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Perhaps the woman with the disfigured face was right. On the Pipe-Line Trail James Rutlidge spent the day following his experience with Sibyl Andrés, in camp. His companions very quickly felt his sullen, ugly mood, and left him to his own thoughts. The manner in which Sibyl received his advances had in no way changed the man's mind as to the nature of her relation to Aaron King.
Another paroxysm of coughing mercifully prevented the poor creature's reply. With one accord, the little group turned, now, to James Rutlidge the dreaded authority and arbiter of artistic destinies.
"I will take good care of her until you get back. You need have no fear. You're not doubting my word, are you?" "If I doubted your word, I would take Miss Andrés with me," answered the convict, simply. James Rutlidge looked at him, curiously; "Oh, you would?" "Yes, sir, I would; and I think I should tell you, too, that if you should forget your promise "
Taine, James Rutlidge, and all their kin and kind, with a vehement earnestness that startled his companion familiar as the latter was with his friend's peculiar talent in the art of vigorous expression.
He spoke with a shade of sadness. Again, she put out her hand impulsively to touch his arm, as she answered eagerly, "Ah, but no one else will say that. No one else will dare. It will be the sensation of the year I tell you. Just you wait until Jim Rutlidge sees it. Wait until it is hung for exhibition, and he tells the world about it. Everybody worth while will be coming to you then.
"His father was the worst I ever knew, and he's like him. Forget him. Here comes the delivery boy with our stuff. Let's overhaul the outfit. I hope they'll get here with that burro, before dark. Where'll we put him, in the studio, heh?" "Look here," said the artist a few minutes later, returning from a visit to the studio for something, "this is what was the matter with Rutlidge.
She only knew that in the presence of James Rutlidge she was frightened. She had tried many times to overcome her strange antipathy; for Rutlidge, until that day in the studio, had never been other than kind and courteous in his persistent efforts to win her friendship.
It was the signal that Sibyl always gave when she approached their camp. James Rutlidge broke into a low laugh while Sibyl's friends looked at each other in angry consternation as the girl, following her hail and accompanied by the delighted dog, appeared in full view; her fishing-rod in hand, her creel swung over her shoulder.
The woman, true to her life training, as James Rutlidge had been true to his schooling when he approached Sibyl Andrés in the mountains, construed the artist's manner, not as a splendid self-control but as a careful policy. To her, and to her kind, the great issues of life are governed, not at all by principle, but by policy.
But neither of the three men mentioned the name of James Rutlidge in the presence of the women; while Sibyl was, apparently, again her own bright and happy self carrying on a fanciful play of words with the novelist, singing with the artist, and making music for them all with her violin.
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