"Ordinarily I would have my doubts myself," replied Redfield, "but the whole country is roused, and we're going to round up these men this time, sure. The best men and the big papers all over the West are demanding an exercise of the law, and the reward we have offered--" He paused, suddenly. "By-the-way, that reward will come to you if you can bring about the arrest of the criminals."
"The reward should go to Dunn's family," replied the ranger, soberly. "Poor chap, he's sacrificed himself for the good of the State."
"That's true. His family is left in bad shape--"
Cavanagh broke off the conversation suddenly. "I must go back to--" he had almost said "back to Wetherford." "My patient needs me!" he exclaimed.
"He's surely dying. In my judgment he can't last the night, but so long as he's conscious it's up to me to be on the spot."
Redfield walked slowly back across the river, thinking on the patient courage of the ranger.
"It isn't the obvious kind of thing, but it's courage all the same," he said to himself.
Meanwhile Lize and Virginia, left alone beside the fire, had drawn closer together.
The girl's face, so sweet and so pensive, wrought strongly upon the older woman's sympathy. Something of her own girlhood came back to her. Being freed from the town and all its associations, she became more considerate, more thoughtful. She wished to speak, and yet she found it very hard to begin. At last she said, with a touch of mockery in her tone: "You like Ross Cavanagh almost as well as I do myself, don't you?"
The girl flushed a little, but her eyes remained steady. "I would not be here if I did not," she replied.
"Neither would I. Well, now, I have got something to tell you--something I ought to have told you long ago--something that Ross ought to know. I intended to tell you that first day you came back, but I couldn't somehow get to it, and I kept putting it off and putting it off till--well, then I got fond of you, and every day made it harder." Here she made her supreme effort. "Child, I'm an old bluff. I'm not your mother at all."
Lee stared at her in amazement. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean your real mother died when you was a tiny little babe. You see, I was your father's second wife; in fact, you weren't a year old when we married. Ed made me promise never to let you know. We were to bring you up just the same as if you was a child to both of us. Nobody knows but Reddy. I told him the day we started up here."