The fact that Solange ate heartily and naturally perhaps went far to overcome the feeling of diffidence that had settled on the Wallace rancheria. Perhaps it was merely that she showed herself quite human and feminine and charmingly demure. At any rate, before the meal was over, the Wallaces and Dave had recovered much of their poise and the two young men were even making awkward attempts at flirtation, much to the amusement of the girl.
Mr. Wallace, himself, although retaining a slight feeling that there was something uncanny about her, felt it overshadowed by a conviction that it would never do to permit her to go into the hills as she intended to do. He finally expressed himself to that effect.
“This here mine you’re hunting for, mad’mo’selle,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ to hold out no hopes to you, but I’ll set Dave and my son to lookin’ for it and you just stay right here with ma and me and make yourself at home.”
Solange smiled and shook her head. She habitually kept her eyes lowered, and perhaps this was the reason that, when she raised them now and then, 183 they caught the observer unawares, with the effect of holding him startled and fascinated.
“It is kind of you, monsieur,” she said. “But I cannot stay. I am pledged to make the hunt—not only for the mine but for the man who killed my father. That is not an errand that I can delegate.”
“I’m afraid there ain’t no chance to find the man that did that,” said Wallace, kindly. “There ain’t no one knows. It might have been Louisiana, but if it was, he’s been gone these nineteen years and you’ll never find him.”
Solange smiled a little sadly and grimly. “We Basques are queer people,” she said. “We are very old. Perhaps that is why we feel things that others do not feel. It is not like the second sight I have heard that some possess. Yet it is in me here.” She laid her hand on her breast. “I feel that I will find that man—and the mine, but not so strongly. It is what you call a—a hunch, is it not?”
Wallace shook his head dubiously, but Solange had raised her eyes and as long as he could see them he felt unable to question anything she said.
“And it is said that a murderer always returns, sooner or later, to the scene of his crime, monsieur. I will be there when he comes back.”
“But,” said Mrs. Wallace, gently, “it is not necessary for you to go yourself. Indeed, you can’t do it, my dear!”