Blanche laughed at the half impatient, wholly solicitous greeting. It was so characteristic of him.
“I guess worry for you wouldn’t keep me from my bed a minute,” she cried. Then came the inevitable touch of affection. “It’s only for an incompetent a woman needs to worry.”
She came close to him and smiled up into his face. In a moment Larry’s arm was about her yielding body, and they stood together gazing out on the broadening of the dawn.
“Dear old Blanche,” he said at last. “Worry or no worry, I’m glad to get back. You know, kid, I’m sick to death of these toughs. I feel like a sort of penitentiary guy, who needs to go around with automatic shooting weapons and a club to make things sure he’ll eat his next meal right. If it wasn’t I’m guessing I can see the end of this crazy notion coming I’d have to get out on the hillside and holler. But it’s coming, kid. I’ve shot that bunch out, and the junk we’ve got around now couldn’t commit crime enough to set the police worrying after ’em. I’ve a notion I’ve been figuring on. It’s a good notion. This ranch gets me all the time. So do the hills and the air—the whole darn thing. I’m herding Jim along a road that’ll leave this place just what it is—a swell mixed farm run right, and the crook shelter can go hang. The only thing that’s got me scared is the thing Jim may get doing to that gopher, McFardell. How’s the little kid?”
“Sleeping like a child. I’ve just been in to her. That’s when I heard your big feet out here.”
A great spread of yellow topped the eastern hills, and Blanche watched it grow.
“If things go right, Jim won’t need much herding along that road, Larry. I don’t think you need to be scared for him,” Blanche went on confidently. “He’s fallen for Molly, and I’m going to help things along all I know. Think of us in the old days back in New York,” she laughed. “Then think of us here. Think of me trying to fix things up with Jim and this poor little soul of a farm girl, who’s hit the biggest trouble a woman can strike. Does it make you want to laugh or weep? No. That’s right. Shake your disreputable old head. And so it is with me. I don’t want to do either. This is our valley of a big hope—hope for Jim and hope for that little girl. Well, old boy, time will show how things are to go. It just can’t go on as it is with that boy McFardell on our trail. Something’s going to break for us. It’s got to be a get-out one way or another. Molly, maybe, is the whole answer to the problem. Meanwhile I’m getting my death standing around making love to a boy who doesn’t know enough to get quick to his blankets after a hundred miles in the saddle.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
A Burdened Heart
THERE was no sound in the room but of the rustle of the sewing upon which Blanche was engaged. It was a blazing afternoon. Beyond the open, mosquito-netted window the nature-sounds added to the sense of general drowsiness. There was not a breath of air stirring amongst the hill-tops to temper the summer heat.
For a moment Blanche raised her eyes from her work. They were gravely contemplative as they surveyed the face of her charge, who was occupying her own luxurious bed. Molly was half sitting, propped up against a number of ample pillows, and her eyes were closed, while her face was calmly reposeful.