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She had stopped to put on a white gown that her father loved and her lustrous hair lay banded closely, a halo, about her shapely head. Her face looked like a saint's. "It is not so much to save Bruce Steering's inheritance for him, it's to save my father for myself." Her lips moved stiffly as she whispered. "My old dream-father, my idol, I cannot live without him!"
Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy, from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the timber; and then only because he saw a horseman down the ridge road ahead of him. What instantly attracted Steering's attention was the man's back. It was a small but proud back. It had none of the hill stoop.
"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before to-night." "Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?" "Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going on to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"
"Something? Everything." "Then wait just as long as you can, will you?" "Yes, I will, gladly, since you ask it, just as long as I can." Steering's voice sang as he answered.
"I was hoping that I might find you here. Get on your horse and let's go to the woods. Wouldn't you like to? The hills are one long glory to-day." It was not the note of her prayer, it was well-ordered and calm. Still, Steering's heart leaped like a boy's at her friendliness, and he began to speak his gratitude in a lyric tune: "Ah, what fortune!
When the sound of Steering's foot-steps had died away, Madeira took a letter from his pocket, spread it open before him and read it over and over. I want you to turn the Tigmores over to my cousin, Bruce Steering. Let him start at once on the jack trail, that primrose path of dalliance. As for me, my dear sir, by the time this reaches you, I shall be on the long trail.
At the pos'-office I am stop'." The old man was talking now with his eyes burning into Steering's eyes, an expression of horror flattening his face; he held the four fingers of one lean hand pressed to his mouth, so that his words came out inarticulate and broken, though they seemed to scorch his throat like balls of fire.
"I don't know I " He could not go on at all for a minute, and when he could go on he said abruptly, "I'm going to see Steering, too, before I quite bust up with him, Sally." Then he went quickly back to the bank, and the girl passed on down the street to the post-office, in front of which she saw Steering's horse at the hitching-rail.
He was always showing in innumerable ways the hold that Bruce had taken upon his young affections, but he could not help showing, too, the sore spot of his valuation of Steering's regard for Miss Madeira.
Madeira patted Steering's shoulder again and laughed again, pleased at his aptness in figuring the thing out. "He's just exactly right," said the girl, nodding at Steering. "Over here the average man needs a guardian to keep him out of the clutches of the 'boodlers. I almost hate to see this sort of excitement come into Canaan.
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