Lightnin'

With a covert eye he watched Marvin, who stood a few feet from the line and smiled down at Bill, the latter grinning up at him, warming to the affectionate arm placed about his shoulder. As the two women went up the stairs, Marvin watched them, a half-shadow in his eyes as he caught Millie's disdainful glance. Giving Bill a good-by pat, Marvin, hat in hand, made a sweeping bow which took in Hammond, Thomas, and Blodgett.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he laughed ironically. Sidling with his back to the California desk, he reached the door, where he waved his hand at his astonished persecutors and slid out upon the veranda and down the steps, where he wandered off in the twilight.

Blodgett walked to the door and looked after him. "Guess I'll stick 'round a bit," he grumbled to Thomas, who had followed him to the door and was gazing after Marvin.

Hammond remained where he was, leaning up against the desk, watching Thomas and Blodgett with surly eyes. "You two are a nice pair of mollycoddles," he sneered, "letting him make a get-away like that. If either of you had any gumption you'd have knocked him over the line."

"Yes?" drawled the sheriff. "'N' be arrested for assault. My jurisdiction stops on this side of the line." He was silent, while he took a piece of tobacco from his pocket and cut off a bite. After a minute he grunted: "Humph! He'ain't gone yet. I'm goin' to stay here 'til to-morrow mornin'. By that time he'll be home, for he 'ain't got no place else to go. Then I'll nab him good 'n' quick."

All this time Bill had stood in the middle of the floor, listening to all that was said, saying never a word himself. Now he went slowly to one side of the room, took a chair that stood against the California wall and placed it in front of the table, close to the dividing line. Blodgett, thinking there was reason for his act, so deliberate was it, took a chair from its place near the Nevada wall and placed it parallel with Bill's, seating himself in it.

The two men contemplated each other in silence. Thomas and Hammond stood in short consultation, and then the latter went to his room on the California side of the hotel, Thomas sauntering to a rocking-chair on the veranda. He lighted a cigar and sat looking out over the lake, where the moon was rising over the rim of the bordering Sierras.

There was scrutiny in the eye with which Blodgett viewed Bill. There was distrust in the steady look which thrust itself between Bill's half-open lids and struck straight in the center of Blodgett's pupil. The latter opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again, as steps were heard on the veranda and Rodney Harper entered the lobby.

"Do you know where I can find John Marvin?" he asked of the two men whose backs he faced. Both immediately turned in their chairs, the sheriff alert for any news he might obtain of the habits and customs of the man he was pursuing. Bill, when he saw who it was, arose and slowly went toward him, holding out his hand.

"Oh! Hello, old chap! I got your telegram, also one from Marvin. Where is he?" Harper grasped Bill's hand and gave it a hearty shake, glancing anxiously about the lobby.

Bill ignored the last question, keeping a slanting eye on Blodgett. "Your wife's up-stairs," he whispered, with a nod toward the Nevada up-stairs hallway.

"Where?" Harper turned in the direction of Bill's nod.

"In Nevada," Bill drawled, with a slow grin.

Harper shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Bill, continuing with his subject, "What's the number of her room?"

"You'd better go slow." Bill thrust his hands in his pockets, assuming an air of counselor. "I told her I thought you'd be here."

"What did she say?" Harper was at the register and going quickly down the list. He came to his wife's name, letting his finger run across the page until he came to the number of her room; then he swept past Bill and had his foot on the first step when Bill stopped him.

"Ye'll spoil it all, if ye ain't careful." The old man drew the younger one's head close to his mouth, speaking in low tones.

"What makes you say that? In your telegram you made me believe everything was all right," Harper said, as he leaned against the newel-post.

"So 'twill be if you listen to some one that knows summat 'bout women. If you chase chickens they run like wild-fire 'n' ye can't catch 'em unless you get 'em in a corner. But if you holds out your hand with a little feed, by 'n' by they eat right out of it."

Harper laughed. "That's what you think, is it?"

"I know," Bill chuckled. "You oughter heard what she said to me." Bill loved to think that he knew something the other fellow would like to know. Even his sympathy with Harper and his desire to see all well between him and his wife could not contain him when it came to holding out in a matter of mere curiosity. "I was goin' to tell you, but I'd better not," he added, with a wise look. "'Twan't very encouragin'," he added.

Harper walked away from the stairway, his arm through Bill's. "Don't you think you'd better tell me?" There was real concern in Harper's voice and Bill knew it was the expression of the anxiety in his heart. Too, Bill knew that it required tact to approach Mrs. Harper in her present hysterical mood.

So he answered, with a brusk shake of his head, "Nope."

"Well, of all the damned-fool things!" Harper stood still, letting go of Bill's arm.

"I wouldn't call her that," Bill remonstrated, moving away from Harper with a quick look of astonishment.

"Who's calling her that?" Harper paced up and down, a scowl on his face. "I mean the whole situation. It's such a silly mistake. And yet she won't believe it."

"Same here." There was a warm sense of comradeship in the same sad cause in the air with which Bill made his last remark. It brought Harper to a standstill. With a smile he listened to the old man's explanation. "Folks don't believe nothin' I tell 'em. Women never do believe you when you tell 'em the truth, but tell 'em a lie 'n' they swallows it hook 'n' bait. Why don't you write her a letter? Ef she knows yer here 'n' ain't too anxious ye got a good chance."

"I believe I'll do that. It sounds like a good scheme. Give her a chance to think things over instead of running in on her all of a sudden. Have you got a room?" Harper went to the Nevada desk and took up the pen to register, but Bill interrupted him.

"Come on over here," Bill nodded to the California desk, following his own gesture to a place back of the counter. "We always got plenty of room on this side."

"Where's the bar?"

At this question put by Harper, Bill's head struck an interesting and inquisitive attitude. "Down to the saloon," he said.

But he was doomed to disappointment. "Never mind, then," was Harper's disheartening reply.

Bill's interest slackened, but was quickly revived as Harper, in the middle of scribbling a note to his wife, looked up long enough to add, "I've got a flask in my bag."

It did not take Bill long to get from behind the desk. That bag was a friend. He had promised Marvin that he would not spend his pension, and Mrs. Jones had carefully removed the flask from its corner in the Nevada desk. "I'll show you right up," he exclaimed, making an undue and unaccustomed haste toward the stairs, bag in hand.

At the top of the stairs he stood, waiting for Harper to seal the envelop.

Harper came up the stairs, two at a time, and handed the letter to Bill, offering to take the bag from Bill as he did so. But Bill shook his hand loose. "I'd better take the bag to the room for you first. Ye must be pretty tired." There was a hidden implication in the monotone in which the last speech was delivered.

Rodney Harper was too possessed of his own affairs to feel it, and with an impatient gesture he stooped to take his bag from Bill, pleading, "Please, old man, won't you deliver the letter?"

But Bill, attuned to a rare occasion, had quickly evaded Harper's outstretched hand and was down the hallway with the bag. He opened the door of Harper's room and went in first, depositing the bag on the floor. Then he went up to the frowning guest, caught hold of his arm, and whispered:

"Marvin's here, but I didn't want them folks down-stairs to know it. They come to git him fer cuttin' down your timber, but he jumped over the California line. He'll be back by 'n' by, I'm thinkin'."

Harper was interested in the news and asked Bill to let him know when Marvin was about again, but he was not interested enough to make him forget what was his present paramount concern. He gave a desperate glance toward the letter in Bill's hand.

But Bill had no intention of leaving until his own possessive intention was fulfilled. He backed away from the bed where he had placed the bag, slowly retreating until he came to the door, which Harper had left open for Bill's exit. When he reached the sill he grasped the knob with one hand, half closing it, while he stood in front of it on the inside. The anxiety in Harper's contracted brow met the slow grin that wrinkled about Bill's eyes and mouth. A question started from Harper's tongue.

Bill forestalled it. "I'm sorry," he said, slowly and gently, but with a wise twinkle in his blue eyes, "thet there ain't no bar. Mother she doesn't like drink." He paused a moment to see what effect his words were having. As he saw his intention was slowly penetrating through Harper's absorption in his own affairs, Bill made his final coup. "She lifted my flask from the desk, or I could be askin' you to have a swig."

Harper threw back his head and laughed. "So that's it!" he exclaimed, hurriedly opening his bag and extracting the flask. "Well, I tell you what I'll do. If you'll beat it in quick time with that note I'll treat you to the whole darned flask."

Bill needed no second bidding. With flask secure in his back pocket he lost no time in descending the California stairs and mounting the flight to the Nevada half of the hotel and leaving the letter with Mrs. Harper. On the way back to the lobby he slightly diminished the contents of the flask.

He entered the lobby with a smile whose target was the whole world and threw himself whole-heartedly into the pleasure of tormenting Blodgett. He knew that Blodgett was furious at the manner of Marvin's escape as much as at the fact itself. So he dropped into the chair next to the sheriff, drawling, "You goin' over to Truckee to get a California warrant?"

Blodgett gave Bill a mean look, sneering, as he sniffed at the air, "Say, you're collecting something, ain't you?"

"I didn't get nothin' from you," Bill answered, shortly. Which answer was not without its point, Blodgett's reputation as one of the closest men in Washoe County not being unknown to Bill.

"Don't get sore. I wished I was in your place," said Blodgett, as he fidgeted about in his chair and looked through the doorway.

Thomas, who had been on the veranda all this time, came indoors just as Blodgett finished his remark.

Bill caught it quickly, his smile flashing into a gleam of humor toward Thomas.