"You bet we will!" cried Harry. His manner was enthusiastic, not so much with joy over seeing Bismarck Anne, as with instinctive relief from the tension of his rather sentimental interview with Molly. He remembered the latter and performed some sort of an introduction.
The two women looked each other in the eye.
"How do you do?" asked Molly coolly, without moving an inch.
"Very well, my dear," replied Bismarck Anne smiling, "and very glad to get here."
The endearing epithet relegated Molly at once to the category of little girls.
The conversation continued for some moments longer, the men standing as silent spectators. Molly continued very reserved. The newcomer did not appear to notice it, but chattered on unconcernedly in a light-hearted fashion, appealing to the other just often enough to convey the idea that there was nothing noticeably repellent in her manner. In fact she did it so well that the group gained the impression that Molly carried her share of the small talk, which was not true. But in spite of the apparent good-feeling Cheyenne Harry felt uncomfortably that something was wrong. Searching about for the cause, he at last discovered it in Molly's attitude.
So on the way to the cabin he was vexed, and showed it. And Molly felt so strongly the innate justice of her position and appreciated so keenly the skill with which she had been made to appear sulky and unreasonable, that when she had finally shut her own door behind her, she threw herself on her bed and cried as though her heart would break. Then her blood told. She dried her eyes and in her inmost heart she declared war against this woman, war to the knife and to the uttermost. The momentary defeat dashed her at first, then it nerved her. After all nothing definite had occurred. This creature had planted several stinging thrusts which had hit home because Molly, in the innocence of her heart, was not expecting them. She was on her guard now. It would not happen again. Cheyenne Harry had known the woman before, evidently, and surely it was natural that in the first surprise of seeing her so unexpectedly, he should display a certain enthusiasm of recognition. But his relations with her—Molly Lafond—were too intimate, too long-continued, to be lightly broken.
As the twilight fell she saw, through the oblong of her sliding window, that men were hurrying by to dine early, in order that they might prepare for the festivities of the evening. Across the square she could make out the dim shape of the new dance hall, a long low structure trimmed with evergreens and bunting. Frosty was even then lighting the lamps in the Little Nugget. She sat there motionless, staring out into the night, fingering the soft white stuff of the gown lying across her lap, until a certain peace came to her and a conviction that all would be well.
The night was warm and balmy with the odors of early spring. Molly had slid back the halves of her narrow window, and over the boxes of flowers that fringed this little artificial horizon the mellow notes of the first whitethroat, that nightingale of the north, floated in on the tepid air. Beyond the nearer silhouette of the flowers another dimmer silhouette of the hills wavered uncertainly beneath a few uncertain stars. The girl watched these stars idly, dreaming in tune with the plaintive notes of the bird. Then silently another bulkier silhouette interposed itself, almost filling the window.
"What is it?" she cried, starting.