“That’s a pretty long drift, eh?” suggested Larry Haines.
“All depends,” answered Jack. “It’s long for some and short for some…I mean, for those that keep moving and don’t care much where they get.”
“I don’t know that kind,” replied Haines coldly.
“That’s your misfortune,” answered Jack in the same tone. “Those that keep moving like the road. They can’t see any point in standing still the rest of a man’s life.”
He was disliking Haines heartily. He could gather from the expression of the other that the feeling was mutual. That distaste seemed founded upon nothing but chance. In the meantime, Joe and the girl had come slowly up the hill toward them, and Trainor gave his attention to the young couple.
Alice Cary was obviously entirely happy. They had been talking about everything—nothing. She had had no chance to make comparisons or conduct an investigation. As for Joe Bigot, the big man was actually trembling with joy. And now and again he fixed upon Trainor a glance that was burning with gratitude.
The smile with which she acknowledged her introduction to Jack Trainor went through and through him, and then he found that she and Bigot and Haines and he were riding four abreast down the hill and toward the little red-roofed village in the distance. On the way Jack thought to himself: She’s sharp as a fox, for all of her careless ways. And Haines is sharp as a fox. Between them, it will be a close squeeze if they don’t find out the truth. The thing for me to do is simply to get out of the town before they find any clues to work on. That would be the finish of poor Joe with the girl. And, no matter how beautiful she may be, he’s too good for her.
He was roused from this meditation by the voice of the girl saying: “Look at that tree yonder. What sort of a tree is it, Joe? But see the way it’s budding, just like points of light on the tips of the twigs. I’ll never see a tree bud after this, Joe, without thinking of something that you said about it.”
Larry Haines twisted his head sharply toward Bigot. The idea of Bigot’s having said something about budding trees apparently stunned him.
“Something I said? I don’t remember,” said Joe innocently.
The girl frowned. Had she not been in the saddle, she would probably have stamped, Jack decided. She did not want to go further into the matter. It was a reference Joe, if he were a true lover, should have caught up at once like a burning brand passed to him. It should have set him on fire, and now it seemed that he did not even remember having said it.
“Not said…but something you wrote. I suppose that’s the same thing,” said Alice Cary.
Her smile was a thin veneer over her anger, it seemed to observant Jack Trainor.
“I disremember,” said Joe Bigot as heavily as before.
In the cabin in the mountains, he had formed the habit of looking to Jack for counsel whenever he was mentally cornered by a difficulty. Now his eye rolled toward his friend again, and the flash of Trainor’s glance brought him up with an almost visible start.
“In a letter,” he said. “Yes, I sort of vaguely remember it.”
This brought a dark frown to the forehead of Alice, for it was something that he should more than casually remember. If it had been an utterance out of his soul, as it had seemed, it should never be forgotten.
Jack Trainor, gnawing his lips with anxiety at one side of the little troop, remembered it well enough.
“It was about the winter being like night, and the spring being like day, and the budding of the trees the sunshine of the day…it was something like that,” said the girl. “I thought it was beautiful, Joe.”
Joe stirred under her reproachful glance, and then, feeling the ferret-like glance of Larry Haines upon him, he turned a bright crimson.
But Jack Trainor knew that there was a vital part of the simile left out—the part that referred to her in the same breath with the buds. It had been a comparison that had come out of his heart, seeing the faint smile of the girl in the photograph play like sunshine indeed in the dark, cold interior of the cabin. But now there was danger ahead in very fact. The suspicions of Larry Haines must be by this time fully aroused. No matter how the girl may have passed over the eloquence of her big lover and accepted it as real, Larry Haines would instantly know that Joe was perfectly incapable of saying such a thing as this—of conceiving such fanciful and complicated figures of speech.
But Haines said not a word to attempt to draw a confession from Joe. For that, Trainor respected his prowess and feared him the more. A man capable of playing a waiting game is always to be dreaded when it comes to a pinch. With all of his soul, Jack wished them well and safely out of the difficulty.
Luckily the down pitch of the hill—almost the only considerable incline in the entire vicinity—had urged the horses to a gallop, and now the whole troop fled down the slope at a round pace that blew the color back into the cheeks of Alice and sent the light gleaming into her eyes. She was laughing again when they reached the level once more, and so the party continued in the most perfect good humor until they reached the silent little street of the village.
All that way Larry Haines had said not a word.
Yes, decided Jack, I must certainly move on this very night! But, just as this conclusion became definite in his mind, Haines spoke for the first time.
“There’s a man you ought to know, Joe,” he said. “That old chap yonder. He’s a trapper, too, and he spent the season up in the mountains pretty close to you. I think he went out from the same town to his trap line.”
He watched Joe keenly as he spoke. Trainor watched the big man with no less attention to see how he would endure the test. And he was glad to note that Bigot neither changed color nor started visibly. There had not been one chance in a thousand that a trapper from the far-distant Rockies would come into the vicinity of the little town. It was like leaving someone in Peking and meeting him again in the middle of the Arizona desert. It was an unlucky chance, to say the least. But even at that, the probabilities were great that the old fellow ahead of them, just now in the act of sauntering across the street, had never even heard the name of Joe Bigot in the mountains unless he actually stumbled across a mutual friend.
However, it was necessary to make inquiries and follow up the remark of Haines. Trainor marked with pleasure that Bigot saw the need and accepted the risk. His face was unchanged except for a slight bulging of the heavy muscles at the angle of the jaw, and that small sign was enough to tell Jack of the spiritual strain under which the poor trapper was laboring. He veered his horse to the side, nevertheless, and paused beside the old man, whose bent body was token of the labor he had endured.
“Hello, stranger,” said Joe. “The boys tell me that you been up trapping around Crampton. I been working a trap line up that way myself.”
The other nodded, running his fingers thoughtfully through his short tangle of gray beard. But his face remained a blank. For that Jack was profoundly grateful.
“Look here, Minter,” broke in Haines, “you must be a good deal of a hermit if you never ran across Joe Bigot in the mountains and yet you got your provisions from the same place.”
“Joe Bigot?” echoed the old man slowly. “Joe Bigot?”
Here, as his face suddenly cleared under the light of knowledge, the heart of Trainor failed him.
“Sure I’ve heard of you, Bigot. I recollect the storekeeper talking about you. Used to say that you always took out enough grubstakes to’ve done two ordinary men. But then, a man can see in half a glance that you ain’t ordinary, not by seventy pounds, I’d say.”
He laughed heartily at his rather thin jest, his eyes snapping and glittering with enjoyment under their white brows.