“It is smeared—thrust into the envelope wet,” Larry said.
Breckenridge rose, and walked, with no apparent purpose, across the room. “Larry,” he said, “Tom and I will come with you. No—you wait a minute. Of course, I know there are occasions on which one’s friends’ company is superfluous—distinctly so; but we could pull up and wait behind the bluff—quite a long way off, you know.”
“I was told to come alone.” Larry turned upon him sharply.
Breckenridge made a gesture of resignation. “Then I’m not going to stay here most of the night by myself. It’s doleful. I’ll ride over to Muller’s now.”
“Will it be any livelier there?”
Breckenridge wondered whether Larry had noticed anything unusual in his voice, and managed to laugh. “A little,” he said. “The fräulein is pretty enough in the lamplight to warrant one listening to a good deal about Menotti and the franc tireurs. She makes really excellent coffee, too,” and he slipped out before Grant could ask any more questions.
Darkness was just closing down when the latter rode away. There was very little of the prairie broncho in the big horse beneath him, whose sire had brought the best blood that could be imported into that country, and he had examined every buckle of girth and headstall as he fastened them. He also rode, for lightness, in a thin deerskin jacket which fitted him closely, with a rifle across his saddle, gazing with keen eyes across the shadowy waste when now and then a half-moon came out. Once he also drew bridle and sat still a minute listening, for he fancied he heard the distant beat of hoofs, and then went on with a little laugh at his credulity. The Cedar was roaring in its hollow and the birches moaning in a bluff, but as the damp wind that brought the blood to his cheeks sank, there was stillness save for the sound of the river, and Grant decided that his ears had deceived him.
It behooved him to be cautious, for he knew the bitterness of the cattle-men against him, and the Sheriff’s writ still held good; but Hetty had sent for him, and if his enemies had lain in wait in every bluff and hollow he would have gone.
While he rode, troubled by vague apprehensions, which now and then gave place to exultation that set his heart throbbing, Hetty sat with Miss Schuyler in her room at Cedar Range. An occasional murmur of voices reached them faintly from the big hall below where Torrance and some of his neighbours sat with the Sheriff over their cigars and wine, and the girls knew that a few of the most daring horsemen among the cow-boys had their horses saddled ready. Hetty lay in a low chair with a book she was not reading on her knee, and Miss Schuyler, glancing at her now and then over the embroidery she paid almost as little attention to, noticed the weariness in her face and the anxiety in her eyes. She laid down her needle when Torrance’s voice came up from below.
“What can they be plotting, Hetty?” she said. “Horses ready, that most unpleasant Sheriff smiling cunningly as he did when I passed him talking to Clavering, and the sense of expectancy. It’s there. One could hear it in their voices, even if one had not seen their faces, and when I met your father at the head of the stairs he almost frightened me. Of course, he was not theatrical—he never is—but I know that set of his lips and look in his eyes, and have more than a fancy it means trouble for somebody. I suppose he has not told you anything—in fact, he seems to have kept curiously aloof from both of us lately.”