Lorraine looked at him again doubtfully and went after the matches. He thanked her, smiling down at her quizzically. "A man can get along without lots of things, but he's plumb lost without matches. You've maybe saved my life, Miss Hunter, if you only knew it."
She watched him as he rode away, opening the gate and letting himself through without dismounting. He disappeared finally around a small spur of the hill, and Lorraine found her knees trembling under her.
"Ket, you're an awful fool," she exclaimed fiercely. "Why did you let me give myself away to that man? I--I believe he _was_ the man. And if I really did see him, it wasn't my imagination at all. He saw me there, perhaps. Ket, I'm scared! I'm not going to stay on this ranch all alone. I'm going to saddle the family skeleton, and I'm going to ride till dark. There's something queer about that man from Whisper. I'm afraid of him."
After awhile, when she had finished her breakfast and was putting up a lunch, Lorraine picked up the nameless gray cat and holding its head between her slim fingers, looked at it steadily. "Ket, you're the humanest thing I've seen since I left home," she said wistfully. "I _hate_ a country where horrible things happen under the surface and the top is just gray and quiet and so dull it makes you want to scream. Lone Morgan lied to me. He lied--he lied!" She hugged the cat impulsively and rubbed her cheek absently against it, so that it began purring immediately.
"Ket--I'm afraid of that man at Whisper!" she breathed miserably against its fur.
Brit was smoking his pipe after supper and staring at nothing, though his face was turned toward the closed door. Lorraine had washed the dishes and was tidying the room and looking at her father now and then in a troubled, questioning way of which Brit was quite oblivious.
"Dad," she said abruptly, "who is the man at Whisper?"
Brit turned his eyes slowly to her face as if he had not grasped her meaning and was waiting for her to repeat the question. It was evident that his thoughts had pulled away from something that meant a good deal to him.
"A man came this morning, and said he was the man at Whisper, and that he would come again to see you."
Brit took his pipe from his mouth, looked at it and crowded down the tobacco with a forefinger. "He seen me ride away from the ranch, this morning," he said. "He was coming down the Whisper trail as I was taking the fork over to Sugar Spring, Frank and me. What did he say he wanted to see me about?"