'So long,' repeated Longstreet absently.
Carr rode away. Longstreet's eyes, following the galloping horse, were still puzzled. 'I'm learning a thing or two,' he told himself soberly as he went back into the cabin. Many times he nodded his head thoughtfully. 'I've lived too long in another sort of world; now I am coming to grips with real life, real men and women. There's a new set of rules to grasp. Well,' and he straightened his thin body and a flickering smile played over his lips, 'I can learn. As Barbee says of stud poker: "You've got to set tight and keep your trap shut and your eye peeled."'
Helen slept soundly all morning. Longstreet dozed, studied the maps he had made during the last week and pottered. At noon they lunched together, neither having a great deal to say. Helen regarded her father more than ever as a baby who ought to be scolded and lessoned; still, like any doting mother, she found excuses for him and told herself that he had been amply punished for his indiscretion. She, too, opined that he had learned a lesson. Consequently she coddled him to such an extent that Longstreet remarked the fact and began to wonder just what Helen wanted now; no doubt she was going to ask something of him and was preparing the way after the approved and time-honoured custom.
But the day wore on with never a favour asked. In the drowsy afternoon Helen coaxed her father into her room and dropped the shades and ordered him to sleep, telling him that he looked like a ghost of his former rugged beauty. Then she sank down listlessly upon the doorstep, brooding, her eyes wandering through the green fields of Desert Valley. Her musings were disturbed by the clatter of shod hoofs across the rugged plateau; she looked up quickly, her eyes brightening. Then she saw that it was John Carr returning, and into her look there came an expression much resembling that which had been so much to-day in her father's—one of uncertainty.
Carr staked out his horse before he came to her. Then he sat down on a box near the doorstep and studied her gravely before he spoke. Helen smiled.
'You are thinking unpleasant things about some one,' she stated quickly. 'Has the world turned into a terribly serious place all of a sudden?'
There was little levity in Carr's make-up at any time; just now his speech was as sober as his look.
'I am thinking about you and your father, to begin with,' he replied gravely. 'I have been over yonder all day.' He swept out an impatient arm toward Dry Gulch. 'They call it Sanchia's Town. And it is a town already. I saw Nate Kemble there; he's the big man of the Quigley Mines, and you see how long it has taken him to get on the spot. Your father evidently made no mistake in his location. There's gold there, all right!'
Helen waited expectantly for him to go on. For certainly the fact that her father had been able to find gold was no cause for Carr's frowning eyes.
'My blood has been boiling all day,' Carr blurted out angrily. 'Longstreet should be a rich man to-day and he has gained nothing. I saw Nate Kemble pay one man ten thousand dollars for his claim; Kemble wouldn't pay that if the thing were not worth a great deal more. Kemble doesn't make many mistakes. Your father stumbled on to the place and then he couldn't hold it. When do you think he will make another discovery? And, if his lucky star should lead him aright again, is he the man to cash in on his luck? Don't you see, Helen, that James Edward Longstreet in this man's land is a fish out of water?'