She ran to the door muffled and hooded, leaped into the sleigh, and gathered up the reins.
"But you cannot go alone," said Hays, with awkward courtesy. "I was kalkilatin'"--"You're too tired to go out again, dad," broke in Zuleika's voice quickly. "You ain't fit; you're all gray and krinkly now, like as when you had one of your last spells. She'll send the sleigh back to-morrow."
"I can find my way," said the lady briskly; "there's only one turn off, I believe, and that"--"Leads to the stage station three miles west. You needn't be afraid of gettin' off on that, for you'll likely see the down stage crossin' your road ez soon ez you get clear of the ranch."
"Good-night," said the lady. An arc of white spray sprang before the forward runner, and the sleigh vanished in the road.
Father and daughter returned to the office.
"You didn't get to know her, dad, did ye?" queried Zuleika.
"No," responded Hays gravely, "except to see she wasn't no backwoods or mountaineering sort. Now, there's the kind of woman, Zuly, as knows her own mind and yours too; that a man like your brother Jack oughter pick out when he marries."
Zuleika's face beamed behind her father. "You ain't goin' to sit up any longer, dad?" she said, as she noticed him resume his seat by the fire. "It's gettin' late, and you look mighty tuckered out with your night's work."
"Do you know what she said, Zuly?" returned her father, after a pause, which turned out to have been a long, silent laugh.
"No."
"She said," he repeated slowly, "that she reckoned I came back here to-night to have the pleasure of her acquaintance!" He brought his two hands heavily down upon his knees, rubbing them down deliberately towards his ankles, and leaning forward with his face to the fire and a long-sustained smile of complete though tardy appreciation.
He was still in this attitude when Zuleika left him. The wind crooned over him confidentially, but he still sat there, given up apparently to some posthumous enjoyment of his visitor's departing witticism.
It was scarcely daylight when Zuleika, while dressing, heard a quick tapping upon her shutter. She opened it to the scared and bewildered face of her brother.
"What happened with her and father last night?" he said hoarsely.
"Nothing--why?"
"Read that. It was brought to me half an hour ago by a man in dad's sleigh, from the stage station."
He handed her a crumpled note with trembling fingers. She took it and read:--
"The game's up and I'm out of it! Take my advice and clear out of it too, until you can come back in better shape. Don't be such a fool as to try and follow me. Your father isn't one, and that's where you've slipped up."
"He shall pay for it, whatever he's done," said her brother with an access of wild passion. "Where is he?"
"Why, Jack, you wouldn't dare to see him now?"
"Wouldn't I?" He turned and ran, convulsed with passion, before the windows towards the front of the house. Zuleika slipped out of her bedroom and ran to her father's room. He was not there.
Already she could hear her brother hammering frantically against the locked front door.
The door of the office was partly open. Her father was still there. Asleep? Yes, for he had apparently sunk forward before the cold hearth. But the hands that he had always been trying to warm were colder than the hearth or ashes, and he himself never again spoke nor stirred.
. . . . . .
It was deemed providential by the neighbors that his youngest and favorite son, alarmed by news of his father's failing health, had arrived from the Atlantic States just at the last moment. But it was thought singular that after the division of the property he entirely abandoned the Ranch, and that even pending the division his beautiful but fastidious Eastern bride declined to visit it with her husband.
