His air was too much for the girl"s sense of humor. She laughed as she shifted the folded easel, and j.a.panned tin box she was carrying, from one hand to the other.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she cried, stifling her mirth. "And--and I do so hate hawks. They"re such villains, and--and the valley"s full of them.
But there, the valley is full of everything bad--isn"t it?"
Bill was smoothing out the paper absent mindedly. Helen"s reference had reminded him of his purpose. Her presence somehow made it difficult.
But Helen went on without apparently noticing his awkwardness.
"Tell me, Mr. Bryant, what was it brought you out this way, when you ought to be worrying around getting wise to--to the ranching business?" she demanded.
Bill flung back his broad shoulders, and, with the movement, seemed to fling off every care. He laughed cordially.
"Say, you make me laugh," he cried. "Now if I was to tell you what had brought me this way, you"d sure get mad." Then he discovered the things she was carrying for the first time. "Say, can"t I carry those things?" he cried, reaching out and possessing himself of them without ceremony. "Why, it"s a paint box, and--and easel," he cried in awe-struck tones. "I didn"t guess you--painted."
Helen was frankly delighted with him, but she promptly denied the charge.
"Paint? "Daub," you mean. Guess Charlie tried to knock painting into my--my thick head. But he had to quit it after I reached the daubing stage. I don"t think he guesses I"ll ever win prizes at it," she went on, moving up toward the pine. "Still, I might sell some of my daubs among the worst drinking cases in the village."
But Bill felt the outrage of such possibilities.
"I"ll buy "em all," he cried. "Just name your price, I"d--I"d like to collect works of art," he added enthusiastically.
Helen turned abruptly and glared.
"How dare you laugh at me?" she cried, in mock anger. "I--I might have paid you to take one away, but I just won"t--now. So there. Works of art! How dare you? And what are you hugging that old piece of paper to death for? Give it to me. Perhaps it"s somebody"s love letter. Though folks don"t generally write love letters on blue paper. It suggests something too legal."
Bill yielded up the paper with a good-natured smile.
"It"s all mussed and dirty," he said, in a sort of apology.
"That"s up to me," cried Helen. "Anyway a woman"s curiosity don"t mind dirt."
She smoothed the paper carefully as she paused at the foot of the pine. Bill looked around.
"Is this where you paint?" he asked.
Helen nodded. She was busy with the paper. Bill occupied himself by thoroughly entangling the legs of the folded easel, in an endeavor to set it up for her. He tried it every way without success, and finally desisted with a regretful sigh.
"Was there ever----?" he began.
But Helen broke in with a sharp exclamation, which promptly drew him to her side.
"This--this isn"t a love letter at all," she cried amazedly.
"It"s--it"s--listen! "Please have ten gallons of Brandy and twenty Rye laid in the manger in my barn. Money enclosed. O"B!""
Helen looked up at the man beside her. All her laughter had gone.
There was something like tragedy in her serious eyes.
Bill was staring at the paper.
"Why that"s--that"s an order for--liquor from O"Brien," he said, with the air of having made a discovery.
His brilliancy pa.s.sed the girl by. She merely nodded.
"How--how did it get there?" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Why, some one must have thrown it there," Bill declared deliberately.
Again the man"s shrewdness lacked an appreciative audience. The girl made no answer. She was thinking. She moved aside and leaned against the rough trunk of the mighty pine. She was still staring at the paper.
But her movement caught the man"s attention, and the sudden realization of the proximity of the pine recalled many things to his mind. The pine. That was where he had seen Charlie, his first night in the valley. That was where the police were watching him. That was where he vanished. It was at the pine that O"Brien had warned him Charlie had gone to collect "greenbacks"--dollars. That was...o...b..ien"s order, money enclosed. Charlie had found the order and money. Then, when he was interrupted by his, Bill"s, shout he had thrown the order away.
The realization was like a douche of cold water, in spite of all he had seen and knew. Then he did a thing he hardly understood the reason of. It was the result of impulse--a sort of sub-conscious impulse. He reached out and took the weather-stained paper from the girl"s yielding hands and deliberately tore it up.
"Why--why are you doing that?" Helen asked sharply.
Bill forced himself to a smile, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I don"t know," he said. Then, after a pause: "I guess that order has been filled." A bitterness found expression in the quality of his smile. "I saw the liquor delivered at O"Brien"s last night. I saw the "runners" at work. Charlie was with them. Say, where d"you paint from?
Right here?"
Helen looked up into the man"s face. The last vestige of levity had pa.s.sed from her. Her cheeks had paled, and she was striving desperately to read behind the ill-fitting smile she beheld. Bill knew. Bill knew all that everybody believed in the valley. He had done what n.o.body else had done. He had seen Charlie at his work. A desperate feeling of tragedy was tugging at her heart. This great big soul had received the full force of the blow, and somehow she felt that it had been a staggering blow.
All her sympathy went out to him. Now she utterly ignored his question. She sat down at the foot of the tree and signed to him.
"Sit here," she said soberly. "Sit here, and--talk to me. You came out here this morning because--because you wanted to find some one to talk to. Well?"
Bill obeyed her. There was no question in his mind. She had fathomed his purpose, and he was glad. He replied to her challenge without hesitation, and strove to speak lightly. But as he went on all lightness pa.s.sed out of his manner, and the girl was left with a full view of those stirring feelings which he had not the wit nor inclination to secrete for long.
"Say," he began, "you asked what I was doing here, and guessed right--first time. Only, maybe you didn"t guess it was you I came out to find. I saw you leave your house, and figured you"d make the new church. I was going right on down to the new church. Yes, I wanted to talk--to you. You see, I came here full of a--a sort of hope, and--and in two days I find the arm of the law reaching out to grab up my brother. I"ve given up everything to come and--join. Now I"m up against it, and I can"t just think right. I sort of need some one to help me think--right. You see, I guessed you could do it."
The man was sitting with his arms clasped about his knees. His big blue eyes were staring out over the valley. But he saw nothing of it.
Helen, watching him, remained quite unconscious of the tribute to herself. She was touched. She was filled with a tender feeling she had never known before. She found herself longing to reach out and take hold of one of those big, strong hands, and clasp it tightly and protectingly in her own. She longed to tell him that she understood his grief, and was yearning to share it with him, that she might lighten the burden which had fallen upon him. But she did neither of these things. She just waited for him to continue.
"You see," he went on, slowly, with almost painful deliberation, "I kind of feel we can think two ways. One with our heads, and the other with our hearts. That"s how I seem to be thinking now. And between the two I"m all mussed up."
The girl nodded.
"I--I think I know," she said quietly.
The man"s face lit for a moment.
"I knew you would," he cried, in a burst of enthusiasm. Then the light died out of his eyes again, and he shook his head. "But you can"t," he said hopelessly. "n.o.body can, but--me. I love old Charlie."
"What does your head say?" asked Helen abruptly.
"My head?" The man released his knees and pushed back his hat, as though for her to read for herself. "Guess my head says I best get aboard a train quick, and get right back East where I came from, and--stop there."