And Shorty said nothing when Lawler veered from the Circle L trail and headed eastward, toward Hamlin’s cabin.  And he waited with much patience outside the cabin while Lawler went in, to stay an unconscionably long time.

Ruth was alone.  And her eyes were glowing with happiness when she saw Lawler.

“Oh, I know!” she said when Lawler essayed to break the news to her.  “On his way to town, Blackburn rode over and told me.  All of your men were in town—­didn’t you know that?”

“Ruth,” said Lawler; “I will be elected.  Won’t you come to the capital with me—­to be the first lady of the state?”

She looked straight at him, her face paling.

“Wait, Kane,” she said, gently.  “I—­I can’t, just now.  Oh, Kane, don’t you see that the higher you go the harder it is for me.  I can’t have people say—­what they might say—­what your enemies would be sure to say!  Father is all right now.  But I can’t depend upon him.  We will wait, Kane—­until we are sure.”

Shorty rode with Lawler after they left the Hamlin cabin.  And the gravity of Lawler’s expression was noted by the giant, and duly commented upon the following morning, in Blackburn’s presence.

“The boss’s trail is sure hard to anticipate,” said Shorty.  “There’s the state goin’ loco over him—­nominatin’ him for governor, an’ folks in Willets makin’ more fuss over him than they did over the President—­the time he stopped for two minutes in town.  Well, you’d think a man would be sort of fussed up himself, over that kind of a deal.  But what does the boss do?  He rides home with me, sayin’ nothin’ pretty regular—­with a face on him as long as the moral law—­an’ then some.  I ain’t got no rope on him—­an’ that’s a fact.  But he’s all wool an’ a yard wide—­ain’t he, Blackburn?”

CHAPTER XXXVI

A MAN MEDITATES VENGEANCE

It had always been lonely at the Hamlin cabin, and it grew more lonely after Kane Lawler left the Circle L. For the barrier between Ruth and the happiness she had a right to expect seemed to grow higher and more impassable daily.

After receiving official notification of his nomination, Lawler had gone away on a speaking tour of the state, and Ruth had seen little of him.  He came home once, for a few days, just before the election, and had renewed his pleas to Ruth.  But the girl, rigidly adhering to her determination not to permit the shadow of her father’s reputation to embarrass him, had firmly refused to consent.  And after the election, when he had gone to the capital to take the office to which he had been chosen by a record vote, she watched him ride away with a consciousness that the world had grown to gigantic proportions and that Lawler was going to its extreme farther limits, leaving behind him a gulf of space, endless and desolate.

Dorgan, the country prosecutor, had been defeated for re-election by a man named Carney—­who was known to be friendly to Singleton.  Moreton had also been defeated—­by “Slim” McCray, who hailed from a little town called Keegles, southeast from Willets.  It was rumored—­after the election—­that Slim McCray had been friendly to Antrim, though no one advanced any evidence in support of the rumor.