"About a month ago"--the speaker cleared his throat raspingly--"on August 16th it was, to be exact, there was a funeral in town. It started from the C-C ranch house and ended in the same lot with Mary Landor. It wasn't much of a funeral, either. Besides myself and Mrs. Burton no one was there." Again the voice halted; and following there came the sharp crackling of a match, and the quick puff, puff of an habitual smoker. "It was the funeral of a child: a child half Indian, half white." Again the story paused; but the steady smoking continued. "Go on, please," requested a voice. "Early yesterday morning"--again the narrator halted perforce, to clear his throat--"just before I left three men went through town on their way to the same ranch. One was the owner, another a lawyer, the third a man who wished to buy. They were in a hurry. They only stopped to water their team and to visit Red Jennings's place. They are at the ranch house closing the bargain now." "Yes," repeated the voice, "I'm listening." The speaker did not respond at once. With the trick of the very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself. The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely. The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all. His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by request. "I have nothing more to say--unless you wish," he repeated in the old formula. For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a match in the white man's hand. Following, as though prompted by the sound, came a question. "Why,"--the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they looked immovably into those of his companion,--"why, please, was not the mother of the child at least at the funeral?" "Because she could not come," impassively. "The baby was less than two days old." "She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?" "Yes. Several weeks." "She returned alone?" "Yes." "And to stay?" Swifter and more swiftly came the questions. Even yet no muscle of the inquisitor's body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling. "Yes," answered Manning. "She, Bess, had left her husband?" "No, Craig had left her." Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither man noticed the change. "There was a reason?" "Yes," baldly. "Another woman." The locked fingers across the Indian's knee were growing white; white as the sunlight without. "And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?" "It is her ranch no more. It is his." "She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had done? You mean to tell me this?"