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But like her husband, she was gazing through and beyond. She was watching the tongues of flame as they licked up the resinous trunks and foliage of a great pine bluff. At length it was the woman's voice broke the silence. "Where where did this all happen?" The question was the verbal expression of a despairing hope. The voice, however, was steady. "In the Cathills." "The Lightfoot gang?" "Yes.
When the attorneys have robbed us all they need, and Nat's handed over, there'll be a good month to haying. That month I'm going to spend in the Cathills. I'll be back for the hay." The other eased himself in his rocker. Then for some moments no sound broke the silence of the room. "It's been a heavy spring," Bud said at last. Jeff nodded. His thoughts were away in the Cathills.
After all it only meant perhaps the delay of a day for his own projects. "Then we'll feed and water right here, Bud," he said resignedly. "We can leave our pack ponies, and ride light. There's five hours of daylight yet." "Yes, five hours good. Thanks, boy. Don't you worry a thing. We'll make this time good. We're goin' to find your Ronald if he's anywheres around these Cathills."
Her hair hung loosely in a knot at the nape of her neck, and its intensely dark masses made an exquisite framing for the oval of the handsome face beneath the loose brim of wide prairie hat. The stillness of these wooded slopes of the Cathills was profound. They possessed something of the solemnity belonging to the parent range of the Rockies beyond. For they were almost primeval.
It was some minutes since a word had passed between the two men. Jeff had nothing to say, and Bud's sympathy was too deep for words. He was waiting for the younger man to fight his battle to its logical end. He knew, only too well, all that Jeff had suffered since the moment of that gruesome discovery in the Cathills valley.
But it don't take a feller who's lived all his life among cattle more'n five seconds to locate their meanin'. They're corrals set up in an a'mighty hurry by folks who hate work o' that sort anyway. An' I'd say, Jeff, cattlemen real cattlemen don't dump a range down in the heart of the Cathills, not even fer this sweet-grass you can see around, when ther's the prairie jest outside.
Somewhere out there, hidden away at the foot of the Cathills, lay his homestead, and the wife for whom he had abandoned all that his birth had entitled him to. During the past two years he had learned truly all that he had sacrificed for the greatest of all dreams of youth. But these things, for the moment, were not in his mind. Only Penrose.
"Nothin' has happened?" he enquired presently, in his direct fashion. Jeff laughed without any visible sign of lightness. "No," he said. Then with a deep sigh. "Thank God nothing has happened. But " "Then the trouble ?" "The trouble? Say, Bud, try to get it all as I see it. It's difficult. The boy's away up trapping and shooting for a living somewhere in the Cathills.
And that which he read carried him back to an unforgettable scene in the Cathills, when a twin stood gazing upon its other half, hanging by the neck dead under the shade of a wide-spreading tree. "It's up to us to set up a reward, Bud," Jeff went on, in the same passionless fashion. "A big reward. We've got to make it so some amateur Judas is ready to sell his friends.
"Seems to me," Bud went on. "Work kind o' worries me some these times." He smiled. "Guess the wheels need the dope of leisure. Mebbe I ain't as young as you." "No." Jeff's attention was still wandering. "Guess the Cathills is an a'mighty big piece o' country gropin' around in," Bud went on. "Sure. A hell of a piece. But it don't signify." "No-o," Bud meditated.
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