“Good-bye, Mr. Lance!” cried Dorothy, spurring after Tavia.
Tavia was again her trifling self. She chuckled as they rode away.
“Poor Lance! He’ll wake up some day. Hope it will be a real nice ‘cowgirl’ who gets him. Meanwhile we’ll just slip back East, Dorothy, leaving him nothing but fond recollections of us as he dreams over his campfire at night.”
Aunt Winnie refused to send for the big stagecoach in which to ride to town, so the young folk rode in the saddle to Dugonne the next afternoon, where the ponies were left at a stable to be called for the next time Hank Ledger had occasion to go to town. John Dempsey drove Mrs. White in a single-seated buckboard.
Old John Dempsey had made a place for himself at the ranch and was to be continued on the payroll. The veteran’s eyes overflowed when he bade Dorothy Dale good-bye at the hotel.
“You was my salvation, Miss Dorothy, that’s what you was,” he said. “I got a chance to live out o’ doors an’ work—and when I can’t work I hope the good Lord’ll take me away, Miss.”
“That will be many, many years hence, Mr. Dempsey,” cried Dorothy, smiling.
He drove away, but half an hour afterward the bellhop came to Mrs. White’s suite and said that an old man wanted to see Dorothy. It was John Dempsey. His wrinkled old face was twisted into a wry grin and he thrust a handful of banknotes into the hand of the surprised girl before he said a word.
“I done it,” he cackled. “Dunno as I’d oughter; but that snake in the grass insisted. I sold him the letter. When he finds out it’s only a lithograph copy of the original letter Old Abe wrote to that poor widder woman, he’ll be hoppin’ like a hen on a hot griddle, I reckon. A hundred dollars he give me,” added John Dempsey, “and ha’f of it belongs to you, Miss.”
“Not a penny shall I take,” declared Dorothy. “You must put it all in the bank against a rainy day, Mr. Dempsey.”