"We've brought him back safely," he said, after slight hesitation. "We spent the night very comfortably in a farm-house on the prairie."
She noticed his hesitation, and her eyes became eager.
"I do believe that you have had an adventure," she exclaimed. "I know that you have; I know by your look. You must tell it to me at once."
"We have had an adventure," admitted Harley, "and there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you of it, as in a few hours a long account of it written by me will be going eastward."
"I am waiting."
Harley began at once with his narrative, and they became absorbed in it, he in the telling and she in the hearing. While he talked and she listened "King" Plummer approached. Now the "King" in these later few days had begun to study the ways of women, in so far as his limited experience enabled him to do so, a task to which he had never turned his attention before in his life. But the words of Mrs. Grayson rankled; they kept him unhappy, they disturbed his self-satisfaction, and made him apprehensive for the future. He had been in the crowd that welcomed Jimmy Grayson, he had shaken the candidate's hand effusively, and now, when he entered the hotel, he found Sylvia Morgan welcoming John Harley.
"King" Plummer did not like what he saw; it gave him his second shock, and he paused to examine the two with a yellow eye, and a mind reluctant to admit certain facts, among them the most obvious one, that they were a handsome couple, and of an age. And this was a fact that did not give the "King" pleasure. He did not dislike Harley; instead, he appreciated his good qualities, but just then he regarded him with an unfriendly glance; that reality of youth annoyed him. There was a glass on the other side of the room, and the "King" looked at his own reflection. He saw a large, powerful head and broad, strong features, the whole expressing a man at the height of his powers, at the very flood-tide of his strength. But it was not young. The hair was iron-gray, and there were many deep lines in the face—not unhandsome lines, yet they were lines.
"With all his shameless youth," were the "King's" unuttered thoughts, "I could beat him at anything, except, perhaps, scribbling. I could live and prosper where he would starve to death." And surging upon the "King" came the memories of his long, triumphant, and joyous struggle with wild nature. Then he approached the couple, and greeted Harley with the good-nature that was really a part of him. Sylvia, with shining eyes, told at second hand, though not with diminished effect, the story of the night, and "King" Plummer was loud in his applause. He did not care what criticism the supercilious might make, the act was to him spontaneous and natural.
"But I don't see why you should have been with Jimmy Grayson then," he said, frankly, to Harley. "You are an Easterner, new to these parts, and it isn't right that just you should be along when the interestin' things happen."
Harley could not help laughing at the naïve remark, but he liked "King" Plummer all the better for it. The "King," however, gave him no more chance to talk alone that day with Sylvia. Mr. Plummer showed the greatest regard for Miss Morgan's health and comfort, and did not try to hide his solicitude; he was continually about her, arranging little conveniences for the journey, and introducing Idaho topics, familiar to them, but to which Harley was necessarily a stranger. The "King," with his wide sense of Western hospitality, would not have done this at another time, but in view of the close relationship between himself and Sylvia he regarded it as pardonable.