“Bess,” he said low, “there’s something that’s troubling you, something you’d feel better to tell me.  Don’t you trust me enough to tell me now, girlie?”

Very long they stood so, face to face.  For a time the girl did not look up, merely stood there, her fingers locked behind her back, her long lashes all but meeting; then of a sudden, swiftly as the passing shadow of an April cloud, the mood changed, she glanced up.

“I thought I could scare you, How,” she joyed softly, “and I have.”  She smiled straight into his eyes.  “I wanted to see how much you cared for me, was all.  I’ve found out.  There’s absolutely nothing to tell, How, man; absolutely nothing.”

For another half minute the man looked at her deeply, silently; but, still smiling, she answered him back, and with a last lingering grip that was a caress his hands dropped.

“I trust you, Bess, completely,” he said.  “It makes me unhappy to feel that you are unhappy, is all.”

“I know, How.”  Tears were on the long lashes now, tears that came so easily.  “I’ll try not to be bad again.”  She touched his sleeve.  “I’m very tired now and sleepy.  You’ll forgive me this once again, won’t you?”

“Forgive you!—­Bess!” She was in his arms, pressed close to his breast, the presence of her, intense, feminine, intoxicating him, bearing him as the fruit of the poppy to oblivion.  “God, girl, if you could only realise how I love you.  I can’t tell you; I can’t say things; but if you could only realise!”

Passionate, throbbing, the girl’s face lifted.  Her great brown eyes, sparkling wet, glorious, looked into his eyes.  Her lips parted.

“Say that again, How,” she whispered, “only say that again.  Tell me that you love me.  Tell me! tell me!”

CHAPTER XIV

FATE, THE SATIRIST

Four months drifted by.  The will of Colonel William Landor had been read and executed.  According to its provisions the home ranch with one-tenth of the herd, divided impartially as they filed past the executor, were left to Mary Landor; in event of her death to descend to “an only nephew, Clayton Craig by name.”  A second fraction of the great herd, a tenth of the remainder, selected in the same manner, reverted at once “unqualifiedly and with full title to hold or to sell to the aforementioned sole blood relative, Clayton Craig.”  All of the estate not previously mentioned, the second ranch whereon How Landor had builded, various chattels enumerated, a small sum of money in a city bank, and the balance of the herd, whose number the testator himself could not give with certainty, were willed likewise unqualifiedly to “my adopted daughter, Elizabeth Landor.”  That was all.  A single sheet of greasy note paper, a collection of pedantic antiquated phrases, penned laboriously with the scrawling hand of one unused to writing; but incontrovertible in its laconic directness.  Save these three no other names were mentioned.  So far as the Indian Ma-wa-cha-sa, commonly called How Landor, was concerned he might never have existed.  In a hundred words the labour was complete; and at its end, before the single sheet was covered, sprawling, characteristic, was the last signature of him who at the time was the biggest cattleman west of the river:  William Landor of the Buffalo Butte.