long eyes regarded her curiously. "Why, don't you know? Hasn't—hasn't it followed him?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," said the schoolma'am, calmly facing the stare. "If you mean a dog, he doesn't own one, I believe. Cowboys don't seem to take to dogs; they're afraid they might be mistaken for sheep-herders, perhaps—and that would be a disgrace."
Miss Forsyth leaned back and her eyes, half closed as they were, saw Weary away down by the door. "No, I didn't mean a dog. I'm glad if he has gotten quite away from—he's such a dear fellow! Even if he did—but I never believed it, you know. If only he had trusted me, and stayed to face—But he went without telling me goodbye, even, and we—But he was afraid, you see—"
Miss Satterly also glanced across to where Weary stood gloomily alone, his hands thrust into his pockets. "I really can't imagine Mr. Davidson as being afraid," she remarked defensively.
"Oh, but you don't understand! Will is physically brave—and he was afraid I—but I believed in him, always—even when—" She broke off suddenly and became prettily diffident. "I wonder why I am talking to you like this. But there is something so sympathetic in your very atmosphere—and seeing him so unexpectedly brought it all back—and it seemed as if I must talk to someone, or I should shriek." (Myrtle Forsyth was often just upon the point of "shrieking") "And he was so glad to see me—and when I told him I never believed a word—But you see, leaving the way he did—"
"Well," said Miss Satterly rather unsympathetically, "and how did he leave, then?"
Miss Forsyth twisted her watch chain and hesitated. "I really ought not to say a word—if you really don't know—what he did—"
"If it's to his discredit," said the schoolma'am, looking straight at her, "I certainly don't know. It must have been something awful, judging from your tone. Did he"—she spoke solemnly—"did he _mur-r_der ten people, old men and children, and throw their bodies into—a well?"
It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as disconcerted as she felt. She did, however, show a rather catty look in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice. "There are other crimes—beside—murder," she reminded. "I won't tell what it was—but—but Will found it necessary to leave in the night! He did not even come to tell me goodbye, and I have—but now we have met by chance, and I could explain—and so," she smiled tremulously at the schoolma'am, "I know you can understand—and you will not mention to anyone what I have told you. I'm too impulsive—and I felt drawn to you, somehow. I—I would die if I thought any harm could come to Will because of my confiding in you. A woman," she added pensively, "has so much to bear—and this has been very hard—because it was not a thing I could talk over—not even with my own mother!" Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little that was definite, and implying a great deal. This method saved her the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if she came out plainly. She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma'am and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with what she had accomplished.
Miss Satterly sat very still, scarce thinking consciously. She stared at Weary and tried to imagine him a fugitive from his native town, and in spite of herself wondered what it was he had done. It must be something very bad, and she shrank from the thought. Then Cal Emmett came up to ask her for a dance, and she went with him thankfully and tried to forget the things she had heard.
Weary, after dancing with every woman but the one he wanted, and finding himself beside Myrtle Forsyth with a frequency that puzzled him, felt an unutterable disgust for the whole thing. After a waltz quadrille, during which he seemed to get her out of his arms only to find her swinging into them again, and smiling up at him in a way he knew of old, he made desperately for the door; snatched up the first gray hat he came to—which happened to belong to Chip—and went out into the dewy darkness.
It was half an hour before he could draw the hostler of the Dry Lake stable away from a crap game, and it was another half hour before he succeeded in overcoming Glory's disinclination for a gallop over the prairie alone.
But it was two hours before Miss Forsythe gave over watching furtively the door, and it was daylight before Chip Emmett found a gray hat under the water bench—a hat which he finally recognized as Weary's and so appropriated to his own use.
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