It was a singular place for such an exchange of confidences. Wetherford stood with his back against his pony, his face flushed, his eyes bright as though part of his youth had returned to him, while the ranger, slender, erect, and powerful, faced him with sombre glance. Overhead the detached clouds swept swift as eagles, casting shadows cold as winter, and in the dwarfed century-old trees the wind breathed a sad monody. Occasionally the sun shone warm and golden upon the group, and then it seemed spring, and the far-off plain a misty sea.
At last Cavanagh said: “You are only a distant and romantic figure to Lee—a part of the dead past. She remembers you as a bold rider and a wondrously brave and chivalrous father.”
“Does she?” he asked, eagerly.
“Yes, and she loves to talk of you. She knows the town’s folk despise your memory, but that she lays to prejudice.”
“She must never know. You must promise never to tell her.”
“I promise that,” Cavanagh said, and Edwards went on:
“If I could bring something to her—prove to her I’m still a man—it might do to tell her, but I’m a branded man now, and an old man, and there’s no hope for me. I worked in one of the machine-shops down there, and it took the life out of me. Then, too, I left a bad name here in the Fork—I know that. Those big cattle-men fooled me into taking their side of the war. I staked everything I had on them, and then they railroaded me out of the county. So, you see, I’m double-crossed, no matter where I turn.”
Every word he uttered made more apparent to Cavanagh that Lee Virginia would derive nothing but pain and disheartenment from a knowledge that her father lived. “She must be spared this added burden of shameful inheritance,” he decided.
The other man seemed to understand something of the ranger’s indignant pity, for he repeated: “I want you to swear not to let Lee know I’m alive, no matter what comes; she must not be saddled with my record. Let her go on thinking well of me. Give me your word!” He held out an insistent palm.
Ross yielded his hand, and in spite of himself his tenderness for the broken man deepened. The sky was darkening to the west, and with a glance upward he said: “I reckon we’d better make your camp soon or you’ll be chilled to the bone.”