When she made no reply to this, the man understood.
Slowly he drew on his gloves and, laying aside all
pretense, said simply: “I have been trying
to see you, Miss Worth, because I wanted to tell you
myself of the miserable part I took in the shameful
trick my uncle attempted to play on your father.
I see that you know all about it and I realize that
it is quite useless for me to ask you to forgive me.”
He paused, but still the young woman was silent.
[Illustration: More to regain his composure than
because he was thirsty helped himself from the earthen
water jar]
The man could not know how she was fighting to keep
back the tears.
“You told me plainly that you could never forgive
one who was untrue to his work,” he went on
hopelessly, “and you are right. There was
a time, before I knew you, when I would have defended
my action, when I would have held that it was right;
but I cannot now. Perhaps if I had known you
longer—But what’s the use. I
am a sad bungler in this great work, Miss Worth.
I am out of place in the big desert. I should
have stayed at home. I wish—I wish
you had never wakened me to the possibilities of life—real
life. You would not need to feel ashamed for
me now.”
When she looked up he was mounting his horse.
Almost she cried out to him, but he rode quickly out
of her sight.
PABLO BRINGS NEWS TO BARBARA.
All through the long hot months of that second summer
Barbara stayed in the desert with her father.
Many times Mr. Worth insisted that she should go to
the coast or the mountains for a few weeks, while
Abe, Texas and Pat added their entreaties. But
the young woman’s answer was always—to
her father: “If you must stay, daddy, then
I must stay to take care of you;” to Abe it
was: “Why don’t you take a vacation?
This is just as much my work as it is yours;”
to Texas it was a laughing question whether he thought
she was a “quitter,” and to Pat she always
declared that the desert could not in the least hurt
her complexion.
“And look at the other women,” she would
argue. There was Jack Hanson’s little wife,
with their children, in a twelve by fourteen tent
out there on their claim alone all day and many nights,
while Jack was on the work. And Mrs. White, who
stoutly declared that she was “sure going to
stand by her Jim if it burned her to a crisp,”
and that they did not have the money to spend even
if they could leave the crops they had managed to
plant. And Mrs. Rollins and Mrs. Baird and Mrs.
Cole and the others, who were holding down their husbands’
claims while the men were earning money on the works
to help them in getting their start. Surely if
these women could stay with their men-folk Barbara
could. So Mr. Worth let her have her way.
And the other three strove among themselves, with varied
and picturesque figures of speech, and—it
must be confessed—some rather strong language,
to express their admiration for her courage and endurance,
while all four taxed their inventive powers to the
limit devising ways to add to her comfort.
