That made things harder than ever for Starr. If the tablet had been
prescribed for heartache rather than headache, Starr would have swallowed
thankfully the dose. The murder, over against the other line of hills,
had not seemed to him so terrible as those sheets of scribbled paper
locked away inside Helen May's desk. The grief of Estan's mother over her
dead son was no more bitter than was Starr's grief at what he believed
was true of Helen May. Indeed, Starr's trouble was greater, because he
must mask it with a smile.
All through breakfast he talked with her, looked into her eyes, smiled at
her across the table. But he was white under his tan. She thought that
was from his headache, and was kinder than she meant to be because of
it; perhaps because of her dream too, though she was not conscious of any
change in her manner.
Starr could have cursed her for that change, which he believed was a sly
attempt to win him over and make him forget anything he may have read on
those pages. He would not think of it then; time enough when he was away
and need not pretend or set a guard over his features and his tongue. The
hurt was there, the great, incredible, soul-searing hurt; but he would
not dwell upon what had caused that hurt. He forced himself to talk and
to laugh now and then, but afterwards he could not remember what they had
talked about.
As soon as he decently could, he went away again into the howling wind
that had done him so ill a turn. He did not know what he should do; this
discovery that Helen May was implicated had set him all at sea, but he
felt that he must get away somewhere and think the whole thing out before
he went crazy.
He left the Basin, rode around behind it and, leaving Rabbit in the
thicket where he had left him the day before, he toiled up the pinnacle
and sat down in the shelter of a boulder pile where he would be out of
the wind as well as out of sight, and where he could still stare somberly
down at the cabin.
And there he faced his trouble bravely, and at the same time he
fulfilled his duty toward his government by keeping a watch over the
place that seemed to him then the most suspicious place in the country.
The office of _Las Nuevas_, even, was not more so, as Starr saw things
then. For if _Las Nuevas_ were the distributing point for the propaganda
literature, this cabin of Helen May's seemed to be the fountain head.
First of all, and going back to the beginning, how did he really _know_
that her story was true? How, for instance, did he know that her father
had not been one of the heads of the conspiracy? How did he know that her
father--it might even be her husband!--was dead? He had simply accepted
her word, as a matter of course, because she was a young woman, and more
attractive than the average young woman. Starr was terribly bitter, at
that point in his reasoning, and even felt certain that he hated all
women. Well, then, her reason for being in the neighborhood would bear a
lot of looking into.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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