Hidden Gold Part 16

Helen made no direct reply to this, and for awhile Dorothy allowed her mother to sustain the conversation. She had no doubt but that Moran was back of it all, and she was thinking of what Lem Trowbridge had said; that if they could only "get something on" Moran and the Senator, a solution of the whole problem would be at hand. She thought that she had detected a defensive note in Helen's voice, and she was wondering why it should have been there.

"But you haven't answered my question yet about Mr. Moran," Helen presently challenged her. "You seemed to have something more in mind than what you said. Would you mind telling me?"

Dorothy looked steadily but not offensively at her.

"Oh, it's nothing, Miss Rexhill. I was only thinking that he has gone rather far: been very zealous in your father's interests. Probably...."

"Why, Dorothy--!" her mother interposed, in a shocked tone.

"Miss Rexhill asked me, mother, and you know that I always speak frankly."

"Yes, do go on," Helen urged, with even an added touch of sweetness in her manner. "I really want to know. I am so out of touch with things here, so ill informed."

"Well, you can sit here at the windows and learn all you wish to know.

There isn't a man in this town that would see Gordon arrested and not fight to free him. Feeling is running high here now. You know, it's something like a violin string. You can stretch it just so far and then it snaps. That's all."

"Dorothy, I'm really mortified that you...."

"Oh, you've no occasion to be, Mrs. Purnell," Helen interrupted, smiling. "I asked for the plain truth, you know."

Mrs. Purnell laughed feebly.

"Dorothy has known Mr. Wade so long and we both like him so well that she can't bear to hear a word against him," she explained. Her sense of _lese majeste_ was running away with her judgment, and Dorothy shot an irritated glance at her. "Not that I think he did it at all, you understand; but...."

"Oh, perfectly," declared Helen, with rising color and an equal feeling of annoyance. "Oh, dear me, do look at my poor letters!"

A gust of wind, stronger than any that had come before, had swept the weight to the floor and scattered letter paper, envelopes, and blotter about the room. Helen was just able to catch the writing-pad as it slid to the floor, while Dorothy and her mother laughingly salvaged the rest. The incident happily relieved the awkward drift of their conversation, and they all felt relieved.

"Well, now, did you ever?" Mrs. Purnell e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, looking at the lithographed blotter, which she held in her hand. "I declare this picture of a little girl reminds me of Dorothy when she was that age."

"Oh, mother!"

"Really?" Helen broke in. "How interesting. I hadn't noticed the picture. Do let me see."

To be courteous, she agreed with Mrs. Purnell that there was a strong likeness, which Dorothy laughingly denied.

"I guess I know what you looked like when you were five better than you do," Mrs. Purnell declared. "It's the image of you as you were then, and as Miss Rexhill says, there is a facial resemblance even yet."

"Perhaps you would like to take it with you, then," Helen suggested, to Mrs. Purnell's delight, who explained that the only picture she had of Dorothy at that age had been lost.

"If it wouldn't deprive you?"

"No, indeed. You must take it. I have a large blotter in my writing-pad, so I really don't need that one at all. So many such things are sent to father that we always have more than we can use up."

When Dorothy and her mother left the hotel, urged homeward by the first big drops of the coming rain, Mrs. Purnell tucked the blotter in the bosom of her dress, happy to have the suggestion of the picture to recall the days when her husband's presence cheered them all. Her world had been a small one, and little things like this helped to make it bright.

Soon afterward the supper bell rang, and during the meal Helen told the Senator, who seemed somewhat morose and preoccupied, of the visit she had had.

"Sure tiresome people. Goodness! I was glad to see them at first because I thought they would help me to pa.s.s the afternoon, but instead I was bored to death. That little minx is crazy about Gordon, though. I could see that."

"Um!"

"And the worst of it is that she just fits into the scenery here, and I don't. You know, father, I never could wax enthusiastic over shooing the cows to roost and things like that."

"Um!"

"I feel like a deaf person at a concert, here in this town."

This remark brought a wry laugh from her father, and Helen smiled.

"Well, I've made you laugh, anyway," she said. "You're frightfully grouchy this evening."

"My dear, I'm busy, very busy, and I haven't time to think of trifles.

I'll be at it most of the night."

"Oh, shall you? Goodness, that's cheerful. I wish I had never come to this awful little place. I suppose I must go back to my letters for something to do. And, father," she added, as he lingered with her for a moment in the hallway, "the Purnells seem to think that you and Mr.

Moran had better not go too far. The people here are very much wrought up."

He patted her shoulder affectionately.

"You leave all that to me and go write to your mother."

There was nothing else for her to do, so she returned to the parlor.

When she had finished her letters, she idly picked up a week-old copy of a Denver newspaper which lay on the table and glanced through the headlines. She was yawningly thinking of bed, when Moran came into the room.

"Oh, are you and father through at last?"

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "That is, we're through upstairs. I'm on my way over to the office to straighten up a few loose ends before I turn in. There's no rest for the weary, you know."

"Don't let me keep you, then," she said dryly, as he lingered. "I'm going to bed."

"You're not keeping me. I'm keeping myself." He quite understood her motive, but he was not thin-skinned, and he had learned that he had to make his opportunities with her. "Your father told me you were getting anxious."

"Not anxious, tired."

"Things are getting a little warm here, but before there's any real danger we expect to have the soldiers here to take charge."

He rather ostentatiously displayed his bandaged wrist, hoping to win her sympathy, but she professed none. Instead, she yawned and tapped her lips with her fingers, and her indifference piqued him.

"I was talking with Dorothy Purnell this afternoon," Helen finally remarked, eyeing him lazily, "and she seems to be of the opinion that you'll have hard work arresting Gordon Wade. I rather hope that you do."

"Well--" He teetered a little on his feet and stroked his mustache. "We may have, at that. Miss Purnell is popular and she can make a lot of trouble for us if she wants to. Being very fond of Wade, she's likely to do all that she can."

"Would she really have so much influence?" Helen asked, carefully guarding her tongue.

He laughed softly as though amused at the thought.

"Influence? Evidently you don't realize what a good looking girl means in a frontier town like this. She's part sister, part mother, sweetheart and a breath from Heaven to every man in Crawling Water. On that account, with one exception, I've had to import every last one of my men. The exception is Tug Bailey, who's beyond hope where women are concerned. To all the rest, Dorothy Purnell is 'Wade's girl,' and they wouldn't fight against her, or him, for all the money in Wyoming."