"No, it's not strange, either," she broke in to say. "Your partner--and that's father--had to come up here on business, and I've come along with him, just as I always do when he comes here in the partridge season." She patted a gun-butt. "But I didn't expect to find fire and smoke and lightning and rain and tornadoes up here, any more than I looked for you at Pogey Notch when you were supposed to be exploring for a winter's operation on Enchanted. Now you will have to explain to your partner here!" And he turned from her smiling face to shake hands with Rodburd Ide.
"Every man who can handle brush and mattock is expected to be at the head of a fire in time of trouble!" chirped the "Mayor of Castonia." He tipped back his head to beam amiably on his partner. "Did it get through onto us, Wade?"
"Then God was good to us! Isn't that so, Mr. Barrett?" And the cheerful little man trotted along to grip the hand of "Stumpage John." That gentleman glowered sullenly, and tried to explain his gloom by muttering about "blowdowns" being worse than fires. He looked ill. As he came down the trail a fever had been rising in his blood. He went away by himself, and sat down feeling faint and weak.
"Old Enchanted is all right," said Ide. "There's a thousand acres of black growth there, every tree standin' with its arm about its brother. You mustn't let 'em devil you, Mr. Barrett!" he called.
Mr. Barrett, his lowering gaze on Wade, agreed mentally.
"Well, this is certainly a convention of the timber interests!" cried the brisk little autocrat of Castonia. He pointed up the trail, where the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt was advancing alone.
Wade withdrew unobstrusively, and stood beside Nina Ide. Perhaps he hoped that her talk might bring some word of Elva Barrett.
But at last even Rodburd Ide's cheery consciousness became impressed by the fact that neither Britt nor Barrett seemed to relish any chat on timber topics. And he broke upon a constrained silence to suggest to Wade that they proceed--taking it for granted that now his partner's way lay to the north, along with his own.
"There's--there's--" Wade stammered, and now for the first time Ide and his daughter marked the girl of the Skeet settlement leaning moodily against the side of the Durfy hovel, the unkempt Abe hovering apprehensively in the background.