"What now, Pollock?" she asked.
"You're the boss," he repeated stoutly. "But I've got a right to be next in authority. Under you, you know. Why, by cripes, I go around feeling as if I had to take orders from Carson or Tripp or any other of the foremen!"
"'By cripes' is good!" laughed Judith. "Go ahead."
"That's all," he insisted. "You can tell them, when you get a chance, that I am your little old right-hand man. Suppose," he suggested vaguely, "that you left the ranch a day or so. Or even longer, some time. There's got to be some one here who is the head when there is need for it."
Judith mirthfully acquiesced. Hampton's interest was sufficiently heavy for him to be entitled to some consideration. Besides, she had come to experience a liking for the boy and had seen in him the change for the better which his new life was working in him. Further, she meant to make it her business that she did not leave the ranch for a day or so, or an hour or so, when she should be there. Consequently, within a week Pollock Hampton was known humorously from one end to the other of the big ranch as the Foreman-at-Large.
Marcia Langworthy, visiting in southern California, wrote brief, sunny notes to Hampton, intricate letters to Judith. The mystery of Bud Lee of which she had had a glimpse when the artist, Dick Farris, and Lee recognized each other as old friends had piqued her curiosity in a way which allowed that young daughter of Eve no rest until she had made her own investigations. She wrote at length, telling Judith all that she had learned of Lee. How he had been quite the rage, my dear. Oh, tremendously rich, with great ranch in the South, a wonderful adobe hacienda of the old Spanish days, where, like a young king, he had entertained lavishly. How, believing in his friends, he had lost everything, then had dropped out of the world, content equally to allow that world to believe him soldiering in France or dead in the trenches and to take his wage as a common laborer. Wasn't it too romantic for anything?
In due course, following up her letters, Marcia herself came back to the Blue Lake ranch, Judith's guest now. The major and Mrs. Langworthy were visiting in the East—it seemed that they always visited somewhere—and Marcia would stay at the ranch indefinitely. Hampton drove into Rocky Bend for her and held the girl's breathless admiration all the way home, handling the reins of his young team in a thoroughly reckless, shivery manner.
"Isn't he splendid?" cried Marcia when she slipped away with Judith to her room.
Under the bright approval of Marcia's eyes Hampton flushed with pleasure. Could Mrs. Langworthy have seen them together she would have nudged the major and whispered in his ear.
During the two months after the dance, Bud Lee and Judith had seen virtually nothing of each other. When routine duties or a necessary report brought them for a few minutes into each other's society there was a marked constraint upon them. Never had the man lost the stinging sense of his offense against her; never had Judith condescended to be anything but cool and brief with him. While no open reference was made to what was past, still the memory of it must lie in each heart, and though Lee held his eyes level with hers and drank deep of the warm loveliness of her, he told himself angrily that he was beneath her contempt. The chivalry within him, so great and essential a part of the man's nature, was a wounded thing, hurt by his own act. The old feeling of camaraderie which had sprung up between them at times was gone now; they could no longer be "pardners" as they had been that night in the old cabin.