Again relief swept him.

"Come, be kind, Janet," he began. But she was already through the gate and skipping up the walk, vanishing in the gloom of the veranda. The screen door clapped shut. "Peeved, all right. I'll have to be extra-nice to her for a day or so until she calms down," he murmured to himself. "Must send her a box of chocolates and some magazines to-morrow to show my contrite heart; that always gets 'em. Hang it, it's time to fix a day, too. We've been engaged long enough. She sure has a figure and face--a beaut! I guess she didn't smell the booze on my breath. Got to be careful about that till we're married." He jumped into his car.

The screen door had clapped shut, but Janet had not entered. She had employed the artifice to convey the impression it had. She did not wish to go in to her work just yet, for calm as she had appeared during the interview her emotions were running full tide. Love Ed Sorenson? Marry him? She groped for and dropped into a wicker chair, her head sinking in shame and self-abas.e.m.e.nt. Never--never!

And before her mind swam another face, a face with the hair ruffled about the brow, clear of eyes and strong-lined, as she had beheld it in the moonlight of the road.

All at once she tugged at a finger, fiercely pulling off the engagement ring. She rubbed her cheek as well, with an angry hand, for the memory of kisses was burning her as by fire.

Then she sat quite motionless for a long time.

"I'll just ask father," she exclaimed. "There can't be more than a dozen Johnsons around here."

Which would have given Ed Sorenson a fresh jolt in his breathing apparatus if he had overheard, and shriveled the c.o.c.ky self-a.s.surance with which he sipped a high-ball that moment at Vorse's bar.

CHAPTER XI

JANET AND MARY

In a region as spa.r.s.ely settled by white people as San Mateo and its adjoining counties there were not, as Janet put it, more than a dozen Johnson families. In fact, there were but two, she learned from her father: one at Bowenville, the small railroad town of three hundred people, a merchant with a wife and four little children; the other a rancher on Terry Creek, whose wife was dead and who had one child, a girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age.

"I may be away at dinner time, so don't wait for me," she told her father next morning. "I'm going out in the country a few miles--and you know my car! If you'd just let me squeeze some of these patients who never pay, you could have a new car yourself."

"Mine's all right," he smiled.

"But mine isn't. Look at it. You gave it to me only because you scorned to ride in it any longer yourself. It would do for me, you said, but you prance around in a bright shiny one yourself. I blush at the row mine makes; sounds like a boiler factory; I drive only along side streets. If the patients would pay what they owe, I could ride like a lady instead of a slinking magpie."

The doctor leaned back in his chair and laughed (they were at breakfast) and remarked that old friends were best.

"Don't call my asthmatic tin beast a friend; we're bitter enemies,"

said she.

It carried her to Terry Creek about noon, however, safely enough, whither she went with a firm resolution that crushed a certain embarra.s.sment and anxiety. Suppose these people resented her inquiries.

She placed the bearded, tanned rancher at once, when she saw him working on a piece of harness before the door as she drove up. She had seen him in town at different times. She once had stopped here, too, several years previous when accompanying her father, who had been called to dress the rancher's injured hand. The girl could not have been over twelve or thirteen then, a shabby, awkward girl wearing a braid who came out to gaze shyly at her sitting in the car.

Johnson arose from the ground and approached as she alighted, while the girl's head popped into sight at the door.

"I'm Dr. Hosmer's daughter, Janet," she stated, putting out her hand and smiling. "I've come to see you on a matter. Shall we go into the house?"

With curiosity sharing a vague hostility in his bearing he led her in, where his daughter was setting the table. Janet also told the girl who she was. At once dismay and startlement greeted the announcement. But she invited Janet to be seated, she herself withdrawing to a spot by the stove.

No need for Janet to beat about the bush with her errand.

"Mr. Johnson," she said, "I've come to you and your daughter for a little help if you can give it." That seemed the best way to break down their reserve, an appeal rather than simply blunt questions--and what was it if not an appeal? "What I have to say is just among the three of us and I know it will go no farther. You're acquainted with my father; he's respected by every one."

"He is," Johnson stated, nodding.

"The situation is this, to speak plainly: last night I heard something that has caused me to come to you for information; I'm engaged to Ed Sorenson, and in a moment of anger he denounced Mr. Weir, the engineer at the dam, for having told me a false story--lies--about him and your daughter."

Janet perceived the quick, troubled look exchanged by man and girl.

"Mr. Weir has never mentioned your daughter's name in my hearing; I think him incapable of discussing any one maliciously. He's very careful of what he says. I consider him a very honorable man. At any rate, he said nothing of what Ed Sorenson suggested, and if the latter himself hadn't spoken of the thing I should have had no inkling that there had been anything justifying an inquiry on my part. There may not be. But why should he imagine Mr. Weir had told me 'lies' linking him and your daughter?"

"I know Weir--and I know Ed Sorenson, too," was the rancher's grim rejoinder.

"This is a disagreeable subject, I know. But I'm not here out of mere curiosity, but a desire to learn if something has been concealed from me by Ed Sorenson that I should be informed of. His manner, his words, the whole incident has filled me with doubts. See, I'm trusting you absolutely." And she extended a hand in a gesture bespeaking sincerity.

Johnson peered at her in silence from under s.h.a.ggy brows.

"I ask myself why Mr. Sorenson took it for granted that the engineer had been telling me false stories and if there was any ground for such fears," she went on. "He had nothing to be afraid of, no matter what might be said, if he had done nothing unworthy. I can't imagine Mr.

Weir, for instance, being alarmed in that way."

"They're telling plenty of lies about him, for that matter, but I guess it doesn't worry him any," Johnson said.

"What I ask you touches a delicate subject, perhaps," Janet continued, reluctantly. "You may feel that I'm pushing in where I'm not concerned. But if Mr. Sorenson has done anything discreditable--if he has acted in a way to make me ashamed when I know, then it becomes a matter affecting my happiness too. I would never marry a man who had done something dishonorable, for if I did so knowingly I should be dishonored and dishonorable as well."

Johnson suddenly thrust a brown forefinger at her.

"Do you want to know what Sorenson did?" he demanded, wrathfully.

Janet gripped her hands together. "Yes."

"You'll not go spreading it all around the country? But I guess you won't as long as it would make you out a fool too. I'll not have Mary's name dragged about in a lot of gossip."

"I a.s.sure you I shall remain silent, for her sake and my own."

"All right, I'll tell you. You're too good a girl--any decent girl is--to marry Ed Sorenson. He met Mary at a dance last spring in town where she went with some friends of ours, and made love to her but wouldn't let her tell me or any one. We don't get to town so very often; she never knew he was engaged to marry you, there never happening to be any mention of it to her. Then he got her to go to Bowenville one day awhile ago, under promise to marry her there--Mary is only sixteen, a little girl yet. To me, anyway."

Janet felt the working of his love in those simple words. Felt it but half-consciously, though, for her own soul was stifling at Ed Sorenson's revealed infamy.

"When he got her there, he told her they would have to go away farther to be married--to Los Angeles." Again his finger came up, this time to be shaken at her like a hammer. "He never intended to marry her; he planned to get her there, ruin her, and cast her off. That's the sort of man you're going to marry!"

"I remember he expected to be away for a couple of weeks--a business trip, he said. But afterwards he explained that it hadn't been necessary to go."

"A business trip! Yes, the dirty kind of business he likes. And if it hadn't been that Weir heard him explaining to Mary that she must go on and interfered--there in the restaurant--Ed Sorenson might have succeeded. Mary trusted him, thought he was straight. But he's crooked, crooked as his old man. When Weir told him to his face what he thought of his tricks, he let it out he was engaged to you. Didn't mean to, of course. Weir said he would stay right with them and see that they got married next day before a minister, then Sorenson snapped out he was to marry you. That opened Mary's eyes, that and his refusing to go before a preacher as the engineer demanded. So Weir brought her home to me.

"And that isn't all I know," he snarled. "Mexicans and cowboys and others have talked--women don't hear these things--how he's had to pay Mexicans hush-money for girls of theirs he's wronged. But what do people care? He's rich, he's old man Sorenson's boy; everything's kept quiet; and he goes around as big as life." With a muttered oath he turned away, his lips shut hard and his beard sticking out savagely.

He came back to her again.

"The young one gets it from the old one," he exclaimed. "Bad crooked blood in both of them. I know. I've been here ever since I was a boy and remember things Sorenson believes every one has forgotten, I know how he got his start, how he and the rest of his bunch cleaned out Dent of his ranch and cattle gambling and then killed him when he discovered they had used marked cards, how at the same time they robbed another man----"

Janet struggled to her feet. She had covered her eyes and bowed her head before the torrent of his vehemence.