Beyond the sand-hills, the level grass was getting white and dry, and in the distance the figures of a man and horses stood out against a moving cloud of dust.  Helen supposed he was summer-fallowing, but did not understand the dust, because when she last passed the spot the soil looked dark and firm.  She remembered that Festing had been anxious about the weather.

Riding on, she saw the roof of the Charnock homestead above a straggling bluff, and her thoughts centered on its occupants.  Strange as the thing was, she had come to think of Sadie as her friend.  Her loyalty and her patience with her husband commanded respect, and now it looked as if they would be rewarded.  Bob was taking an interest in his farm and had worked with steady industry for the last month or two.  Helen thought she deserved some credit for this; she had had a part in Bob’s reformation and had made Stephen help.

Sadie trusted her, and no suspicion or jealousy marked their relations.  Indeed, Helen wondered why she had at one time been drawn to Bob.  Were she free to do so, she would certainly not marry him now.  Still she had loved him, and this gave her thoughts about him a vague, sentimental gentleness.  It was a comfort to feel that she had done something to turn his wandering feet into the right path.

When she reached the homestead she found Sadie looking disturbed.  Her face was hard, but her eyes were red, and Helen suspected that she had been crying.  It was obvious that something serious had happened, because Sadie’s pluck seldom broke down.

“I’m glad you came,” the latter said.  “I’m surely in trouble.”

Helen asked what the trouble was, and Sadie told her in jerky sentences.  Charnock had started for the railroad early that morning, and after he left she discovered that he had written a cheque, payable to Wilkinson.

“It’s not so much the money, but to feel he has cheated me and broken loose when I thought he was cured,” she concluded.  “He has been going steady, but now that brute has got hold of him he’ll hang around the settlement, tanking and betting, for a week or two.  Then he’ll be slack and moody and leave the farm alone, and I’ll have to begin the job again.”

Sadie paused, with tears in her eyes, and then pulled herself together.  “Pshaw!” she said, “I’m a silly fool.  Before you came I thought I’d quit and let Bob go his own way; but I’m not beaten yet.  If Wilkinson wants him, there’s going to be some fight.  Now, I want you to ride over with me to the fellow’s place.”

Helen felt sympathetic.  Sadie’s resentment was justified, and she looked rather refined when angry.  Her stiff pose lent her a touch of dignity; her heightened color and the sparkle in her eyes gave her face the charm of animation.  Moreover, her want of reserve no longer jarred.  Reserve is not very common on the plains.

“But you must tell me something about it first,” Helen replied.  “How did you find out he had written the cheque?”