nd the road gang that Wayland
hasn't been at the Cabin since that night I was there; and Gee
Whittiker," Brydges laughed sleepily, the same smile that said nothing
but came up from the subterranean under current, "he _was_ a bear with
a sore head that night; spent most of the night prancing the Ridge.
Well, a fellow can't exactly stand on one leg and then on t'other all
through a call. She didn't ask me to sit down. Said her father was
coming home by Smelter City and you could have the pleasure of
conveying your sympathy personally: kept standing herself all the time;
kept looking from me to the door. Well, sir, while she was looking
_through_ the door behind me, I was looking _through_ the door behind
her." And as Bat said it, he looked away. "Wayland's Range coat was
hanging in that inner room."

Bat smiled slowly and sleepily; then openly grinned as who should say
"now the cat _is_ out"; but when he turned to Moyese, his chief had
whirled in the swing chair and was sitting with hands clasped under his
hat, and the back of his head towards Brydges.

A glossy smile had come over Bat's face that is not good to see on man,
woman, child or beast; and it is the same kind of smile on all four,
not laughter, nor light, not definite enough to be malicious, nor
pointed enough to be self accusatory, nor direct enough to be
challenged and repudiated; a smile untellably familiar--a Satyr-faced
thought looking through a veil, somehow sinuously suggestive, saying
nothing at all, yet conveying the physical sensation of pus from an
ulcerous thing; and strangely enough, there are blow-fly natures that
prefer pus to nectar.

If Brydges had not been so absorbed in the jocularity of his own
sensations, he would have observed that his chief remained singularly
silent.

"Oh, I don't suppose he's there all this time." Bat rushed to the
defence of the absent, (Heaven bless such defenders). "That old
Canadian duffer, who seems to have hitched up with him on the Rim Rocks
accident, your ranch foreman saw 'em pass together at noon; tried to
telephone 'Herald,' but I choked _that_ off; that old fellow once wrote
our paper to know about Canadian settlers here. He recognized Calamity
and talked about old North West Rebellion days. It's my theory he's
here about something that's been hushed up! Like dad, like daughter,"
Bat pronounced.

"It's my theory when MacDonald comes back from the Upper Pass, Wayland
and the old fellow will t