“No use lying to myself!” she soliloquized.  “I think of him!..  I can’t help it...  I ran out here, wild, restless, unable to reason... just because I’d decided to see him again—­to make sure I—­I really didn’t care....  How furious—­how ridiculous I’ll feel—­when—­when—­”

Lenore did not complete her thought, because she was not sure.  Nothing could be any truer than the fact that she had no idea how she would feel.  She began sensitively to distrust herself.  She who had always been so sure of motives, so contented with things as they were, had been struck by an absurd fancy that haunted because it was fiercely repudiated and scorned, that would give her no rest until it was proven false.  But suppose it were true!

A succeeding blankness of mind awoke to the clip-clop of hoofs and her father’s cheery halloo.

Anderson dismounted and, throwing his bridle, he sat down heavily beside her.

“You can ride back home,” he said.

Lenore knew she had been reproved for her wandering out there, and she made a motion to rise.  His big hand held her down.

“No hurry, now I’m here.  Grand day, ain’t it?  An’ I see the barley’s goin’.  Them sacks look good to me.”

Lenore waited with some perturbation.  She had a guilty conscience and she feared he meant to quiz her about her sudden change of front regarding the Bend trip.  So she could not look up and she could not say a word.

“Jake says that Nash has been tryin’ to make up to you.  Any sense in what he says?” asked her father, bluntly.

“Why, hardly.  Oh, I’ve noticed Nash is—­is rather fresh, as Rose calls it,” replied Lenore, somewhat relieved at this unexpected query.

“Yes, he’s been makin’ eyes at Rose.  She told me,” replied Anderson.

“Discharge him,” said Lenore, forcibly.

“So I ought.  But let me tell you, Lenore.  I’ve been hopin’ to get Nash dead to rights.”

“What more do you want?” she demanded.

“I mean regardin’ his relation to the I.W.W....  Listen.  Here’s the point.  Nash has been tracked an’ caught in secret talks with prominent men in this country.  Men of foreign blood an’ mebbe foreign sympathies.  We’re at the start of big an’ bad times in the good old U.S.  No one can tell how bad.  Well, you know my position in the Golden Valley.  I’m looked to.  Reckon this I.W.W. has got me a marked man.  I’m packin’ two guns right now.  An’ you bet Jake is packin’ the same.  We don’t travel far apart any more this summer.”

Lenore had started shudderingly and her look showed her voiceless fear.

“You needn’t tell your mother,” he went on, more intimately.  “I can trust you an’ ...  To come back to Nash.  He an’ this Glidden—­you remember, one of those men at Dorn’s house—­they are usin’ gold.  They must have barrels of it.  If I could find out where that gold comes from!  Probably they don’t know.  But I might find out if men here in our own country are hatchin’ plots with the I.W.W.”