How it had stolen in upon him he hardly knew. Perhaps it was his mother's persistent references to Betty. Perhaps it was the result of his talk with the man who had brought her to the straits she was now placed in. Perhaps it was one of these things, or both, coupled with the memory of trifling incidents in the past, which had seemed to mean nothing at the time of their happening.
Whatever it was, his love for the girl swept through him now in a way that drove him headlong to her rescue. His own affairs of the mills, the fate of his friends in Malkern, of the village itself; all these things were driven into the background of his thoughts. Betty needed him. The thought set his brain whirling with a wild thrilling happiness, mazed, every alternate moment, with a horrible fear that drove him to the depths of despair.
It was high noon when smoke ahead warned him that the journey was nearly over. The buckboard was on the ridge shouldering a wide valley, and below it was the rushing torrent of the Red Sand River. From his position Dave had a full view of the dull green forest world rolling away, east and west, in vast, undulating waves as far as the eye could reach. Only to the south, beyond the valley, was there a break in the dense, verdant carpet. And here it was he beheld the telltale smoke of the lumber camp.
"That's the camp," he said, looking straight ahead, watching the slowly rising haze with longing eyes. "Guess we haven't to cross the river. Good."
Mason was looking out over his shoulder.
"No," he said after a moment's pause, while he tried to read the signs he beheld. "We don't cross the river. Keep to the trail. It takes us right past my shack."
"Where Parson Tom and——?"
"Yes, where they're living."
In another quarter of a mile they would be descending the hollow of a small valley diverging from the valley of the Red Sand River. As they drew near the decline, Dave spoke again.
"Can you make anything out, Mason?" he asked. "Seems to me that smoke is thick for—for stovepipes. There's two lots; one of 'em nearer this way."