Louise smiled in complete sympathy, challenging the Judge meanwhile with laughing eyes. But the Judge—he was still much of a boy in spite of his grave calling and mature years—just threw back his blonde head and shouted in rapturous glee. He laughed till the very ceiling rang in loud response; laughed till the tears shone in his big blue eyes. Mrs. Higgins looked on in undisguised amazement, hands on hips.
“Dear me, suz!” she sputtered, “is the man gone clean daffy?”
“Won’t you shake hands with me, Mrs. Higgins?” he asked, gravely. “I ask your pardon for my levity, and I assure you there isn’t a man in the whole world I esteem more or hold greater faith in than Dick Gordon—or love so much. I thank you for your championship of him. I would that he had more friends like you. Louise, are you ready?”
Their walk to the hotel was a silent one. Later, as she was leaving him to go to her own room, Louise laid her head caressingly on her uncle’s sleeve.
“Uncle Hammond,” she said, impulsively, “you are—incorrigible, but you are the best man in all the world.”
“The very best?” he asked, smilingly.
“The very best,” she repeated, firmly.
There was a full calendar that term, and the close of the first week found the court still wrestling with criminal cases, with that of Jesse Black yet uncalled. Gordon reckoned that Black’s trial could not possibly be taken up until Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week. Long before that, the town began filling up for the big rustling case. There were other rustling cases on the criminal docket, but they paled before this one where the suspected leader of a gang was on trial. The interested and the curious did not mean to miss any part of it. They began coming in early in the week. They kept coming the remainder of that week and Sunday as well. Even as late as Monday, delayed range riders came scurrying in, leaving the cattle mostly to shift for themselves. The Velpen aggregation, better informed, kept to its own side of the river pretty generally until the Sunday, at least, should be past.
The flats southeast of town became the camping grounds for those unable to find quarters at the hotel, and who lived too far out to make the nightly ride home and back in the morning. They were tempted by the unusually mild weather. These were mostly Indians and half-breeds, but with a goodly sprinkling of cowboys of the rougher order. Camp-fires spotted the plain, burning redly at night. There was plenty of drift-wood to be had for the hauling. Blanketed Indians squatted and smoked around their fires—a revival of an older and better day for them. Sometimes they stalked majestically through the one street of the town.
The judicial party was safely housed in the hotel, with the best service it was possible for the management to give in this busy season of congested patronage. It was impossible to accommodate the crowds. Even the office was jammed with cots at night. Mary Williston had come in from White’s to be with Louise. She was physically strong again, but ever strangely quiet, always sombre-eyed.