The chauffeur, sitting in the machine outside the gate, averted his head and looked away into the gaunt desolation of the plain.
Shortly afterward, father and daughter were comfortably settled in the rear seat and, like two children embarking on some glorious adventure, began their journey down the hot sandy floor of Soapweed Plains, bound for the dreary railroad station of Mirage. They reached there around four o’clock, ate dinner in the combination saloon-store-restaurant, and boarded the northbound train at dark.
It so happened that, owing to the joyous anticipation and breathless conjecture with which the trip itself engrossed her, not until the conductor came down the aisle to collect the tickets was Dot suddenly reminded that she had not asked her father how long he contemplated being gone. The uniformed person had passed on when she broached the subject.
“Are we going to be away very long, daddy?” she asked.
“We sure are,” said Lemuel cheerfully. “We’re out for a big time. What I mean—big. An’ we’re goin’ to see everything worth seein’, you kin gamble on that, Dot. If there’s anything your little heart desires, jest say so.”
“But how long—about a week or so?” she persisted. “There was something I wanted to attend to when I get back.”
“Get back?” laughed Lemuel. “Now listen here, hon! Furst, me an’ you’s goin’ to have the fling of our young lives. Then——” He broke off and, looking fixedly at her, grinned oddly. “You’ve seen the last of Soapweed Plains, Dot, for anyway three years. I’m toggin’ you up like a queen, an’ you’re sailin’ into Longwell’s Seminary for to be edjucated. That’s the main reason why I borried the money.”
Dot stared at him incredulously. Then, marking the strange set to his jaws, the triumphant glint in his habitually mild eyes, cold fear gripped her heart suddenly.
“Three years!” she choked. “Daddy, you’ve—you’ve deceived me. You’ve lied to me——”
“I’ve done it for your own good, Dot. ’Tain’t wrong to lie when it’s to help some one you love.” He paused. “You say you got somepn to ’tend to. Is that why you want to git back home?” he asked, his mind on the missing paymaster’s money.