Mark, after all. He shot himself with his own gun. You were just scared of him.”
“Yes? Well?”
Robin paused on the interrogation. He shook her gently.