CHAPTER x.x.xI

YES, JUDITH WAS WAITING . . .

At the old cabin above the lake Bud Lee dismounted. His hand in its rude sling was paining him terribly, demanding some sort of first-aid treatment. To-morrow he could take it to a doctor; perhaps in an hour or so he could get Tripp to look to it; just now he must do what he could for it himself with hot water and strips torn from an old shirt.

The hand treated first, it was slow, tedious business seeking to remove the traces of his recent encounter with Trevors; and, though he could wash his face and manage a change of clothes, there was nothing dapper about the result. But at length, shaking his head at the bruised face looking at him from his bit of mirror, he went out to his horse and rode down the trail that led to the ranch headquarters. Judith was waiting for him--that was vastly more important than the fact that he had a crippled hand and a cut or so upon his face.

Night had descended, serene with stars. He wondered if the boys were back yet from the lumber-camp. He had met them, as Carson had predicted he would, riding in a close-packed, silent, ominous body. He felt a.s.sured that they would find no work for them to do at the company's office, that Carson was right and Trevors would "be on his way." But he stopped at the bunk-house.

No, the boys hadn't come in yet. But there was a message for Lee, just received by the cook. It was from Greene, the forester, brief and to the point:

Greene had lost no time in finding the sheriff of the adjoining county at White Rock and in going with him to the cave. They had found Quinnion. He was dead, the manner of his death clearly indicated. For he lay at the foot of the cliffs straight below the cave's mouth, his face terribly torn and scratched by a mad woman's nails, the mad woman herself lying huddled and still close beside him. He had allowed the escape of her captive; she had accused him after the two of them had gone back to the cavern, had thrown herself upon him, tearing at his face, and the two had fallen. Mother and son? Lee shuddered, hoping within his heart that Judith had been mistaken. It was too horrible.

But, such is youth, such is love. Bud Lee promptly forgot both Chris Quinnion and Mad Ruth as he went through the lilacs to the house. He remembered how Marcia had flown once to Pollock Hampton when he had made a hero of himself, how again just to-day she had gone swiftly to him because he had made a fool of himself and because it seemed she loved him. In due time there was going to be a wedding at Blue Lake ranch. A wedding! Just one? Lee hurried on.

Yes, Judith was waiting for him. She was there in the living-room, curled up on a great couch, lifting her eyes expectantly as his step sounded on the veranda. A wonderfully gowned, transcendently lovely Judith; a Judith of bare white arms, round and warm and rich in their tender curves; a Judith softly, alluringly feminine even in the eyes of Bud Lee, no longer theorist; a Judith whose filmy gown clung lingeringly to her like a sun-shot mist, a Judith whose tender mouth was a red flower, whose eyes were Aphrodite's own, glorious, dawn-gray, soft with the light shining in them, the unhidden light of love for the man who came toward her swiftly; the Judith he had first held in his arms and kissed.

He came in quickly, his heart singing. The color suddenly ran up hot and vivid in the girl's cheeks. Standing over her he put out his hand.

But she slipped her own hands behind her.

"Good evening, Mr. Lee," said Judith brightly. "Really, you have taken your time in making your first call. Won't you sit down?"

"No," said Bud Lee gravely. "I'll take mine standing, please!"

"Like a man to be shot at dawn?" cried Judith. "Dear me, Mr. Lee, that sounds so tragic. What, pray, are you taking?"

"A new job," said Lee. "I've come to tell you that just being horse foreman doesn't suit me any longer. What you need and need right away is a general manager. That's what I want to be, your general manager, Judith. For life!"

Judith laughed softly, happily. Her hands flew out to him like two little homing birds, and she followed them--home.

"You'll find your work cut out for you, Mr. Lee," she told him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You'll find your work cut out for you."]

"It's the kind of work I want," answered Bud Lee.

Then suddenly her arms went about his neck and tears sprang into her eyes and she set her lips to the cut he had sought to cover with his hair, and took his sore, swathed hand tenderly into her own two hands, laying it against her cheek.

"Carson telephoned me," she whispered, her lips trembling all of a sudden. "He told me how Trevors fought . . . and how you fought! And he was half crying over the telephone, he was so proud of you. And I am proud of you! And--oh, Bud Lee, Bud Lee, I love you so!"

From without came the sound of the Blue Lake boys returning, Carson at their head. Riding close together they were singing, their voices floating through the night in an old cowboy song. Mrs. Simpson heard and ran out into the courtyard to listen. Marcia and Pollock Hampton, lost to all save each other in the shadows far down the veranda, listened, and Marcia clapped her hands. The voices were to be heard from afar, the strong voices of a score of men. The strange thing is that neither Judith nor Bud Lee heard; that neither had the vaguest consciousness just then that there were in all the world any other, mortals than--Judith and Bud Lee.