Mr. Gale lifted haggard eyes.
'Then it's bumming around, regular tramps, and to the bad generally.' Belding spread wide his big arms, and when one of them dropped round Nell, who sat beside him, she squeezed his hand tight. 'Sure, it's the regular thing,' he concluded, cheerfully.
He rather felt a little glee at Mr. Gale's distress, and Mrs. Gale's crushed I-told-you-so woe in no wise bothered him; but the look in the big, dark eyes of Dick's sister was too much for Belding.
He choked off his characteristic oath when excited and blurted out, 'Say, but Dick Gale never went to the bad!...Listen!'
Belding had scarcely started Dick Gale's story when he perceived that never in his life had he such an absorbed and breathless audience. Presently they were awed, and at the conclusion of that story they sat white- faced, still, amazed beyond speech. Dick Gale's advent in Casita, his rescue of Mercedes, his life as a border ranger certainly lost no picturesque or daring or even noble detail in Belding's telling. He kept back nothing but the present doubt of Dick's safety.
Dick's sister was the first of the three to recover herself.
'Oh, father!' she cried; and there was a glorious light in her eyes. 'Deep down in my heart I knew Dick was a man!'
Mr. Gale rose unsteadily from his chair. His frailty was now painfully manifest.
'Mr. Belding, do you mean my son–Richard Gale–has done all that you told us?' he asked, incredulously.
'I sure do,' replied Belding, with hearty good will.
'Martha, do you hear?' Mr. Gale turned to question his wife. She could not answer. Her face had not yet regained its natural color.
'He faced that bandit and his gang alone–he fought them?' demanded Mr. Gale, his voice stronger.
'Dick mopped up the floor with the whole outfit!'
'He rescued a Spanish girl, went into the desert without food, weapons, anything but his hands? Richard Gale, whose hands were always useless?'
Belding nodded with a grin.
'He's a ranger now–riding, fighting, sleeping on the sand, preparing his own food?'
'Well, I should smile,' rejoined Belding.
'He cares for his horse, with his own hands?' This query seemed to be the climax of Mr. Gale's strange hunger for truth. He had raised his head a little higher, and his eye was brighter.
Mention of a horse fired Belding's blood.
'Does Dick Gale care for his horse? Say, there are not many men as well loved as that white horse of Dick's. Blanco Sol he is, Mr. Gale. That's Mex for White Sun.
Wait till you see Blanco Sol! Bar one, the whitest, biggest, strongest, fastest, grandest horse in the Southwest!'
'So he loves a horse! I shall not know my own son....Mr. Belding, you say Richard works for you. May I ask, at what salary?'
'He gets forty dollars, board and outfit,' replied Belding, proudly.
'Forty dollars?' echoed the father. 'By the day or week?'
'The month, of course,' said Belding, somewhat taken aback.
'Forty dollars a month for a young man who spent five hundred in the same time when he was at college, and who ran it into thousands when he got out!'
Mr. Gale laughed for the first time, and it was the laugh of a man who wanted to believe what he heard yet scarcely dared to do it.
'What does he do with so much money–money earned by peril, toil, sweat, and blood? Forty dollars a month!'
'He saves it,' replied Belding.
Evidently this was too much for Dick Gale's father, and he gazed at his wife in sheer speechless astonishment. Dick's sister clapped her hands like a little child.
Belding saw that the moment was propitious.
'Sure he saves it. Dick's engaged to marry Nell here. My stepdaughter, Nell Burton.'
'Oh-h, Dad!' faltered Nell; and she rose, white as her dress.
How strange it was to see Dick's mother and sister rise, also, and turn to Nell with dark, proud, searching eyes. Belding vaguely realized some blunder he had made. Nell's white, appealing face gave him a pang. What had he done? Surely this family of Dick's ought to know his relation to Nell. There was a silence that positively made Belding nervous.
Then Elsie Gale stepped close to Nell.
'Miss Burton, are you really Richard's betrothed?'
Nell's tremulous lips framed an affirmative, but never uttered it. She held out her hand, showing the ring Dick had given her. Miss Gale's recognition was instant, and her response was warm, sweet, gracious.
'I think I am going to be very, very glad,' she said, and kissed Nell.
