It may be that old Jim McCullen, calmly contemplating her from his side of the narrow trail, wondered too, but he had the advantage of most people, for he knew that whatever she did do would be the nearest thing to her hand. There was nothing variable or fitful about Hope.
She folded her letter and tucked it back in her belt, her only comment being, as she spurred her horse into a faster gait: "Larry says he is coming over here one of these days."
They rode past the camp and on to the flat beyond, where grazed Sydney's two hundred head of steers. These they rode around, while Jim reviewed the news of the ranch and round-up, in which the girl found some interest, asking numerous questions about the recent shipment of cattle, the tone of the market, the prospect for hay, the number of cattle turned on the range, and many things pertaining to the work of the ranch, but never a question concerning the idle New Yorkers who made up her mother's annual house-party. In them she took, as usual, no interest.
She finally left her old friend and turned her horse's head back toward Harris' still as much perturbed in heart as when McCullen knocked at her school-house door. She tormented herself with unanswerable questions, arriving always at the same conclusion—that after all it only seemed reasonable to suppose Livingston should be married. It explained his conduct toward her perfectly. She wondered what the woman, Helene, had done to deserve such unforgiveness from one who, above all men, was the most tender and thoughtful. She concluded that it must have been something dreadful, and, oddly for her, began to feel sorry for him. She saw him when she reached the top of the divide, riding half a mile away toward his ranch buildings. Then a certain feeling of ownership, of pride, took possession of her, crowding everything before it. How well he sat his horse, in his English fashion, she thought. What a physique, what grace of strength! Then he disappeared from her sight as his horse plunged into the brush of the creek-bottom, and Hope, drawing a long breath, spurred up her own horse until she was safely out of sight of ranch and ranch-buildings. A bend in the road brought her face to face with Long Bill and Shorty Smith.
"Hello," said Shorty Smith, drawing rein beside her. "I was a lookin' for you."
"Really," said the girl, stopping beside him and calmly contemplating both men.
"Yep," nodded Long Bill politely, "we was huntin' fer you, Miss Hathaway."
"You see it's like this," explained Shorty Smith; "the old man, he ain't a-doin' very well. I reckon it's his age. That there wound of his'n won't heal, so we thought mebby you had some arnica salve er something sort o' soothin' to dope him with."
"I haven't the salve, but I might go over there myself if you want an anodyne," replied Hope, unsmiling at the men's blank faces.
"I'm goin' to ride to town to-morrow and I reckoned if you didn't have no salve you could send in for it."