"Virginia," he said quietly, "thanks to you I can start in all over now."
She understood. So did Mrs. Engle. For Norton had explained to both the banker and his wife, holding nothing back from them, telling them frankly of crimes committed, of his attempted abduction of the girl who in turn had "abducted him." He had restitutions to make without the least unnecessary delay. He must square himself and he thanked God that he could square himself, that his crimes had been bloodless, that he had but to return the stolen moneys. And, to wipe his slate clean, he stood ready to pay to the full for what he had done, to offer his confession openly, to accept without a murmur whatever decree the court might award him.
Again John Engle did his bit. He went to the county-seat and saw the district attorney, an upright man, but one who saw clearly. The lawyer laid his work aside and came immediately with Engle to the King's Palace.
"Any court, having the full evidence," he said crisply, "would hold you blameless. Give me the money you have taken; I shall see that it is returned and that no questions are asked. And if you've got any idiotic compulsion about open confession . . . Well, think of somebody besides yourself for a change. Try thinking about the Wonder Girl a little, it will be good for you."
For he never called her anything but that, the Wonder Girl. When he had heard everything, he came to her after his straightforward fashion and gripped her hand until he hurt her.
"I didn't know they made girls like you," he told her before she even knew who he was.
It was he who, summoning all of his forensic eloquence, finally quieted Norton's disturbed mind. Norton in his weakened condition was all for making a clean breast before the world, for acknowledging himself unfit for his office, for resigning. But in the end when he was told curtly that he owed vastly more to the county than to his stupid conscience, that he had been chosen to get Jim Galloway, that that was his job, that he could do all the resigning he wanted to afterward, and that finally he was not to consider his own personal feelings until he had thought of Virginia's, Norton gave over his regrets and merely waxed impatient for the time when he could finish his work and go back to Las Flores rancho. For it was understood that he would not go alone.
"I'll free del Rio because I have to, not because I want to," said the lawyer at the end. "Trusting to you to bring him in again later. He is one of Galloway's crowd and I know it, despite his big bluffs. Galloway is away right now, somewhere below the border. Just what he is up to I don't know. I think del Rio does. When Galloway gets back you keep your eye on the two of them."
After the county attorney's departure Rod Norton rested more easily. He was making restitution for all that he had done, he was getting well and strong again, he had been given such proof as comes to few men of the utter devotion of a woman. Through many a bright hour he and Virginia, daring to look confidently ahead, talked of life as it might be lived upon Las Flores when the lake was made, the lower lands irrigated, the big home built.
"And," she confessed to him at the last, her face hidden against his breast, "I never want to see a surgeon's lancet again in all of my life, Rod Norton!"