“It was good of you to come,” he said to Louise, with grave sincerity.
“I didn’t want to,” confessed Louise, honestly. “I’m afraid it is too big and lonesome for me. I am sure I should have gone back to Velpen last night to catch the early train had it not been for Mary. She is so—good.”
“The worst is over now that you have conquered your first impulse to fly,” he said.
“I cried, though. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t help it. You see I never was so far from home before.”
He was an absorbed, hard-working lawyer. Years of contact with the plain, hard realities of rough living in a new country had dried up, somewhat, his stream of sentiment. Maybe the source was only blocked with debris, but certainly the stream was running dry. He could not help thinking that a girl who cries because she is far from home had much better stay at home and leave the grave things which are men’s work to men. But he was a gentleman and a kindly one, so he answered, quietly, “I trust you will like us better when you know us better,” and, after a few more commonplaces, went his way.
“There’s a man,” said Louise, thoughtfully, on the way to McAllister’s office “I like him, Mary.”
“And yet there are men in this county who would kill him if they dared.”
“Mary! what do you mean? Are there then so many cut-throats in this awful country?”
“I think there are many desperate men among the rustlers who would not hesitate to kill either Paul Langford or Richard Gordon since these prosecutions have begun. There are also many good people who think Mr. Gordon is just stirring up trouble and putting the county to expense when he can have no hope of conviction. They say that his failures encourage the rustlers more than an inactive policy would.”
“People who argue like that are either tainted with dishonesty themselves or they are foolish, one of the two,” said Louise, with conviction.