“There’s something I’ve been meaning to—to tell you,” the girl said suddenly, breaking a brief silence.
Buck glanced at her to find her eyes fixed on the ears of her horse and a faint flush staining her cheeks.
“That room—” she went on determinedly, but with an evident effort. “A man’s room— You must have thought it strange. Indeed, I saw you thought it strange—”
Again she paused, and in his turn Buck felt a sudden rush of embarrassment.
“I didn’t mean to—” he began awkwardly. “It just seemed funny to find a regular man’s room in a household of women. I suppose it was your—your father’s,” he added. 85
“No, it wasn’t,” she returned briefly. She glanced at him for an instant and then looked away again. “You probably don’t know the history of the Shoe-Bar,” she went on more firmly. “Two years ago it was bought by a young man named Stratton. I never met him, but he was a business acquaintance of my father’s and naturally I heard a good deal of him from time to time. He was a ranchman all his life and very keen about it, and the moment he saw the Shoe-Bar he fell in love with it. But the war came, and he had scarcely taken title to the place before he went off and enlisted. Just before he sailed for France he sold the ranch to my father, with the understanding that if he came back safely, Dad would turn it over to him again. He felt, I suppose, how uncertain it all was and that money in the bank would be easier for his—his heirs, than property.”
She paused for an instant, her lips pressed tightly together. “He never came back,” she went on in a lower, slightly unsteady voice. “He—gave up his life for those of us who stayed behind. After a little we left Chicago and came here. I loved the place at once, and I’ve gone on caring for it increasingly ever since. But back of everything there’s always been a sense of the tragedy, the injustice of it all. They never even found his body. He was just—missing. And yet, when I came into that room, with his things about just as he had left them when he went 86 away, he seemed so real,—I—I couldn’t touch it. Somehow, it was all that was left of him. And even though I’d never seen him, I felt as if I wanted to keep it that way always in memory of a—a brave soldier, and a—man.”
Her low voice ceased. With face averted, she stared in silence across the brown, scorched prairie. Stratton, his eyes fixed straight ahead, and his cheeks tinged with unwonted color, found it quite impossible to speak, and for a space the stillness was broken only by the creak of saddle-leather and the dull thud of horses’ hoofs.
“It’s mighty fine of you to feel like that,” he said at length. “I’m sorry if I gave you the idea I—I was—curious.”
“But you would be, naturally. You see, the other boys all know.” She turned her head and looked at him. “I think we’re all curious at times about things which really don’t concern us. I’ve even wondered once or twice about you. You know you don’t talk like the regulation cow-puncher—quite.”