Ames could not keep still for long. Naturally he was nervous, watchful, strained. He alone of the three friends forced his way into Snell’s residence, not to be a witness of the ceremony, but to see his sister in the now famous gown. And he came out to Cappy and Sam with a soft, beautiful light on his face.

  “O Lord! She’s ruined us!” he exclaimed. “Sam, you must see her in that dress if you have to kill somebody. . . . An’ you, Cappy Tanner — damn your old wooden haid! the mess aboot Nesta was bad enough before you throwed this gauntlet. But, by Heaven; it’s worth it!”

  The wedding feast and dance began simultaneously, but neither the dance-hall nor the dining-room could accommodate all the guests at one time.

  The hour was late when Cappy Tanner saw Nesta Ames in all her glory. Cappy knew her and yet she seemed a stranger. How queer that a mere dress could make such difference! But it did. Nesta was the despair of all the girls present and the object of adoration to the young men. No such beautiful, radiant being had ever before graced a Tonto ball. Lil Snell had been made a bride, but she did not look a happy one. She looked dowdy and dim beside the lovely Nesta. And Nesta utterly outshone Madge Low, a dark, handsome girl reported the sweetheart of Lee Tate.

  Cappy’s shrewd old eyes saw through the flimsy disguise of these few girls who hated Nesta, just as they had penetrated to the shallow, evil heart of Lee Tate. Their machinations to undo Nesta, for this great occasion at least, had rebounded upon their own heads. Nesta had her revenge. The young men of Shelby and of all the Tonto mobbed her in their demand for dances.

  After a dance she led her partner to Rich, Sam, and Cappy, where they watched from the side. Close at hand she appeared to Cappy the old Nesta, only more mature, lovelier, sweeter of smile. She had forgotten every unhappy moment of her life. This ball and her triumph were enough for all the future. Her face shone like a pearl in a glowing light; her eyes seemed to have turned to dark midnight hue made strangely brilliant by stars.

  “Sam, you haven’t asked me to dance,” she said, with bewildering sweetness. “Nor you, either, Rich Ames.”

  “Listen to her!” gasped Sam.

  “Nesta, you might just as well be in Doubtful Canyon,” drawled Rich, but his eyes held a blue worshiping flash.

  “Look at ’em comin’,” burst out Sam, indicating the tall young men rushing like wind through the cornstalks.

  “I’ve saved two dances,” trilled Nesta, gayly, “the next for you, Sam, and then one for Rich.”

  Under the glamour upon her, and the obsession of passion or love or revenge, whatever it was that radiated from her, Tanner’s piercing affection discerned tragedy. He watched her dance with Sam, the cynosure of all eyes, and then with Rich. Since childhood these twins had danced together. They moved as one, Rich the personification of lithe masculine grace, and Nesta, her heavy-lidded eyes dreaming, dark, seeing nothing, lost in the music and rhythm of the dance.

  Cappy Tanner left the hall and wended a sorrowful way to his lodgings. He saw through the hour to unknown calamity. Next morning, an hour after the cold gray dawn broke, he was riding alone back to Mescal Ridge.

  Nesta, too, returned late that day, with Sam and Rich, and her mother accompanied by the twins, all weary and spent. Cappy saw them for only a few moments. But next day the serene, even tenor of life at Mescal Ridge seemed to have reinstated itself. Cappy welcomed it, though he sensed it as a lull before a storm.

  “Cap, shore I’m drunk or dreamin’,” said Rich, when Cappy presented himself at the cabin.

  “Wal, you do look wild, but you ain’t drunk,” rejoined Tanner.

  “Nesta came home like a lamb. She’s promised to marry Sam, if we’ll give her a little time. She’s queer. The fire an’ glory of her seem daid. It clean stumps me.”

  “Wal, thet weddin’ an’ dance would have taken the starch out of most girls — if they’d been Nesta. . . . I’m plumb curious. Did she find out you punched Lee Tate’s nose into a sausage?”

  “Did she? Shore! . . . The dance lasted all night. Nesta asked Sam an’ me to stay. In the mawnin’ she cut the Snell outfit. An’ as she came out with her things, who should bob up but Lee Tate. He shore tried to detain her, talkin’ low. She looked at his busted face an’ laughed. By thunder! my blood run cold, then hot. She pulled her sleeve away from him as if he was dirt. An’ she swept by, her eyes ablaze, her haid up. . . . An’ I reckon that’s aboot all, Cappy.”

  “Wal, wal! Thet clean stumps me!” ejaculated Tanner, stroking his beard. “Who’n’ll can savvy a woman? — But I say, watch her close.”

  An astounding thing to Tanner was the way Playford’s boast to Lee Tate bade fair to turn into reality. Nesta actually did consent to be married that week.

  Tanner went several times to the Ames cabin, but only once did he see Nesta. Then he was shocked. She seemed infinitely removed from the glorious Nesta of the dance at Shelby. She was too apathetic, too yielding, too haunted. Tanner imagined she had resigned herself to a situation which her heart sanctioned, but her conscience opposed.

  Sam Playford hung around the cabin apparently in a trance. Mrs. Ames’ cheerful and practical preparations for Nesta’s marriage augured well for her subtle waiving of a possible slip between the cup and the lip. But she might have known more about Nesta than anyone else. Rich showed increasing strain. He too hung around in sight of the cabin. About the only work Tanner saw him apply himself to was chopping wood, which he did desultorily.

  Tanner kept to himself for a couple of days forcing himself to necessary labor, if he intended to spend a winter trapping. He would be glad when this marriage business was over. Mescal and Manzanita sought him out the second day, eager to impart the latest news. Nesta did not want to go to Shelby to be married and Sam had ridden in to have the parson come to Mescal Ridge on Saturday.

  * * * * *

  Indian summer lingered, though it was past the middle of November. The old trapper could not help being aware of the still, smoky blue days, the warmth of sun, the late-blooming asters, the lonesome caw of crow and the melancholy note of thrush, the slumberous waiting solitude.

  Saturday — Nesta Ames’ wedding day — dawned at last, the warmest, purplest, and most beautiful of those waning summer days. Cappy had vaguely imagined that it never would come. Even now, as he donned his best garb to see Nesta married, he could not drive away a strange presentiment. He had seen a shadow in Nesta’s eyes and it had spread to his consciousness.

  When Cappy emerged from the gulch into the Mescal Ridge trail he espied half a dozen horses hitched under the three spruces beside the Ames cabin.

  A clip-clop of hoofs at a trot sounded up the trail. Sam Playford emerged from the wall of green, and his garb shone bright against that background.

  Cappy essayed a merry halloo to Sam, but a piercing scream cut it short.

  “What the hell?” ejaculated the trapper. Could that have been Mescal’s high-pitched shrill laughter? Playford had checked his horse. He had heard. Suddenly with a shout he leaped out of his saddle and plunged down over the rocky bank.

  Then Cappy, thus directed, saw a moving object along the shore of Rock Pool, coming around the huge boulder. Cappy stared, while all his senses save sight seemed held in abeyance. Something flashed silvery in the sunlight. He made out Rich Ames carrying a heavy burden up from the creek. Then he saw Playford crashing through the willows, thumping over the rocks. Cappy’s heart gave a great leap, then sank like lead. In a panic he rushed at the declivity below the trail. But as he could not get down there he ran up to where Playford had gone over. His frantic haste caused him to stumble and fall headlong. Jarring contact with rocks, furious threshing into brush, caused no pain he was conscious of. Scrambling up, he hurried across the rough bench, arriving at the sycamores panting, so spent he could not speak.

  Nesta Ames leaned back against a tree trunk, disheveled, limp as a sack, wet from her waist down. A terrible dark blaze burned in her eyes. Playford knelt beside her, wringing his hands, his face ashen.

  Rich’s back, as he stood bowed as if under a tremendous burden, made Tanner not want to see his face.

  “I saw the parson,” Nesta was saying. “I lost my nerve. . . . I couldn’t go on with the wedding.”

  Tanner’s relief to see her alive, hear her voice, realize she was unhurt, was so great that it seemed the shame and tragedy of her avowal were as nothing. He went forward, to drop on one knee on the other side of Nesta, and take her limp cold hand.

  “Lass — lass — —” he began huskily, in broken accents.

  “Shore that’s plain. But why?” demanded the brother, grim and hard. Tanner felt the urge to look at him, but had not the courage yet.

  Nesta looked at him with unfathomable eyes. She might have lost her courage when it came to the marriage, but she had no fear of Rich, no shame in facing him! She seemed beyond both. Her hand shook, her full bosom rose and fell. Her red lips set in a bitter resolute line.

  “Didn’t you try to drown yourself?” queried Rich, harshly.

  “Do you think I was trying to baptize myself?” she countered, scornfully, her voice gathering strength.

  “Answer me!” he ordered. “You slipped out. I saw you. I ran over heah. . . . An’ I caught you tryin’ to make away with yourself. Didn’t I?”

  “You shore did,” she replied, with steely ring of voice. “But you might have saved yourself the trouble — and me more than you can guess.”

  “Tell me why,” went on Rich, hoarsely.

  “I couldn’t go through with it. I wanted to. I hoped to make Sam happy. I loved him. . . . But I couldn’t marry him.”

  “Why?”

  “I wronged Sam. I was untrue to him. . . . Mother wanted me to marry him and keep it secret. But I intended to tell him — soon as I — was his wife.”

  “How’d you wrong him?”

  “I got — mixed up with Lee Tate.”

  “Mixed up! . . . Ahuh. You shore talk queer. . . . Nesta Ames, what you mean — mixed up?”

  “It couldn’t have been worse,” she returned, mournfully.

  Rich violently shook his whole supple frame, as if to throw off an enmeshing net. He plumped down on both knees at Nesta’s feet and plucked at them with nerveless hands. His face was convulsed in agony.

  “I thought I could go on with it,” continued Nesta, simply. “I really do love Sam. . . . More a hundred times than that devil. I didn’t mean to be a false wife. I’d have told Sam. And I knew he’d forgive. . . . But I wilted — when I found out I was going to have a baby.”

  “O my Gawd!” cried Rich, and he fell forward on his face, to dig his brown hands deep into the moss, to beat the ground with his feet.

  Playford flung an arm over his twitching face. Nesta gazed from him to Rich, and then to Tanner.

  “Cappy, it’s — horrible!” she whispered. “If he’d only let me — drown myself.”

  “Lass, thet wouldn’t help none,” said the trapper, huskily. “It’s hell on the boys — but I reckon — all right with me.”

  Rich Ames shuddered. He then seemed to freeze. When he arose Tanner could not bear to look at his face.

  “Nesta, I reckon I can kill you,” he said, in a singularly cold and bitter voice.

  “I wish you would, Rich,” she burst out, with a first show of passion. “Then I’d not have it — on my soul. . . . For I cain’t live. I wouldn’t make way with the baby — I cain’t live through it, Rich!”

  “By Gawd! you won’t, if you were to blame!”

  “Of course I was. How could any girl be such — such an idiot — unless she were to blame? But I swear to you, Rich, and to Heaven — that I never knew it would go so far.”

  “You loved this skunk Tate?” demanded Ames, stridently, as he leaned over her, his jaw protruding.

  “No! — No!” she cried, wildly. “That’s the horror of it. . . . But I was fascinated . . . then — afterward — he had some power over me. I never broke it till the mawnin’ after the dance. . . . Oh, too late — too late!”

  Tanner found his voice and besought Ames to hear Nesta’s story. “Boy,” he concluded, “you’re pronouncin’ judgment too soon.”

  “Nesta, tell us,” begged Playford. “I can’t think of you — as bad. . . . But no matter. Tell the truth. We three will find a way out for you.”

  “Poor Sam!” she whispered, lifting her hand to touch him. “I must be bad. I am bad. And there’s no way out for me.”

  Rich knelt again, this time closer to her.

  “Tate won’t marry you?” he asked, huskily.

  “I don’t know. But even if he would, I’d never — never have him.”

  “Well, you stump me, Nesta Ames,” said Rich, throwing up his hands. “Do as Sam wants. Tell us the truth.”

  “Oh, it’s miserable enough,” began Nesta, her eyes brooding and somber. “I never loved Lee Tate. But I always felt queer when he looked at me — talked to me — which he came to do this last year. . . . It all must be because of Madge Low and Lil Snell. Madge is his girl now and Lil used to be. I didn’t know till lately how thick he was with them. Madge was a cat, and Lil was jealous of me. They made me so furious I could have killed them. I swore I’d show them I was not a gawky country jake. They said Lee was playing with me. But they fixed it many times when he could see me. I know now they put the job up on me. . . . Well, it began then. I flirted with him. But I — I didn’t give in to him — let him touch me — or kiss me . . . until one day Lil double-crossed me — rode off and left me with him alone. . . . He dragged me off my horse — threw me into a pine thicket — and — and had his way. . . . After that I hated him — but still I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to see him — I avoided him — but when he found me I — I couldn’t help myself. . . . He was like a snake. . . . That night at the dance I woke up. All I had ever wanted was to show that nasty, dirty Madge Low I wouldn’t wipe my boots on her. And Lil Snell — too! They helped Lee Tate ruin me. I saw it. I won Lee from them and their other beaus. I had Lil’s husband running after me as hard as any of them. . . . That was enough. I saw my mistake — the awful cost. Before I left Shelby I laughed in Lee Tate’s face — I told him I despised him — would never look at him again. But I lied. I knew his power over me — that he could drag me down again. Still I came home to Sam — to hope and fight. . . . Then I found out aboot the baby coming. It was all too — late. . . . When I — saw the parson coming — I ran to — drown myself.”

  Playford reached long arms for Nesta, and kneeling still, he lifted her against him.

  “Nesta, it’s not too late,” he said, poignantly. “You poor mad little girl! — All for vanity! I’ll stick to you. We’ll never let anyone know.”

  “Sam! . . . You’d marry me — now?” she wailed, all defiance and bitterness gone from her.

  “Yes. We’ll go over to the cabin, an’ have the weddin’ — same as we planned.”

  “No, no,” she implored, suddenly bereft of the hopeless resignation that had been her anchor.

  “But, Nesta, you said you loved me? went on Sam, tenderly.

  “Oh, I do — I do! . . . I never stopped loving you. . . . But I cain’t risk this! — O my God if I only dared!”

  Rich Ames reached a long arm, to catch her quivering shoulder and turn her face from Playford’s breast.

  “Why don’t you dare?” he flung at her, sharply. “Sam’s big an’ fine. He’s got real love. No one will ever know. Me an’ Cappy will keep your secret. The baby will be an Ames. — Why don’t you dare?”

  Tanner never before gazed upon such woe as wrung his heart then. Nesta could not meet her brother’s flaming eyes; she turned from the staunch Playford. And it was to Tanner that she whispered piteously:

  “Cappy — he’d hound me — catch me alone some day — —”

  Tanner choked with misery. He heard Playford sob. But Ames bent over his sister:

  “Never in this world, Nesta dear,” he drawled, with his old slow, cool speech.

  “Rich!”

  “You heahed me. — Come, brace up. Help her on her feet, Sam. . . . You’ll go back home. An’ listen. Nesta fell in the creek. An’, Sam, you an’ Cappy happened along. Nesta was scared. She’s pretty shaky. But you’ll go on with the weddin’.”

  “Rich!” cried Nesta.

  “You heah me, Sam?”

  “I ain’t deaf, pard,” replied Playford, his voice gruff with emotion.

  “You heah me, Cap?” went on Ames, inexorably.

  “Shore do, lad, an’ I’m obeyin’ pronto,” replied the trapper, as he helped Sam support the trembling girl.

  “Nesta, I won’t be heah to see you married,” went on Ames. There were finality and farewell in his words, a strange note, scarcely tenderness. He made no move to kiss her, touch her, though her fluttering hands were outstretched. “But I wish you happiness with Sam — an’ shore, if you’re good to him, it’ll come some day.”

  “Rich!” she screamed, but it might as well have been to the empty air.

  * * * * *

  News arrived post haste next day at Mescal Ridge. The rider, a stranger to Tanner, dashed in on a froth-lathered horse, and slid off.

  “Howdy!” he said. “Come ‘way from the cabin. I got a word for you.”

  Mrs. Ames, who had been talking to the trapper, after one look at the grave-faced visitor, hurried into the living-room, drawing the wide-eyed twins with her.

  “Reckon you’re Tanner?” the man interrogated, when they had reached the spruces.

  “Reckon I am,” replied Cappy, gloomily, in a tone that signified that he wished he could deny his name.

  “Where’s young Playford?”

  “Gone up to his homestead with his wife. They was married yesterday.”

  “Glad to hear it. I didn’t cotton to this job. An’ you’ll have to tell them.”

  “Ahuh. . . . What’ll I tell?”