“Ben, dear, you quite overlooked something,” rejoined Hettie, bravely, while she felt the hot blood mount to cheek and temple. “Nevada loved not only you — but me too . . . and I — I loved him.”

  “Well, now, Hettie,” replied Ben, strangely softened, “I reckon that’s no news, though you never declared it so — so openly. But even though that was true, why should it make such a difference?”

  “The boy came of a good family,” replied Hettie. “He had fine instincts. And one of them was an instinct to disappear when there was danger of my learning who he really was. There can be no other reason. He had pride. And he loved me so — so well, he couldn’t bear to shame me.”

  “Damn him, anyway!” burst out Ben, again. “He’s broken your heart, too.”

  “Not yet,” replied Hettie, in strong vibrating tones.

  “Hettie, did that son-of-a-gun make love to you?” queried Ben, struggling with his resentment and remorse.

  “Did — he?” murmured she, with a little broken laugh. “Ben, when he found out I cared — he — he made the most terrible love to me. . . . Oh, I can never forget — never get over it!”

  “Well!” ejaculated her brother, amazed out of his own pain. “How and when did he ever get the chance?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” asked Hettie, archly.

  “And you — my little sixteen-year-old sister! . . . Who can ever tell about a girl?”

  “Ben, didn’t Ina Blaine love you when she was five years old — and ten — and fourteen?” queried Hettie. “And at eighteen after she’d been away from you four years?”

  “Thank the Lord, she did. I’ve never begun to understand it. But it’s beautiful, wonderful. . . . Did my pard, Nevada, ever know you, too, had that strange, glorious thing — woman’s love — for him?”

  “Yes, Nevada knew,” replied Hettie, eloquently. “He knew he had my faith, too. . . . And, Ben, that is why I’ve never lost him. I know. It’s the way a woman feels. Nevada is not dead. He is not false to me — to what I believed he had become. And somewhere, somehow, he will come back to me — to us.”

  “My God! that’s good to hear!” exclaimed Ben, with fervent emotion. “You strike me right in the heart, Hettie.”

  “I’m glad. I’ve wanted to speak for long,” replied Hettie, simply. “And there’s another thing that touches us closely.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, anxiously, as she gazed solemnly up at him, and hesitated.

  “Mother is failing. Haven’t you noticed it?”

  Ben nodded his head sorrowfully. “I reckon I try not to see, but I do.”

  “She has brightened up since spring came,” went on Hettie. “Mother loves the sun, the trees, the flowers, the birds. She likes to be outdoors. Winter is long and cold here. It rains and snows and sleets. She dreads the icy wind. Honestly, Ben, I don’t think it’s grief for father. She has gotten over that. I believe this valley is bad for her. It’s bad for me, too, in winter.”

  “I’ve been afraid of that very thing,” declared her brother, thoughtfully. “But there’s a possibility of some organic disease.”

  “Mother’s not old,” said Hettie. “She ought to live many years yet. But we must do something to help her. Ben, I suggest you take her to San Francisco. Get the opinion and advice of some up-to-date physician. Take Ina with you. Blaine will be safe with me. I’ll run the ranch, never fear.”

  “By George! it’s a great idea,” declared Ben, with amazing enthusiasm. He leaped down off the corral fence, then turned to help Hettie. “Ina will be tickled. She’ll get her brother Marvie to stay with you.”

  “Ben, I actually believe you’ve decided already,” replied Hettie, suddenly feeling radiant.

  “Reckon I have, and I’ll bet you Ina squeals with joy. Let’s go tell her this minute.”

  Hettie peeped through the corral fence at California Red.

  “Good-by, you beautiful, stand-off wild thing!” she cried. “Some day some one will come and he’ll tame you to eat out of my hand.”

  With arms locked, Hettie and Ben hurried down the lane, eager with the import of new hopes, happier than they had been for a long time. It was Ben now who talked, while Hettie kept silent. She thrilled with the consciousness that she had roused Ben from a creeping sad abstraction that had grown more noticeable of late. Ben not only missed his old friend, Nevada, but also the wild-horse-hunting life which had been his sole occupation for years before his marriage, and which had been the cause of the alienation from his father.

  Ina was in the yard, gathering violets, which certainly matched the blue of her spring dress and the color of her eyes. Little Blaine babbled at sight of his father and ran as fast as his short fat legs could carry him.

  “Well, good-mawnin’, you-all!” said Ina, gayly. “Say, you look excited.” . . . Then she kissed Hettie and continued, “Many happy, happy returns of the day.”

  Ben snatched the boy up and, holding him on his arm, he confronted Ina with a smile that held great portent.

  “How soon can you get ready for a trip to San Francisco?” he asked, quite naturally, as if he were in the habit of speaking so every day.

  “What! Oh, I knew something was up,” she cried, the color flashing to her beautiful face. “How soon? . . . Fifteen minutes!”

  “Ha! Ha! I thought you’d hit the saddle and ride that idea pronto,” said Ben, happily. “But you needn’t be so swift as that.”

  “Ben, are you really going to take me to Frisco?” asked Ina, eagerly.

  “Yes. It’s all settled. But—”

  “You darling,” she cried, kissing him. “I wanted to go somewhere. The winter has been so long, so confining. Klamath Falls was my hope. But San Francisco! Oh!”

  “Ina, I’m sorry I don’t think of such things,” replied Ben, ruefully. “I guess I’d fallen into a rut. You must thank Hettie.”

  Whereupon Ina most heartily embraced Hettie, and then, coming down to earth, she said: “Let’s go in to breakfast. You can tell me there all about this grand idea.”

  “We’ll tell you now,” said Ben. “The trip to Frisco is on mother’s account and we mustn’t discuss it before her. The fact is, Ina, mother is failing. Something wrong with her. Hettie suggested we take her to San Francisco to see a competent physician. Blaine will be safe with Hettie and so will the ranch. What do you say, dearest?”

  “I say it’s a happy and wise suggestion,” returned Ina, with a nod of commendation toward Hettie. “This damp cold Tule Lake does not agree with mother.”

  The only hitch in the plans formulated by Ben and Hettie concerned the coming of Marvie Blaine to stay at the Ide ranch. Hart Blaine would not allow his son to go.

  “That boy can’t run a mowin’ machine, let alone a ranch,” old Blaine had said to Ben.

  There was trouble between Marvie and his father, for which, in Ben’s opinion, both were equally to blame.

  “Sure reminds me of my scrap with dad,” remarked Ben to Hettie. “Only I was right and dad was wrong. Marvie refused to go to college. Reckon he’s not so different from me. He likes horses and the open country.”

  “Some day Marvie will run off just as you did, Ben Ide,” Hettie had answered.

  So Hettie was left alone in the Ide homestead with little Blaine and the two women servants. She rather welcomed the solitude. She found how much her mother had taken of time and thought. Part of the day she had the servants take care of Blaine while she devoted herself to the many set tasks at hand and the new ones always arising. After supper, when Blaine had been put to bed, she had hours to be alone and think before her own rest claimed her.

  The running of the ranch had at first seemed something that would be pleasure, rather than work. She discovered presently that it was not only work, but an extremely embarrassing and exasperating task. There were eighteen hands employed on the lake ranch, and as many more out in the hills. Most of these employees were young men of the valley, unmarried, and very desirous of changing that state of single blessedness. Some had been schoolmates of Hettie’s. And there were several riders, long, lean, rangy fellows from the South, with whom Hettie grew most annoyed. They continually found reasons to ride in to the ranch. Some of the excuses were ridiculous in the extreme. These droll boys of the open range paid court to her, wholly oblivious of her rebuffs. In two weeks’ time the whole contingent was in love with Hettie or trying to make her believe so. And the plowing, the planting, the movement of stock, the hauling of supplies, the herding of cattle, in fact all tasks pertaining to the operation of Ben Ide’s ranches, had to be talked over elaborately with the temporary mistress.

  Hettie had fun out of it, except in the case of the several lean-faced, quiet-eyed riders from the hills. They made love to her. Moreover, they reminded her of Nevada, and that inflamed her lonely, hungry heart.

  If Nevada had come to mind often in the past, what did he do now but haunt every hour? She saw him in every one of the range riders. Yet how incomparably he bestrode a horse! Hettie saw his lean, fine still face, so clean cut and brown, with the sleepy eyes that yet could wake to flame and also smile with a light she had never seen in any other. His old black sombrero, with bullet holes in the crown, when laid aside had appeared a disreputable thing, but on his head it had seemed picturesque and beautiful. His old silk scarf with the checks of red, the yellow vest with the string of a little tobacco pouch always hanging out of a pocket, the worn leather wristbands, the high top-boots with their scalloped edges, and their long bright jingling spurs — how well she remembered them, how vividly they were limned in the eye of her memory! Then, as something inevitable at the end of reminiscence, something that seemed an inseparable part of Nevada, she recalled the dark and heavy gun he had always worn. It had bumped against her as she walked beside him. When he had taken her in his arms, even in the sweet madness of that moment, she had felt the gun hard and cold against her.

  The years had brought Hettie stronger and deeper love for Nevada. As she looked back now she remembered her open aversion to his gun, and to the something about him that hinted of its deadly use. She had been a callow, sentimental girl, sickened at the thought of bloodshed, hostile toward the spirit and skill that had eventually saved her brother from ruin and perhaps herself from the villainous Setter.

  She had lived and suffered during the four years since Nevada had ridden away, leaving death and calamity behind him. She was a woman now. She saw differently. She divined what she had been to him — how her friendship and love had uplifted him. How great and enduring had her own love become! She was his alone. Separation could never change her.

  “What did it matter who Nevada was or what he was before he came to Ben and me?” she mused, sitting by the open window in the dark, listening to the last sleepy honks of wild geese and the melancholy peep-peep of spring frogs. “But he could not see that. Yet he must have known it would not matter to me, so long as he kept himself the Nevada we knew and loved. . . . Would he ever fall to rustling cattle, if that had once been his crime? No! Would he ever drink again? No! Could he sink to the embrace of some bad woman? Never! . . . Will he use again that terrible gun? . . . Ah, he will! I feel it. If not for himself, then for some one. . . . He was flame and lightning to destroy!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  HETTIE’S FOLK DID not return from San Francisco on the date they had specified, nor did she receive any letter from them. Every day thereafter she expected them, only to be disappointed. This, added to the increasing perplexity of the duties that had been left to her, and the persistence of her admirers, wore her into such a nervous state that she failed to keep her boast about running the ranch.

  One day several strangers from Klamath Falls called upon Hettie. They were business men, representing an Oregon syndicate, who were buying up land around Tule Lake Valley. There had been considerable speculation in that vicinity since the draining of the lake. The Ides had received offers before, but never anything like the one made by these men. Hettie was shrewd enough to grasp that some situation had arisen, such as the possibility of a railroad from Klamath Falls, to increase the value of the Ide property enormously. She neither refused nor accepted the offer, saying that control of the ranches was in her brother’s hand. Her amazement and gratification, however, lingered after their departure. She scarcely ever thought of herself as sharing equally with Ben the fortune their father had left them.

  Hettie happened to be out on the farm somewhere when her people returned; and upon coming back to the house, hot and dusty and weary, what was her surprise and joy to be waylaid in the hall by her mother and Ina. It took no second glance to see that the little trip had been happily beneficial, especially to her mother.

  When they reached the sitting room, Hettie was on the verge of tears. Sight of Ben then was too much for her, and she ran weeping into his outstretched arms.

  “Oh — Ben,” she cried, “I — I fell down on running the ranch! . . . The silly fools nagged me — to death!”

  “Who?” queried Ben, suddenly aghast.

  “The boys — and some of the men — too. They just — made my life — miserable.”

  “Well! The lazy sons-of-guns!” ejaculated Ben. “I’ll fire the whole caboodle of them.”

  Ina’s tender solicitude and Ben’s anger at once calmed Hettie.

  “Oh no, Ben. It’s not so — so bad as that. They only hatched every pretense and excuse to approach me — just to make outrageous love.”

  Ben’s haw-haw mingled with Ina’s scream of laughter. Hettie had to accept that mirth with the best grace possible. Her troubles were over, at last, and she could not but forgive the suitors who had so besieged her. The high spirits of Ben and Ina and the certain evidence of her mother’s improvement were sufficient to lift Hettie to the heights.

  “What’d you bring me from Frisco?” she asked presently, with all a child’s eagerness.

  “Candy,” replied Ben, with a smile.

  “A new spring dress and hat — oh, adorable,” replied Ina.

  “Well, daughter, I fetched you somethin’ too,” added Mrs. Ide, beaming.

  “I — I’m almost glad you went off and left me alone,” responded Hettie, gratefully.

  Nothing was said during supper about the main object of the journey to San Francisco. Ina told of their trips to the stores, and Ben of their jaunts to seashore and parks and theaters. Later, when Mrs. Ide had retired, Ben took Hettie into Ina’s room, where the ecstatic Blaine gloated over his new toys.

  “Well, Hettie, your sending us off on this trip means a great change in our lives,” began Ben, gravely.

  “Oh — Ben!” faltered Hettie.

  Here Ina interposed to reprove Ben for his abruptness and lack of tact. Then she added, “Hettie dear, it’s nothing to frighten you.”

  “Winter and spring are too damp and cold for mother,” continued Ben. “To keep her here longer will endanger her life.”

  “Then we certainly won’t keep her,” replied Hettie, resolutely.

  “Exactly. Ina and I got that far, anyway, in our decision.”

  “Will mother — be all right in some other climate?” queried Hettie, with hesitation.

  “She’ll get well,” answered Ben. “She needs a mild, dry, warm climate in winter and a high, dry, bracing climate in summer.”

  “Where can we find them?”

  “Easy enough. But the thing that stumps Ina and me is how to decide what’s best to do.”

  “That’s easy enough,” returned Hettie. “I will go with mother and live with her.”

  “Sure you will. But that doesn’t solve the problem.”

  “Surely we can afford it, Ben?”

  “I reckon. However, the point is I don’t want to be separated from mother and you. Neither does Ina. That much is settled. We won’t be separated.”

  Hettie gazed with suddenly dim eyes at her brother. He and Ina felt what she had not spoken. They were both in dead earnest, and Ina’s color had faded. Evidently they had talked this thing over, to a conclusion that was momentous.

  “Ben, you can’t imagine how happy you make me,” said Hettie, feelingly. “Separation would be hard. I have only mother and you and yours to live for. . . . Then, if you won’t let mother and me leave you . . .”

  “We’ve sure got to go with you,” interrupted Ben, forcibly. “But what to do is sure a sticker.”

  “Sell — out!” said Hettie, huskily.

  “But we’ve lived here all our lives. This land has made us prosperous. It’s home.”

  “Ben, it’d not be home without mother.”

  “No. And it wouldn’t be the same if we were all separated. But I’d hate to sacrifice the land just to get a quick sale. And we’ll need money, wherever we go.”

  “Ben, I can sell this lake property of ours for two hundred thousand,” declared Hettie.

  Her brother stared at her. At length he spoke: “Hettie, don’t make wild statements like that. It’s hard enough on me to make decisions.”

  “I can sell for that to-morrow,” grandly added Hettie, conscious of a sudden tremendous importance.

  “Now I know she’s crazy,” wailed Ben, turning to his wife.

  “She looks pretty sure and sane to me, Bennie boy. You’re only a wild-horse hunter, anyway. Hettie and I have the business brains.”

  “By George!” cried Ben, leaping up. “You’re right. But I can’t believe we could sell for that.”

  “It’s true, Ben. Listen,” said Hettie, and then briefly told about the offer of the Klamath Falls syndicate.

  “Horses not included in the deal? Not California Red?” queried Ben, beginning to manifest signs of extreme excitement.

  “Their offer embraced land and buildings on this ranch, and all the Ide cattle. But not horses.”

  “Girls, it’s settled, it’s done!” cried Ben, giving way to the force of something that had been impelling him. He kissed Ina and hugged Hettie. He tore up and down the room. He woke little Blaine, who had fallen asleep on the bed amid his toys.