“She said something else, something to heat you up,” persisted the girl, who perceived her mother’s agitation. “What did she say—something about me—and Cliff?”
The mother did not answer, for Wayland entered the room at the moment; but Berrie knew that traducers were already busy with her affairs. “I don’t care anything about old lady Belden,” she said, later; “but I hate to have that Moore girl telling lies about me.”
As for Wayland, the nights in the camp by the lake, and, indeed, all the experiences of his trip in the high places were becoming each moment more remote, more unreal. Camp life at timber-line did not seem to him subject to ordinary conventional laws of human conduct, and the fact that he and Berrie had shared the same tent under the stress of cold and snow, now seemed so far away as to be only a complication in a splendid mountain drama. Surely no blame could attach to the frank and generous girl, even though the jealous assault of Cliff Belden should throw the valley into a fever of chatter. “Furthermore, I don’t believe he will be in haste to speak of his share in the play,” he added. “It was too nearly criminal.”
It was almost noon of the fourth day when the Supervisor called up to say that he was at the office, and would reach the ranch at six o’clock.
“I wish you would come home at once,” his wife argued; and something in her voice convinced him that he was more needed at home, than in the town.
“All right, mother. Hold the fort an hour and I’ll be there.”
Mrs. McFarlane met him at the hitching-bar, and it required but a glance for him to read in her face a troubled state of mind.
“This has been a disastrous trip for Berrie,” she said, after one of the hands had relieved the Supervisor of his horse.
“In what way?”
She was a bit impatient. “Mrs. Belden is filling the valley with the story of Berrie’s stay in camp with Mr. Norcross.”