‘Thank you,’ Helen replied, accepting the statement as a satisfactory compliment.  He laughed.  Then he looked toward the professor, whose thoughts were plainly a thousand miles away.

‘I’ve caught an inspiration,’ he said softly.

‘What is it?’ smiled Helen.

There’ll be a moon in two or three hours.  At best the accommodations here are bad; rooms stuffy and close and hot.  If you are not too tired-----’

He saw that she understood what he meant, and further that she gave her glad acceptance.

‘It will be fun!’ she told him.  He even detected a something of eagerness in her tone; he had already thought that it would be just he and she this time—­they two alone riding together out through the glorious night, chaperoned only by the knowledge that somewhere in the distance behind them the wagon jolted along.  He wondered if she, too, had thought of this?

When the three at table finished and went out into the cool of the porch they found only empty chairs; a half-silhouette showed where Barbee leaned against a pepper tree by the roadside.  Helen settled herself comfortably, wandering if Mrs. Murray had re-entered the hotel by some side door or if she had business elsewhere.  Howard made the suggestion of the return to Desert Valley.  Longstreet hesitated, then objected, saying that by now the store would be closed and that the wagon was still to be loaded.

’Tod Barstow will be up at the saloon, probably looking for a game of cribbage,’ said Howard.  ’It will take me about three shakes to locate him.  The store will be open; old Mexican Pete lives in the back.  I’ll have Tod hitch up at the first peep of the moon; he can load your stuff on in twenty minutes.’

Helen added her voice to Alan’s.  Longstreet’s eyes travelled out to the listless figure against the pepper tree.  At the moment Barbee’s silhouette disengaged itself from the tree’s shadowy trunk and started up the road.

‘All right,’ said Longstreet.  ’But you needn’t trouble about looking up Barstow; I’d enjoy the walk.  If you and Helen will wait here, I’ll see that the wagon is ready about moonrise.’  And as though he had just remembered an important engagement, he hurried away.

They saw him overtake Barbee; they heard his cheerful voice, and then a surly rejoinder from the boy.  Then, far across the sky, a star fell and their eyes went to it together and they fell silent.  When the brief silence was gone, and they talked in lowered voices, they had both forgotten Longstreet and Barbee.  And, for one, Alan Howard was in no haste for the rising moon.

Chapter VIII

Poker and the Scientific Mind

Barbee, as he himself would have expressed it, was soured on life.  At least for the moment, and after all that is about all that life is, the instant that it is passing.  When Longstreet called to him he grunted in disgust.  He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and spat out the cold stump of his cigarette.  It was Barbee’s natural way to swing along with his hat far back, so that he might see the stars.  Now his hat brim was dragged low, and for Barbee the stars were only less remote and frigid than a certain fickle woman.