“Where is Batterly now,” I asked.
“Gone away—this week past.”
“Oh, well,” I sighed, “we’ll acquit him. I’m sure he was not over fond of Joey.” After a pause I asked brusquely: “Where has he gone?”
“I don’t know—sure I don’t, Mr. Dale. The last I heard of him he was going to hire a swift-water boat and a poler, and try the swift-water fishing above St. Joe.”
“Then he hasn’t left the country,” I said. And my heart sank leaden and my hate of the man boiled up in my veins fiercely, as I pictured him still skulking about, a menace to Haidee’s peace of mind.
The time went very heavily past. All my days and many nights were spent in the saddle, and the evenings that I passed at Cedar Dale were consumed in feverish plans for the scoutings that I made. I did not even now attempt to visit Haidee at Hidden Lake; but one morning, at sunrise, hearing a soft tap on my door, I opened to see Wanza standing there with a covered basket on her arm.
“I saw your light last night,” she quavered. “I have brought you some good nourishing food. I can see you’re not cooking for yourself. You’re growing white and thin.”
Her womanly act in coming thus to offer me comfort stirred me strangely, appealed to the finest fibre in my nature. Her simplicity, her self-forgetfulness made me falter at her feet.
But at last I gave over my scoutings. I made a cedar chest for Joey’s room, and in this I placed all his little kickshaws, his few clothes, and his flute, along with the gay Indian blanket he had reveled in, and the quilt Wanza had pieced for him. The room thus became to me a sort of shrine. And finding me here at the close of a long day with tears of which I was not ashamed in my eyes, Wanza broke down and sobbed beside me.
“I’d like to kill whoever it is as has taken Joey away,” she cried, brandishing a resentful fist.