The occasion when nine men with their hands tied behind them arrived at the Bar T ranch, accompanied by six others with Winchesters across their saddle bows, was an extremely happy one for Juliet Bissell. This happiness was not associated, except superficially, with the capture of the rustlers, but had to do especially with the receipt of a certain smeared and blackened journal from a certain tall and generously proportioned young man.
The captives arrived at noon, but it was nearly supper-time before she had finished reading, around, amid, among and between the lines, despite the fact that the lines themselves left very little doubt as to the writer’s meaning.
This was not the same beautiful girl Bud Larkin had left behind him that early morning of his escape. Since that time she had changed. The eyes that had formerly been but the beautiful abode of allurement and half-spoken promises, had taken on a sweet and patient seriousness. The corners 254 of her mouth still turned up as though she were about to smile, but there was a firmer set to them that spoke of suppressed impulses.
She moved with a greater dignity, and for the first time became aware of the real worth of her mother, who until now she had somehow taken for granted. Martha’s consternation and grief at her husband’s sudden and prolonged disappearance, only broken by the visit of Skidmore and his camera, had been really pitiful, and the girl’s eyes were opened to the real value and beauty of an undying love.
Her own misery, after the receipt of the letter brought by Skidmore, she had faced alone, and in her, as in all good and true natures, it had worked a change. It had softened her to the grief of another, and showed her, for the first time, that happiness is only really great when in sharp contrast with pain.
So this long and simple love-letter from Bud, while satisfying the cravings of the lover, stirred up again the misgivings of the doubter. And her cogitations resulted in the admission that Bud must be either one of two things. Either he was absolutely innocent of the imputations contained in the letter that Skidmore brought, or he was one of the most consummate villains at large. 255
There were grounds for both suppositions, and the girl, after hours of vain struggle, found herself still in the middle ground, but more nervous and anxious than she had ever been.
The arrival of Mike Stelton under guard two days after that of the other rustlers created a sensation. For the girl it was the blow that shattered another illusion, for although she had never cared for the foreman, her belief in his unswerving faithfulness to the Bissell house was absolute. Now to see him the admitted leader of the gang that had steadily impoverished her father was almost unbelievable.
The man who brought Stelton in also brought a hurried scrawl to Juliet from Bud, which read:
Darling: