Hidden Gold, Wilder Anthony [best fiction books to read TXT] 📗

"Well, good luck to you, Gordon." Trowbridge slapped his friend on the shoulder, and they separated.

"Frank, can you let me have a bed?" Wade asked of the hotel proprietor, a freckled Irishman.

"Sure; as many as you want."

"One will do, Frank; and another thing," the ranchman said guardedly. "I'll need an extra horse to-night, and I don't want to be seen with him until I need him. Can you have him tied behind the school-house a little before nine o'clock?"

"You bet I can!" The Irishman slowly dropped an eyelid, for the school-house was close by the jail.

Wade tumbled into the bed provided for him and slept like a log, having that happy faculty of the healthy man, of being able to sleep when his body needed it, no matter what impended against the hour of awakening.

When he did wake up, the afternoon was well advanced, and after another hearty meal he walked over to the Purnells' to pass the time until it was late enough for him to get to work.

"Now, Gordon will tell you I'm right," Mrs. Purnell proclaimed triumphantly, when the young man entered the cottage. "I want Dorothy to go with me to call on Miss Rexhill, and she doesn't want to go. The idea! When Miss Rexhill was nice enough to call on us first."

Mrs. Purnell set much store upon her manners, as the little Michigan town where she was born understood good breeding, and she had not been at all annoyed by Helen Rexhill's patronage, which had so displeased Wade. To her mind the Rexhills were very great people, and great people were to be expected to bear themselves in lofty fashion. Dorothy had inherited her democracy from her father and not from her mother, who, indeed, would have been disappointed if Helen Rexhill appeared any less than the exalted personage she imagined herself to be.

"Oh, I'd like to meet her well enough, only...." Dorothy stopped, unwilling to say before Wade that she did not consider the Rexhills sufficiently good friends of his, in the light of recent developments, for them to be friends of hers.

"Of course, go," he broke in heartily. "She's not responsible for what her father does in the way of business, and I reckon she'd think it funny if you didn't call."

"There now!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed triumphantly.

"All right, I'll go." In her heart Dorothy was curious to meet the other woman and gauge her powers of attraction. "We'll go to-morrow, mother."

Quite satisfied, Mrs. Purnell made some excuse to leave them together, as she usually did, for her mother heart had traveled farther along the Road to To-morrow than her daughter's fancy. She secretly hoped that the young cattleman would some day declare his love for Dorothy and ask for her hand in marriage.

In reply to the girl's anxious questions Wade told her of what had happened since their meeting on the trail, as they sat together on the porch of the little cottage. She was wearing a plain dress of green gingham, which, somehow, suggested to him the freshness of lettuce. She laughed a little when he told her of that and called him foolish, though the smile that showed a dimple in her chin belied her words.

"Then the posse is still at the ranch?" she asked.

"I think so. If they are, we are going to run them off to-morrow morning, or perhaps to-night. I've had enough of this nonsense and I mean to meet Moran halfway from now on."

"Yes, I suppose you must," she admitted reluctantly. "But do be careful, Gordon."

"As careful as I can be under the circumstances," he said cheerfully, and told her that his chief purpose in coming to see her was to thank her again for the service she had rendered him.

"Oh, you don't need to thank me for that. Do you know"—she puckered up her brows in a reflective way—"I've been thinking. It seems very strange to me that Senator Rexhill and Moran should be willing to go to such lengths merely to get hold of this land as a speculation. Doesn't it seem so to you?"

"Yes, it does, but that must be their reason."

"I'm not so sure of that, Gordon. There must be something more behind all this. That's what I have been thinking about. You remember that when Moran first came here he had an office just across the street from his present one?"

"Yes. Simon Barsdale had Moran's present office until he moved to Sheridan. You were his stenographer for a while, I remember." Wade looked at her curiously, wondering what she was driving at.

"Moran bought Mr. Barsdale's safe." Her voice sounded strange and unnatural. "I know the old combination. I wonder if it has been changed?"

"Lem Trowbridge was saying only this morning," said Wade thoughtfully, for he was beginning to catch her meaning, "that if we could only get proof of something crooked we might...."

"Well, I think we can," Dorothy interrupted.

They looked searchingly at each other in the gathering dusk, and he tried to read the light in her eyes, and being strangely affected himself by their close proximity, he misinterpreted it. He slipped his hand over hers and once more the desire to kiss her seized him. He let go of her hand and was just putting his arm around her shoulders when, to his surprise, she appeared suddenly indignant.

"Don't!"

He was abashed, and for a moment neither said a word.

"What is the combination?" he finally asked hoarsely.

"I promised Mr. Barsdale never to tell any one." Her lips wreathed into a little smile. "I'll do it myself."

"No, you won't." Wade shook his head positively. "Do you suppose I'm going to let you steal for me? It will be bad enough to do it myself; but necessity knows no law. Well, we'll let it go for the present then. Don't you think of doing it, Dorothy. Will you promise me?"

"I never promise," she said, smiling again, and ignoring her last words in womanly fashion, "but if you don't want me to...."

"Well, I don't," he declared firmly. "Let it rest at that. We'll probably find some other way anyhow."

She asked him then about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's subtleties, and he failed to guess her thoughts and walked away, leaving her, as Shakespeare put it, to