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'The camp's deadly dull, an' it would cheer up things a whole lot, besides bein' compliments to this young female Old Monte's bringin' in on the stage. "'Oh no, says Enright, 'no need of stringin him none. On second thought, Jack, I don't reckon I'd run him out neither. It dignifies him too much.
So she went out moving away like a vision in dainty white across the room and out the door. A few minutes later she was back again with a vase of red roses, which she arranged upon the table where he could see them. Monte's recovery was rapid in many ways more rapid than he desired.
"Pardon, monsieur," replied the clerk in some confusion, fearing he had made a grave mistake. "I did not know monsieur was traveling alone." Then it was Monte's turn to show signs of confusion. It was quite true he was not traveling alone. It was the truest thing he knew just then. "What is necessary for a lady traveling by motor?" he inquired.
He fired once and waited. This time the bullet had not flown so far afield as the first shots; Howard heard its shrill cleaving of the air. He saw that Monte was moving to one side. Again he understood the man's intention. Monte planned to put him between two fires. Howard jerked up his own gun. The two explosions came simultaneously, his and Monte's. There was a brief silence.
Men and women were forced to stand together and take the long road side by side. The blood rushed to Monte's head. He must get to her at once. She would need him now if only for a little while. He must carry her home. She could not go without him. He started down the steps of the bank, two at a time, and almost ran against her. She was on her way to the bank as he had been, in search of gold.
Peter missed the man. On the ride with Marjory that he enjoyed the next day after Monte's departure, he talked a great deal of him. "I 'd like to have seen into his eyes," he told her. "I kept feeling I 'd find something there more than I got hold of in his voice and the grip of his hand." "He has blue eyes," she told him, "and they are clean as a child's." "They are a bit sad?"
"Monte's eyes sad?" she exclaimed. "What made you think so?" "Perhaps because, from what he let drop the other night, I gathered he was n't altogether happy with Mrs. Covington." "He told you that?" "No; not directly," he assured her. "He's too loyal. I may be utterly mistaken; only he was rather vague as to why she was not here with him." "She was not with him," Marjory answered slowly.
Then, too, he had a voice that made her think again of Peter Noyes. In sudden terror she clung to Monte's arm, and during the brief ceremony gave her responses in a whisper. Peter Noyes himself could not have made of this journey to the embassy a more trying ordeal. A ring was slipped upon the fourth finger of her left hand.
The trivial gossip of Monte's life had always been passed on to Marjory, so that she had really for these last few years been following his movements and adventures month by month, until she felt in almost as intimate contact with him as with the Warrens. She had reason to think that, in turn, her movements were retailed to Monte. The design was obvious and amusing.
After all perhaps there was no harm in going to Mr. Monte's for a little while, perhaps She drew in her breath suddenly and shivered. For the first time in her life she was afraid, not of the storm, or the consequences of her escapade, but of herself.
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