“Did he speak to you—are you engaged?”
Her head drooped. “Not really engaged, mother; but he told me how much he liked me—and—it’s all right, mother, I know it is. I’m not fine enough for him, but I’m going to try to change my ways so he won’t be ashamed of me.”
Mrs. McFarlane’s face cleared. “He surely is a fine young fellow, and can be trusted to do the right thing. Well, we might as well go to bed. We can’t settle anything till your father gets home,” she said.
Wayland rose next morning free from dizziness and almost free from pain, and when he came out of his room his expression was cheerful. “I feel as if I’d slept a week, and I’m hungry. I don’t know why I should be, but I am.”
Mrs. McFarlane met him with something very intimate, something almost maternal in her look; but her words were as few and as restrained as ever. He divined that she had been talking with Berrie, and that a fairly clear understanding of the situation had been reached. That this understanding involved him closely he was aware; but nothing in his manner acknowledged it.
She did not ask any questions, believing that sooner or later the whole story must come out. The fact that Siona Moore and Mrs. Belden knew that Berrie had started back on Thursday with young Norcross made it easy for the villagers to discover that she had not reached the ranch till Saturday. “What could Joe have been thinking of to allow them to go?” she said. “Mr. Nash’s presence in the camp must be made known; but then there is Clifford’s assault upon Mr. Norcross, can that be kept secret, too?” And so while the young people chatted, the troubled mother waited in fear, knowing that in a day or two the countryside would be aflame with accusation.
In a landscape like this, as she well knew, nothing moves unobserved. The native—man or woman—is able to perceive and name objects scarcely discernible to the eye of the alien. A minute speck is discovered on the hillside. “Hello, there’s Jim Sanders on his roan,” says one, or “Here comes Kit Jenkins with her flea-bit gray. I wonder who’s on the bay alongside of her,” remarks another, and each of these observations is taken quite as a matter of course. With a wide and empty field of vision, and with trained, unspoiled optic nerves, the plainsman is marvelously penetrating of glance. Hence, Mrs. McFarlane was perfectly certain that not one but several of her neighbors had seen and recognized Berrie and young Norcross as they came down the hill. In a day or two every man would know just where they camped, and what had taken place in camp. Mrs. Belden would not rest till she had ferreted out every crook and turn of that trail, and her speech was quite as coarse as that of any of her male associates.
Easy-going with regard to many things, these citizens were abnormally alive to all matters relating to courtship, and popular as she believed Berrie to be, Mrs. McFarlane could not hope that her daughter would be spared—especially by the Beldens, who would naturally feel that Clifford had been cheated. She sighed deeply. “Well, nothing can be done till Joe returns,” she repeated.
A long day’s rest, a second night’s sleep, set Wayland on his feet. He came to breakfast quite gay. “Barring the hickory-nut on the back of my head,” he explained, “I’m feeling fine, almost ready for another expedition. I may make a ranger yet.”
Berrie, though equally gay, was not so sure of his ability to return to work. “I reckon you’d better go easy till daddy gets back; but if you feel like it we’ll ride up to the post-office this afternoon.”