“I bin thinkin’ it all over, Dot, an’ I decided that what me an’ you needs most is a leetle more pleasure an’ not so much stickin’ to a cussed ol’ ranch year in an’ year out like we bin doin’. So I’m goin’ to borry some real money off Bob, an’ we’re takin’ a trip—Frisco, Noo York, or any place you say. Le’s be good an’ happy wunst anyway, an’ see how it feels. What d’you say?”
She brightened instantly. Her eyes widened, sparkled with expectation. “It’d be just wonderful, daddy,” she cried. “But—but you’d have to pay the money back some time, and it would be so hard——”
“We ain’t goin’ to stop to think o’ that, hon. We’re out for one grand cut-up, me an’ you. Leave it to me. I’ll do the worryin’. If I git it you’ll go, won’t you?”
“Go?” she echoed joyously. “Oh, daddy! I’ve been wishing and wishing and wishing, months and months and years, to see cities and orchards and rivers and steamers and street cars and the ocean, and——”
They talked on, Lemuel controlling by a desperate effort the wild enthusiasm that consumed him, Dot giving her eagerness unbridled play, planning and scheduling an itinerary with a dispatch and thoroughness that made him fairly marvel at her cleverness. Shortly afterward, however, as he was galloping toward camp he laughed aloud to the boundless desolation of plain over the shrewd way in which he had deceived his daughter, clever though she was.
Dot stood on the front porch looking after him. She watched him out of sight, her brain in a delicious stupor at the glorious prospect of seeing for the first time in her life the great fairyland far to the north, that wonderful region she had read and dreamed so much about. For a long interval she reveled in the thought, until her eyes turned to the violet and yellow scallop of range in the distance. Her mind swung back to the present, then to Billy Gee. How was he faring?
The day was hot, similar to yesterday. It was very silent, too. Presently it began dawning on her that to-day was different from any she had ever known. She glanced over the garden. It seemed lonesome; she had never thought it lonesome before. The feel of the ranch, too, filled her with an odd depression. Everything looked so colorless, so uninteresting, so awfully the same. Her eyes went back to the violet and yellow scallop of hills again. That bleak playground of mirages where she had visualized the figments of her imagination, appeared to have lost its magic. The whole range seemed faded, so wrinkled, so woefully unattractive, like the bleached outlines of some shabby old crayon. She turned into the house and entered the parlor.
For many seconds she stood and gazed down at the lounge and began reviewing, as she had done a number of times, her meeting with the notorious Billy Gee, from the moment of his coming, until she bade him good-by in the half light of the hayloft.
“He isn’t the terrible person they say,” she told the parlor lounge. “There are a lot of worse men in Geerusalem who wear white collars and polish their shoes every morning. They know how to rob according to law. They haven’t the courage to take to the open with a six-shooter. Poor fellow! He was so grateful, and his voice was so lonely, so gentle.”
She walked into her bedroom, still thinking of him, and it came to her suddenly that she had hidden the worst criminal of the generation in that bedroom, that he had occupied her bed even! She halted in the middle of the floor and blushed furiously over the reflection. What would her father say if he knew? And her dear old lady friend, the good Mrs. Agatha Liggs? Or Sheriff Warburton? The utter recklessness of her act now struck her with full force.