Part 64

"I know."

"How did you learn it?"

"A reporter came boiling over the ridge about noon to-day, wanting me to give him the names which Dunn had given me. I was strongly tempted to do as he asked me to--you know these newspaper men are sometimes the best kind of detectives for running down criminals; but on second thought I concluded to wait until I had discussed the matter with you. I haven't much faith in the county authorities."

"Ordinarily I would have my doubts myself," replied Redfield, "but the whole country is roused, and we're going to round up these men this time, sure. The best men and the big papers all over the West are demanding an exercise of the law, and the reward we have offered--" He paused, suddenly. "By-the-way, that reward will come to you if you can bring about the arrest of the criminals."

"The reward should go to Dunn's family," replied the ranger, soberly. "Poor chap, he's sacrificed himself for the good of the State."

"That's true. His family is left in bad shape--"

Cavanagh broke off the conversation suddenly. "I must go back to--" he had almost said "back to Wetherford." "My patient needs me!" he exclaimed.

"How does he seem?"

"He's surely dying. In my judgment he can't last the night, but so long as he's conscious it's up to me to be on the spot."

Redfield walked slowly back across the river, thinking on the patient courage of the ranger.

"It isn't the obvious kind of thing, but it's courage all the same," he said to himself.

Meanwhile Lize and Virginia, left alone beside the fire, had drawn closer together.

The girl's face, so sweet and so pensive, wrought strongly upon the older woman's sympathy. Something of her own girlhood came back to her. Being freed from the town and all its associations, she became more considerate, more thoughtful. She wished to speak, and yet she found it very hard to begin. At last she said, with a touch of mockery in her tone: "You like Ross Cavanagh almost as well as I do myself, don't you?"

The girl flushed a little, but her eyes remained steady. "I would not be here if I did not," she replied.

"Neither would I. Well, now, I have got something to tell you--something I ought to have told you long ago--something that Ross ought to know. I intended to tell you that first day you came back, but I couldn't somehow get to it, and I kept putting it off and putting it off till--well, then I got fond of you, and every day made it harder." Here she made her supreme effort. "Child, I'm an old bluff. I'm not your mother at all."

Lee stared at her in amazement. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean your real mother died when you was a tiny little babe. You see, I was your father's second wife; in fact, you weren't a year old when we married. Ed made me promise never to let you know. We were to bring you up just the same as if you was a child to both of us. Nobody knows but Reddy. I told him the day we started up here."

The girl's mind ran swiftly over the past as she listened. The truth of the revelation reached her instantly, explaining a hundred strange things which had puzzled her all her life. The absence of deep affection between herself and Lize was explained. Their difference in habit, temperament, thought--all became plain. "But my mother!" she said, at last. "Who was my mother?"

"I never saw her. You see, Ed came into the country bringing you, a little motherless babe. He always said your mother was a fine woman, but I never so much as saw a picture of her. She was an educated woman, he said--a Southern woman--and her name was Virginia, but that's about all I can tell you of her. Now, I am going to let Ross know all of this as soon as I can. It will make a whole lot of difference in what he thinks of you."

She uttered all this much as a man would have done, with steady voice and with bright eyes, but Lee Virginia could feel beneath her harsh inflections the deep emotion which vibrated there, and her heart went out toward the lonely woman in a new rush of tenderness. Now that she was released from the necessity of excusing her mother's faults--faults she could now ignore; now that she could look upon her as a loyal friend, she was moved to pity and to love, and, rising, she went to her and put her arm about her neck, and said: "This won't make any difference. I am going to stay with you and help you just the same."

The tears came to the old woman's eyes, and her voice broke as she replied: "I knew you would say that, Lee Virginia, but all the same I don't intend to have you do any such thing. You've got to cut loose from me altogether, because some fine chap is going to come along one of these days, and he won't want me even as a step-mother-in-law. No, I have decided that you and me had better live apart. I'll get you a place to live up in Sulphur, where I can visit you now and again; but I guess I am elected to stay right here in the Fork. They don't like me, and I don't like them; but I have kind o' got used to their ways of looking at me sidewise; they don't matter as much as it would up there in the city."

Lee turned back wistfully toward the story of her mother. "Where did my mother meet my father? Do you know that?"

"No, I don't. It was a runaway match, Ed said. I never did know who her folks were--only I know they thought she was marrying the wrong man."

The girl sighed as her mind took in the significance of her mother's coming to this wild country, leaving all that she knew and loved behind. "Poor little mother. It must have been very hard for her."

"I am afraid she did have a hard time, for Ed admitted to me that he hadn't so much as a saddle when he landed in the State. He hadn't much when I met him first, but everybody liked him. He was one of the handsomest men that ever jumped a saddle. But he was close-mouthed. You never could get anything out of him that he didn't want to tell, and I was never able to discover what he had been doing in the southern part of the State."

As she pondered on her changed relationship to Lize, Lee's heart lightened. It would make a difference to Ross. It would make a difference to the Redfields. Traitorous as it seemed, it was a great relief--a joy--to know that her own mother, her real mother, had been "nice." "She must have been nice or Lize would not have said so," she reasoned, recalling that her stepmother had admitted her feeling of jealousy.

At last Lize rose. "Well, now, dearie, I reckon we had better turn in. It is getting chilly and late."

As they were about to part at the door of the tent Virginia took Lize's face between her hands. "Good-night, mother," she said, and kissed her, to show her that what she had said would not make any difference.