“Mr. Straight will go to the stage road with you,” added the young man. At this hint of watchfulness the face of Barrett darkened. “As a school-teacher, I know something of the boarding-schools of the State, and I’ll—” The timber baron’s temper flamed at this plain intent to advise.
“I’ve taken charge of the girl, I say! Your responsibility ends. You were apologizing a moment ago for meddling. Now, don’t go to—”
“I didn’t apologize,” replied Wade, with decision. “And I don’t intend to. And my responsibility ends only when I know that this unfortunate creature is placed in a good school to get the advantages that she has been robbed of all these years.”
The hot retort from Barrett ended in his throat with a cluck. “The devil!” he blurted, staring down the trail.
Dwight Wade, whirling to look to the south, could not indorse that sentiment. Close at hand was Nina Ide, riding a horse with the grace of a boy, whose attire she had adopted with a woods girl’s scorn of conventions. Wade hurried to meet her, cap in hand and eager questions on his lips. The color mounted to her face, and she shook out the folds of a poncho, looped across the saddle, and draped it over her knees.
“No, it’s not strange, either,” she broke in to say. “Your partner—and that’s father—had to come up here on business, and I’ve come along with him, just as I always do when he comes here in the partridge season.” She patted a gun-butt. “But I didn’t expect to find fire and smoke and lightning and rain and tornadoes up here, any more than I looked for you at Pogey Notch when you were supposed to be exploring for a winter’s operation on Enchanted. Now you will have to explain to your partner here!” And he turned from her smiling face to shake hands with Rodburd Ide.
“Every man who can handle brush and mattock is expected to be at the head of a fire in time of trouble!” chirped the “Mayor of Castonia.” He tipped back his head to beam amiably on his partner. “Did it get through onto us, Wade?”
“The rain stopped it half-way up Pogey.”
“Then God was good to us! Isn’t that so, Mr. Barrett?” And the cheerful little man trotted along to grip the hand of “Stumpage John.” That gentleman glowered sullenly, and tried to explain his gloom by muttering about “blowdowns” being worse than fires. He looked ill. As he came down the trail a fever had been rising in his blood. He went away by himself, and sat down feeling faint and weak.