Swiftly, exuberantly swiftly, Craig took her up.

“Yes, I think he would have liked that.  I ...  You agree with me too, don’t you, Aunt Mary?”

The older woman started at sound of her name, looked up vacantly.  “What?” she queried absently.

Craig repeated the question perfunctorily.

“Yes, he was always good to me, very good to me,” she returned monotonously.

In sympathy, the girl’s brown eyes moistened anew; but Craig turned away almost impatiently.  “Let’s consider it settled then,” he said.

For the first time the girl glanced up; but it was not at Craig that she looked.  It was at that other figure in the background, the figure that not once through it all had stirred or made a sound.  “What shall we do, How? what ought we to do?” she asked.

For ten seconds there was silence; but not even then did Craig recognise the other’s presence by so much as a glance.  Only the look of exultation left his face, and over his blue eyes the lids tightened perceptibly.

“Don’t consider what I think, Bess,” said a low voice at last.  “Do what you feel is right.”

It was the white man who had decided, but it was another who brought the decision to pass.  How Landor, the Indian, it was who, alone in the dreary chamber beneath the roof, laid the dead man out decently, and for five dragging minutes thereafter, before the others had come, stood like a statue gazing down at the kindly, heavy face, with a look on his own that no living human had ever seen or would ever see.  How Landor, the Indian, it was who, again alone in the surrey, with the closely drawn canvas curtains, drove all that day and half the night to the nearest undertaker at the railroad terminus beyond the river, seventy-five miles away.  How Landor, the Indian, again it was who, with a change of horses, but barely a pause to eat, started straight back on the return trail, and ere it was again light was within the limits of Coyote Centre, knocking at the door of Mattie Burton, the one woman friend of Mary Landor he knew.  How Landor it was once more who, before twenty-four hours from the time he had left, had passed, with the unwilling visitor by his side, re-entered the Buffalo Butte ranch yard.  Last of all, How Landor, the Indian, it was who faced the old surrey once more to the east, and with still another team before him and a cold lunch in his pocket, sat waiting within the hour to take the departing ones away.

Through it all he scarcely spoke a word, not one that was superfluous.  What he was thinking of no one but he himself knew.  That he had expected what had taken place in his absence, his bringing Mrs. Burton proved.  At last realisation had come, and Mary Landor was paying the price of the brief lethargic respite; paying it with usury, paying it with the helpless abandon of the dependent.  The dreary weather-coloured ranch house was not a pleasant place to be in that day.  Craig left it thankfully, with a shrug of the shoulders beneath the box-fitting topcoat, as the door closed behind him.  The other passenger, the one who should have left also and did not, the girl Elizabeth—.