Something had happened to Allison. For the first time in her healthy young life sleep refused to visit her. Even her terrible grief at the death of her father had given way to sleep at last and she had forgotten her tragedy for a blessed time.
But on the night following her interview with the strange man of the cañon she was wide awake till dawn.
She was not uncomfortable. She did not think she was ill. But an odd inner warmth surged all through her, a pleasant fire ran in her . She lay in her bed with her hands beneath her head and thought over and over each phase of the day she had spent with Sonny, each incident that had led up to the appearance of Brand Fair. Then, with a delight, she went over his every word, every movement. She remembered the look of his brown hand on the black horse’s bit, the of his hat, the way the chin-strap lay along his lean, dark cheek. She recalled the direct glance of his eyes, the slow smile that his lips’ corners.
He was like no other man she had ever seen.
There was a sweetness in the tones of his deep voice, a sense of restfulness and strength about him. He seemed to fit in with her dreams of the best things to be had in life—like lace curtains and the rag carpet which was slowly growing in her Mammy’s hands.
His name, too—Brand Fair. She liked the sound of it.
And it was Sonny’s name. Suddenly she sat bolt upright, staring at the darkness. Fair—Sonny Fair! Could it be that Brand was Sonny’s father? For some reason a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart, a feeling of disaster to her.
“Now why” she asked herself slowly, “should that make any difference? Wouldn’t he be just as nice—just as pleasant to talk to?”
She sat a long time holding her two braids in her hands, twirling the ends around her fingers, thinking.
Why was she so pleased with this stranger, she wondered?
She had seen many men in her life—there were the cowboys from the Upper Country whom she saw at Cordova, nearly every time she went there, there was McKane, and Sheriff Price Selwood.
She liked the sheriff. He was a man under his stern , she knew. His eyes were direct, like Fair’s somewhat, and he had the same seeming of quiet strength. He had been at the cabin quite a few times after her father’s death, asking all sorts of questions about his manner of life, his experience in the hills, and so . Yes—Fair was a little like the sheriff, only more so—oh, very much more so—quiet, steady, one whose word you would take without question.
He was different, that was all—different.
He had not always lived in the hills, that was certain. She lay down once more and tried to sleep, but her eyes would not obey her will. They came open each time she closed them to see this man at the of stone, his hand on the black’s bit—at the pool by the cave below where he bade her good-bye—still there when she looked back from far down the cañon.
She heard Old John, the big plymouth-rock rooster, crow for midnight from his in the rafters of the stable—and again at false dawn a little while before daylight.
“Well, I’d like to know what me,” she thought to herself as she got up with the first grey above Mystery , “I never stayed awake all night in my life before.”
It was indicative of the great good health and strength there was in her that she felt no ill effects from the unusual experience. She brushed her hair and pinned it around her head in a shining coronet, put on a clean dress from the clothes-press in the corner, laced up the heavy shoes she had to wear about her man’s work, and went softly out to light the kitchen fire, to draw a fresh pail of water and to stand lost in rapt of the of coming day. She washed her face and hands in the basin and came blooming from the cold water, content with her lot, happy to be alive—and to know that Brand and Sonny Fair were in Blue Stone Cañon, and that they called themselves her friends.
She had never had a special friend before—not since those far-back little-girl days in Missouri.
“Mammy,” she said at breakfast, “I never slept a last night. I kept thinking about Sonny and Brand all the time—wondering why they’re hiding, and what relation they are, and why they live so hard and poor like. It seems dreadful, don’t it?”
“Seems funny, if you ask me,” said Bud shortly, “maybe this Brand feller knows something of all this that’s been going on up and down Nameless.”
Nance laid down her knife and fork and looked at him.
“Of all things, Bud!” she said, “it’s not like you to cast the first stone. And you’ve never seen this man’s face, or you wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, I’m not so sure of it,” returned the boy, “I hate to see you take up so with a stranger.”
“I trust your feelin’ for him, Nance,” said Mrs. Allison, “somehow there’s somethin’ in a woman’s heart when she looks into a man’s eyes, most times, which sets th’ stamp on him for good or bad. Seems like it’s seventh sense which th’ gives us woman-kind for a safeguard. I trust it.”
“I guess I do, too, Mammy,” said Nance, “leastways I felt to trust Brand Fair the first minute I laid eyes on him. He’s different.”
Mrs. Allison said no more, but she was thinking back over the long years to that camp-meeting time when she had meant to “frail” the stranger, young John Allison, and how his smiling eyes had her angry heart to peace—a peace which stayed with her always, through hardship and poverty, through many Western moves, and which now the sorrow of his absence. John Allison had seemed to her “different” also.
For some reason Nance stayed away from the cañon for several days. She busied herself with odd jobs about the place. She mended the wire fence around the big flat where the wild hay was waving thick, its green floor flowing with sheets of silver where the light winds swept, and gave the harness a thorough oiling.
As she sat in the barn door running the back and forth through her hands she cast smiling eyes out at her field of corn.
“It’s going to be a big crop, Bud,” she said, “there’ll be three ears on every stalk and they’re strong. We’ll pull the suckers next week and cultivate it again in ten days more—and you just watch it grow and wave its green banners.”
“It’s already waving them,” said Bud working beside her, “it sure looks fine.”
There was the pride of possession in the two young faces, the quiet joy of satisfaction in simple work well done and its reward.
“I hope,” said the girl dreamily, “I hope, Bud, that there’ll be enough left over after we pay McKane to get the carpet woven. Mammy’s got nearly enough balls already, and we can take it in to Bement in the early fall and go back after it about two weeks later.”
Bud’s eyes sparkled.
“Gee! But that would be good,” he said wistfully, “a regular holiday. I’d like to see a town again.”
“One trip I’d go with you and the next we’d make Mammy go. It’d set her up, give her something to think about all winter,” planned Nance, “she don’t get out like we do.”
So they looked ahead to the meagre joys of their poor life and were happy.
Two days later Nance again rode Buckskin to the cañon, and this time she went in the afternoon.
The eager gladness of the child, the welcome of the Collie, gave her a feeling of that she had stayed away so long, and she made glowing holiday with her cookies, her songs and her laughter, so that the hours flew on magic wings—and Brand came home before they were even beginning to look for him.
He came upon them silently, as he had done before, and Nance sprang up in confusion.
“How do you always get here so quietly?” she asked, “I never heard a sound.”
“Look at Diamond,” he replied smilingly, “we always follow the water. A stream leaves no tell-tale tracks. Even Sonny can swim like a fish.”
Nance sobered quickly.
A disturbing thought of Bud’s remark about rustlers came into her mind—and she thought of those ninety of Bossick’s driven into Nameless and whisked out of the country. Of course ninety head of cattle couldn’t go down the big river indefinitely—but she didn’t like the suggestion.
“No,” she said, “it don’t. That’s what the rustlers seem to think.”
She looked him square in the eyes, and was satisfied.
There was............