"Well, if you hear it direct, send the man on to me with it," said Wade, his lips compressing ominously. "I'm about through, Lem, not quite, but pretty nearly. I've told Moran to have Jensen trail those sheep, and if he doesn't...."
Trowbridge nodded and smiled, as they paused at a street corner—one of the few that Crawling Water possessed.
"That's the idea, Gordon. We'll all be the readier for the waiting. Well, I'll not go any farther with you." He winked with elaborate precision and looked in the direction of a snug little cottage, with flower boxes in the windows, a biscuit toss away. "She's home. I saw her leave the store yonder a little while ago."
Wade blushed like a boy and looked foolish.
"I don't get into town so very often," he began lamely, when Trowbridge slapped him heartily on the back.
"You don't need to make any excuses to me, old man," he said, moving off. "That little woman has put Crawling Water on edge with admiration. You're not the only one—or, maybe, you are."
Secretly eager though Wade was to reach the cottage, the nearer he approached it, the slower he walked, fuming at himself for his sudden spinelessness. Although no ladies' man, he had never been woman wary until lately, and this of itself was a sign, the significance of which he was far from realizing. When he was with Dorothy Purnell, he almost forgot her sex in the easy companionability of their relationship; when away from her, he thought no more of her than he might of some man friend; but the approach had become a matter of embarrassing difficulty with him. There had even been occasions when he had walked past the cottage and ridden home without seeing her, trying speciously to convince himself that such had all along been his intention.
Something of the sort might have happened now had she not hailed him from the open doorway.
"Whither bound, stranger?" she smilingly demanded, in her low, rich contralto. "Better come in where it's cool. Mother'll be glad to see you, and I—shan't mind."