Part 45 (1/2)

Nasmyth, who understood her, stood silent a moment or two, with one hand tightly closed. ”In that case there is nothing to be said, and I must try to face it gracefully,” he told her. ”Reproaches are not exactly becoming in the case of a discarded man.” He took off his wide hat as he held out his hand. ”Miss Hamilton, the thing naturally hurts me, but perhaps I cannot reasonably blame you. I'm not sure you could expect me to go any further now.”

”Ah!” exclaimed Violet, ”you have made it easy. I would like to a.s.sure you of my good-will.”

He held her hand a moment and swung abruptly away. He met Mrs. Acton as he went down a corridor. He stopped in front of her, and she looked at him questioningly when she saw his face.

”I have not come up to expectations. It is, perhaps, fortunate Miss Hamilton found it out when she did,” he said.

”Oh!” Mrs. Acton replied, ”I told you it would not be well to stay away very long.”

”I scarcely think the result would have been different in any case,”

Nasmyth declared.

Mrs. Acton was silent for a moment. Then she looked at him sharply.

”Where are you going now?” she asked.

”Back to the world I belong to,” answered Nasmyth,--”to the railroad, in the first case. I'm not sure that Miss Hamilton would like to feel that I was in the house.”

Mrs. Acton made no protest, and ten minutes later he had crossed the clearing and plunged into the Bush.

Mrs. Acton, crossing the veranda, laid her hand on the girl's shoulder.

”I naturally don't know what he said to you, but I can't help believing that he acquitted himself rather well,” she observed. ”After all, it must have been a little painful to him.”

”Perhaps it was,” replied Violet. ”Still, I don't think it hurt him dreadfully.”

She was more or less correct in this surmise, for, as Nasmyth walked on through the Bush, he became conscious of a faint relief.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE LAST SHOT

Laura Waynefleet was preparing breakfast, and the door of the ranch stood open, when she heard the sharp clatter of the flung-down slip-rails in the fence across the clearing jar upon the stillness of the surrounding woods. It was early in the morning, and since it was evident that, if the strangers who were approaching came from the settlement, they must have set out as soon as it was light, she decided that their business was probably urgent. Laying down the frying-pan in which she was making flapjacks, she moved toward the door, and stood watching two men ride across the clearing in the direction of the house. They did not belong to the settlement, for she had never seen either of them before, a fact which made it clear that they had not ridden in from the canon. She had quick eyes, and she noticed that, although they could not have ridden very far that morning, their horses appeared jaded, which suggested that they had made a long journey the previous day. The men appeared weary, too, and she imagined that they were not accustomed to the Bush.

As she watched them she wondered with a trace of uneasiness what their business could be, and decided that it was, perhaps, as well that her father was busy in the stable, where he could not hear them arrive.

Since Gordon usually called at the ranch when he went down to the settlement, she was more or less acquainted with what was being done at the canon and with Nasmyth's affairs, and she was on her guard when one of the strangers pulled his horse up close in front of her.

”Can we hire a couple of horses here?” he asked. ”Ours are played out.”

There was then a cayuse pony in Waynefleet's stable, but it belonged to a neighbouring rancher, and Laura had no intention of handing it over to the strangers.

”I'm afraid not,” she answered. ”The only horse on the ranch does not belong to us, and I wouldn't care to hire it out unless I had permission. Besides, I may want it myself. You could have obtained horses at the settlement hotel.”

”We didn't put up there.”

”But you must have come through the settlement. You have evidently ridden in from the railroad.”

The man laughed. ”Well,” he admitted, ”we certainly did, but we got off the trail last night, and they took us in at Bullen's ranch. Soon after we started out a chopper told us we could save a league by riding up the valley instead of by the settlement. Does the man you said the horse belonged to live in the neighbourhood?”