Peggy saw it first. She said it was a
shame to put you off in that cabin with Miss Gray away up here. I don't
want to stick my nose in your business, old man, but--by George!--I
congratulate you! I've only seen one lovelier woman in my life, and that's
Peggy."
He thrust out a hand and pumped his friend's limp arm, and Aldous felt
himself growing suddenly warm under the other's chuckling gaze.
"For goodness sake don't say anything, or act anything, old man," he
pleaded. "I'm--just--hoping."
Blackton nodded with prodigious understanding in his eyes.
"Come along when you get through with MacDonald," he said. "I'm going in
and clean up for to-night's fireworks."
A question was in Aldous' mind, but he did not put it in words. He wanted
to know about Quade and Culver Rann.
"Blackton is such a ridiculously forgetful fellow at times that I don't
want to rouse his alarm," he said to MacDonald as they were riding toward
the corral a few minutes later. "He might let something out to Joanne and
his wife, and I've got reasons--mighty good reasons, Mac--for keeping this
affair as quiet as possible. We'll have to discover what Rann and Quade are
doing ourselves.
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