THEN began a strange period for Kay. The days were endless and the heat extreme. The wheat men were watching the sky and praying for rain. Tom, inured to weather of all kinds, came and went on mysterious errands of his own. He was, she gathered, looking for work. But he had cleaned and loaded his revolver, and whatever that meant it frightened her.
Of the incident of the party in thirty-four, she found that to Tom it was simply that and nothing more. He had wakened in the morning, puzzled to find himself fully clothed but otherwise unrepentant.
"They didn't mean anything, you know, girl. They were just feeling good, and when a lot of fellows feel like that they just naturally want to sing."
He never knew that she had not gone to bed.
Shut up in the hotel room Kay suffered intensely from the heat and loneliness. She had no friends, even no books. True, some of the important ranchers' wives called on her. They came, kindly enough, smiling, intensely curious, and because she had no sitting room she saw them in the lobby, with its worn leather chairs, its brass cuspidors, the drinking fountain where one leaned over and by turning a lever, was enabled to drink without a cup. But she was too constrained, too bewildered to make friends of them, and one or two of them showed a certain pity which she fiercely resented.
She had, however, two callers who came to her room without announcement.
One was Bob Allison. She opened the door and he stepped inside, a big man with a heavy jaw and a broad brown Stetson hat on the back of his head.
"You'll have to excuse me, Mrs. McNair. Where's that young scapegrace of a husband of yours?"
"He's out just now. If there's any message"
