“Yes.” She turned away indifferently. “I’ll show you your room, Mr. Morse.”
The deputy watched them disappear into the house with astonishment printed on his face. He had ridden twenty-seven miles to see Melissy Lee and he had not quite expected this sort of a greeting.
“If that don’t beat the Dutch. Looks like I’ll do my callin’ on the old man after all, maybe,” he murmured with a grin.
CHAPTER III
AN ACCUSATION
The rescued man ate, drank, and from sheer fatigue fell asleep within five minutes of the time he was shown his bedroom.
Since he was not of the easily discouraged kind, the deputy stayed to supper on invitation of Lee. He sat opposite the daughter of his host, and that young woman treated him with the most frigid politeness. The owner of the Bar Double G was quite unaware of any change of temperature. Jack and his little girl had always been the best of friends. So now he discoursed on the price of cows, the good rains, the outrages of the rustlers, and kindred topics without suspecting that the attention of the young man was on more personal matters.
Though born in Arizona, Melissy was of the South. Due westward rolls the tide of settlement, and Beauchamp Lee had migrated from Tennessee after the war, following the line of least resistance to the sunburned territory. Later he had married a woman a good deal younger than himself. She had borne him two children, the elder of whom was 36 now a young man. Melissy was the younger, and while she was still a babe in arms the mother had died of typhoid and left her baby girl to grow up as best she might in a land where women were few and far. This tiny pledge of her mother’s love Champ Lee had treasured as a gift from Heaven. He had tended her and nursed her through the ailments of childhood with a devotion the most pure of his reckless life. Given to heady gusts of passion, there had never been a moment when his voice had been other than gentle and tender to her.