“What in hell made you run off?” demanded Mrs. Crump in an aggrieved tone.

“Well,” hesitated Thady Shea, “I figured I might get you into trouble with Mackintavers and his crowd; Dorales would be after me, you know. And then I wanted to make up for what I’d done. I wanted to go away and prove to myself that I could do something—without any one else helping me. It’s a little vague, but——”

“Oh, I savvy,” finished Mrs. Crump for him. “My land, Thady! I been hunting you all over creation, but I never aimed to see you lookin’ like this—never!” Hands on her hips, she surveyed him with appraising, delighted eyes.

As he stood there awkwardly beside the plow, Thady Shea did look unlike her last view of him. Also, he sounded different. They had talked at length, but in all their talk, in all his tale to date, he had not once broken into the rolling, rounded phrases which formerly he had so loved.

He showed the lack of self-consciousness that was upon him. It was not the bristly beard which had wrought the change, although this disguised him startlingly. Perhaps it was the gruelling work which he had been doing of late, with its effects.

In this man of fifty-eight there showed a strange boyishness. He was no longer gaunt and haggard. True, there was a haunting gentleness, a sadness, in his eyes, but it was the sadness of time past, not of the present. His look, his manner, had taken on a definite personality. No longer was he Thaddeus Roscius, the actor who fitted himself into the characters of other men; Montalembert was dead and here stood Thady Shea, man of his hands; one whose eyes met the world honestly and earnestly, with wide questioning, with a balanced poise and surety in self.

“My land!” pursued Mrs. Crump, meditatively. “When I think of the knock-kneed, blear-eyed critter I found layin’ up above the Bajada grade, I can’t hardly recognize ye, Thady! Ye look’s if ye’d got used to leaning on yourself. Want to come back to Number Sixteen with me?”

Shea frowned in perplexity. His eyes were serious. He had set forth all that had happened to him, all that he had done; Mrs. Crump had given him no blame, but in her eyes had shone pride and praise.

“I—I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “I’m looking for a purpose in life. I’m trying to find something definite. It’s so long since I’ve had anything definite! These twenty years, and more, there has seemed to be a knot gripped about my soul, somewhere—stifling me. I don’t seem to——”

“No need for all that,” said Mrs. Crump, impatiently. “You’re rich now.”

Shea’s eyes widened. “You mean—the mine?”

“No, I don’t. That mine is a humdinger, or will be once it gets started to paying. I got Lewis an’ Gilbert workin’ there now, they bein’ out o’ jail and shut o’ that old charge. No, Thady; I mean the ten thousand we screwed out o’ that skunk Mackintavers.”

Shea looked blank. “Ten thousand? I don’t understand.”

Mrs. Crump sighed in resignation, and set herself to explain.

“It was a right smart trick to indorse that check Dorales had made ready for ye—’bout the smartest thing I ever knowed ye to do, Thady. I takes that check and lights out and cashes it ’fore old Mackintavers heard what had happened to Dorales. The money’s in your name, down to the First National at Silver City; I ain’t touched it.”

She fumbled in her bosom and produced a folded check book.

“Here’s the check book they give me, all proper. Sign your checks the same way ye indorsed that one, savvy? I turned in the note ye left me at the shack, with your signature on it, to the bank.”

She broke off. She came to a faltering but decided halt.

For, as she had spoken, a queer look had stolen across the beard-blurred features of Thady Shea, and had settled there. It was such a look as she had never previously seen upon his face. It was a look of incredulous wonder, of grief, of dismay.

The personal equation in that look silenced and startled Mrs. Crump. It conveyed to her that she must have said some terrible thing, something which had shocked Thady Shea beyond words, something which had struck and hurt him like a blow. She rapidly thought back—no, she had not even sworn!

“What the devil ails ye?” she demanded.

“Why—why—that check!” blurted Shea. He drew back from the check book which she was extending to him. His eyes were wide, fixed. “I never meant it—that way! I never dreamed you’d do anything with it. I left it there with the other paper to show you what Dorales had been up to.”

Mrs. Crump laughed suddenly.

“Oh, then I gave ye too much credit? Never mind, Thady——”

“You don’t understand!” In his voice was a harsh note, a note of pain. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? That money—why, it’s stolen! It’ll have to go back to Mackintavers! It isn’t ours.”

For the first time in many years Mehitabel Crump was shocked into immobile silence. She was absolutely petrified. She could not believe the words she heard.

“You didn’t look at it that way, of course,” added Shea hastily. Earnestness grew upon him, and deep conviction. “But it’s true. If it were ten cents or ten dollars, it might not matter. But—ten thousand dollars! It must go back.”

The blue eyes of Mrs. Crump hardened like agates. Her mouth clenched grimly. Her wrinkled features tightened into fighting lines. She was dumbly amazed that the magnitude of the sum did not appeal to Thady Shea’s cupidity; but she was vigorously and fiercely determined that the money was to be his. It was not for herself that she wanted it.

When she made answer, it was with a virile insistence that drove home every word like a blow.

“You got no call to insult me, Thady Shea, by callin’ me a thief; mind that! Are you crazy or just plain fool? Mackintavers an’ Dorales comes along thinking to trim us right and proper, like they done by other poor folks, thinking to rob a lone widder woman, thinking to fool you into robbing me. That there check for ten thousand was the jackpot. Mackintavers signed it as such, knowin’ it to be such, stakin’ it agin’ Number Sixteen to win or lose. You didn’t know that the prop’ty was recorded in your name—but he knew!

“He lost, and you can bet he ain’t said nothing about losing them table stakes! What call you got to beef about winning that bet? It’s plumb legal, cashed at a bank, sanctified by Sandy hisself over the phone. You’d be a fool not to take money after you’d won it in a game like that! If ye want——”

For the second time Mrs. Crump came to a decided and bewildered halt.

She was entirely convinced that to take the money was legitimate; she was convinced that it had been lawfully won, that Thady Shea was actually entitled to it. She had chuckled over the coup a hundred times. She had chuckled a hundred times over the grimly delightful irony of cashing that check, of giving Mackintavers a counter-thrust that he would remember. Yet, although she was presenting her argument with entire conviction, she was conscious that it was like presenting her argument in the face of a stone wall.

Somehow Thady Shea was ignoring her argument. Its point seemed quite lost upon him. He stood before her, flinty, untouched, unheeding. The slight glint of scorn in his eye, real or fancied, flicked Mrs. Crump on the raw; it lashed her into real and unassumed anger.

“All that is quite true,” he said. In his manner was a gentleness, a frightful gentleness, a gentleness so entire and calm that it was hideous. One would have said that he was speaking to a little child.

“All that is true, Mrs. Crump. Of course your intentions were whole-souled and generous, and from your viewpoint the action was justified. I didn’t mean to call you a thief, heaven knows! I didn’t mean any such thing.

“But—the money was to be given in exchange for something. The exchange did not take place. Therefore, to keep the money would be theft. That is the way I look at it. That is all I can see to it—all! The money must go back.”

There was a terrible simplicity in the man’s face, in the words he used, in the argument he used. It was a simplicity which nothing could change. It was a simplicity above all argument or question. It was a simplicity that stood up like a gray naked rock. Against this implacable front Mrs. Crump was impotent and knew it.

Thady Shea reached out and took the check book from her hand. He opened it. He stripped one check from the book and placed this check in his pocket. Then he took the check book, tore it across, and flung the pieces away. He did it casually, impatiently, carelessly.

Now, to tear a check book across is not an easy thing. To do it carelessly, casually, is a most unusual and significant thing. It jerked at Mrs. Crump’s attention. She wondered just how strong Thady Shea was. Yet, the thought that the one check in Shea’s pocket was destined for Mackintavers fired the anger within her, and fanned the flame. She could deal gently, pityingly, with a weak man. With a strong man, strong as Thady Shea was strong, she had but one argument.

“I’ll write out that check——” began Shea.

“You’re a coward!” said Mrs. Crump, savagely. She knew the words were fearfully unjust, but they rose within her and she said them. The thought that Mackintavers would deem her weak and silly enough to return that money maddened her. “You’re a coward!”

She leaned forward and struck him in the mouth. She struck a man’s blow, a full, hard-fisted, strong blow, a blow that might have felled another man than Thady Shea. Under it he reeled. Then he came upright and stood motionless, looking at her. He did not speak. Slowly he lifted his hand to his mouth, and his eyes shifted to the red smear upon his hand. Then his gaze went again to her face.

Under his look, Mrs. Crump shivered a little. The anger went out of her suddenly and utterly. Before his calm, hurt strength she recoiled. Her brittle, false hardness was broken and shattered. He did not speak, and his silence frightened her. She went to pieces.

“Thady!” The words came from her in a breath, a groan. Her burning blue eyes were gone dull and lifeless, dumb with misery, as she realized what she had just done. “Oh, Thady! I—Heaven forgive me, Thady, I didn’t mean to do it. I wanted you to have that money.”

“I wonder if you really think I’m a coward?” said Shea, curiously calm. “I am one, of course, but I don’t see how a desire for justice can be cowardly.”

“I don’t!” she burst forth impetuously, passionately. “Thady, I’m sorry—I never meant it; it didn’t come from the heart, Thady! I’m an old fool of a woman, that’s what I am. An old fool of a woman! Don’t look at me that way; I tell ye I can’t stand it—it’s awful! I’m sorry for it, bitter sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Shea, simply. “Listen to me, now. You’ve given me something real; a purpose. Maybe Ross was right. Maybe I had to wait till it came to me. Now I’m going to find Mackintavers and give him his money, make things right. I may be a coward in physical things, but——”

“Don’t talk that way!” she broke in, harshly. “Thady, I’m sorry. Come back to the mine with me; forget this foolishness. I’m a fool of an old woman, that’s all. I need ye at the mine, Thady.”

He smiled a little. “Do you really mean it, Mrs. Crump? May I come back—after I have seen Mackintavers?”

“Come now! Don’t go chasing off like a dratted mule. Come back with me now!”

“No.” Shea looked away from her. He motioned toward the horses, their tails switching in the arrogant sunlight. He motioned toward the half-plowed field. “I’ll finish this job first. Then, in a few days, I’ll go and see Mackintavers. You see? I have to do it. The purpose has come to me; maybe it’ll lead into something else. I don’t know. After that, I’ll come back to Number Sixteen and go to work, if you still want me.”

“Yes,” she said, humbly. “I’ll need ye, Thady. I’m sorry ye won’t come now.”

She turned from him and walked down the caÑon. Around the bend, out of Shea’s sight, she leaned against a bowlder. She was a woman, and God has given tears to women. Great sobs shook her for the first time in years. Passionate sobs were they, holding the pent-up emotion of a deep spirit that had broken through its mask of cynic harshness.

Presently Mrs. Crump recalled that, although she was beyond the sight of Thady Shea, she was in full view of the distant shack. Muttering that she was a dratted old fool, she wiped her eyes. She tucked in loosened wisps of hair about the edge of her bonnet. She pulled her bonnet straight and started for the dust-white flivver, beyond the shack.

Mrs. Crump found Fred Ross cheerfully whistling “Silver Threads Among the Gold” and finishing his house-cleaning.

“That there Thady Shea,” she stated, harshly, “is the most amazing human critter I’ve ever run up against!”

Ross grinned amiably. “Meaning, ma’am?”

“Meaning you can figger it out for yourself. Adios!”

“Hold on, ma’am. Ain’t you goin’ to set a while?”

“I am not. I got work to do. So long, and good luck to ye!”

Ross insisted upon cranking the dust-white flivver, and she departed with no more words.

An hour later Thady Shea brought in the horses, and put them up for the night. He came into the house and helped Ross get supper. He commented on the house-cleaning with admiration. He discussed, from an amateur’s standpoint, fencing the upper end of the caÑon against the proposed flock of sheep. He seemed to enjoy his supper hugely.

The meal over, both men lounged outside, smoking and watching the crimsoned peaks that overhung them.

“Mrs. Crump,” observed Shea at last, “is the most generous, whole-souled woman I ever knew. She’s a wonder, Ross!”

“She is,” assented the rancher, dryly. “I suppose you’re goin’ to leave me?”

“Yes,” said Shea, gravely. “After that upper flat is plowed.”

“Tell you what. Wait till Sunday. I’m goin’ to Magdalena then, to see a lady friend. Take ye in the car if you’re goin’ that way. Then I’ll pay you—got to give you something for the work, Shea. So go to Magdalena with me Sunday.”

“Mackintavers’ ranch lies over there, doesn’t it?”

“North. Yes.”

“All right. That’ll suit me.”