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 **** Gale care for his horse? Say, there are not many men as well loved as that white horse of ****'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 **** Gale's father, and he gazed at his wife in sheer speechless astonishment. ****'s sister clapped her hands like a little child.
Belding saw that the moment was propitious.
"Sure he saves it. ****'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 ****'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 ****'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 **** 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.
"Miss Burton, we are learning wonderful things about Richard," added Mr. Gale, in an earnest though shaken voice. "If you have had to do with ****** a man of him--and now I begin to see, to believe so--may God bless you!...My dear girl, I have not really looked at you. Richard's fiancee!...Mother, we have not found him yet, but I think we've found his secret. We believed him a lost son. But here is his sweetheart!"
It was only then that the pride and hauteur of Mrs. Gale's face broke into an expression of mingled pain and joy. She opened her arms. Nell, uttering a strange little stifled cry, flew into them.
Belding suddenly discovered an unaccountable blur in his sight.
He could not see perfectly, and that was why, when Mrs. Belding entered the sitting-room, he was not certain that her face was as sad and white as it seemed.