Like Old Tom, he felt that his action was in a way more or less extenuated by circ.u.mstance. And still mindful of Dexter Allison's odd moment or two of guarded antagonism that very morning, he gradually led the conversation around to more recent things.

"I suppose you have had your conference with Mr. Allison, Steve?" he suggested in a matter-of-fact way.

Instantly at that question all the boyishness left the other's face.

He looked away and looked back again, very deliberately.

"No more than a word," he answered. "He asked me to come down again, toward the end of the week, if I could get away. He said no doubt I would want to spend all the time I could to-day with you and Miss Sarah."

"Of course," Caleb exclaimed, "of course! I see. Is it--is it unethical if I ask, privately, your opinion of this job which the East Coast Company has on its hands? Do you believe they can swing it in time to fulfill all their obligations?"

Again there followed a moment's pause while Steve's eyes roved thoughtfully around the room.

"Mr. Elliott wouldn't have risked every cent he has," he finally replied, "unless I had a.s.sured him that it wasn't so very much more than a man-sized gamble. Nor Mr. Ainnesley, either, I think. So that puts it up to me pretty squarely, doesn't it? We'll have to win through--because we have to, now!"

"Quite so!" murmured Caleb again.

He studied a long time over his next words, and it was a very vivid vision of a rigid little figure in a wrecked black velvet suit--a vision of a bleak-faced boy with bruised lips who had insisted upon going back downtown for Miss Sarah's eggs--which eventually overbore his distaste for anything that might savor of disloyalty to a friend.

"Of course there could arise unforeseen circ.u.mstances," he ventured.

"Unforeseen interference which, unless one guarded against it, might defeat every effort."

The room seemed very, very quiet.

"Of course," came the calm answer at last; and Caleb could not see Steve's face behind the cupped hands at his pipe bowl, "of course--unless one more or less guarded against it."

And there, just as calmly, they dropped it. The topic was not discussed again that night, unless a bit of news which Fat Joe Morgan himself delivered might be construed as somehow relative. Fat Joe had been driving for an hour, silent some of the time, but for the most part devoted to a whole-hearted rendition of "Home, Sweet Home," in his thin and bell-like tenor, when he broke off in the middle of a stanza to chuckle.

"Say, Chief," he exclaimed, "I've got news for you that'll just fill you plumb full of happiness and good cheer. I hired another hand to-day who'll be a distinct addition to our gang up-river. Just to while away the dark hours I'll let you guess for a while who he is.

I'll let you guess from here to Last Oak, above the cypress bend at the rapids. One, two, three--and the contest is on!"

The man beside Fat Joe stirred and opened his eyes. Fat Joe couldn't see it, for it was too dark, but Steve frowned somewhat at the levity which had interrupted him. He had just been thinking about the tight grip of a slender hand which had fallen upon his arm that afternoon when a red-headed riverman lurched drunkenly from a doorway ahead.

Joe's words were exactly coincident with that thought and the answer came mechanically.

"Harrigan," grunted Steve.

And in the darkness Fat Joe sighed mournfully.

"Bull's-eye," he whimpered, "and there goes the whole evenin's entertainment! Why didn't you cast around, sort of fruitless for a while, and prolong the excitement? But you're right. Harrigan, that's him! He'd just met up with that fat party who owns the plaster palace on the hill--just met up with him, down the road a piece, and Allison had fired him for keeps, he said. He asked me if we didn't have room for a nice steady hand, so I hired him. And I'll leave it to you if it ain't Harrigan's feet that's mostly unsteady, at that. He seemed awful cheerful for a man who'd just been allowed to resign, but who was I to entertain dark doubts? I hired him; I thought you might like the touch of color his hair'll lend to the landscape. It'll be comfortin', too, havin' him around where we can have a look at him any time we take the notion. Don't you think so?"

Steve's grunted reply was hardly intelligible, but it seemed to satisfy Fat Joe. The latter had long before learned to read the signs; he knew when his best efforts were only wasted words, and once more he gave his attention to the jogging horses and his neglected melody.

Caleb Hunter, wondering after Steve had gone just how much he might have seemed to insinuate, regretted that he had spoken at all.

Recollection of Allison's bluff cordiality with O'Mara only made him the more ashamed of his suspicion, and yet the next morning at table he attempted, covertly, to sound Sarah for an opinion, too. She invariably solved his perplexities or relegated them to the limbo of gentle ridicule.

"Just why should he want this East Coast job to fail?" he puzzled aloud. "He's in it, along with Elliott and Ainnesley, even if he isn't in so deep. That is, of course, a.s.suming that he does want it to fail."

The preoccupied gleam in Miss Sarah's eyes promised a reply that might be worth considering, but when it came Caleb found trouble in a.s.similating it.

"They did look so well together," she murmured absently. "He's so much broader--and a whole head taller, too!"

It didn't seem to be exactly a relevant answer, but Caleb nodded patiently.

"Taller, yes," he admitted judiciously. "But he isn't half so big around."

Sarah sat, fork poised, and gazed at him.

"Not half so big as who?" she neglected her sentence structure.

"Why--Dexter!" said Caleb. "Isn't that what we were talking about?"

"Maybe you were," Miss Sarah sniffed. "But I was not discussing Dexter's height or girth either. I was referring to his daughter and--and our boy, Stephen. I was going to ask you if you thought she could be entirely disinterested in him. I don't believe any woman forgets a man who has ever thought enough of her to fight for her."

"I suppose not," agreed Caleb humbly.

"And I was wondering, if that argument ever came up again--I'm wondering if Archibald Wickersham wouldn't come out second best, just as he did before?"

Then her brother understood. He threw back his head and laughed until Sarah's face registered a trace of vexation.

"Sarah," he saluted her, "I'm a mere babe in arms when it comes to finesse, in comparison with you. But since you have introduced the subject I might remark that there are two individuals to be considered.

Maybe she might be--interested--as you so delicately phrase it. But the boy--well, he's had one mighty pointed lesson, you know."

But there was no mirth in Sarah's eyes. She was most serious.

"That's the very thing which perplexes me," she confessed. "I was going to ask you about that. For it was hurt pride that sent him away and he hasn't forgotten the hurt, even yet. He was going to tell us, last night when I stopped him, that he hadn't written again because he wasn't certain that we wanted to hear; and he was painfully conscious of how childish it would sound in words, too. Some men quit when they are whipped once, but don't some of them refuse to recognize that they've ever been whipped at all, Cal? And then, she told me that she had asked him to her party, Friday night. If he comes I think I'll be better able to tell just what----"

"He won't!" cut in Caleb flatly, and when she taxed him for it he proceeded to elaborate at considerable length the reason for his certainty. His argument was rather tight and so, just because of that, woman-fashion she believed the contrary.

All day Friday she watched the hills' road. Not until the orchestra in the lodge beyond the hedge had begun tunelessly to strum their instruments, to insure their later tunefulness, did she reluctantly abandon her position at the window. But then, from his chair at the fire, Caleb noticed how wistfully disappointed her face was.

It turned much colder with nightfall; a wind sharp with the tang of autumn was blowing in off the river when Barbara, m.u.f.fled from throat to ankle in a sapphire fur-edged wrap, slipped in at the door, having stolen away ostensibly to display to them her costume. It was after the hour of ten, but the girl lingered a little after she had executed that mission; she stopped again in the door, indecisively worrying her lip with small teeth, when she finally turned to depart.

"We are very sorry that Mr. O'Mara could not come," she hesitated. "I had promised both Garry and Archie Wickersham that he would be down."

The older woman nodded and accepted the statement for what it was--a question which the girl's eyes failed to conceal.

"We haven't heard from him since he went back into camp," she answered.

"He, no doubt, has been unable to get away."

Barbara turned without replying and pa.s.sed out, less airily than she had entered. But Miss Sarah's eyes were no longer disappointed as she again took her place at a window. And a second later, when she had drawn back suddenly into the room with a m.u.f.fled exclamation, her brother was astonished at her beaming face. A moment earlier he would have sworn that it was only wistful, but before she went upstairs, exclaiming still further at the lateness of the hour, it began to look more than a little like veritable triumph to him.

Barbara Allison recrossed the lawn very slowly that night; she retraced her steps with head bent, the fall of her slippered feet m.u.f.fled by the carpet of thick, unfrosted gra.s.s. Vaguely troubled, vaguely disturbed at herself for her inability to a.n.a.lyze that strange mood which, twice in the last few nights, had sent her with aching throat and wet cheeks into Miriam's room, she was within arm's length of the dark figure in the hedge gap through which she had just come, before she was aware of its presence. Stephen O'Mara, weatherbeaten hat in hand, was standing there in her path, peering steadily at the stucco and timber lodge alight from end to end like a huge and sprawling glow-worm.

Even in that first moment when she stopped and caught her breath, audibly, from sheer surprise, the girl sensed the indecision in the att.i.tude of the man before her. But she could not know that it was not a thing of the moment--that irresolution; could not know that throughout the week Steve had periodically abused himself for his inability to settle the question once and for all, and leave his brain free for more important things. Just as often as he told himself that he would not go, he had found himself reopening the mental discussion, and yet--and strangely enough--it was not the recollection of Barbara's repeated invitations, or even her distress over Garry Devereau, who had been ceaselessly in his thoughts ever since she had spoken of him, which finally achieved the decision. An insistent desire again to meet the Honorable Archibald Wickersham in the end led him to request Fat Joe to hook up the team, that day at noon, for the long drive down river. With Steve himself handling the reins, they had rolled the thirty miles at a speed which might have mildly surprised Fat Joe had he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or eight or more. And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off down the hill--a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"--when the girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon the man's arm.

Again she felt the swift tensing of the flesh beneath; she fell back a step before the startling abruptness with which Steve whirled. She even threw up one small hand, as if to shield her face. And then, the cloak falling open at her throat, a slender, swaying figure in blue and shimmering white, she stood and flung a little laugh at him--a laugh a little unsteady, a bit tinged with mockery, and as untroubled as the spirit of youth itself.

"Is that the way you always prepare to greet your friends?" she asked.

The man just stood and stared at her--stared much as if he mistrusted his own ears and eyes.