There was no preamble. There was no sign of emotion, even at the moment of his arrival. Jeff launched his request at father and daughter in a voice such as he might have used in the most commonplace of affairs.

 

It was a request to be put up for the night.

 

But both Bud and Nan were startled. Nan's cheeks paled, and imagination gripped her. She said nothing. With Bud to be startled was to instantly resort to verbal expression.

 

"Wot's wrong?" he demanded.

 

Then the storm broke. It broke almost immoderately before these two who were the intimates of Jeff's life. All that had been withheld before Dug McFarlane, all which he had refused to display before the wife he had set up for his worship, Jeff had no scruples in laying before these two. It was the sure token of the relations between them, relations of perfect trust and sympathy.

 

Bud sat gazing at the outward sign of the passionate fires he had always known to lie smouldering in the depths of this man's soul. Nan stood paralyzed before such violence. Both knew that hell was raging under the storm of emotion. Both knew that the wounds inflicted upon this man's strong heart were well-nigh mortal.

 

The whole story was told, broken, disjointed. For the first time Nan learned the result of the search for an erring twin brother, and her horror was unbounded. A heart full of tenderness bled for the man whose sufferings she was witnessing. The story of Elvine's own actions filled her with revolting, yet with pity. It was not in her to condemn easily. She felt that such acts were beyond her powers of judgment.

 

The man's grief, his bitter, passionate resentment smote her beyond any sufferings she had ever known herself. Elvine absorbed all the anger she could bestow, but even so it was infinitesimal beside the harvest of grief which the sight of this man's suffering yielded her. That was the paramount emotion of the moment with her. That, and the injustice she deemed to have been meted out to him.

 

It was not until the great crescendo of the man's storm of grief had passed that Nan bethought herself of the need in which he stood. Nor was that need apparent until his whole note had changed to a moody bitterness with which he regarded the future. Then she understood the demon that was knocking at the door of his soul.

 

Immediately her decision was taken. She left the two men together and went to make the necessary preparations for this refugee's accommodation. Curiously enough, these preparations were not complete for nearly an hour, at the time, in fact, that it was her father's habit to seek his bed.

 

When she returned to the parlor the place was full of the reek of Bud's tobacco, but it was only from the one pipe. Neither of the men were talking when she entered the room, and her glance passed swiftly from one to the other.

 

She moved over to where Jeff was sitting with his back turned to her, and stood behind his chair.

 

"Everything's fixed for you, Jeff," she said. "But--but maybe you don't feel like turning in yet. My Daddy usually goes at this time, and--he's had a hard day."

 

Bud looked across at her. His pipe was removed from his mouth for the purpose of protest. But the protest remained unspoken in face of the meaning he beheld in the girl's brown eyes. Instead he rose heavily from his rocker.

 

"Say, jest take your time, Jeff, boy," he said. "Guess you'll need to think hard before mornin'. I don't guess it's your way to jump at things. I ain't never see you jump yet. Anyway, when you're thinkin', boy, it'll be best to remember that a woman's jest a woman, an' her notions ain't allus our notions."

 

Nan came over to him, and he rested one great arm about her shoulders, and stooped and kissed her.

 

"Good-night, little gal," he said. "Maybe Jeff'll excuse me. An' maybe you ken tell him some o' them things that don't come easy to me. So long, Jeff. I'll sure see you in the mornin' before you quit."

 

He stood uncertainly for a moment with his arm upon Nan's shoulders. He seemed to want to say more, and was at a loss how to say it. Finally he stuck his pipe back into his mouth with a savage thrust and lumbered heavily from the room.

 

Nan understood. She knew he was laboring under profound emotion, and a feeling of self-disgust at his own inability to help his partner and friend.

 

As the door closed she moved over to the table and leaned against it. Jeff's back was toward her, and his face was turned in the direction of the window, across which the curtains had not yet been drawn.

 

He was leaning forward, his gaze intent and straight ahead out into the black night beyond. His elbows were on his knees, and his hands were clasped, and hanging between them. To the sympathetic heart of Nan there was despair in every line of his attitude. She nerved herself to carry out her decisions.

 

"Jeff!"

 

There was no movement in response. But a reply came. It was in the tone of a man indifferent to everything but the thought teeming through his brain.

 

"Well?"

 

"Why did you come around here--to-night?"

 

The question achieved its purpose. The man abandoned his attitude in a movement of fierce resentment. He swung round on the questioner, his eyes hot with feeling.

 

"Because I guess I need to sleep somewhere. Because nothing on earth could make me share roof with the woman who's my wife. Gee, my wife! Say, Nan, the thought of it nearly sets me crazy."

 

"Does it? You didn't feel that way--two nights ago."

 

The man's eyes met the girl's incredulously.

 

"How can you talk that way?" he demanded roughly. "I didn't know a thing then. I thought she was all she seemed. Maybe I was just a blind fool, crazy with love. Anyway--I hadn't learned the hell lying around her heart."

 

"I s'pose there is hell lying around her heart?"

 

Nan's words were provocative. Yet they were spoke in such a tone of simplicity as to rob them of all apparent intent.

 

Jeff was in no mood for patience. Swift resentment followed upon his incredulous stare.

 

"Do you need me to give it you all again?" he cried fiercely. "It don't need savvee to grip things." Then his voice rose. "And to think those dollars have fed her, and clothed her, a body as fair as an angel's, and a heart as foul as hell." Then his tone dropped as if he were afraid of the sound of his own voice. "Say, thank God I kept my hands off her. If she'd been a man----"

 

He left his sentence unfinished. In her mind Nan completed it. But aloud she gave it another ending.

 

"If she'd been a man I don't guess she'd have been there to have you lay hands on her."

 

There was a new note in the girl's tones. But it passed Jeff by.

 

"No," he said with almost foolish seriousness.

 

"Say, Jeff," the girl went on gently, a moment later, "aren't you acting a teeny bit crazy over this? I mean talking of souls foul as hell. And--an' not sharing the same roof with the woman you've sworn to love, and--and cherish as long as you both live. She hasn't done a thing wrong by you since you said--an' meant that. She hasn't done a thing wrong anyway."

 

The denial was so gentle yet so decided. Had there been heat in it it must have been ineffective. As it was Jeff stared incredulously and speechless, and the girl went on:

 

"You think I'm wrong," she said. "Maybe you think I'm crazy, same as I guess this thing's made you feel." She shook her head. "I'm not--sure. Take us here. Maybe I'm chasing around through the hills. Chance runs me plumb into the camp of these rustlers who're cutting into your profits on the Obar. I come right in and hand you the story. You and Bud round up a bunch of boys and I take you to where the camp's hidden. You hold 'em up, and you hang them. Well, I guess the pleasantest moment of that racket for you would be to get back to home and hand me a bunch of dollars. Say, I can see you doing it. I can see your smile. I can hear you sayin': 'Take 'em, little Nan, an' buy yourself some swell fixing.' And say, Jeff, I wouldn't have done a thing less than your Evie's done. That's how I'd say now, acting as you are, you aren't the 'Honest Jeff' I've always known. You're not fair to Evie, you aren't ............