Ide, I hope you remember me,” said Ina, advancing with a little contraction of her heart. Faintly she grasped at an affinity that brought her close to this woman.
“Ina Blaine!” exclaimed Mrs. Ide, in a slightly quavering voice, making haste to adjust her spectacles. “I ought to remember. That name is almost as familiar as Hettie’s. . . . So you are Ina! I wouldn’t have known you. Welcome home to Tule Lake, my dear. It was like you to come to us at once. I told them last night you’d never change.”
“Oh, I’m changed, grown up, Mrs. Ide,” replied Ina, taking the proffered hand, and then yielding to a warm impulse she kissed the faded cheek. “But I’m happy to be home, and I—I intend to be as I used to be.”
“Of course you will,” responded Mrs. Ide. “Even though you are a young woman now. Come, sit here an’ tell us all about yourself.”
Ina had never before found such inspiring listeners and she talked for an hour, telling all about her school life, and just touching at the end on her arrival home.
“It’s good to hear you, Ina,” murmured Mrs. Ide. “I hope an’ pray the changes that have come will not make you unhappy.”
“I shall not let myself be unhappy,” replied Ina, spiritedly. “I confess I’d have liked to find my home—my people the same as when I left them. But—they’re not. I’ll adjust myself to it.”
“Are you going to come to see us occasionally?” inquired Mrs. Ide, gravely.
“Same as I used to,” replied Ina, with feeling.
“Your father will not like that, Ina. He is a hard man, as hard in some ways as Amos Ide.”
“We have already clashed,” said Ina, naïvely. “To my discomfiture.”
“Mother, Ina’s as spunky as when she used to quarrel with Ben,” spoke up Hettie, impulsively.
Manifestly it was an unfortunate allusion, for the older woman appeared to retreat within herself. Ina regretted the reference to Ben, for she knew she must say something about him, and was at a loss.
“Yes, I remember Ben and our quarrels as well as anything,” she replied, simply. “It would be nice to—to talk over old times, but we’ll leave that till another day. Good-by, Mrs. Ide. I shall come to see you often. . . . Hettie, will you walk down the lane with me? I’m going to meet Marvie and Dall.”
“That I shall,” rejoined Hettie, heartily.
But once out of the house, Ina felt the constraint that bound Hettie as well as herself. She would make an end of that. But despite her overtures, it was not until they were well down the lane that she hit upon the right way to reach Hettie.
Suddenly turning to Hettie, she had queried, bluntly: “Now tell me about Ben.”
Hettie turned so pale that the freckles stood out prominently upon her face, and her eyes filled with tears.
“You’ve heard?” she asked, huskily.
“A lot of gossip,” replied Ina, swiftly. “I don’t believe a single word of it. Hettie, tell me the truth.”
“Oh, Ina—that’s so good of you,” burst out Hettie, almost sobbing, and she seized Ina’s hand. “There’s not so much to tell. Ben loved the wild country and wild horses. He couldn’t help it. Father drove him away from home—made an outcast of him. It broke mother’s heart—and it’s breaking mine. All kinds of lies have been flying around about Ben. Of late, since that man Setter came to Tule Lake, they’re growing worse.”
“I met Setter. I don’t like him or trust him, Hettie. He said some hard things about Ben’s friend, a cowboy from Nevada.”
“I hate him, Ina,” flashed Hettie, with a dark flush. “I could tell you a reason outside of his lies about Ben.”
“You needn’t. I’ve met and seen many men these four years of my absence. . . . Hettie, I just cannot believe Ben would steal. I can’t.”
“Ina, I know he wouldn’t,” rejoined Hettie, eloquently. “It’s not easy to tell how I know, but it’s in my heart.”
“Have your family lost faith in Ben?”
“Yes, all except mother. But it’s hope now, more than real faith. Father has broken her. Ben was his pride, if you remember. The disappointment has made father old. . . . Oh, such a mess to make over a boy’s love of horses! I grow sick when I think of it.”
“Well, Hettie, it seems we’re of the same mind,” went on Ina, soberly. “Now it’s not what we must do, but how.”
“Ina, I don’t—understand you,” faltered Hettie.
“We’ve got to save Ben before it’s too late,” declared Ina, and the strange sweet warmth that seemed liberated by her conscious words brought the hot blood to her cheeks.
“We’ve got to! You and I?” asked Hettie, in low, wondering voice.
“Yes. You’re his sister and I’m—his old playmate. Probably his only friends, except the cowboy from Nevada. . . . Hettie, I’m forming impressions of that cowboy Setter claimed was a horse thief. I believe he’s some one who’s standing by Ben. He has found Ben alone, forsaken, an outcast. Perhaps he too loves wild horses. Hettie, we’ve got to see these boys, especially Ben, if we have to ride out to Forlorn River.”
“I’ll go, though father will half kill me when he finds out,” declared Hettie, in awe.
“As a last resort, we’ll do it,” returned Ina. “But let us wait. Something may happen. We might get word to Ben. He might hear of my return and want to see me.”
“He’d want to, Ina, but he’d never come, even if you sent him word,” said Hettie, sadly.
“Poor Ben! What a pass he must have come to! . . . Well, here’s the end of your lane and I think that’s Marvie coming way down the road. I’ll see you soon again, Hettie. Meanwhile remember we are archplotters.”
“Oh, Ina Blaine, I could hug you!” cried Hettie, in passionate gratefulness.
“Well, do it!”
But Hettie turned and fled down the lane.
* * * *
Saturday came and passed. Ina spent it with Marvie out in the open—a long beautiful spring day, full of laughter and excitement, yet with moments for appreciation of the soft gray sage slopes above the brook where Marvie loved to fish, and lonely intervals when she dreamed.
Through some machination of Kate’s, that almost roused Ina’s temper, Dall was not permitted to accompany them. So Ina, not to disappoint Marvie, had gone alone with him.
It was dark when they drove into the lane of Tule Lake Ranch. Ina, as she shuffled wet and disheveled into the bright kitchen, did not need sister Kate’s wry look to appreciate her appearance. She did not care. She was tired, and strangely happy. Her father’s displeasure with Marvie, her mother’s divided state of mind,
