Three times since she had informed him she would play a lone hand in the search for her father's strike, Bethune had called at the cabin. And not once had he alluded to the progress of her work. She was thankful to him for that—she had not forgotten the hurt in her father's eyes as the taunting questions of the scoffers struck home. Always she had known of the hurt, but now, with the disheartening days of her own failure heaping themselves upon her, she was beginning to understand the reason for the hurt. And, guessing this, Bethune refrained from questioning, but talked gaily of books, and sunsets, and of life, and love, and the joy of living. A supreme optimist, she thought him, despite the half-veiled cynicism that threaded his somewhat fatalistic view of life, a cynicism that but added the necessary sauce piquante to so abandoned an optimism.
Above all, the man was a gentleman. His speech held nothing of the abrupt bluntness of Vil Holland's. He would appear shortly after her early supper, and was always well upon his way before the late darkness began to obscure the contours of her little valley. An hour's chat upon the doorstep of the cabin and he was gone—riding down the valley, singing as he rode some old chanson of his French forebears, with always a pause at the cottonwood grove for a farewell wave of his hat. And Patty would turn from the doorway, and light her lamp, and proceed to enjoy the small present which he never failed to leave in her hand—a box of bon-bons of a kind she had vainly sought for in the little town—again, a novel, a woman's novel written by a man who thought he knew—and another time, just a handful of wild flowers gathered in the hills. She ate the candy making it last over several days. She read the book from cover to cover as she lay upon her air mattress, tucked snugly between her blankets. And she arranged the wild flowers loosely in a shallow bowl and watered them, and talked to them, and admired their beauty, and when they were wilted she threw them out, but she did not gather more flowers to fill the bowl, instead she wiped it dry and returned it to its shelf in the cupboard—and wondered when Bethune would come again. She admitted to herself that he interested—at least, amused her—helped her to throw off for the moment the spirit of dull depression that had fastened itself upon her like a tangible thing, bearing down upon her, threatening to crush her with its weight.
Always, during these brief visits, her lurking distrust of him vanished in the frank boyishness of his personality. The incidents that had engendered the distrust—the substitution of the name Schultz for Schmidt in the matter of the horse pasture, his abrupt warning against Vil Holland, and his attempt to be admitted into her confidence as a matter of right, were for the moment forgotten in the spell of his presence—but always during her lonely rides in the hills, the half-formed doubt returned. Pondering the doubt, she realized that the principal reason for its continued existence was not so much in the incidents that had awakened it, as in the simple question asked by Vil Holland: "You say your dad told you all about this partnership business?" And in the "Oh," with which he had greeted the reply that she had it from the lips of Bethune. With the realization, her dislike for Vil Holland increased. She characterized him as a "jug-guzzler," a "swashbuckler," and a "ruffian"—and smiled as she recalled the picturesque figure with the clean-cut, bronzed face. "Oh, I don't know—I hate these hills! Nobody seems sincere excepting the Wattses, and they're—impossible!"
She had borrowed Watts's team and made a second trip to town for supplies, and the check that she drew in payment cut her bank account in half. As before she had offered to take Microby Dandeline, but the girl declined to go, giving as an excuse that "pitcher shows wasn't as good as circusts, an' they wasn't no fights, an' she didn't like towns, nohow."
Upon her return from town Patty stopped at the Thompsons' for dinner where she was accorded a royal welcome by the genial rancher and his wife, and where also, she met the Reverend Len Christie, the most picturesque, and the most un-clerical minister of the gospel she had ever seen. To all appearances the man might have been a cowboy. He affected chaps of yellow hair, a dark blue flannel shirt, against which flamed a scarf of brilliant crimson caught together by means of a vivid green scarab. He wore a roll brimmed Stetson, and carried a six-gun at his belt. A pair of high-heeled boots added a couple of inches to the six feet two that nature had provided him with, and he shook hands as though he enjoyed shaking hands. "I've heard of you, Miss Sinclair, back in town and have looked forward to meeting you on my first trip into the hills. How are my friends, the Wattses, these days? And that reprobate, Vil Holland?" He did not mention that it was Vil Holland who had spoken of her presence in the hills, nor that the cowboy had also specified that she utterly despised the ground he rode on.
To her surprise Patty noticed that there was affection rather than disapprobation in the word reprobate, and she answered a trifle stiffly: "The Wattses are all well, I think: but, as for Mr. Holland, I really cannot answer."
The parson appeared not to notice the constraint but turned to Thompson: "By the way, Tom, why isn't Vil riding the round-up this year? Has he made his strike?"
Thompson grinned: "Naw, Vil ain't made no strike. Facts is, they's be'n some considerable horse liftin' goin' on lately, an' the stockmen's payin' Vil wages fer to keep his eye peeled. He's out in the hills all the time anyhow with his prospectin', an' they figger the thieves won't pay no 'tention to him, like if a stranger was to begin kihootin' 'round out there."
"Have they got a line on 'em at all?"
"Well," considered Thompson. "Not as I know of—exactly. Monk Bethune an' that there Lord Clendennin' is hangin' 'round the hills—that's about all I know."