The plaza clock boomed ten strokes as they rode into Saguache. Mackenzie was waiting for them on the steps of the hotel.
“Have they—has anything been——?”
The owner of the Fiddleback shook his grizzled head. “Not yet. Didn’t you meet Curly?”
“No.”
“He rode out to come in with you, but if he didn’t meet you by ten he was to come back. You took the north road, I reckon?”
“Yes.”
His warm heart was wrung for the young woman whose fine eyes stared with dumb agony from a face that looked very white in the shining moonlight. He put an arm around her shoulders, and drew her into the hotel with cheerful talk.
“Come along, Bob. We’re going to tuck away a good supper first off. While you’re eating, I’ll tell you all there is to be told.”
Kate opened her lips to say that she was not hungry and could not possibly eat a bite, but she thought better of it. Bob had tasted nothing since noon, and of course he must be fed.
The lad fell to with an appetite grief had not dulled. His cousin could at first only pick at what was set before her. It seemed heartless to be sitting down in comfort to so good a supper while her father was in she knew not how great distress. Grief swelled in her throat, and forced back the food she was trying to eat.