For a long time, as she stood there, pride fought a savage battle with duty. Her face was pallid, her lips tight-clenched, and shame unutterable gripped her. To be sure, Lawler had enjoined her father to silence, and it was evident that she was not to know. Still, she did know; and Lawler had added an obligation, a debt, to the already high barrier that was between them. Yet she dared not evade the obligation, for that would be robbing her father of a chance over which he seemed to exult, a chance which promised the reformation, for which she had prayed.
Her heart was like lead within her—a dull weight that threatened to drag her down. And yet she felt a pulse of thankfulness. For if her father really meant to try—if he should succeed in redeeming himself in Lawler's eyes and in her own, she might one day be able to go to Lawler with no shame in her eyes, with the comforting assurance that her father had earned the right to hold his head up among men. To be sure, there always would be the shadow of the past mistake lurking behind; but it would be the shadow of a mistake corrected, of a black gulf bridged.
Her father was waiting when she finally turned to him—waiting, his chin on his chest, his face crimson with shame.
"Ruth, girl—you ain't goin' to judge me too harsh, are you?" he begged. Once more she yielded to the pathetic appeal in his eyes. She ran to him again, holding him tightly to her. A cool gust swept in through the open doorway—the night wind, laden with mystery. But the girl laughed and snuggled closer to the man; and the man laughed hoarsely, vibrantly, in a voice that threatened to break.
CHAPTER XIII
THE INVISIBLE MENACE
At the close of the second day the big trail herd halted at the edge of the vast level over which it had come. The herd had been driven forty miles. Cattle, men, and horses had passed through a country which was familiar to them; a country featured by long grama grass, greasewood, and cactus plants.
There was no timber on the plains. The gray of the grama grass and the bare stretches of alkali shone white in the glare of a sun that swam in a cloudless sky of deepest azure. Except for the men, the cattle, the horses, and the two slow-moving, awkward-looking canvas-covered wagons, there had been no evidence of life on the great plain. In a silence unbroken save by the clashing of horns, the bleating and bawling of the cattle, the ceaseless creaking of the wagons, and the low voices of the men, the cavalcade moved eastward.
The wind that swept over the plains was chill. It carried a tang that penetrated; that caused the men, especially in the early morning, to turn up the collars of their woolen shirts as they rode; a chill that brought a profane protest from the tawny-haired giant who had disclosed to Lawler the whereabouts of Joe Hamlin that night in the Circle L bunkhouse.
The first camp had been made on the Wolf—at a shallow about five miles north of the Two Bar, Hamlin's ranch. And with the clear, sparkling, icy water of the river on his face, and glistening beads of it on his colorless eyelashes, the giant had growled to several of his brother cowboys, who were likewise performing their ablutions at the river: