Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/239

Rh her words. "And, in any case," she went on, with an assumption of the lightness that had been missing from her voice all evening, "I shall record the Hidden Homestead."

"That helps," Sheridan answered. "Goodnight." But he rode off with the feeling that a riddle had been propounded to him that he could not answer because he did not understand its terms.

Jackson did not sing on the way they passed in silence until they reached Pioche Pass.

"Thora told you, I suppose," Sheridan then said.

"Yep, she told me. She aims to trail along. Don't it beat hell? Don't it just plumb beat hell to a cinder? Here we go ridin' up all lit up like two church winders with good news. She comes back with the same stuff, an' the evenin's sp'iled. If you'd had enny luck, Pete Sheridan, you'd have lost that letter. They was both happy here as steers in clover, might have bin happier. What in Sam Hill does she want to go back East for?"

"For what she can't get here, Red. Society of her kind, men who are of a different world than ours, gowns, jewels, life!"

"Life! If it wasn't for you, her life wouldn't amount to much just now. She don't want truck with the East. She belongs West. Same as Thora. They both fit. An' I'm tellin' you somethin' else, Pete, a woman belongs where her man is, unless she's tied up to another woman, like Thora is, an' that other woman don't know her own mind. Easterners, gowns, jewels! Shucks."

Sheridan's thoughts echoed Red's to some measure.