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Bellamy is a distant cousin of mine." "So he told me." "Have you known him long?" Melissy thought that there was a little more than curiosity in the quick look the young woman flung at her. "I met him when he first came here. He was lost on the desert and I found him. After that we became very unfriendly. He jumped a mining claim belonging to my father.
She didn't miss the hired man, though; and I guess he had something else to think of besides Minty Glenwood and housekeeping, for a few minutes, anyway. "Then Aunt Melissy Lovejoy told him he could take himself out of that house, and not come back except for meals, and she said he could sleep over in the shop, which was an old, leaky, broken stump of a tree where we kept our garden tools.
Yet Flatray answered easily, without any perceptible hesitation: "I reckon I'll play my hand and let Bucky play his." "Suits me if it does you. Jeff, collect that hardware. Now, while you boys beat up the hills for O'Connor, I'll trail back to camp with these two all-night picnickers." Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at that distance who they were.
Why the tenderfoot had first come West to hide what wounds in the great baked desert no man knew or asked. Melissy had guessed, but she did not breathe to a soul her knowledge. It was a first article of Arizona's creed that a man's past belonged to him alone, was a blotted book if he chose to have it so.
In the confusion Flatray ran up his horse from the pasture, slapped on the saddle, and melted into the night. An hour later Melissy asked her father what had become of him. "Doggone that boy, I don't know where he went. Reckon he thought he'd be in the way. Mighty funny he didn't give us a chanct to tell him to stay."
"His wife and children." Melissy recalled the smoldering admiration in his bold eyes. She laughed shortly. "That finishes him with me. He's married, is he? Well, I know the kind of husband he is." Jack flashed a quick look at her. He guessed what she meant. But this did not square at all with what his friends had told him of O'Connor. "Did he ask for me?" "No.
Be sure of that, Mrs. MacQueen." The audacity of the name used, designed as it was to stab her friend and to remind Melissy how things stood, made the girl gasp. She looked quickly at Bellamy and saw him crush the anger from his face. The train drew into the station. Presently the conductor's "All aboard!" served notice that it was starting.
A few minutes later they came down towsled, eyes heavy with sleep, giggling at each other in girlish fashion. But when they knew whose marriage they were witnessing, giggles and sleep fled together. They were due for another surprise later. MacQueen and his bride were standing in the heavy shadows, so that both bulked vaguely in mere outline. Hitherto, Melissy had not spoken a word.
The Lord made men different, and I s'pose it's all right; but sometimes it seems kind of hard." The large, firm mouth quivered like a child's. "She was a reg'lar little spitfire, Melissy Whitin' was: there wa'n't nothin' to her but temper. I'll warrant Ephrum Spencer has got his come-uppance before this time," said the poor-mistress, with satisfaction.
"No, I don't see it," Flatray answered hotly. "I can take what's coming to me, can't I? But if you save my life that way you make me as low a thing as he is. I say I'll not have it." Melissy could stand it no longer. She began to sob. "I I Oh, Jack, I've got to do it. Don't you see? Don't you see? It won't make any difference with me if I don't. No difference except that you'll be dead."
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