“Well?”
“Are you going to stand pat with us?”
“If you mean, am I going to tell what I know when called upon,” answered Williston, with a simple dignity that made Langford color with sudden shame, “I am. There are many of us ‘little fellows’ who would have been glad to stand up against the rustling outrage long ago had we received any backing. The moral support of men of your class has not been what you might call a sort of ‘on the spot’ support, now, has it?” relapsing into a gentle sarcasm. “At least, until you came to the front,” he qualified.
“You will not be the loser, and there’s my hand on it,” said Langford, frankly and earnestly, ignoring the latter part of the speech. “The Three Bars never forgets a friend. They may do you before we are through with them, Williston, but remember, the Three Bars never forgets.”
Braggadocio? Maybe. But there was strength back of it, there was determination back of it, and there was an abiding faith in the power of the Three Bars to make things happen, and a big wrath destined to sleep not nor slumber till some things had happened in the cattle country.
Mary Williston, from her window, as is the way with a maid, watched the two horsemen for many a mile as they galloped away. She followed them with her eyes while they slowly became faint, moving specks in the level distance and until they were altogether blotted out, and there was no sign of living thing on the plain that stretched between. But Paul Langford, as is the way with a man, forgot that he had seen a beautiful girl and had thrilled to her glance. He looked back not once as he urged his trusty little mare on to see Dick Gordon.
[CHAPTER III—LOUISE]
It was raining when she left Wind City, but the rain had soon been distanced. Perhaps the Judge was right when he said it never rained north or west of Wind City. But the Judge had not wanted her to go. Neither had the Judge’s wife.
Full twenty minutes, only day before yesterday, the Judge had delayed his day’s outing at the mill where the Jim River doubles right around on its tracks, in order to make it perfectly clear to her that it was absolutely outside of the bounds of her duty, that it was altogether an affair on the side, that she could not be expected to go, and that the prosecuting attorney up there had merely asked her out of courtesy, in deference to her position. Of course he would be glad enough to get her, but let him get some one nearer home, or do without. It wasn’t at all necessary for the court reporter to hold herself in readiness to answer the call of anything outside her prescribed circuit duties. To be sure she would earn a trifle, but it was a hard trip, a hard country, and she had much better postpone her initial journey into the unknown until the regular term of court, when he could be with her. He had then thrown his minnow seine over his shoulders, taken his minnow pail in one hand and his reel case and lunch box in the other, and walked out to the road wagon awaiting him at the gate, and so off to his frolic, leaving her to fight it out for herself.
The Judge’s wife had not been so diplomatic, not by any means. She had dwelt long and earnestly, and no doubt to a large extent truly, on the uncivilized condition of their neighbors up the line; the roughness of accommodation, the boldness and license of the cowboys, the daring and insolence of the cattle thieves, the cunning and dishonesty of the Indians, and the uncouthness and viciousness of the half-breeds. She had ended by declaring eloquently that Louise would die of lonesomeness if, by God’s good providence, she escaped a worse fate at the hands of one or all of the many evils she had enumerated. Yes, it was very evident Aunt Helen had not wanted her to go. But Aunt Helen’s real reason had been that she held it so dizzily unconventional for her niece to go out to that wild and unholy land alone. She did not actually fear for her niece’s personal safety, and Louise more than half suspected the truth.