The girls agreed heartily with the plan, and Daisy went into the cabin to bring out the remaining dry wood. Before long a bright cheerful blaze was crackling in front of them.
For some time no one said anything. Each was absorbed in his or her own thoughts.
Still gazing into the fire, Kirk suddenly broke the silence by speaking about himself.
“Girls,” he began, “you have been wondering about me, I know, and thinking I am rather queer. Well, I guess I am! When I came to the ranch early in the summer, I felt as if I would never want to talk to anybody, or make friends with anybody again. But lately—through the influence of several of the boys, and of you two Girl Scouts, I’ve begun to feel more like a human-being again. And so now that you are under my care tonight, dependent as it were upon me, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. In fact, I just can’t keep it any longer: I am Olive’s husband!”
“What? What?” cried Daisy, staring at Kirk as if she thought he was crazy.
The young man had not meant to blurt out his announcement so bluntly; he was sorry to have startled the girls as he must have done.
“Yes,” he went on to explain, “you see my name is Smith—Thomas Kirk Smith—and when I came out here I began to use the middle name instead of the first, so that I might forget a little bit. But it didn’t do any good. I’ve just been bitter—I hated everybody. Then when I met you, Daisy, and saw how self-controlled you were, with the same trouble as mine, I began to be ashamed.”
As he spoke of his sorrow in his quiet voice, without even looking at the girls, both were even more impressed by his suffering than by the strangeness of the fact that he was the man who, on account of Daisy’s sister, was so often in their thoughts. The whole thing was incredible: that here on this lonely ranch in Wyoming, they should find, not the girl whom they were seeking, but her husband! They knew now that Kirk was speaking the truth, and yet it seemed miraculous.
“Yes,” said Daisy, after the first excitement of the revelation was over, “of course I noticed that your name was Smith—for no matter how often I hear it, it always startles me. But, knowing that your first name was different, I never gave it a second thought. For who would ever think of finding you here?”
“It was a coincidence,” he said. “I was so run down last Spring that I just had to go somewhere. And I’d been out here before, not on this ranch, but in the same country, so I thought this would be the best place. Now I’m glad I did.”