blue pete glided in and tossed aside the blanket of his indian disguise with a gesture of irritability. with a petulant kick his beaded moccasins struck the ceiling of the cave, and, sighing, he sank his feet into the more familiar high-heeled cowboy boots.
mira, moving busily about the camp stove in a recess, noted it all without turning her head--noted, too, that there the usual routine of his return was interrupted. the great two-inch spurs, his individual twist to cowboy attire--great spiked wheels which he never used, but whose glitter and rattle seemed to satisfy him--were forgotten. instead, he sank to the rocky floor and meditatively drew from his belt the beloved corncob pipe.
troubled, mira went about the preparation of their evening meal with a plaintive quietness. juno, too, seemed oppressed, for after a tentative wriggle of her stump of a tail she settled back on her haunches, eyes fixed on her mistress.
mira struggled to hold back the tears, struggled harder to hide them when they persisted. to celebrate their return to the old cave under the river bank she had spent hours that afternoon scouring woods and river bottom for wild flowers; and a dozen old tin cans rescued from the camp garbage heap gleamed confused colour in the candle light. for more hours she had been rasping her little hands with scrubbing the rude table and the blocks that served as seats; and over the table she had draped after much experiment a gaudy indian blanket, thereby approaching more nearly the atmosphere of home they both craved so eagerly. about the wall depended picture papers, meaningless in story but heavy with pathetic longing.
hitherto he had always noticed so quickly and eagerly her efforts toward their comfort. from the first it had been one of the rites of their association--he beaming wordlessly at the touches of decoration with which she busied herself about their wild homes, she glowing with vocal pleasure at the things he carved with his own hands--the chair back in the cypress hills cave, the shelves for her stores, the drawer in the table, the box for juno to sleep in.
and now he did not seem to notice--and she had worked so hard.
presently the odour of the cooking venison beat its way to his brain and he lifted his head from his chest. he saw then the flowers in the old tomato and butter tins, the indian blanket hanging from the table, the fresh spruce boughs of their bed; and his neglect was to him akin to sacrilege. rising, he made for the door and the darkness beyond.
without turning she saw him leave, and in part she understood.
he was suffering--blue pete was suffering these days in mind as never in body. the accumulation of the intense longings since she had been torn from him down in the hills to serve her sentence for rustling was struggling with other hopes and fears; and the fight was rending. until only a few days ago he had been heading with certain and speedy success for the day when mira might return with head held high to the 3-bar-y, her own ranch. only his guilt intervened, for she had already paid the penalty of her own rustling. it was the knowledge that she would never return without him that made the aim such a sacred one. to free her he must clear himself with the police. and that could be only when every horse with whose stealing he had been connected was returned to its rightful owner. in his simplicity he imagined the law would be satisfied then.
so near had been the attainment of his one great ambition that his head sometimes whirled. only two horses yet to recover! then so many things had happened.
throughout his engagement as a common bohunk blue pete had been happily unconscious of the embarrassing forces working subtly within him to thrust to the background his own redemption. he only knew he was uncomfortable, that strange processes were cropping to the surface in his once firmly fixed mind. it seemed treason to mira--mira, for whom everything was done--to delay a task so simple.
yet he could not take the last two horses that alone, he imagined, stood between him and freedom, and relieve himself of new responsibilities.
doubly miserable, he sank on the needle-strewn sand and sighed.
"pete!"
mira's gentle voice came to him through the darkness, filled with trembling entreaty. conscience-stricken, he hurried back to the cave. she met him at the edge of the candle light and took his hand.
"can't you tell me about it, pete?"
with angry self-accusation he replied: "i cud 'a' got the horses, mira, an'--an' we'd 'a' bin back in the hills long before this. thar was jes' a padlock to smash . . . an' i didn't smash it."
she smiled sadly and wound a small arm about his neck.
"i know," she whispered. "we can't help it. . . . there are so many reasons why we can't go yet."
she turned swiftly away to the stove that he might not see how it tore her. never in his gloomiest suffering had blue pete longed as she had for a home. for he had never known home as she had. her efforts to brighten up their days were the expression of a desire to plant in his inexperienced mind the picture of home that kept passing before her eyes. her nights were but one long dream of a fireside, with blue pete in the other chair. and as the time of their penance seemed to be nearing an end the ugly ranch-house at the 3-bar-y became to her a palace. over and over again she planned the fresh home they would start--every chair and table and picture and rug had a place. helen mahon, the sergeant's wife--her own educated cousin--would help her, would supply the art mira herself, in her prairie upbringing, only groped for. she would make of the 3-bar-y a home for the whole cypress hills district. every day of delay was agony.
yet she spoke cheerfully. "it wouldn't be just--just right to go till the trestle's done, pete, dear."
he looked at her sharply. it was the conviction he had been fighting many a day--that it seemed to be only his own had made it so much harder for him. from the silence he had forced on himself of late he spoke fiercely:
"that damned pole! we can't let him win. we got to lick them bohunks."
"and mr. torrance--after all, pete, he's only a tenderfoot. . . . then there's tressa."
he nodded slowly. "yes, there's tressa." a chivalry he would never have acknowledged had been thrusting the girl more and more into the foreground. from the ordinary perils of isolation father and lover might defend her, but in the great calamity that blue pete knew was planned to overwhelm her two protectors she would inevitably fall.
"but yuh shudn't have to wait, mira," he burst out. "an yuh wudn't," he added miserably, "if i wasn't jes' a common rustler."
she came to him with quick steps and ran her fingers through his coarse hair.
"i wasn't no better, pete--me and my brothers." in her emotion she had dropped back into the old looseness of speech.
he seized her hand in both his own and crushed it to his lips so that it hurt pleasurably.
"i know why yuh stole them horses," he murmured. "yuh cudn't bear to see the sergeant thinkin' he loved yuh--an' yuh knew he cudn't love a rustler."
"i guess i knew i was going to love you, pete."
he wrapped his arms about her and buried his face in her neck; and she could feel him trembling.
presently she spoke again softly:
"and there's the sergeant."
"god help me!" he groaned. "i think that's what's holdin' me."
from the moment of his leap through torrance's window the half breed's mind had been disquieted. at any risk, until he could go to them with clean hands, he would not let the police know he was still alive. he knew their relentlessness in the chase; and he must be free in order to redeem himself.
that very night, straight from eaves-dropping at the bohunks' meeting, he had crept back to torrance's stable and found it locked. the padlock in itself was nothing, but it implied suspicion--possibly entangling precautions. and so he had slunk away.
a night's reflection had warned him how fortunate was the instinct that held his hand. as mira lay sleeping heavily beside him on their bed of spruce, he had lived again the happy days of his unofficial police duties with sergeant mahon--on the prairie, at the barracks and the police post, but more vividly than all, in the fastnesses of the cypress hills. he saw once more the kindly eye, felt the friendly hand, heard the soft voice of the one man above his class who had treated him as equal and friend. he saw again the old tobacco pouch spilled on inspector barker's desk in the barracks at medicine hat.
he knew why mahon had come north.
"i can't see him fail, mira," he groaned. "he's did fer if he does. we got to stay an' see him through."
"perhaps he's after the horse-thief too."
blue pete started. then his head sank in one arm. "we can't help him thar, mira. we can't be caught--yet. . . . an' the sergeant wudn't want to get us--yet."
"it'll be all over soon, pete," she said more brightly. "mr. torrance has promised us the horses when he goes."
"god fergive me fer keepin' yuh waitin', mira!" he breathed, trying to read in her face the forgiveness that meant more to him.
but she had turned away, and he did not see the tear on her lashes.
