Ginger went, flinging herself into her riding suit and marching through the house with her Scotch chin held high and her Spanish mouth hard, slamming the door for good measure and springing into Snort’s saddle and loping furiously away, but she didn’t really believe it was the end. She had a very good time with ’Rome Ojeda and a wild and satisfying ride, and when she came back, four hours later, she was good-natured again. She wasn’t entirely ready to forgive Dean, but she was ready to consider forgiving him, and she went into the house to find him and tell him so.
She did not find him. She found, instead, an irate and voluble Aunt Fan who had been generating rage for hours.
“You needn’t call him,” she said. “He won’t hear you, not unless you can shout loud enough to make yourself heard at San Luis Obispo. I dare say you could, if you put your mind to it—it’s simply horrible, the way you yell to the men in the corral. Tomboys are all right and very fetching, but let me tell you, Ginger McVeagh, you’ve grown up, and tom-women aren’t cunning at all, and if you can’t key down and act more like a lady and less like a——”
“San Luis?” Ginger stood still and looked at her. She did not seem to have heard anything else beside the name of the town. “San Luis? What’s he doing there?”
“He’s catching the Coaster to Los Angeles to-night; that’s what he’s doing there, Ginger McVeagh. And to-morrow morning he’ll be on his way to Boston, and why he hasn’t gone before, heaven only knows—I don’t. Now if you’ve got anything in your head but ’Rome Ojeda and long-horned steers and alfalfa crops you’ll stop staring at me and get——”
“Did he say anything?” she wanted to know in a mild and wondering voice. “What did he say, Aunt Fan?”
“He said, ‘Tell her I’ve gone; she will understand,’ and he was white as a sheet. If ever anybody in this world looked like death on a pale horse, that boy did when he walked out of this house. He telephoned into town for a machine and he was packed before it got here, and he shook hands with me and with Manuela and Ling and out he marched, and if you want my opinion, Ginger McVeagh——”
Ginger did not in the least want her opinion; she wanted Dean Wolcott, sharply and imperatively. She walked out of the corridor and into the living room where they had begun the afternoon together. The old chests were there still, and the table was spread with a litter of ancient treasures. She picked up a fichu of yellowed lace and put it down again, and a fan with sticks of carved ivory and looked at it gravely, as if she had never seen it before. It had surprised her and worried her a little to find him so warmly interested in things of that sort; she would have preferred having him clumsily ignorant about them, good-humoredly tolerant. Now, she realized, it would never need to worry her again. She stood staring down at the beautiful old things; they looked mellow and very wise. Three generations of Valdés women had used them before her, but she knew, suddenly, that she hated them and never wanted to see them again. She began to stuff them hastily back into the carved chests of dark and satiny wood, and called to Manuela to put them away in the storeroom.
Her aunt followed her before she had finished. “If you hurry,” she said urgently, “if you get out the car this minute and fly, you can catch him at San Luis!”
Ginger did not answer her for an instant. Then she said, deliberately and without passion, “I don’t want to catch him at San Luis, Aunt Fan. I don’t want to catch him—anywhere.”