“Well, you’re payin’, old sport. Me an’ Dot’s goin’ to git married nex’ Sunday, whether you like it or not. That’s how I square up with you.”
Before Lemuel could reply there was a heavy footfall in the hall and a strident voice boomed heartily:
“Hold on there, a minute, kid! I got somepn to say about this.” They turned to see Sheriff Warburton standing in the doorway, a bandage around his head. Back of him stood Dot, her pretty face wreathed in smiles. The sheriff got out his handcuffs and approached the two men, his eye on Billy Gee. Lemuel catching the meaning of the action grinned broadly.
“I always told myself, that I’d hang these nickel-plated doodads on you some time, young feller,” said the sheriff gravely. “I’m goin’ to, right now—perticular on account of what you jest said. Come here, Dot!” He reached out and took the girl by the arm and brought her alongside of Billy Gee. With a deft movement, he handcuffed them together. “After Sunday, Billy, that’s the awful fix you’ll be in, an’ that’s how I square up with you. He’s a lucky dog, Dot,” he added laughingly.
Tinnemaha Pete, watching the proceedings with Mrs. Liggs, burst into a loud cackle of mirth.
“Son of a gun, Agatha! Did ye mark that? He ain’t sech a measly skunk, as I thought he was. What’re cryin’ about, Agatha?”
“I’m—I’m so happy, Pete,” she breathed, turning away.
In the months that followed, the Huntington ranch vanished, save for two fenced-in acres that held the house, outbuildings, and the cool, old-fashioned garden with the trim little grave in one corner. The townsite of Liggs sprang up mushroomlike and took its proud place on the map of San Buenaventura County. The Billy Geerusalem claims blossomed out, bonanzas, and the camp of Geerusalem lost its ranking as the metropolis of Soapweed Plains. It never knew a railroad—even as the elder Sangerly had avowed to Jule Quintell, now languishing in the State penitentiary.
Prosperity can never change the sterling members of the human family, no more than may the powers of alchemy convert slag into gold. They are still the same humble dwellers of the vast Mohave—Tinnemaha Pete, quaint, timid old desert rat; Sheriff Bob Warburton, big of soul and purposeful; achieving, ambitious Lex Sangerly; Dick Lennox, mining engineer of merit.
The dark days of uncertainty still remain green in the mind of Lemuel Huntington. They remain green, too, in the mind of his daughter, whose romantic brain worked out the destiny of her own happiness. Nor can the shy little mother, who lived and suffered for her wayward son, ever forget; nor that son, who found the turning point in the realization that the price for a hunted animal could not tempt her compassionate heart.