“Dear Marianne,” scrawled the pencil,
“this is to let you know that I have to go on
business to—”
“Better not tell her where,” suggested
Hervey. “She might send after and ask a
lot of bothersome questions. You know the way
a woman is.”
“You sure got a fine head for business, Lew,”
nodded Jordan, and continued his note: “to
a town across the mountains and it may be a few days
before I get back. I met Lew on the road, so I’m
letting him take this note back to you Another thing:
I’ve told Lew about several things I want done
while I’m gone. Easier than explaining them
all to you, honey, he can do them himself and tell
you later.
Affectionately,”
As he scrawled the signature Hervey suggested softly:
“Suppose you put down at the bottom: ’This
will serve as authority to Lew Hervey to act in my
name while I’m away.’”
“Sure,” nodded Jordan, as he scribbled
the dictated words. “Marianne is a stickler
for form. She’ll want something like that
to convince her.”
He shoved the paper into the trembling hand of Lew
Hervey, and sighed with weariness.
“Chief,” muttered Hervey, finding that
even in the darkness he could not look into the tired,
pain-worn face of the rancher, “I sure hope you
never have no call to be sorry for this.”
“Sorry? I ain’t bothering about that.
So long, Lew.”
But Lew Hervey had suddenly lost his voice. He
could only wave his adieu.
STRATEGY
Never had Red Perris passed a night of such pleasant
dreams. For never, indeed, had he been so exquisitely
flattered as during the preceding evening when Marianne
Jordan kept him after dinner in the ranchhouse while
the other hired men, as was their custom, loitered
to smoke their after-dinner cigarettes in the moist
coolness of the patio. For the building was on
the Spanish-Mexican style. The walls were heavy
enough to defy the most biting cold of winter and the
most searching sun in summer. And they marched
in a wide circle around an interior court which was
bordered with a clumsy arcade of ’dobe pillars.
By daylight the defects in construction were rather
too apparent. But at night the effect was imposing,
almost grand.
But while the cowhands smoked in the patio, the noise
of their laughter and their heavy voices penetrated
no louder than the dim humming of bees to the ear
of Red Jim Perris, sitting tete-a-tete with Marianne
in an inner room. And he did not envy the sprawling
freedom of those outside.
