Claim Number One Part 16

"Well, it's scandalous!" declared Mrs. Reed. "Even it he comes back, his conduct is simply disgusting, and I'll never permit him to address a word to my daughter again!"

Agnes had drawn a little apart from them. She had no heart to come to Dr. Slavens' defense, although she knew that the charge was calumnious.

But it furnished her a sudden and new train of thought. What interest had the chief of police in circulating such a report? Was the motive for Dr. Slavens' disappearance behind that insidious attempt to discredit him, and fasten a character upon him wholly foreign to his own?

It was a matter worth looking into. Had Dr. Slavens incurred, somehow, the disfavor of the vicious element which was the backbone of the place?

And had he paid the penalty of such temerity, perhaps with his life?

Thinking over the futility of a further appeal to the authorities there, and wondering where she could turn for honest a.s.sistance beyond William Bentley, who could do no more than herself, Agnes walked away from the camp a short distance, retracing the way they had come.

"Of all the deluded, deceived creatures!" said Mrs. Reed.

"Hush-sh-s.h.!.+" said the miller's wife.

It was almost sunset when Agnes, overtaking her thoughts, halted with a start to find that she had gone half the distance back to the river.

Hoping that they would not be waiting supper on her account, she turned and hurried back.

Meanwhile, at camp there had been a little running-up of excitement, occasioned by the arrival of the Governor's son, who came on a commission from his mother and sister, bearing a note of invitation to Mrs. Reed, her sister, Mrs. Mann, and June Reed.

Jerry Boyle--for that was the name of the Governor's son--was greatly surprised to find his friend, Joe Walker, in the camp. But that only made it easier for him, he declared, seeing that Walker could vouch for him and put him on unquestionable terms at once.

"Just as if it were necessary!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, glowing with pleasure. "And you the brother of my daughter's dearest friend!"

Jerry Boyle seemed older by ten years than Walker. He was a tall man, with a little forward bend to him that gave him an awkward cast. He was dark-skinned and big-nosed, with black eyebrows which met at its bridge and appeared to threaten an invasion of that structure. Little sensitive, expressive ripples ran over his face as he talked, and that was all the time. For Boyle was as voluble as a political press-agent.

Bentley recognized him, even before he was introduced, as the man whom Walker had pointed out in the dance-house the night before. He said nothing about that, but he smiled to himself when he recalled Walker's anxiety to leave the place. It was a sort of guilty honor, he thought, such as that which was anciently supposed to stand between thieves.

As Agnes approached, Boyle was in the middle of a story of his experiences in Comanche during the days of its infancy. Mrs. Reed, busy about the stove, had grown so deeply interested that she stood with a lamb chop in her hand poised above the frying-pan, her face all smiles.

Boyle was seated on a low box, and some of the others were standing around him, hiding him from Agnes, who stopped near the stove on catching the sound of the new voice. Mrs. Reed nodded rea.s.suringly.

"It's the Governor's son," said she.

Boyle caught sight of Agnes at that moment and jumped to his feet.

Walker turned to introduce him.

"No need," said Boyle, striding forward to their great amazement, his hand outstretched. "Miss Gates and I are old friends."

Agnes drew back with a frightened, shrinking start, her face very white.

"I beg your pardon, sir!" she protested with some little show of indignation.

"This is Miss Horton," said Walker, coming to her rescue with considerable presence. "She's one of us."

Boyle stammered, staring in amazement.

"I apologize to Miss Horton," said he with something like an insolent emphasis upon the name. "The resemblance is remarkable, believe me!"

Agnes inclined her head in cold acknowledgment, as if afraid to trust her tongue, and pa.s.sed on into the tent. Boyle stared after her, and a feeling that there was something out of tune seemed to fall upon the party waiting there for supper in the red sunset.

Boyle forgot the rest of his story, and the others forgot to ask him to resume it. He repeated something about remarkable resemblances, and seemed to have fallen into a period of abstraction, from which he roused himself presently with a short, grunting laugh.

"I must be gettin' on," said he, arising and taking his cowboy hat from the table, where it lay among the plates--to the great satisfaction and delight of Mrs. Mann, who believed that she had met a real westerner at last.

"Oh, stay for supper!" pleaded June.

"You'll get enough of me when you come out to the ranch," he laughed, giving her cheek a brotherly pinch.

While Mrs. Reed would have resented such familiarity with June's cheek on the part of Mr. Walker, or even Mr. Bentley, she took it as an act of condescension and compliment on the part of the Governor's son, and smiled.

Walker went off down the street with Boyle, to speed him on his way. The Governor's son was to send out to the ranch, some forty miles distant, for a conveyance to carry Mrs. Reed and her party thither. It was to be there early on the morning of the second day from that time, that being, for that country, only an easy day's drive for a double team to a democrat wagon.

There was an uncomfortable air of uneasiness and constraint upon them during supper and afterward, a period usually filled with banter and chatter, and shrill laughter from June. They were not able to get clear of the suspicion raised by Boyle's apparent recognition of Agnes and her denial that she was Miss Gates. The two older women especially seemed to believe that Agnes had been guilty of some serious misdemeanor in her past.

"He _wasn't_ mistaken in her ident.i.ty," whispered Mrs. Reed to Mrs. Mann when Agnes went in for a wrap as the chill of night began to settle.

Mrs. Mann, charitable and romantic as she was in her mild way, shook her head sadly.

"I'm afraid he wasn't," said she.

"I'm sorry that I can't take June away from here tomorrow," lamented Mrs. Reed. "There's something hidden in that woman's life!"

Agnes had come out silently, as anyone must have come over that velvet-soft earth, which much trampling only made the softer. In the gloom she stood just behind Mrs. Reed. That pure-minded lady did not know that she was there, and was unable to see the rolling warning in her sister's eyes.

"Would you mind walking over to the stage-office with me, Mr. Bentley?"

asked Agnes. "I want to engage pa.s.sage to Meander for tomorrow."

On the way to the stage-office they talked matters over between them.

Her purpose in going to Meander was, primarily, to enlist the sheriff of the county in the search for Dr. Slavens, and, remotely, to be there when her day came for filing on a piece of land.

"I made up my mind to do it after we came back from the canon," she explained. "There's nothing more to be hoped for here. That story the police told us only strengthens my belief that a crime has been committed, and in my opinion that chief knows all about it, too."

She said nothing of Boyle and the start that his salutation had given her. Whatever Bentley thought of that incident he kept to himself. But there was one thing in connection with Boyle's visit which he felt that she should know.

"The Governor's son told Walker that he saw the doctor late last night in about the same condition as that policeman described," he said. "It came up when Walker asked Boyle to keep an eye open and let us know if he happened to run across him."

"Well, in spite of the high authority, I don't believe it," said she with undisturbed conviction.

For a little while Bentley walked on beside her in silence. When he spoke there was the softness of reverence in his voice.

"If I had the faith of a good woman in such measure as that," said he, "I'd think I was next door to heaven!"

"It is the being who inspires faith that is more admirable than the faith itself, it seems to me," she rejoined. "Faith has lived in many a guilty heart--faith in somebody, something."

"Yes," he agreed gently. And then, after a little while: "Yes."

"Will you be returning to the East soon?" she asked.

"I've been thinking some of going on to Meander to get a fuller impression of this country and see how the boy is getting on," he replied.