at the back. The little storeroom and woodshed were likewise empty.
“She’s gone!” he admitted, and spying the garments he had lent her and both his blankets and the one she had arrived in, he was further staggered. “Gone! Without a stitch on her! Good heaven, what’s to be made of this? . . . I’ll kill those crooks.”
Lynn sank in the old rocker and gazed blankly at the packages he had dropped to the floor. A cold sweat broke out all over him. He endeavored to still his agitation so that he could think what he must do. But it was futile. His grief and fury, and another emotion unfamiliar to him, would not be assuaged at the moment. He could not sit still. He got up to pace the floor. What had happened to Anne Vandergrift? Helpless before that one poignant query he could only reiterate it.
A rustle outside the open door brought Lynn upright. A white face appeared against the black background. It flashed across the threshold. Anne Vandergrift ran in with softly thudding feet. She closed the door and dropped the bar in place, then turned to come to him, her gray eyes unnaturally wide and bright.
“Anne! . . . You’re not gone? They didn’t get you?” Lynn burst out.
“No. But have I had a scare! Oh, I thought you’d never—never come,” she replied.
If the moment had not been so vital and compelling Lynn would have laughed at the girl’s ludicrous appearance. She looked lost in his fleece-lined coat, and she had donned a pair of his overalls and had tucked the bottoms in heavy woolen socks. She kicked off his loose slippers and then slipped out of the coat. Under it she had on his red blouse, which completely hid her femininity. But after a second glance at her flashing face and tumbling hair Lynn did not see anything else.
“I borrowed your clothes,” she said, her gravity breaking.
“So I see. You look—swell,” he rejoined haltingly and then flounced onto the chair as if weak in his relief.
“By George, but I’m glad you’re here safe.”
“You couldn’t be half as glad as I am.”
“I thought . . . Well, never mind. . . . How come, Anne—that I found you gone?”
“I slept almost all day,” she replied hurriedly. “When I got up I thought I’d better put on these. It was a good thing I did. I’d hardly got dressed when I saw a big car down by that long house across the road from the tents.”
“That’s the mess hall where we eat.”
“I saw men get out. There were five of them. Gangsters! Oh, I could recognize a gangster now in a burlap sack. They looked like wolves on the scent. Four of them went in. And the one who stayed by the car was Bellew.”
“Bellew!” ejaculated Lynn, leaping up.
“Yes. I knew him, even at that distance. I nearly dropped. All I could think of was to run and hide. I went out the back way—out into the brush—where I hid behind a rock. I was not able to see the car, but I could have seen it come down the road toward the cabin. It didn’t come. And after a while I lost some of my fright, but I stayed out there till I saw the light show from your window. I’d heard a car—a sputtering, rattling car which I thought was yours. But, believe me, I made sure it was you in here.”
“Anne, what was Bellew doing out here?” demanded Lynn.
“He was after me. He might have been on some other errand. That’s possible. But I felt he was after me.”
“What made you feel that way?”
“I—I don’t know. Only I saw him—I heard him. He wasn’t like a human being. He’s steel and—and flint. A terrible man! It made me weak just to know he was out there. . . . Mr. Weston, please—please don’t let him get me.”
“Cut the mister,” responded Lynn, gruff in his confoundment and apprehension. “My name’s Lynn. I fetched your things and some supper for both of us. But we’ll have to cook it.”
“I can cook,” she said seriously.
“I’ll build the fire and get some water in. Then I’ll go out and snoop around. I didn’t see any cars, only trucks as I drove in. . . . I wonder—had I better take you away tonight?”
“Oh, let me stay,” she pleaded wildly. She appeared terribly unstrung.
“That’d really be best. I didn’t have time to find you a boarding-house.”
“Lynn, why not let me stay here a—a little while. . . . Let me hide here till Bellew gives up searching?”
“Here! . . . In my cabin—with me?” exclaimed Lynn, aghast.
“Yes,” she importuned, her eyes gravely upon him. “You’re the only decent man I’ve met since I worked for Mr. Smith.”
“Thanks. . . . Say, L.A. must have been as bad to you as Shanghai,” returned Lynn, and he considered her suggestion a moment. It struck him singularly that he did not instantly repudiate the idea. But he nipped an insidious and pleasing temptation in the bud. “No, Anne, that wouldn’t do at all.”
“Why wouldn’t it—unless I’d impose upon you. But I could sleep in your woodshed—take care of your cabin.”
“I daresay you could, Gray Eyes,” he replied, regarding her with a growing realization that her personality equaled her charm. He could not help contrasting her with Helen Pritchard, whose memory only an extraordinary allusion could invoke. “Suppose you were caught here.”
“I wouldn’t care—for myself.”
“Well, I would. It’d ruin your good name.”
“With whom? Some of these workingmen? Possibly your boss or some officials? But I’m unknown here and alone in the whole world.”
“Anne! It’s not the thought of myself that makes me disapprove. Or lack of—of feeling for you. It’s principle. Lord knows, I’m not much. I’m a failure myself—and also alone in the world. But I won’t risk disgracing you.”
“You’re risking more by taking me to Boulder City. More than my life! . . . That Bellew will find me. He will. . . . Oh, I’d kill myself the minute I had a chance. But those beasts do not give a girl a chance even for that.”
“I could drive you to a railroad and put you on a train,” he replied, unable to meet the eloquent beseeching eyes.
“That would be as bad. Where can I go? What can I do? There’s no work these days. I’d be worse off than when I tramped the streets of Los Angeles.”
Lynn bent over to light the fire. He was in a tight spot, and he felt himself yielding. He ought to have been glad to shelter and protect this girl, and he wondered what besides his thought of her good name was at the root of his reluctance. Having lighted the fire he slowly got up to find her close beside him, waiting in a suspense that made him blurt out, “Anne, you’re distractingly pretty!”
“What of it?” she cried, almost in desperation. “I can’t help that. . . . Oh, I hate my face—all of me! If it weren’t for that I’d have missed this horrible experience.”
“Yeah? Well, any other girl having your beauty wouldn’t hate it, believe me. . . . I’ll go out now, Anne, and have a look around. Fasten the door. I’ll be back in half an hour. Meanwhile you get supper.”
Lynn put on the fleece-lined coat and strode out. The night was dark and cloudy, with a damp breeze off the river. Before he had gone halfway to the mess hall he realized he would have to give in to Anne’s proposition, at least for the moment. The poor kid was so frightened that she wanted to stay near the one man who had been kind and brotherly to her. Lynn persuaded himself anew that he had not refused on his own account. It really was the best and safest way out of the difficulty for the time being. And once having submitted to the idea he got something out of it, a warm, fine sense of another opportunity to prove to be what he had once