nance allison went back to blue stone cañon. it was as inevitable as the recurrent sun that she should do so. her whole nature was stirred to the depths by what she had found in the lonely gorge.
the mystery of the thing lured her, set her young mind hunting for its solution. and the little ragged boy with his weazened face and bright brown eyes tugged at her tender heart irresistibly.
he was a beautiful, small creature despite his thinness and his poverty. there was intelligence in the broad forehead under the long, loose, unkempt, dark curls, capacity for affection in the mobile lips and a terrible hunger for love in the whole little face.
for four days, “hand-running” as her mother said, the girl went to the cañon. the friendship ripened with tropical speed, so that she need not search for her quarry now, but found it coming to meet her, peering around this boulder, watching from that vantage point.
when she held out her arms to the child these last two times he had come leaping into them to cling to her neck in delirious gladness, while the sedate collie, fast friend by this time and traitor to his sacred charge, fawned on her knee.
but on the fifth golden day trouble was in the atmosphere.
sonny came with drooping head and a pucker of sorrow in his small brows.
“why, what’s the matter with my little man?” said the girl, kneeling and holding him off to scan him searchingly. “tell nance, sonny. what is it?”
and sonny, dissolved in tears upon the instant, hiding his face in nance’s neck.
“i—i had—” he hiccoughed, “to—to tell—brand—a a—lie! an awful lie! and brand, he—hates a liar!”
“a lie! why, how—why——”
“he found your horse’s tracks down the cañon and—he asked me if i saw—any—any one strange,” wept the child.
nance sat down and took the boy in her lap.
the thing was coming to a climax.
she was meddling with someone’s private business, of that she was sure, both from her own reasoning and her mother’s warning, and maybe she had no right to do so, but her sweet mouth set itself into stubborn lines as she fell to smoothing the little head, damp with the ardours of its owner’s remorse.
“stop crying, honey,” she wheedled softly, “and let nance rock you like this.”
she tucked her heels under her thighs and, holding the child in the comfortable lap thus formed, began to sway her body back and forth for all the world as if she sat in a cushioned rocker.
what is there about a rocking woman with a child’s head on her breast to soothe the sorrows of the world?
the swaying motion soon checked sonny’s sobs and she fell to singing to him, adding her voice to the mysterious voices of the cañon in the lilt and fall of an old camp-meeting hymn brought forth from her memories of missouri. and presently, when its spell had soothed the tumult, she raised him up and fed him cookies made for the occasion, a sugary bribe if ever there was one.
dirk, too, was not averse to this shameful seduction, his pale eyes glowing with desire.
“tell me, sonny,” said nance, “does brand cook for you?”
“sure,” said the child, “sure he does—but he’s gone all day and we get awful hungry ’fore he comes at night.”
“i should think so!” thought nance grimly, “two meals a day! when a little child should eat whenever it’s hungry, to grow! this precious brand is about due for an investigation.”
aloud she said:
“sonny, i’m going to stay with you all day—and i’m going to wait and see brand.”
the boy was aghast at this statement, and it was plain from the distress he showed that it was unprecedented.
“if you do,” he said miserably, “maybe brand will take me away again and—and i’ll never see you any more.”
but nance had other plans and she shook her head.
that was a lovely day. it was warmer than usual, since summer was stepping down the slopes of the lonely hills, and the strangely assorted sorted trio in blue stone cañon enjoyed it to the full.
they explored far up the narrow defile, the child holding to the girl’s hand and skipping happily, the collie pacing beside them, a step to the left, two steps to the rear.
they watched the trout waving in the sunlit pools at noon, and waded in a riffle to find barnacles under rocks that nance might show sonny the tiny creature which built such a wonderful little house of infinitesimal sticks and mortar.
but as the sun dropped over toward the west and the shadows deepened in the great gorge, nance began to feel the loneliness, the cold silence, the oppression of the unpeopled wilderness.
the voices seemed to raise their tones, to become menacing. more and more she realized what it must mean to a child left alone in the cañon, and a deep and rising indignation swelled within her.
this brand fellow, now—he must be cold-blooded as they made them, cruel—no, sonny loved him. he could not be exactly that.
but what sort of man could he be?
she held the child close in her warm arms as she rocked again and pondered the problem. she did not know what she intended to say to him, once she faced him, but of one thing she was certain—he would know, in no uncertain terms, indeed, what a monstrous thing it was to leave a child alone in blue stone cañon—alone, to listen to its mysterious voices, to feel its chill and its menace of shadows!
why, it was a wonder the little mind did not crack with strain, the small heart break with fear!
unconsciously she hugged sonny tighter, making of her body, as it were, a bulwark between him and all harm, seeming to challenge the world for his possession. it was astonishing how the child had crept into her heart in these few short days—how hungrily her arms had closed about him. she had made his cause her own high-handedly—perhaps without reason.
she was thinking of these things when the collie barked sharply and leaped away in welcome. nance flung a startled glance over her shoulder—and got to her feet, sliding the boy down beside her, an arm still about his ragged shoulders.
a man stood at the corner of the jut of stone beyond the pool.
he was tall, somewhere around six feet, a horseman born by his build, narrow of hip and flat of thigh. he was clad in garments almost as much the worse for wear as sonny’s—a blue flannel shirt and corduroy tucked into boots. but nance saw in that first swift glance that these habiliments were different from those of their like which mckane sold in cordova, that seemed made for the man who wore them, so perfectly had they fitted him once.
under a peaked sombrero with a chin-strap run in a bone slide, a pair of dark eyes bored into nance’s, unsmiling. a very dark face, almost indian in clean-cut feature and contour, with repressed lips and thin nostrils, completed the picture.
the newcomer did not speak, but stood holding the bit of a handsome, huge, black horse.
“brand!” called the boy, “oh, brand!”
at that name nance allison found her tongue.
“i’ve been waiting for you,” she said calmly, “i’m glad you’ve come.”
“yes?” he said in a singularly deep, sweet voice.
that voice disconcerted nance upon the instant, stole some of her fire, so to speak. she had been ready to tackle him on the issue at once, to fight, if necessary, with a flood of reasons and protests against his treatment of sonny.
now, suddenly, she felt a vague sense of having intruded, of meddling with another’s affairs. but she was not one to back down from any righteous stand—and sonny’s cause was righteous in every sense, it seemed to her.
so she gazed steadily into the direct dark eyes and nodded decidedly.
“yes—i am,” she repeated, “i—want to talk to you.”
the man dropped the rein over the black’s head and came forward a step or two.
“quite a rare experience,” he said, smiling, as he removed his hat and ran his brown fingers through the thick black hair that stood up from his sweated forehead, “it’s been a long time since any woman has wanted to talk to us—eh, sonny?”
“but—oh, she talks sweet, brand!” cried the child eagerly, “and she—holds me on her lap!”
at the profound awe in the small voice the man’s face grew quickly grave.
“we must be pretty far gone as vagabonds!” he said, “that makes me think what a woman’s love must mean to a child. you have been a gift of god, dropped out of the blue to sonny, miss allison, and i ought to thank you.”
“why—you—you know who i am?” cried the girl, astounded.
“certainly. and i know how long you’ve been coming here to the cañon. i know where you live, too—down on the flats by the river.”
his slow, amused smile at her evident discomfiture was engaging. it disarmed nance, made her feel more than ever an intruder.
“i know what lost waifs you must think us—and you are partly right. we are. i’ve watched you with sonny twice, and i have not removed our camp—if such it could be called—because i didn’t think you’d talk.”
“i haven’t,” said nance, “except to my own family.”
“since you have found us out,” he went on, “i shall tell you that sonny is not the neglected little cast-off that you must naturally think him. i have hidden him here for a purpose. we have a purpose, the boy and i, and we have traveled many miles in its pursuit. we do seem mysterious—but we’re not so greatly so, after all. i try to care for him as best i may when i must be so much away from him. if it wasn’t for dirk i couldn’t leave him as i do.”
“he’s well protected,” said nance, “i used sonny himself to betray the dog. i couldn’t do otherwise.”
“i know something of it—sonny didn’t tell me, but i saw the signs of your scuffle. it was printed plain in the sand and shale.”
“no—sonny didn’t tell,” said nance regretfully, “and i made him a liar—when i didn’t mean to. i asked him not to tell you that i’d been here. i was afraid you’d take him away. i didn’t think you’d ask him point blank.”
“i’ve taught the boy not to talk,” said the man—“it’s a vital necessity to us.”
“he doesn’t. i couldn’t find out a thing, for all i wheedled shamelessly, except that you were brand, and that you two ride always on diamond there.”
“my name is fair, miss allison—brand fair, and that is sonny’s name also. but—we don’t tell it to strangers.”
he smiled at her again, a slow creasing of the lines about his lips, a pleasant narrowing of his eyes.
“then i—” there was an elemental quality of gladness in nance’s voice, though she was utterly unconscious of it, “am not a stranger?”
“you are sonny’s friend,” he replied, “and we give you our trust.”
the girl swallowed once and tightened her hold on the child’s thin shoulders. there was something infinitely pathetic, infinitely intriguing in this situation, and it gripped her strongly.
“i—thank you,” she said awkwardly, “i’ll not betray it.”
“i’m sure you won’t,” said brand fair, “and for the present, if you’ll accept us at our face value, we’ll be mighty glad—eh, sonny?”
“i’ve been glad all the time,” said sonny fervently, “and so’s dirk.”
“ingrates!” laughed the man. “here i’ve shared my poor substance with you two for—a very long time—and at the first bribe of meat and kisses you turn me down cold!”
“oh!” cried nance, flushing, “you know all about us!”
“it’s my business to know all about one who invades my solitude, isn’t it?”
but here sonny could stand brand’s badinage no longer and pulling away from nance he ran to him, and clinging about his knees, begged forgiveness for the lie whose memory troubled his clear little soul.
the man touched the unkempt small head with a tender hand. “sure, old-timer,” he said gently; “that’s all right. a gentleman must lie when a lady commands—he couldn’t do anything else.”
“you make me feel like a sinner!” said nance, “i hope you’ll forgive me, too.”
the man took sonny’s hand as she made ready to leave and turned down the cañon with her.
“we’ll form a guard-of-honor in token of that,” he said, “and in seeing you off we’ll invite you back again. sonny would miss you now, you know. but just remember always, miss allison, please—that in a way we’re keeping out of sight—until—until some time in an uncertain future. consider us a secret, will you not?”
nance allison rode home to nameless with her head in a whirl. life, that had seemed to pass her by in her plodding labor and her patient bearing of trouble, had suddenly touched her with a flaming finger.
she had found mystery and affection in the silence of blue stone cañon—and now there was something else, a strange vibrant element, thin as ether and intangible as wind, a sense of elation, of excitement. she felt a surge within her of some nameless fire, an uplift, a peculiar gladness.
“mammy,” she said straightly when she stepped in at the cabin door, “i’ve found the man!”
“whew! some statement, sis!” cried bud as he shambled across the sill behind her. “what’s he like?”
“why—i don’t just know. he’s tall—and he wears clothes that have once been fine—and he has the straightest eyes i ever saw. his name’s fair—brand fair—and he’s some relation to sonny, for that is his name, too.”
“i hope you gave him that piece of your mind you laid out to?” pursued bud.
“why, no—no,” said nance wonderingly, looking at him with half-seeing eyes, “i don’t—believe—i did!”
mrs. allison looked up from her work of getting supper at the stove.
“i mind me,” she said, “of the first time i ever set eyes on your pappy. i was goin’ to frail him good because he’d run his saddle horse a-past th’ cart i was drivin’, kickin’ a terrible dust all over my sunday dress—it was camp-meetin’ at sharfell’s corners—an’ then—he laughed an’ talked to me—an’ i forgot my mad spell. his eyes jest coaxed th’ wrath out of my heart—then an’ ever after.”
“why, mammy,” said nance, “that’s just what happened here! this man talked to me and i forgot my mad spell! i never said a thing i’d stayed to say! and i promised to keep the secret of him and sonny in the cañon.”
“h’m!” said bud as he sidled into his chair and smoothed his bronze hair, wet from his ablutions at the well, “h’m—mammy, why’d you tell her that? i wish you hadn’t.”
“why?” said nance, but her brother shook his head.
