The other laughed and fell back into his pillows. Bayard looked down at him, eyes speculative beneath slightly drawn brows.
"And then," he added, "if it ever comes to that...."
He snapped his fingers and turned away abruptly, as if the thought brought a great uneasiness.
It was afternoon the next day that Bruce Bayard, swinging down from his horse, whipped the dust from his clothing with his hat and walked through the kitchen door of the Manzanita House.
"Hello, Nora," he said to the girl who approached him. "Got a little clean water for a dirty cow puncher?"
He kicked out of his chaps and, dropping his hat to the floor, reached for the dipper. The girl, after a brief greeting, stood looking at him in perplexed speculation.
"What's wrong, Sister? You look mighty mournful this afternoon!"
"Bruce, what do you know about Ned Lytton?" she asked, cautiously, looking about to see that no one could overhear.
"Well, his wife's here; you took him upstairs with you that night dead drunk, you went home and he was gone before any of us was up. She ... she's worried to fits about him. Everybody's tryin' to put her off his track, 'cause they feel sorry for her; they think he's probably gone back to his mine to sober up, but nobody wants to see her follow and find out what he is. Nobody thinks she knows how he's been actin'.
"You know, they think that she's his sister. I don't."
He scooped water from the shallow basin and buried his face in the cupped hands that held it, rubbing and blowing furiously.
"That's what I come to town for, Nora, because I suspected she'd be worryin'." To himself he thought, "Sister! That helps!"
"Yeah,"--nodding his head as he wiped his hands--"I took him home. I got him there in bed an' I come to town th' first chance I got to tell her he's gettin' along fine."
"That was swell of you, Bruce," she said, with an admiring smile.
"Yes, it was!" she insisted. "To do it for her. She's th' sweetest thing ever come into this town, an' he's...."
"You had a run-in with him, didn't you?" he asked, as if casually, and the girl looked at him sharply.
"He's been kind of nutty an' said somethin' about it."
"He come in here last week, Bruce, drunk. He made a grab for me an' said somethin' fresh an' he was so crazy, so awful lookin', that it scart me for a minute. I told him to keep away or you'd knock all th' poison out of him. He ... You see,"--apologetically--"I was scart an' I knew that was th' easiest way out--to tell him you'd get after him. You ... Th' worst of 'em back up when they think you're likely to land on 'em."