McAlpin, swathed in bandages, made no bones about accusing the common enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on 290 the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn’t get out of the country.
But instead of getting out of the country, de Spain continued as a matter of energetic policy to get into it. He rode the deserts stripped, so to say, for action and walked the streets of Sleepy Cat welcoming every chance to meet men from Music Mountain or the Sinks. It was on Nan that the real hardships of the situation fell, and Nan who had to bear them alone and almost unaided.
Duke came home a day or two later without a word for Nan concerning his encounter with de Spain. He was shorter in the grain than ever, crustier to every one than she had ever known him––and toward Nan herself fiercely resentful. Sassoon was in his company a great deal, and Nan knew of old that Sassoon was a bad symptom. Gale, too, came often, and the three were much together. In some way, Nan felt that she herself was in part the subject of their talks, but no information concerning them could she ever get.
One morning she sat on the porch sewing when Gale rode up. He asked for her uncle. Bonita 291 told him Duke had gone to Calabasas. Gale announced he was bound for Calabasas himself, and dismounted near Nan, professedly to cinch his saddle. He fussed with the straps for a minute, trying to engage Nan in the interval, without success, in conversation. “Look here, Nan,” he said at length, studiously amiable, “don’t you think you’re pretty hard on me, lately?”
“No, I don’t,” she answered. “If Uncle Duke didn’t make me, I’d never look at you, or speak to you––or live in the same mountains with you.”
“I don’t think when a fellow cares for you as much as I do, and gets out of patience once in a while, just because he loves a girl the way a red-blooded man can’t help loving her, she ought to hold it against him forever. Think she ought to, Nan?” he demanded after a pause. She was sewing and had kept silence.
“I think,” she responded, showing her aversion in every syllable, “before a man begins to talk red-blood rot, he ought to find out whether the girl cares for him, or just loathes the sight of him.”
He regarded her fixedly. Paying no attention to him, but bending in the sunshine over her sewing, her hand flying with the needle, her masses of brown hair sweeping back around her pink ears and curling in stray ringlets that the wind danced with while she worked, she inflamed her brawny 292 cousin’s ardor afresh. “You used to care for me, Nan. You can’t deny that.” Her silence was irritating. “Can you?” he demanded. “Come, put up your work and talk it out. I didn’t use to have to coax you for a word and a smile. What’s come over you?”
“Nothing has come over me, Gale. I did use to like you––when I first came back from school. You seemed so big and fine then, and were so nice to me. I did like you.”
“Why didn’t you keep on liking me?”