I don’t want to be bothered. I want to be let alone. I’m tired.”
He cast a glance about the lowering horizon. “More rain coming,” he said. “I wish you could have seen the desert in the sunshine.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Will you?” he cried eagerly. “It may be quite a while.”
“Perhaps Miss Van Arsdale will keep me, as you wouldn’t.”
He shook his head. “You know that it isn’t because I don’t want you to stay. But she is right. It just wouldn’t do. … Here she comes now.”
Io took a step nearer to him. “I’ve been looking at your books.”
He returned her gaze unembarrassed. “Odds and ends,” he said. “You wouldn’t find much to interest you.”
“On the contrary. Everything interested me. You’re a mystery—and I hate mysteries.”
“That’s rather hard.”
“Until they’re solved. Perhaps I shall stay until I solve you.”
“Stay longer. It wouldn’t take any time at all. There’s no mystery to solve.” He spoke with an air of such perfect candor as compelled her belief in his sincerity.
“Perhaps you’ll solve it for me. Here’s Miss Van Arsdale. Good-bye, and thank you. You’ll come and see me? Or shall I come and see you?”
“Both,” smiled Banneker. “That’s fairest.”
The pair rode away leaving the station feeling empty and unsustained. At least Banneker credited it with that feeling. He tried to get back to work, but found his routine dispiriting. He walked out into the desert, musing and aimless.
Silence fell between the two women as they rode. Once Miss Welland stopped to adjust her traveling-bag which had shifted a little in the straps.
“Is riding cross-saddle uncomfortable for you?” asked Miss Van Arsdale.
“Not in the least. I often do it at home.”
Suddenly her mount, a thick-set, soft-going pony shied, almost unseating her. A gun had banged close by. Immediately there was a second report. Miss Van Arsdale dismounted, replacing a short-barreled shot-gun in its saddle-holster, stepped from the trail, and presently returned carrying a brace of plump, slate-gray birds.
“Wild dove,” she said, stroking them. “You’ll find them a welcome addition to a meager bill of fare.”
“I should be quite content with whatever you usually have.”
“Doubted,” replied the other. “I live rather a frugal life. It saves trouble.”
“And I’m afraid I’m going to make you trouble. But you brought it upon yourself.”
“By interfering. Exactly. How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Good Heavens! You have the aplomb of fifty.”
“Experience,” smiled the girl, flattered.
“And the recklessness of fifteen.”
“I abide by the rules of the game. And when I find myself—well, out of bounds, I make my own rules.”
Miss Van Arsdale shook her firmly poised head. “It won’t do. The rules are the same everywhere, for honorable people.”
“Honorable!” There was a flash of resentful pride as the girl turned in the saddle to face her companion.
“I have no intention of preaching at you or of questioning you,” continued the calm, assured voice. “If you are looking for sanctuary”—the fine lips smiled slightly—“though I’m sure I can’t see why you should need it, this is the place. But there are rules of sanctuary, also.”
“I suppose,” surmised the girl, “you want to know why I don’t go back into the world at once.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
“As you wish.”
“I came West to be married.”
“To Delavan Eyre?”
Again the dun pony jumped, this time because a sudden involuntary contraction of his rider’s muscles had startled him. “What do you know of Delavan Eyre, Miss Van Arsdale?”
“I occasionally see a New York newspaper.”
“Then you know who I am, too?”
“Yes. You are the pet of the society column paragraphers; the famous Io’ Welland.” She spoke with a curious intonation.
“Ah, you read the society news?”
“With a qualmish stomach. I see the names of those whom I used to know advertising themselves in the papers as if they had a shaving-soap or a chewing-gum to sell.”
“Part of the game,” returned the girl airily. “The newcomers, the climbers, would give their souls to get the place in print that we get without an effort.”
“Doesn’t it seem to you a bit vulgar?” asked the other.
“Perhaps. But it’s the way the game is played nowadays.”
“With counters which you have let the parvenues establish for you. In my day we tried to keep out of the papers.”
“Clever of you,” approved the girl. “The more you try to keep out, the more eager the papers are to print your picture. They’re crazy over exclusiveness,” she laughed.
“Speculation, pro and con, as to who is going to marry whom, and who is about to divorce whom, and whether Miss Welland’s engagement to Mr. Eyre is authentic, ‘as announced exclusively in this column’—more exclusiveness—; or whether—”
“It wasn’t Del Eyre that I came out here to marry.”
“No?”
“No. It’s Carter Holmesley. Of course you know about him.”
“By advertisement, also; the society-column kind.”
“Really, you know, he couldn’t keep out of the papers. He hates it with all his British soul. But being what he is, a prospective duke, an international poloist, and all that sort of thing, the reporters naturally swarm to him. Columns and columns; more pictures than a popular danseuse. And all without his lifting his hand.”
“Une mariage de reclame,” observed Miss Van Arsdale. “Is it that that constitutes his charm for you?”
Miss Van Arsdale’s smile was still instinct with mockery, but there had crept into it a quality of indulgence.
“No,” answered the girl. Her face became thoughtful and serious. “It’s something else. He—he carried me off my feet from the moment I met him. He was drunk, too, that first time. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him cold sober. But it’s a joyous kind of intoxication; vine-leaves and Bacchus and that sort of thing ‘weave a circle ’round him thrice’—you know. It is honey-dew and the milk of Paradise to him.” She laughed nervously. “And charm! It’s in the very air about him. He can make me follow his lead like a little curly poodle when I’m with him.”
“Were you engaged to Delavan Eyre when you met him?”
“Oh, engaged!” returned the girl fretfully. “There was never more than a sort of understanding. A mariage de convenance on both sides, if it ever came off. I am fond of Del, too. But he was South, and the other came like a whirlwind, and I’m—I’m queer about some things,” she went