The girl laughed with him, continuing: “He was stumbling about and waving his arms all the while he was telling me this joyful news, and he wanted to get me some supper but, ugh!... I simply couldn’t. The place and everything was so dirty—like a pigstye. I was glad to get away, and I left him standing on the broken steps waving his bandaged hand to me. The poor old thing! does he live there all alone?”
Ellis nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get him to sell out and go and live with his son down East for a long time now. I’m glad to hear he’s going at last. He’s too old to live alone like that. His daughter-in-law was the obstacle. The reason I asked you if you were scared was because he’s got a playful way of flourishing a loaded rifle around sometimes when he gets on these toots. He put the fear into me properly one time, I remember.”
A photograph, slightly yellow with age, in a splendid silver frame on the piano attracted her attention and, with an “Excuse me,” she crossed over and scrutinized it long and earnestly. It was the sweet, proud, regally beautiful face of a woman attired in an evening dress of the style worn in the early ’seventies. Ah! no need to tell her who that was! For, in spite of his mutilated ear and scarred, bronzed face, she recognized in the portrait the same regular, clean-cut features and steady eyes of the man who sat there silently watching her, with his head thrown out into strong relief against the leopard-skin kaross.
She glanced at him in mute inquiry, and back to the photograph again, instinctively guessing now whence the inspiration of that moving song had come which had been the means of arousing in her a greater interest in her host than she would perhaps have cared to admit.
“It’s my mother,” he said simply, interpreting her look. “She died when I was just a kid at school. A little over a year before I came out to the States.”
There was silence for awhile and presently he sprang up briskly.
“Well, now, I don’t want to hurry you, Miss O’Malley,” he said, “but we’ve got seven miles to go and it’s a quarter to eleven now. They’ll all have gone to roost at the Trainors’ long ago, I expect. I’m going to give you a good horse to ride ... the black fellow you liked so much.” (She gave a little exclamation of delight.) “The work began to pile up—there’s some awful long patrols to do here. It was too much for one horse, so I kicked for another and got it. I ride ’em turn about. There’s a good pasture at the back, with water, so when I go away for a few days I can always turn the spare one out. I’ll shove your saddle onto Johnny—he’s quiet—and I’ll ride Billy and trail old Sam alongside.”
She thanked him prettily and gratefully for the hospitable entertainment accorded her and his kind offer of guidance.
“Oh, not at all; not at all,” he replied cheerily. “It’s the other way about, I’m thinking. You’ve quite livened things up around here. I’m a kind of a lonely beggar. You can’t think how I’ve enjoyed your company. Well, I’ll go and get those horses and we’ll hit the trail.”
To the lonely man that night ride to the Trainors’ ranch with such an interesting companion seemed all too short, and but for the late hour and the fact of her being by now very tired, he could have wished the distance longer.