Stratton's first feeling was that the girl must have made a mistake. In a dazed fashion he stepped forward and helped her out of the buckboard, but this was a more or less mechanical action and because she so evidently expected it. As he took her hand she pressed it warmly and did not at once relinquish² it after she had reached the ground.

 

"I'm awfully³ glad to see you again," she said, her color heightened a little. "But how on earth do you come to be away off here?"

 

With an effort Buck¹ pulled himself together. He could see that the men were regarding him curiously⁴, and felt that he must say something.

 

"That's simple enough," he answered briefly⁵. "I've got a job on this ranch⁶."

 

She looked slightly puzzled. "Really? But I thought--I had no idea you knew--Mary."

 

"I didn't. I needed a job and drifted in here thinking I'd find a friend of mine who used to work on the same outfit⁷ in Texas. He was gone, but Miss Thorne took me on."

 

"You mean you're a regular cow-boy?" the girl asked in surprise. "Why, you never told me that aboard ship?"

 

A sudden chill swept over Stratton, and for a moment he was stricken speechless. Aboard ship! Was it possible that this girl had been part of that uncanny, vanished year, the very thought of which troubled and oppressed him. His glance desperately⁸ evaded⁹ her charming, questioning eyes and rested suddenly with a curious cool sense of relief on the face of Mary Thorne, who had come up unperceived from behind.

 

But as their eyes met Buck was conscious of an odd veiled expression in their clear depths which vaguely¹⁰ troubled him. It vanished quickly as Miss Thorne moved quickly forward to embrace her friend.

 

"Stella!" she cried. "I'm so awfully glad to see you."

 

There were kisses and renewed embracings; the young man was greeted more decorously but with almost equal warmth, and then suddenly Miss Thorne turned to Stratton, who stood back a little, struggling between a longing¹¹ to escape and an equally strong desire to find out a little more about this attractive but startling reminder¹² of his unknown past.

 

"I had no idea you knew Miss Manning," she said, with the faintest hint of stiffness in her manner.

 

Buck swallowed hard but was saved from further embarrassment¹³ by the girl.

 

"Oh, yes!" she said brightly. "We came home on the same ship. Mr. Green had been wounded, you know, and was under my care. We got to be--great friends."

 

Was there a touch of meaning in the last two words? Stratton preferred to lay it to his imagination, and was glad of the diversion caused by the introduction of the young man, who proved to be Miss Manning's brother. Buck was not at all impressed by the fellow's handsome face, athletic¹⁴ figure, and immaculate clothes. The clothes especially seemed ridiculously out of place for even a visitor on a ranch, and he had always detested¹⁵ those dinky half-shaved mustaches.

 

Meanwhile the trunks had been carried in and the team led away, and Pedro was peevishly¹⁶ complaining from the kitchen door that dinner was getting cold. Buck learned that the visitors were from Chicago, where they had been close friends of the Thorne family for years, and then he managed to break away and join the fellows in the kitchen.

 

During the meal there was a lot of more or less quiet joking on the subject of Stratton's acquaintance with the lady, which he managed to parry rather cleverly. As a matter of fact the acute horror he felt at the very thought of the truth about himself getting out, quickened his wits and kept him constantly on his guard. He kept his temper and his head, explaining calmly that Miss Manning had been one of the nurses detailed¹⁷ to look after the batch¹⁸ of wounded men of whom he had been one. Naturally he had seen considerable of her during the long and tedious voyage, but there were one or two others he liked equally well.

 

His careless manner seemed to convince the men that there was no particular amusement to be extracted from the situation, and to Buck's relief they passed on to a general discussion of strangers on a ranch, the bother they were, and the extra amount of work they made.

 

"Always wantin' to ride around with yuh an' see what's goin' on," declared Butch Siegrist sourly. "If they're wimmin, yuh can't even give a cuss without lookin' first to see if they're near enough to hear."

 

Stratton made a mental resolution that if anything of that sort came up, he would do his best to duck the job of playing cicerone to Miss Stella Manning, attractive as she was. So far his bluff¹⁹ seemed to have worked, but with a mind so entirely²⁰ blank of the slightest detail of their acquaintance, he knew that at any moment the most casual remark might serve to rouse her suspicion.

 

Fortunately, his desire to remain in the background was abetted²¹ by Tex Lynch. Whether or not the foreman wanted to keep him away from the ranch-owner's friends as well as from Miss Thorne herself, Buck could not quite determine. But while the fence-repairing progressed, Stratton was never by any chance detailed to other duties which might keep him in the neighborhood of the ranch-house, and on the one occasion when Miss Thorne and her guests rode out to where the men were working, Lynch saw to it that there was no opportunity for anything like private conversation between them and the object of his solicitude²².

 

Buck watched his manoeuvering with secret amusement.

 

"Wouldn't he be wild if he knew he was playing right into my hands?" he thought.

 

His face darkened as he glanced thoughtfully at the departing figure of Miss Manning. She had greeted him warmly and betrayed a very evident inclination²³ to linger in his vicinity. There had been a slight touch of pique²⁴ in her treatment of Lynch, who hung around so persistently²⁵.

 

"I wish to thunder I had an idea of how much she knows," he muttered. "Did I act like a brainless idiot when I was--was that way, or not?"

 

He had asked the same question of the hospital surgeon and got an unsatisfactory answer. It all depended, the doctor told him non-committally. He might easily have shown evidences of lost memory; on the other hand, it was quite possible, especially with chance acquaintances, that his manner had been entirely normal.

 

There was nothing to be gained, however, by racking his brain for something that wasn't there, and Buck soon gave up the attempt. He could only trust to luck and his own inventiveness, and hope that Lynch's delightfully²⁶ unconscious easing of the situation would continue.

 

The work was finished toward noon on the third day after the arrival of the Mannings, and all the connections hooked up. There remained nothing to do but test the line, and Tex, after making sure everything was in order, glanced over his men, who lounged in front of the Las Vegas shack²⁷.

 

"Yuh may as well stay down at this end," he remarked, looking at Buck, "while the rest of us go back. Stick around where yuh can hear the bell, an' if it don't ring in, say, an hour, try to get the house yourself. If that don't work, come along in an' report. I reckon everything's all right, though."

 

Stratton was conscious of a sudden sense of alertness. He had grown so used to suspecting and analyzing²⁸ everything the foreman said or did that for a moment he forgot the precautions he had taken and wondered whether Lynch was up to some new crooked²⁹ work. Then he remembered and relaxed mentally. Considering the consequences, Tex would hardly dare try any fresh violence against him, especially quite so soon. Besides, in broad daylight and in this open country, Buck couldn't imagine any form of danger he wouldn't be able to meet successfully alone.

 

So he acquiesced³⁰ indifferently, and from the open doorway³¹ of the hut watched the others mount and ride away. There were only four of them, for Kreeger and Butch Siegrist had been dispatched early that morning to ride fence on the other side of the ranch-house. When they were well on their way, Buck untied³² his lunch from the saddle and went into the shack to eat it.

 

In spite of the feeling that he had nothing to fear, he took a position which gave him a good outlook from both door and window, and saw that his gun was loose in the holster. After he had eaten, he went down and got a drink from the creek³³. He had not been back in the shack a great while before the telephone bell jangled, and taking down the receiver he heard Lynch's voice at the other end.

 

Owing to the rather crude nature of the contrivance there was a good deal of buzzing on the line. But this was to be expected, and when Tex had talked a few minutes and decided³⁴ that the system was working as well as could be hoped, he told Stratton to come in to the ranch, and hung up.

 

Buck had not ridden more than a quarter of a mile across the prairie, when all at once he pulled his horse to a standstill. The thought had suddenly come to him that this was the chance he had wanted so long to take a look at that mysterious stretch of desert known as the north pasture. He would be delayed, of course, but explanations were easy and that did not disturb him. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and without delay he turned his horse and spurred forward.

 

An instinct of caution made him keep as close as possible to the rough, broken country that edged the western extremity³⁵ of the ranch, where he would run less chance of being seen than on the flat, open plain. He pushed his horse as much as was wise, and presently observed with satisfaction--though it was still a good way off--the line of fence that marked the northern boundary of middle pasture.

 

A few hundred yards ahead lay a shallow draw, and beyond it a weather-worn ridge³⁶ thrust its blunt nose out into the plain considerably³⁷ further than any Buck had yet passed. He turned the horse out, intending to ride around it, but a couple of minutes later jerked him to a standstill and sat motionless in the saddle, eyes narrowing with a sudden, keen surprise.

 

He had reached a point where, for the first time, he could make out, over the obstruction³⁸ ahead, the extreme northwest corner of the pasture. Almost at the spot where the two lines of fence made a right angle were two horsemen in the typical cow-man attire³⁹. At first they stood close together, but as Stratton stared intently, rising a little in his stirrups to get a clearer view through the scanty⁴⁰ fringe of vegetation that topped the ridge, one of them rode forward and, dismounting, began to manipulate the fence wires with quick, jerky movements of his hands.

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