For his part, Carter listened quietly until the storekeeper paused for breath. Then he turned to the agent. "If you'd like five minutes with my character and attainments, don't be bashful! I've got it coming. After that please oblige with a little information on this charivari? I only heard yesterday morning of that revival through Bender's coming into camp."
As he listened, his natural sternness deepened to dark austerity, then fluxed in sad pity as the store-keeper told of Helen's departure. Murmuring "Poor thing!—poor little thing!" he asked for her address.
His face fell when the store-keeper answered: "You'll have to go to Glaves for that. The doc' might have it, but him an' Miss Jenny went north this morning to settle up her father's affairs." Noting Carter's disappointment, he kindly added: "You kin drive my sorrels. They're a third faster than the livery teams. On'y, remember they're fresh off the grass."
"I'll try not to misuse them," Carter answered, brightening, a remark that plentifully illustrates his impatient feeling.
Agent and store-keeper helped him hitch; and as he headed the sorrels out on the Silver Creek trail—the trail that for him, as for Helen, was one long heartache—the agent drew a deduction from his sombre sternness.
"I heard that MacCloud an' Cummings were back. Je-hosh-a-phat! There'll be something doing if they cross his track."
Stepping out of his stable, after feeding the noon oats next day, Glaves "lifted up his eyes," in biblical phrase, and saw Carter "a long way off." A hot morning at the hay, and the loss of two sections of his mower-sickle by impact with a willow snag, did not tend to alleviate his natural crustiness. As he recognized the tall figure behind the sorrels, the hoar of his fifty winters seemed to settle in the lines of his weathered visage; his eye took the steely sparkle of river ice; his nod, when Carter reined in opposite, was curt as his answer.
"Your wife's address? Yes, I know it."
Forewarned by the store-keeper of the old man's bitterness, Carter was not surprised. "Meaning that you won't give it to me?"
"Not till I know as she wants you to have it."