Then she hurried into the house. The soldier guest was still sleeping, the housekeeper reported. Ginger went on tiptoe to the door and listened. There were the countless questions to ask him about Aleck; she grudged every missed moment.
“We dare not wake him,” said Manuela with authority. “And he must eat before he talks again. Go away, my heart. I will keep watch.” She sat down again in a chair in the corridor and folded her hard brown hands on her stomach. “Listen! Some one comes!”
There was the sound of a motor and Ginger went to see who it was—the house party might have found worse going beyond, and turned back. It was a car from the garage at San Luis Obispo, and before it reached the house she saw that it carried one person beside the driver—a young man who held himself singularly erect. He was, he announced, the cousin who had been waiting, waiting all day, at San Luis Obispo, for Mr. Dean Wolcott. He wanted to know where Mr. Wolcott was. His manner rather conveyed that Mr. Wolcott might have met with foul play; that almost anything might occur in a wilderness of this character.
Miss McVeagh explained that Mr. Dean Wolcott was sleeping; he was greatly exhausted and had been asleep since morning.
The other Mr. Wolcott was clearly annoyed. The trip from Boston to California, undertaken only a day after his cousin had landed from England, had been wholly against his advice and judgment. He had been unable to understand why his cousin could not have mailed Miss McVeagh her brother’s letter, and written her any details.
Ginger, looking levelly at him, saw at once that he had been and always would be unable to understand. She said, very civilly, that she hoped they would both rest for a few days at Dos Pozos before making the return journey.
“Thank you, but that will be quite impossible,” said the young man, hastily. “It will be necessary to leave Los Angeles to-morrow. The entire Wolcott connection—” it was as if he had said—“The Allied Nations,” or “The Nordic Peoples”—“will postpone the holiday festivities until Mr. Dean Wolcott’s return.” He desired to be shown where his cousin was sleeping, and he went briskly in to rouse him, past the protesting Manuela.
Ginger went out of the house. Large as it was, there did not seem to be room enough in it for the newcomer and herself. He brought her sharply out of her mood of whispering gentleness, and she walked a little way toward the bridge and planned to begin work at once on the permanent structure of Aleck’s intention. A big and beautiful idea came to her; there was no way of marking Aleck’s grave, but this bridge should be built in his memory, inscribed to him. It brought the tears to her eyes and she turned, at sound of feet on the path, and saw Dean Wolcott coming toward her, and now, as in the morning, the sun was on him—this time the evening sun, slipping swiftly down behind the hills.
He was faintly flushed with sleep and his voice was stronger and steadier. “I am ashamed,” he said. “I have slept away my one day with you. I had concentrated for so long on the single purpose of bringing Aleck’s message to you that, once it was done, everything seemed to be done. I sank into that sleep as if it were a bottomless pit. I must go back to-night. My mother—my people— You see, I spent only a day with them.”
“You must go,” said Ginger. “You were good—oh, you were good to come!”