When she made no reply to this, the man understood. Slowly he drew on his gloves and, laying aside all pretense, said simply: "I have been trying to see you, Miss Worth, because I wanted to tell you myself of the miserable part I took in the shameful trick my uncle attempted to play on your father. I see that you know all about it and I realize that it is quite useless for me to ask you to forgive me."
He paused, but still the young woman was silent.
[Illustration: More to regain his composure than because he was thirsty helped himself from the earthen water jar]
The man could not know how she was fighting to keep back the tears.
"You told me plainly that you could never forgive one who was untrue to his work," he went on hopelessly, "and you are right. There was a time, before I knew you, when I would have defended my action, when I would have held that it was right; but I cannot now. Perhaps if I had known you longer—But what's the use. I am a sad bungler in this great work, Miss Worth. I am out of place in the big desert. I should have stayed at home. I wish—I wish you had never wakened me to the possibilities of life—real life. You would not need to feel ashamed for me now."
When she looked up he was mounting his horse. Almost she cried out to him, but he rode quickly out of her sight.
CHAPTER XXI.
PABLO BRINGS NEWS TO BARBARA.
All through the long hot months of that second summer Barbara stayed in the desert with her father. Many times Mr. Worth insisted that she should go to the coast or the mountains for a few weeks, while Abe, Texas and Pat added their entreaties. But the young woman's answer was always—to her father: "If you must stay, daddy, then I must stay to take care of you;" to Abe it was: "Why don't you take a vacation? This is just as much my work as it is yours;" to Texas it was a laughing question whether he thought she was a "quitter," and to Pat she always declared that the desert could not in the least hurt her complexion.
"And look at the other women," she would argue. There was Jack Hanson's little wife, with their children, in a twelve by fourteen tent out there on their claim alone all day and many nights, while Jack was on the work. And Mrs. White, who stoutly declared that she was "sure going to stand by her Jim if it burned her to a crisp," and that they did not have the money to spend even if they could leave the crops they had managed to plant. And Mrs. Rollins and Mrs. Baird and Mrs. Cole and the others, who were holding down their husbands' claims while the men were earning money on the works to help them in getting their start. Surely if these women could stay with their men-folk Barbara could. So Mr. Worth let her have her way. And the other three strove among themselves, with varied and picturesque figures of speech, and—it must be confessed—some rather strong language, to express their admiration for her courage and endurance, while all four taxed their inventive powers to the limit devising ways to add to her comfort.