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Updated: June 10, 2025
Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as if in doubt. "I'm tired," she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms. "Si, señorita," answered her attendant quietly.
There was stirring in her heart a sweet womanly pity and sympathy for the enemy whose proffer of friendship had been so cavalierly rejected. The sight of a horseman riding down the trail from the Flagstaff mine shook Melissy into alertness. "Look, dad. It's Mr. Norris," she cried. Morse, who had not yet recognized him, swung to the saddle, his heart full of bitterness.
His daughter came out from her room in her night-dress to meet him. "What kept you, Daddy?" she asked. But before he could answer she knew. She read the signs too clearly to doubt that he had been drinking. Melissy had been up the Cañ del Oro for wild poppies in her runabout and had just reached the ranch.
"We'll get off here and walk in," he ordered; and, after she had dismounted, he picketed the horses close to the road. "You can send for yours in the mornin'. Mine will be in the livery barn by that time." The streets were practically deserted in the residential part of the town. Only one man they saw, and at his approach MacQueen drew Melissy behind a large lilac bush.
"I can milk," said Chad, eagerly, and Dolph laughed. "All right, I'll give ye a chance," he said, and old Joel looked pleased, for it was plain that the little stranger was not going to be a drone in the household, and, taking his pipe from his mouth but without turning his head, he called out: "Git up thar, Melissy."
I told her to take it to you and keep her mouth shut." "You planned his death." "If you like to put it that way. Now we'll go home and forget this foolishness. Jeff, bring the horses round to the mouth of the gulch." Melissy felt suddenly very, very tired and old. Her feet dragged like those of an Indian squaw following her master. It was as though heavy irons weighted her ankles.
She broke out in a cry of distress: "You wouldn't! I've treated you fair. I could have betrayed you, and I didn't. Aren't you going to play square with me?" He nodded. "All right. Show him in. He won't know me except as Lieutenant O'Connor. It was too dark last night to see my face." Bellamy came into the room. "How's Jack?" Melissy asked quickly as she caught his hand. "Good as new. And you?"
He was still young enough to have counted on the effect upon Melissy of his return to town with one of the abductors as his prisoner. It happened that she was on the porch watering her flower boxes when he passed the house. "Jack!" she cried, and on the heels of her exclamation: "What's the matter with you? Been hurt?" A gray pallor had pushed through the tan of her cheeks.
"You had one chance at him, didn't you?" "José spoiled it. Honest, I wasn't going to lie down, 'Lissie." Again the days followed each other uneventfully. Bellamy himself never came for his mail now, but sent one of the boys from the mine for it. Melissy wondered whether he despised her so much he did not ever want to see her again. Somehow she did not like to think this.
"I've got one real good reason for not being reckless. I'll tell you what it is some day." Her shy, alarmed eyes fled his at once. She began an account of how her father had gathered his posse and where she thought he must have gone. After dinner Jack went downtown. Melissy did some household tasks and presently moved out to the cool porch.
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