Joe turned joyously to Lee. “That will be great! Won’t you come out for a spin this minute?”
For a moment Lee was tempted. Anything to get away from this horrible little den and the people who infested it was her feeling, but she distrusted Gregg, and she knew that every eye in the town would be upon her if she went, and, besides, Ross might return while she was away. “No, not to-day,” she replied, finally; but her voice was gentler than it had ever been to him.
The young fellow was moved to explain his position to Lize. “You don’t think much of me, and I don’t blame you. I haven’t been much use so far, but I’m going to reform. If I had a girl like Lee Virginia to live up to, I’d make a great citizen. I don’t lay my arrest up against Cavanagh. I’m ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I’m against it. Dad knows his day is short; that’s what makes him so hot. But he’s a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he’s going to get ahead of the cattle-men if he can.”
“Does he know who burned them sheep-herders?”
“Of course he knows, but ain’t going to say so. You see, that old Basque who was killed was a monopolist, too. He went after that grass without asking anybody’s leave; moreover, he belonged to that Mexican-Dago outfit that everybody hates. The old man isn’t crying over that job; it’s money in his pocket. All the same it’s too good a chance to put the hooks into the cattle-men, hence his offering a reward, and it looks as if something would really be done this time. They say Neill Ballard was mixed up in it, and that old guy that showed me the sheep, but I don’t take much stock in that. Whoever did it was paid by the cattle-men, sure thing.” The young fellow’s tone and bearing made a favorable impression upon Lize. She had never seen this side of him, for the reason that he had hitherto treated her as a bartender. She was acute enough to understand that her social status had changed along with her release from the cash-register, and she was slightly more reconciled, although she could not see her way to providing a living for herself and Lee. For all these reasons she was unwontedly civil to Joe, and sent him away highly elated with the success of his interview.
“I’m going to let him take us up to Sulphur,” she said to Lee. “I want to go to town.”
Lee was silent, but a keen pang ran through her heart, for she perceived in this remark by her mother a tacit acknowledgment of Ross Cavanagh’s desertion of them both. His invitation to them to come and camp with him was only a polite momentary impulse. “I’m ready to go,” she announced, at last. “I’m tired of this place. Let us go to-morrow.”
On the following morning, while they were busy packing for this journey, Redfield rolled up to the door in company with a young man in the uniform of a forester.
“Go ask Reddy to come in,” commanded Lize. “I want to see him.”
Redfield met the girl at the door and presented his companion as “Mr. Dalton, District Forester.” Dalton was a tall young fellow with a marked Southern accent. “Is Cavanagh, the ranger, in town?” he asked.