Suddenly Hardenberg broke the silence. He had been watching the girl, and could no longer bear the misery in her white, strained face.
"You think you've turned a smart trick, don't you?" he snapped with angry impulsiveness. "As a matter of fact the ranch belongs to him already. The man you've known as Green is Buck Stratton himself."
Lynch's lids flashed up. "Yuh--lie!" he murmured. "Stratton's--dead!"
"Nothing like it," retorted the sheriff. "The papers got it wrong. He was only badly wounded. This fellow here is Buck Stratton, and he can prove it."
A spasm quivered over Lynch's face. He tried to speak, but only a faint gurgle came from his blood-flecked lips. Too late Hardenberg, catching an angry glance from Buck, realized and regretted his impulsive indiscretion. For Mary Thorne, turning slowly like a person in a dream, stared into the face of the man beside her, lips quivering and eyes full of a great horror.
"You!" she faltered, in a pitiful, small voice. "You--"
Stratton held her closer, a troubled tenderness sweeping the anger from his eyes.
"But--but, Mary--" he stammered--"what difference does--"
Suddenly her nerves snapped under the culminating strain of the past few hours.
"Difference!" she cried hysterically. "Difference!" Her heart lay like a cold, dead thing within her; she felt utterly miserable and alone. "You--My father! Oh, God!"
She made a weak effort to escape from his embrace. Then, abruptly, her slim, girlish figure grew limp, her head fell back against Stratton's shoulder, her eyes closed.
Mrs. Archer sat alone in the ranch-house living-room, doing absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, she had little use for those minor solaces of knitting or crocheting which soothe the waking hours of so many elderly women. More than once, indeed, she had been heard to state with mild emphasis that when she was no longer able to entertain herself with human nature, or, at the worst, with an interesting book, it would be high time to retire into a nunnery, or its modern equivalent.
Sitting there beside one of the sunny southern windows, her small, faintly wrinkled hands lying reposefully in her lap, she made a dainty, attractive picture of age which was yet not old. Her hair was frankly gray, but luxuriant and crisply waving. No one would have mistaken the soft, faded pink of her complexion, well preserved though it was, for that of a young woman. But her eyes, bright, eager, humorous, changing with every mood, were full of the fire of eternal youth.