“No use, Nan,” said de Spain. “There isn’t any other trail, is there?”
She told him there was no other. “And this will run all night,” she added. “Sometimes it 344 runs like this for days. I ought to have known there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry,” she said, turning to him and as if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, “how did you happen to come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?”
“I came because you sent for me,” he answered, surprised.
“But I didn’t send for you.”
He stopped, dumfounded. “What do you mean, Nan?” he demanded uneasily. “I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you away.”
“Henry! I didn’t send any message––when did you get one?”
“Last night, in my office in Sleepy Cat, from a man that refused to give his name.”
“I never sent any message to you,” she insisted in growing wonderment. “I have been locked in a room for three days, dearie. The Lord knows I wanted to send you word. Who ever telephoned a message like that? Was it a trap to get you in here?”
He told her the story––of the strenuous efforts he had made to discover the identity of the messenger––and how he had been balked. “No matter,” said Nan, at last. “It couldn’t have been 345 a trap. It must have been a friend, surely, not an enemy.”
“Or,” said de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might escape, and putting his face close to hers, “some mildly curious person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the mountains both are trying to marry at once.”