Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/73

 "Wake him up and give him that, Ed," she said. "See that he reads it, won't you? There's going to be trouble if he doesn't go home tonight."

"Right-o," said Ed. "I get you."

But after she left it she wondered. If she sent him back to the ranch she would be sending him to Kay again! She shrugged her shoulders and went on.

To Kay herself those two days of Tom's unexplained absence were sheer torture. Always she was on the watch for him, from early in the morning when the wranglers came in at six for breakfast to late afternoon, with Charlie the dairy-maid driving in the milk herd, great slow-moving beasts with full udders which swung as they walked. Once she went to the corral; but Tom's big gray was not there, nor was Tom's saddle on its peg in the saddle house. She could not ask for him, and now she felt that they would be gone before he came back. Her father was up and moving about, and they were to leave on Wednesday. Already Nora was packing the trunks.

"I'd better keep out your heavy coat, Miss Kay."

"Yes, please, Nora."

If they went before Tom came back what could she do? Could she leave a note for him? But what would she say if she did? "Dear Tom: I am so sorry we have to go without seeing you. I do hope" Never! Better no word at all than that.

In spite of what Jake had told her she had no real suspicion of the truth. Monday passed like Sunday. Herbert was cheerful, almost blithe.

"Well, the old Mariposa won't look so bad to me."

"No?"

"Nor to you either, once you're headed East. You'll—forget all this."

But she ignored that.

To do Herbert justice he believed she would forget, and perhaps it was to make that forgetting easier that he followed her to the verandah that night. She could not stay inside the house. He sat down near her and began his usual preliminary tappings before he lighted his cigarette.