Cherry would have kissed her father again had he not turned away too quickly and gone to his room.
The next morning Keith McBain was early on the grade and stayed long enough to see that the work was going on very much as usual. McCartney had come back to camp during the night and was in his place as foreman when the men took their accustomed places. Old Silent slipped away and was not seen again during the day.
Late that night he drove into camp, gave his team over to the care of the corral foreman and went to his cabin without a word to any of the men. His only word was to Cherry, to enquire—somewhat more eagerly than usual, she thought—concerning King's condition. Then he ate his supper and went to bed.
During the days that followed, Cherry watched her father with growing anxiety. The care that was necessary to give King was growing less each day—so rapid was his recovery, and her mind was more free to dwell upon other things. It had become quite clear to her that a change was coming over her father, though she could not account for it. Sometimes she found him unusually cheerful; he became even talkative at times—especially when he sat with King in the evenings after the day's work was done. On such occasions, when her father's spirits were light, her own joy scarcely knew limits.
But as a rule, he was silent, even morose at times. He ate his meals without speaking. He spent his evenings alone outside, where he sat near the doorway and smoked incessantly, until it was so dark he could not see. Often he left the cabin soon after supper and went off walking by himself along the right-of-way, or into the hills, coming back late, and apparently very tired. Something was weighing very heavily upon his mind every minute of the day. Sometimes at night, long after he had gone to bed, Cherry heard him coughing and tossing about restlessly, unable to go to sleep.
King, as he grew daily stronger, talked with Cherry about her father. He had not failed to notice the change that had come over him, and was almost as anxious about him as Cherry herself was. The last conversation of any length that he had had with Keith McBain was on the first afternoon that King had walked from his room to the chair that Cherry had placed for him outside under the tamaracs. Once before, while he was still lying in bed, he had asked the old man about the claim in the hills. Keith McBain had dismissed the subject at once by assuring him in the fewest possible words that everything was all right. But when he came down from the grade and found King sitting outside in the warm sunlight, and looking very much as he had always looked, he had taken a seat near him, lighted his pipe leisurely—and had told King the whole truth about the affair. King had received the news without comment, and Keith McBain, after lingering a while, had left and gone back to where the men were at work on the grade.
Then followed a week during which virtually nothing was said, except what passed between Cherry and King, and a word of quiet greeting now and then when the old man came in to eat his meals.
But during the week King Howden and Cherry McBain faced together the strange problem that life had set before them, not knowing exactly what was hidden behind the silent bearing of the man who was at the centre of it, conscious only of the fact that they were pleased to face it together.
King regained strength very rapidly and was soon able to take short walks in the afternoons and evenings. He never went alone, except when Cherry went riding. Then he strolled slowly along the little path that led into the hills, the path down which he had come with Cherry on that afternoon when he had found her picking berries and had come back to supper with her.
On one of these little strolls he had gone as far as the pool beside which he had knelt with her for a drink of fresh water. Once again he knelt down, and placing his hands upon a small boulder, leaned forward and took a drink. Again he paused in the act of getting up and looked at the reflection in the water. His face was thin and his cheek showed pale under the tan. And yet he was gloriously conscious of returning vigor. The fresh air, fragrant with the sweetness of the pine woods, filled him with new strength at every breath, and his very blood was riotous to be in action again and take up the challenge of life in a young man's land.