What was there, she asked herself, to be sitting there crying over, like a rough-knuckled housewife whose man has stayed out all night in his cups? If he wanted to stay away that way, let him stay! And then she recalled his hand fumbling at the inner pocket of his coat, and the picture post-card which he had handed her at the riverside.
Still, it wasn’t a matter to cry about–not yet at least. She would permit no more disloyal thoughts. There was some grave trouble at the bottom of Dr. 120 Slavens’ absence, and she declared to herself that she would turn Comanche over, like a stone in the meadow of which the philosopher wrote, and bare all its creeping secrets to the healthy sun, but that she would find him and clear away the unjust suspicions which she knew were growing ranker in that little colony hour by hour.
They all gathered to bid Sergeant Schaefer good-bye, for he was to rejoin them no more. June pressed upon him a paper-bag of fudge, which she had prepared the day before as a surprise against this event. The sergeant stowed it away in the side pocket of his coat, blushing a great deal when he accepted it.
There was a little sadness in their hearts at seeing the soldier go, for it foretold the dissolution of the pleasant party. And the gloom of Dr. Slavens’ absence was heavy over certain of them also, even though Sergeant Schaefer tried to make a joke of it the very last thing he said. They watched the warrior away toward the station, where the engine of his train was even then sending up its smoke. In a little while Horace and Milo followed him to take the stage.
There came a moment after the men had departed when Agnes and William Bentley found themselves alone, the width of the trestle-supported table between them. She looked across at him with no attempt to veil the anxiety which had taken seat in her eyes. William Bentley nodded and smiled in his gentle, understanding way. 121
“Something has happened to him,” she whispered, easing in the words the pent alarm of her breast.
“But we’ll find him,” he comforted her. “Comanche can’t hide a man as big as Dr. Slavens very long.”
“He’ll have to be in Meander day after tomorrow to file on his claim,” she said. “If we can’t find him in time, he’ll lose it.”