"Git on down to the bunkhouse an' feed, boys. One o' you grab my plug.
After, we'll get around out with Lal here. I——"
He broke off as Nan darted away down the veranda. The mail man had just clattered up to the front of the house, and she had gone to meet him.
Bud passed his horse on to one of the men, and, with heavy strides, clanking with the rattle of his heavy Mexican spurs, his leather chapps creaking as he moved, he mounted the veranda and made his way into the house.
* * * * * *
Nan entered the parlor with her hands full of mail. The meal was laid ready, and a colored girl was setting the chairs in their places.
"I'll jest get a clean up, Nan," her father said, without a single trace of his recent display. "Guess I'm full of dust."
He passed through the little room like some overwhelming mammoth. He seemed altogether too vast for the small home, which had never grown with his other worldly possessions. Nan watched him go. Then she laid the mail down on a side table and began to sort it out.
There were a number of letters for Jeff. These she set carefully aside in a pile by themselves for redirection. There were several addressed in girlish hands to herself. For Bud there were only a few. She glanced over the superscription of each. One or two were easily recognized business letters. There was a paper, however, addressed in Jeff's hand, and a letter of considerable bulk. These were what she had been looking for. She pushed the bunkhouse mail aside, and regarded reflectively the outer covering of Jeff's letter to her father.
It was not the first he had received from Jeff during the four weeks since their return home. But its bulk this time was out of the ordinary, and the carefully folded news sheet was more than interesting. It awakened every doubt, every fear to which she had been a prey.
The rapid beating of her heart left her with a choking sensation. Vivid imagination was at work, and she was reading in fancy under those covers that which, sooner or later, she knew she must read in fact.