“Oh, you — you callous girl! How can I tell him?” cried Virginia.

  “You’ve got eyes, arms, hands — and lips, everything, all about as perfect as nature bestows upon a woman.”

  “That’s nonsense. But suppose I have?”

  “Use them. You darned fool! Didn’t you fight Malpass? — Well, fight Cliff in another way. It’s a woman’s prerogative. We’re no longer vassals of men. We don’t have to wait. But since we’re so soft — since we have to love a man — since we must be mothers, it’s self-preservation or destruction.”

  “Ethel, I sent for you to help me — not drive me mad,” replied Virginia, piteously.

  “Now, dearest Virginia, I am in dead earnest,” returned Ethel, suddenly starting up. “I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world. I’m just taking an extreme view of your trouble. I don’t really believe it’s bad at all. I honestly think Cliff is as much in love with you as you are with him. And you bet I’ll know after I see him.”

  “See him? Are you going to?”

  “I am. Or I should say we are.”

  Virginia covered her face with her hands. “Let us wait a little. He might come — to me. That would help so...Ethel, you don’t know all about it.”

  “Ahuh! I thought so. — How can I help you when I don’t know anything?”

  “I am disgustingly rich,” confessed Virginia. “Father’s holdings in the south brought a great deal of money. And there’s more to come. No one here except Mr. Forrest knows it. I made him swear not to give me away. I took this place in exchange for Cottonwoods. I kept a few horses, a car, and some help just so I wouldn’t look too awfully poor. But that Payne ranch at Watrous is mine. All the rest of my horses are there. And there’s other property in the estate. I simply can’t conceal it for long. That’s another thing that scares me.”

  “Mrs. Clifton Forrest, may I inquire why in the name of Heaven that should scare you?”

  “Clifton once said he could never take anything from me. And when he finds out I’m not poor — that I’ve barrels of money, he’ll not want me.”

  “Then he’ll be a darned queer genus homo.”

  “But, Ethel, you don’t know Cliff.”

  “He belongs to the male species of our generation. You’re his wife. You’re a lovely thing — perfectly dippy about him. Considering these facts, I hardly think he’ll cast you off when he finds you’ve got barrels of coin. Men are not that way. Do you want to know what my sweetie would do in such a case?”

  “What?” asked Virginia, dubiously.

  “He’d proceed to blow some of it pronto.”

  “Cliff won’t,” replied Virginia, dejectedly. “I’d be in the seventh heaven if he would.”

  “Very well, Melancholy Mag,” said Ethel, with wise resignation. “We’ll proceed from your angle. We’ll get good and serious. We’ll plan to win Clifton. But we’ll go slow. Consider the whole matter from Clifton’s point of view. You can rely on little sister to dig that up. If he doesn’t come to see us soon, then I’ll plan to see him — quite by accident. After all, it’s a matter of love. We’re not trying to put over any crooked stuff. We’ll think always of his pride, his sensitiveness, his suffering. Now, old Owl-eyes, how does that suit you?”

  “It’s better,” said Virginia, coming out of her trance.

  “Thanks, Pollyanna. Meanwhile we must do things. We’ll ride and climb and drive. Have a perfectly spiffy time.”

  “But suppose I — we would be absent if — if Cliff came,” faltered Virginia.

  “Help! Help!...Virginia Lundeen Forrest, I tell you I’ve got to pull this off my own way or have a lunatic on my hands.”

  Chapter Twenty

  A STEP ON the dry cottonwood leaves startled Virginia, and even before she moved a familiar voice thrilled her:

  “Howdy, daughter!”

  Leaping up, blushing scarlet, she saw Clifton’s father right upon them.

  “Oh, Mr. Forrest, you — you gave me a scare.”

  “Wal, I’m sorry. The cowboys steered me down here. I sort of hated buttin’ up your pretty little party, but it’s kind of important.”

  “Ethel, this is Clifton’s father...my friend, Miss Wayne, from Denver.”

  “Think I once met you before, Miss, but I’m shore glad to meet you again,” replied the rancher. “Suppose we — all set down. It’s nice here.”

  “Virginia, if you’ll excuse me — —” began Ethel.

  “Don’t run off, young lady. I reckon, judgin’ by your looks, you’d make a handy helpmeet. An’ I’m shore goin’ to need one.”

  “Very well. You’re a good judge of character, Mr. Forrest,” said Virginia, with a laugh. “Ethel, you’re elected to stay.”

  Forrest sat down with his broad back to the tree, and he laid his hat aside. Virginia had never seen him look so well. He was ten years younger. The somber shade had gone from the dark hazel eyes that were so poignantly like Clifton’s. He was clean-shaven and neatly garbed.

  “Wal, it shore ain’t easy to begin this confab,” he said, with a smile that made him winning. “But I reckon I’ve got to.”

  “I am all curiosity, Mr. Forrest,” returned Virginia, who was thrilling all over. “Not to say sympathetic.”

  “Lass, I’ve been out to see Cliff,” he announced, tragically.

  Virginia’s hand flashed to her breast, and her eyes and lips must have added to that gesture.

  “Aw, don’t look scared. Cliff’s all right,” he added, hastily. “Fact is I had the jar of my life. I never was so surprised. He’s well! — He’s a strappin’ big fellow, dark as an Indian. I just couldn’t get over it...Now, Virginia, for that good news you shore ought to call me dad, shouldn’t you?”

  “I — surely should — dad,” replied Virginia, huskily. She could have kissed him, and probably would have but for the tight hold Ethel had on her.

  “Good! That will tickle mother. Do you know, Virginia, I’m like to grow jealous of you...Wal, Cliff wasn’t surprised at all to see me. He was as nice an’ kind as if I’d — as if nothin’ had never happened between us. Asked all about mother, an’ shore wanted to see her bad. But he can’t leave the sheep just now. An’ I reckon mother will have to go over to Sycamore.”

  “Oh, I hope she goes soon,” burst out Virginia.

  “Huh! Trust that little lady. Wal, I was pretty gingerly about tacklin’ Cliff. You see, he had me buffaloed. There’s sure been a vast change in that boy. So I beat around the bush, talkin’ a lot, to get my wind.”

  “Did you speak — of me?” queried Virginia, breathlessly.

  “I should smile. You were my best bet. First I told him you owned the sheep he’d been drivin’. He said Lopez had told him. An’ then Cliff said it wasn’t so good for him, as he needed his wages an’ shore couldn’t take money from you.”

  “Oh!” cried Virginia, poignantly, clinging to Ethel’s comforting hand.

  “An’ I told him that was just as well, ‘cause you was now a poor girl. He looked blank. Then he laughed. But I knocked him open-mouthed by tellin’ him you had deeded Cottonwoods back to me. He cussed me, an’ wanted to know how that could be. He’d never heard of your father killin’ Malpass, an’ then dyin’ from gun-shots. That made him sober. He whispered, ‘Poor Virginia!’ An’ then he wanted to know what had become of you. I told him how you’d gone to live where we used to. That you had a few horses, an old car, an’ not much money. You’d have to sell the sheep presently. I could see he was sick about it, an’ shore mad at me, but he didn’t cuss me again. He set there on the stump an’ thought. Finally he looked up with the saddest eyes I ever seen an’ said...What do you think he said?”

  “I can’t imagine. Hurry!” whispered Virginia. In the excitement of the story Ethel had arisen from her elbows to get an arm around her, to hold her tight, a support she surely needed.

  “‘When did she divorce me?’ he asked. I told him you hadn’t divorced him at all...’My Gawd!’ he said, an’ showed me a letter some months old that he hadn’t got till his shepherd lad fetched it out from San Luis. It was not signed, but I recognized Malpass’ handwritin’. The letter told of Virginia divorcin’ you an’ marryin’ Malpass...What a skunk an’ greaser he was!”

  “Oh, despicable! That’s — the worst!” panted Virginia.

  “Wal, it was good Cliff didn’t get that letter way out on the desert, months ago. ‘Cause it shore would have killed him.”

  “You — you think — Cliff cared?” asked Virginia, as if strangling to force utterance.

  “Cared? My Heaven! Lass, the boy worshiped you. I saw that long ago, right after he first came back. Mother put me on to it...I hated you because of that very thing. I accused him of it. All the time I could see his heart in his eyes...Wal, it shore hurts me to think of that now — for Cliff’s love for you saved his life.”

  “Oh, it couldn’t be!” cried Virginia, wildly.

  “Don’t take on so, lass. Shore you must let me tell you. Most of all, let me ask help of you.”

  “But you mustn’t make such rash statements. I can’t believe them. But I — I might. And then how could I bear — —”

  “Child, I’m tellin’ you the truth,” expostulated Forrest.

  “Oh, how can you say that?”

  “Cliff told me. Told me right out, just as cool an’ calm as could be. He said: ‘You needn’t tell her, dad. No use to distress her further. Her heart is big, an’ I don’t want her sorry for me.’...Wal, then I — —”

  “You — you — —” gasped Virginia, who divined what was coming.

  “Shore. I told him plumb straight that it wasn’t all to get free of Malpass you married him.”

  Virginia, in default of vocal powers, squeezed Ethel into asking, “And then what did Cliff say?”

  “‘Wal, dad,’ he said, cool an’ easy, ‘you never was very strong in the head. An’ I’ll thank you not to talk that way. Especially to anyone else.’ It shore flabbergasted me, so I shut up. But I was deep stirred an’ I asked him to forgive me for disgracin’ him an’ turnin’ him out when he was ill an’ crippled...My Gawd! it hurt me to ask. That was damnin’ me black. But once I got it out I felt better.”

  “Did he forgive you?” asked Virginia.

  Forrest showed emotion. “Never a harsh word, lass. He told me, yes, an’ that it made him happy to have everything straightened out. But he added that he expected me to forgive you, too. An’ I said I had done that long ago. Wal, that nerved me for the last, an’ I begged him to come home to Cottonwoods!”

  “He refused,” divined Virginia.

  “‘No, dad,’ he said, simply, ‘I can’t do that. I’ll see mother often when I’m here, an’ you too, if you want, but my home is the desert henceforth.’ I wanted to rave an’ swear. A sheep-herder! My son Clifton! A sheep-herder like those peons!...But somethin’ about him nailed my lips. You’ll feel it when you see him.”

  “See Clifton! — I’ll never have the courage now,” moaned Virginia.

  Forrest’s face fell. “Lass, you love him, don’t you?”

  She made a hopeless, helpless gesture, more eloquent than any affirmation.

  “You’re my last card, Virginia,” he went on. “If you can’t persuade Cliff to come back to us — mother an’ you an’ me, I’m ruined, an’ it’ll finish mother.”

  “I would persuade with the last drop of my heart’s blood,” flashed Virginia, passionately, “if it would be of use. But I know Clifton Forrest. He is beyond us.”

  “Lass, I felt that, too. But you ain’t takin’ into account the one big factor. If he learns you love him — from your own lips — he will come back to us. But at that, I think he’ll stick to the sheep an’ the desert. I’ll never forget him when he said, ‘I’m a sheep-herder.’ You’d think he thought he was President...Wal, lass, I’ve laid my cards on the table, an’ you’ve got the ace. Will you play it for us?”

  “I’ll do anything,” answered Virginia, feeling herself abandoned to the fates, now aloft on the pinnacle of hope and again lost in the depths of despair.

  Forrest kissed her hand with quaint old courtesy.

  “A man ought to be grateful an’ humble. Quíen sabe? Who knows, as the Mexicans have it? I once showed you my door — insulted you — to my endless shame an’ regret. Today nothin’ could do me more honor — make me happier — than to have you cross my threshold again as the wife of my son.”

  Barely had he disappeared among the trees when Ethel hugged Virginia within an inch of her life. Her rapture was infectious.

  “Oh, I want to yell — to sing — to dance — to pray!” cried Virginia. “He loves me — he loves me!...Years ago, Ethel, I used to pull the petals off the daisies and say, ‘Clifton loves me — he loves me not.’...Oh, indeed, who knows what may happen? Only God! Surely way out there on the desert He heard Clifton’s cry.”

  “Say, come down out of the clouds,” quoth the practical Ethel, quickly recovering. “We gotta get our heads together. I’m not quite so stuck on myself as I was. For that ‘I’m a sheep-herder’ stuff of Cliff’s has got my goat.”

  But Virginia was hopeless for the balance of that day, and Ethel had to do all the intriguing herself. Virginia soared back to the zenith; she could not hear, she did not talk, she was not hungry, and she would not sleep for hours.

  Next morning she felt herself to have some semblance to a rational being, and reinstated herself in Ethel’s intellectual regard. Both of them, however, were disrupted out of a possible even tenor by a message from Helen Andrews, which was brought in by Jake. Helen, on the way to Phoenix to visit her brother, had stopped off at Las Vegas to see Virginia. She had sent the message to Cottonwoods, whence it had been relayed to Virginia.

  “Isn’t that perfectly dear of her?” exclaimed Ethel.

  “Indeed it is!...I forgot to write her.”

  “Virginia, you were a jealous cat. But that girl was true blue.”

  “I really loved her. Only, Ethel, in my trouble I forgot everybody save you...Hurry and dress. We’ll drive in to town.”

  And this was how it came about that Virginia, late in the day of friendship, though not too late, found another loving and steadfast heart.

  The following morning Helen motored out in her riding-clothes, as planned, and the three had a glorious run on the horses. After luncheon Virginia’s guests mysteriously disappeared.

  It set Virginia to pondering. When they did not come back soon she went out to look for them. Nowhere in the grove! She fled to the barn, to confront Jake and Con at work on the horses that had been ridden.

  “Jake, have the girls been here?” she queried.

  Now to Virginia’s knowledge no cowboy was a good liar. She saw through Jake in a second, and as for honest Con, he could not lie.

  “What horses did you saddle?”

  “Wal, Mrs. Forrest — —”

  “Don’t call me that,” flashed Virginia, not because she did not love the name, but for the reason that when she heard it she became a scarlet-faced schoolgirl.

  “Tell me,” she commanded.

  “Shore, Miss Virginia, I reckoned somethin’ was wrong,” explained Jake, very contritely. “But not quick enough. Why, those girls could do anythin’ with a man. I shore let them have Dumpy an’ Calamity Jane without your orders. Honest to Gawd, though, I thought you was goin’ to. Not till they rode off like mad did I take a tumble.”

  “Which — way did they — go?” asked Virginia, very weakly.

  He pointed. “First they asked how to find Sycamore, an’ I told them. They rode out the lane an’ up the hill.”

  After the first shock had passed, Virginia realized that it was due only to her supercharged emotional capacity these trying days. Before she got back to the welcome shade trees she was divided between elation and gloom. Trust that sharp-eyed little Wayne lady! That was the terror of the thing, because after Ethel had seen Clifton there would never again be any doubts as to his status as a lover and husband.

  If she had been on a rack of the Spaniards she could have held herself quieter than on this interminable fiendish afternoon. She had been warped out of her orbit. She fluttered like a leaf of an aspen tree. But at last they came.

  Virginia had not been able to breathe inside the house. She had carried blanket and pillow out under the cottonwood where Clifton’s father had told his story. But never until she espied the girls coming through the grove from the barn had she sat down, and then her legs gave way under her.

  How slowly they came! Guilty wretches! But Ethel was radiant and Helen resembled the glorious Helen of ancient romance. The panic of dread, at least, stilled in Virginia’s breast. They could not be so callous as to look so marvelously mysterious and angelic if they had bad news. Nevertheless, Virginia fixed on them terrible accusing eyes.

  Helen threw sombrero, gloves, and whip to the turf, and she dropped on her knees before Virginia. Never had she looked so beautiful. Her face had the tint of a golden pearl and her eyes the sweetness of violets. Virginia had not before seen this Eastern woman under the influence of powerful emotion. Her classic beauty had never lacked soul, but now it bore the glow of grave wonder and joy, of a woman’s divine understanding of what life or death meant to her friend.

  “He loves you, Virginia. You have been blessed by the gods,” she said, softly.

  Virginia had not fortified herself for such a statement from Helen. Anything from the dynamic Ethel! But Helen Andrews was patrician. In such an hour rash or false words would have been impossible. Virginia lost her fierce strain of body and her consciousness succumbed to this attack. There was nothing she could say. Ethel plumped down on her knees beside Helen, sweetly serious for once. These two were leagued against Virginia. She surrendered and never before had she loved them as in that moment.

  “We found Clifton a wondrously changed man,” said Helen, speaking with the solemn gladness of one who had been exalted by deeper insight into human life, or confounded by a spiritual transformation. “I pray that your desert can do as much for my brother Jack. I have faith that it can. But far more than recovery of health and strength has come to Clifton. He has seen through death, Virginia. I felt so slight before him. No one could ever tell what he has gone through. But you know he has conquered self, cast out evil, seen the pitiful frailty of men and women, of our fleeting time here, of the unknown future. He is like the Shepherd we read of in our childhood...I felt ashamed to be deceitful before him — to probe at his heart, as this merciless Ethel wanted me to do and did herself...Just the mention of your name — Virginia — betrayed him to me. How you have wronged him not to know! All women are loved some time or other, or often, or once, anyway. But this soldier — this sheep-herder — has surrounded you with his soul...I think I understand men. My sweetheart went to war, the same as Clifton. He went a rollicking happy-go-lucky chap. But the war changed him. His letters over a period of months told of tremendous cataclysm of mind and heart, of spirit and faith. These letters have sustained me to bear his loss...I felt in Clifton something of what Richard wrote me. These men stand apart. We can never understand them wholly. But the war built or it destroyed. Mostly the latter, alas!...I don’t understand the desert. But so long as I live I shall never forget Clifton Forrest.”