“... trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”
The glory still haloed her dusky head. It glowed in her warm eyes and sparkled in her smile.
He strode through the kinnikinnick to meet them.
As they approached, Betty was conscious of a sharp stab of joy. This clean-cut, light-footed man was not the shuffling, slouchy tramp she had first met two months earlier. The skin had taken on the bronzed hue of health. The eyes were no longer dull and heavy, but quick with life. The unpleasant, bitter expression had gone from the good-looking face.
Betty knew what had transformed him. He had found again the self-reliance of which he had been robbed. There burned in him once more a bright light of manhood strong and unwavering.
He shook hands with Clint Reed so frankly that she knew he cherished no grudge. There flashed into her mind the hesitant prophecy she had once made, that he might look back on that first day on the Diamond Bar K as a red-letter one. It had come true. Then he had reached the turning of the ways and had been led into the long hard uphill climb toward self-respect.
“Glad to see you,” he said as his fingers met firmly those of the girl. “You’ve come to see how Mr. Merrick is getting along with the project, I suppose.”
“We heard about the trouble here and came to find out the facts first-hand,” Reed answered.
The engineer told what he knew. One of his assistants standing near was drawn into the conversation. The cattleman asked him questions. Betty and the man who called himself Tug Jones found themselves momentarily alone.