Joan's eyes had softened with a gentle sympathy, but she offered no word.
"'Bout the other," the man went on, turning back to the girl, and letting his eyes rest on her fair face, "that's easy, too. I was at the shack of the boys in the storm. You come along an' wer' lying right ther' on the door-sill when I found you. I jest carried you right here. Y' see, I guessed who you wer'. Your cart was wrecked on the bank o' the creek----"
"And the teamster?" Joan's eyes were eagerly appealing.
"Oh, guess he was ther' too." Then he abruptly moved toward the horses. "Say, I'll get on an' cut that hay."
Joan understood. She knew that the teamster was dead. She sighed deeply, and as the sound reached him Buck looked round. It was on the tip of his tongue to say some word of comfort, for he knew that Joan had understood that the man was dead, but the girl herself, under the influence of her new resolve, made it unnecessary. She rose from her seat, and her manner suggested a forced lightness.
"I'll go and feed the chickens," she said. "I--I ought to be capable of doing that."
Buck smiled as he prepared to go and see to the hogs.
"Guess you won't have trouble--if you know what to give 'em," he said.
Nor was he quite sure if the girl were angry or smiling as she hurried out of the barn.
The seedling of success planted in rank soil generally develops a wild, pernicious growth which, until the summer of its life has passed, is untameable and pollutes all that with which it comes into contact. The husbandman may pluck at its roots, but the seed is flung broadcast, and he finds himself wringing his hands helplessly in the wilderness.
So it was on the banks of Yellow Creek. The seedling was already flinging its tendrils and fastening tightly upon the life of the little camp. The change had come within three weeks of the moment when the Padre had gazed upon that first wonderful find of gold. So rapid was its development that it was almost staggering to the man who stood by watching the result of the news he had first carried to the camp.
The Padre wandered the hills with trap and gun. Nothing could win him from the pursuit which was his. But his eyes were wide open to those things which had somehow become the care of his leisure. Many of his evenings were spent in the camp, and there he saw and heard the things which, in his working moments, gave him food for a disquietude of thought.