"Didn't run across any strangers on your rides?" he asked, and waited with no little concern for her answer. If she told him, even thus belatedly, of her visit to Childress' "hole in," his alarm on her account well might be unfounded, he argued. If she kept silent, then he was not alarmed enough.
"Strangers—out in this wilderness? What a chance!" she evaded easily. "Who did you think I might have seen?"
It seemed to him that her eyes narrowed as she asked. He closed his own that they might not tell of his disappointment. "Didn't know but that some scout of the horse thieves had been pestering around," he returned, with an easy manner he was far from feeling. "I'm fagged out, Ethel. I'll have a tub and if you can persuade Mrs. Cuss to advance dinner half an hour my appetite will thank you. Your uncle has ridden to Preston's and won't be home until sometime to-morrow."
Once in the privacy of the hall his face took on a haggard look. His disappointment in Ethel was staggering. Her evasion revealed a state of feeling toward him which he did not care to contemplate. Unless he could hold her, unless he finally won her consent to marry him, all the effort of these years in the province would count for little.
What did it all mean? She had deliberately refrained from telling him of her visit to the Open A. Had she and Childress, by any chance, met before that day on the reservation? Could she be so openly under the spell of Childress' undoubted fascination as to be willing to overlook the suspicion, freely expressed by himself, that he was the leader of the rustlers from Montana?
As he entered his own room a jealous rage swept over him. A chance glance into the mirror on his bureau showed him the anger that blazed in his eyes, and he recognized in the look the passion that drives men to kill.
He drew himself up quickly. "Here, old man," he said to himself, "this will not do. Keep cool and get this interloper. You've got to get him!"
As he changed from dusty riding clothes to loose flannels he decided on his course of action. Ethel Andress was playing some sort of a game, but just what sort it was he could not guess. Very well; he, too, could disguise his hand. He would give no hint that he suspected any dissembling on her part. Then he would seek out Dunc O'Hara and between them they would bait a trap that Childress would certainly spring. Once in his clutches there would be no escape for his rival so far as the widow was concerned. And if the major took the law into his own hands with the American's life as a forfeit—well, he had to win Ethel Andress, that was all. There was quite too much at stake for him to be squeamish over the means by which he won her.