"Mebbe," said Theodorik, cruising out, "he went up Thirty-four Pass, after all. I'll have a look."
Woolfridge took his hat and casually followed Perrine to the street. He was of a mind to go to the bank, but he saw Gay Thatcher leave the hotel and cross to the livery stable. Immediately he followed and met the girl as she rode out; his hat came off, he smiled pleasantly, and took hold of the bridle. "Here you are, away for an afternoon's ride. Here I am, with nothing to do and badly wanting a talk with you. Well?"
The girl studied him soberly. "I think you would find me distinctly uninteresting this day."
"Never," Woolfridge assured her, and managed to put a quantity of bold gallantry into the statement. "Not if I talked with you all the rest of my days. That, by the way, is a pleasure I may beg for rather soon."
"You are a very certain man, Mr. Woolfridge. Beginning another campaign already?"
"I believe in going forward," said he "I surely believe in trying my luck."
"And finding other people's prices," she reminded him. "What do you think my price would be, Mr. Woolfridge?"
The humor left him; he became imperceptibly agitated. "Isn't that unkind, Miss Thatcher? I think I have always acted the proper part toward you, have always observed the punctilios. You have distinctly changed. You sound unfriendly to me. Am I to infer that you are warning me there is no chance of my winning?"
"Supposing I did tell you that?"
He stood straight beside the horse, a suave and well-groomed gentleman with the hint of sleeked-down physical comfort about him. Yet for all his efforts to maintain the even and urbane courtesy, he could not suppress the hardening of his freckled jowls nor the metal edge of his reply. "I would not accept the answer as definite," said he. The words were quite flat; they had a peculiar snap to them.
The girl watched the blending of emotions on his face with a somber interest. "Why not, Mr. Woolfridge? Don't you credit me with knowing my own mind?"
He shook his head. "Not that. But you don't see me yet quite as you should. When you do, perhaps you will change your opinion. I am sure of it."
"In other words," she answered him, "I do have a price, after all, and you are going to be very patient—and very relentless—until you find it. I have watched your business methods. You have a set type of finesse which seems to be very successful. But in applying the same methods to a woman I think you are in error. Oh, very much so. I gave you credit for being a little more versatile."
"What have you against me?" he demanded with an abrupt, rising impatience.
"I would hate to offend your pride," said she, "but perhaps it is not so much a definite objection as a plain lack of interest."
He did change color at that. And he was stung far more than she realized he could be. "No, Miss Thatcher. I flatter myself that either I make a friend or an enemy. I am not so colorless as to be merely endured. You have real reasons. You have heard things. I should like to know what they are—and to correct the error of them."
"Remember, Mr. Woolfridge, it is a woman's privilege not to be cross-examined."
He hardly bothered to conceal the irritation. "You are pleased to be mysterious again. And elusive. I once opened to you the doors of myself. Does that not imply the return courtesy? Miss Thatcher, you must give me some opportunity. I have that right. Really, I have."
"I doubt it. I never asked for your confidences. As for myself, I have never yet found the man in whom I cared to place my confessions. It is getting late—and I have a trip to make down to Melotte's."
It was somehow an omen to the girl that Woolfridge, through all the interview, held a tight grip to the bridle. He was that sure of his own strength and his own right. He had not begged her to stop; he had simply checked her from going by the grip he had of the bridle. Nor did he immediately withdraw it; rather he took his time, studying the girl's clear dark eyes at some length. He did not carry himself with the same arrogant command that he used toward his subordinates, but the self-contained confidence had quite the same effect on her.
"You have better access to Melotte's than I have, evidently," said he. "I wish you luck. Perhaps you may find the answer to a question that greatly interests me—the whereabouts of Jim Chaffee."
She betrayed herself then; all of a sudden her eyes were flashing and anger was in her throat. "If I find out, Mr. Woolfridge, you can be sure I will never tell you."
He released his grip on the bridle and stepped back a pace, once more in full command of himself; he smiled—a smile that outraged her. "I understand quite completely," said he, bowing his head. "Now I have something to argue against. When you return I want to show you my side of the case. I am sure I will convince you."
She galloped down the street, not replying. Yet he caught the state of mind she was in—angry at herself and at him, a little confused and much disturbed, and perhaps touched by a minute fear. He watched her go until the pony carried her around the curve of the trail. Then he closed both hands, snapping them like the blades of a jackknife, and walked back to the land office. "She will find I am not a man to be disregarded, nor lightly placed aside. She must listen to me. She must see all that I am, and all that I will be. I can convince her. Why not? I have made myself a power. Is a woman any more stubborn than a county full of men? What I have deliberately started and deliberately carried on I have never yet failed in. I won't with her. It may take time, but she will accept me by and by."
In the office he wrote a brief note to his man at the capital—that man in whom he had placed the business of getting out the advertisements.
Hunnewell:
Find out all that you can about the past life and history of Gay Thatcher. She comes from your city. Find out also what her connections are and why she is down here. This is to be your first and immediate business. Get at it and secure the facts. —W. W. WOOLFRIDGE
A man in love with a woman would never have written such an amazing order, never would have allowed it in his head for a moment. But William Wells Woolfridge, tremendously drawn to Gay Thatcher by her clear eyes and the fine carriage of her body as well as by the maturity of her mind, was not in love with her. He was in love with an obsession—the obsession of personal conquest, the exhilaration of scaling forbidding peaks and knocking over open resistance. Gay Thatcher, whatever else she meant to him, meant more than anything a beautiful acquisition to his gallery of rare objects at Wolf's Head.
Gay Thatcher rode rapidly toward Melotte's on the broad trail bearing the imprint of the recent stirring events. And as she traveled she grew more and more angry at having shown weakness before Woolfridge. For it was weakness to defy him. He was the kind of a man who seized upon such lapses of judgment and made weapons of them. She had given him a point of attack, just as others by some small slip of tongue or some still smaller act had played into his hands. It seemed to her he had the skill the patience of an Oriental, to which was added the Oriental's disposition to finally end some long drawn situation by a single stroke of the blade. It was incredible that so strong a man as Dad Satterlee could have crumbled overnight when faced against Woolfridge; and it was equally incredible that at the turn of an hour a whole county should somehow pass into the man's control. It amounted to that. Gay, rehearsing all that she had learned, felt the warning of fear. She could not dismiss Woolfridge. He wouldn't be dismissed.
So thinking, she came to Melotte's and rode down the yard—a yard resembling an armed camp by the number of Flying M and ex-Stirrup S men loitering about. Going into the house she went to the room where Mack Moran lay. Mack had been in pretty bad shape from a bullet through the shoulder, it had pulled the solid flesh off him and whitened his naturally ruddy cheeks. But he was past danger now and he smiled cheerfully up to the girl as she sat down beside the bed.
"Able to sit up and take nourishment yet?" she asked him, smiling back.
"This family will shore make a hawg out o' me, ma'am. Imagine chicken with dumplin's—corn bread with pear preserves. Gosh, I wish I'd been shot a couple years ago. They certainly is somethin' crooked about a universe