Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 25

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Tom roused himself from a study; and though he was still a little under the spell of this girl's brilliant, elusive beauty, he felt a strong irritation at having Lorena Wyatt's name introduced into the conversation. It put him on the defensive, and he answered almost curtly, "There is nothing to tell."

"Ah," murmured Christine, and with her feminine instincts perceiving the danger signals she turned the subject gracefully. "It's good to see you, Claudie. The same impetuous hero. Did you ever know how many hearts you broke with that conquering air of yours? The figure of romance! Oh, yes!"

Lispenard grinned. "Happy days. Wouldn't it be great sport to spend that time all over again?"

"No," said she, each word bearing its full burden of thoughtfulness, "I'm not sure I'd care to." Tom, blunt man as he was, caught the lingering wistfulness, and it made him the more uncomfortable.

"Each day unto itself. Why look backward?"

"I—I hope so," she agreed. Her hand made a slow gesture. "Claudie, wasn't Tom always the contemplative figure, though? What was it you men called him—the barbarian? Why was that?"

Lispenard rolled a cigarette. "Well, he was always ready to fight. That overweening Texas honour of his put us all on nettles. He also had an extremely matter-of-fact way in speaking of murder and sudden death. A hair-raising calm, so to speak. Some of those wild, weird yarns I used to disbelieve—until I came West."

"Well," said she, appraising Gillette between half-closed lids, "he hasn't changed a whit except to grow more sober. His native heath agrees well with him."

"Oh, he's built for ruling his kingdom," murmured Lispenard. His smile grew somewhat shorter. "I could always whip him—until I touched him too hard. Had more weight, more science, a cooler head than he ever dreamed of having. But when I stung him a few times—"

"The specimen being thus dissected, we will now pass to other things," drawled Tom. "Render your verdict on Blondy."

"Quite fit—quite the same debonair heart disturber."

"Thanks," said the Blond Giant; he rose, made a profound bow, and started out. "But you see only the surface calm. On my honour, Kit, I'm a rough and tough character; a seething furnace roars beneath this placid mug. Oh, you have no idea."

She waited until he was outside before raising her palms in plain distaste. "Ugh! How he has hardened."

"Pay no attention to what he tells you, Kit," said Tom.

"I see it!" she flashed back. "Once that boldness fascinated me. Now it's actually repulsive. How thick his chin is—how heavy his eyes!"

Gillette doubled his hands, looking somberly at her. "Why did you come?"

"I like that, sir! If I am not welcome..."

"Don't fence with me, Kit. You do it too easily."

She seemed half inclined to be sober, yet not for a moment did she allow the tantalizing smile to desert her. "I told my father I needed a change of climate. He was shocked—oh, very much so. But I have a little Ballard stubbornness in me, you know. That was my professed reason. But one day I ran across Jimmy Train, and he showed me a letter you had written him. So I came to plead."

"Kit!"

"Oh, I have no modesty left. My suitors are all married—I grow old and lonely."

The colored cook stepped inside the place and cast one comprehensive glance at the pair, vanishing with a twist of his body. "Boss sho' looks 'sif he got a mizry," he murmured. Quagmire, loitering by the corral motioned him to stay away from the house; Old Mose's white teeth flashed.

Gillette's fingers were laced together; he sat forward in his chair, studying the floor, and the girl noted how his hair curled back from the temples as well as the dogged and resolute set of his lips. And for the first time in her life she lost faith in her ability to command men. No hint of that doubt, however, crept into her half-bantering words. She was relaxed, her head thrown back, looking across the interval with a slanting gaze—such a look as he had once said distinguished her from all other women. How was it he did not notice it now? And, fearing his silence, she broke through it "I would give more than a penny for your thoughts, Tommy."

"It's good to see you again, Kit. But, my dear, you must not drag any more string across the floor for me to grasp at."

"Meaning—I have played with you?"

The answer was so sudden, so vehement that it startled her, "Can you doubt it—can you consider it anything else?"

"We all make mistakes, Tommy. Perhaps I—"

"No, don't say it that way, Kit. You are fencing again. Listen, my dear, I have thought of you all along the trail. Every day, every night. Never a sunset or a sunrise but what your picture wasn't somewhere in it. Once there was a stampede, a man was killed, and even when I saw the boys throwing mud over him, I thought of you. Do you see? Lord, I couldn't help myself. I wanted you. Up until the moment I stepped inside this cabin I wanted you."

"But, Tommy, here I am."

He broke through with a swift move of his hand, and to her that was another mark of the change in him. Once he would have been quieted at her least whisper; and now he commanded her not to interrupt.

"Let me finish. What have I said? That I wanted you until the very moment I saw you sitting there. But, Kit, you come just as I've finished the battle. You bring all that—that damnable misery with you. Misery! Well, you must not torture me any more. I've put myself beyond it. I've licked the wounds dry. They're still in here, understand, my dear. But they're dry. And I won't have 'em opened again."

Her smile was brilliant, a little as if the light of her eyes passed through a film. "You are blunt, Tommy!"

"I've gone back to the blanket," he muttered, lowering his head once more.

"What does that mean?"

"It means when an Indian has gotten his white man education he goes back to the reservation, throws away all his civilized clothes, and takes up the old ways."

"You are no Indian, Tommy."

"No? They called me the barbarian once. It still sticks. I'm in my own land. I've thrown away every blessed thing the East gave me. Chucked it overboard. The old gods are mine. And, by the Lord, Kit, I'm beginning to live once more."

"Have you chucked away everything, Tommy?" she asked quite softly. "Everything?"

He looked up to her; his eyes betrayed the uncertainty in him, and the girl, at this unconscious revelation, let her whole body go limp; laughter tinkled in her throat. She bent forward, hands making little motions in her lap, and the laughter died. "Tommy, supposing I haven't come to torture you? Supposing..."

"You gave me my answer once," said he stubbornly. "You've had your sport."

"Oh, why did you have to be so deadly serious about it all the while? My dear, did you think to pursue and win in a day? Don't you suppose a woman has to be shown—to be convinced?"

"And to be amused," he added. "Remember, Kit, I'm not open to torture any longer."

But she was wise with Eve's wisdom; she had seen him falter. So she turned the conversation in her own inimitable way. "Tom, I heard about your father. Did they ever catch the man?"

"Not yet."

"But they will," she reassured him. "The law will get him." There was something so grimly sardonic on his face that she asked, "What is it?"

"The law out here expects a man to take care of his own troubles. I shall get him—I shall kill him."

"Why, Tom, isn't that—isn't it murder?"

"I told you I had gone back to the old gods, didn't I?"

She bit into her lip; a tinge of colour stood against the soft whiteness of her flesh. "I thought it was only woman's privilege to be unfathomable, Tommy. I'm sorry I mentioned it."

The colored cook's shadow fell athwart the door again, and Tom nodded at him. Presently the grub pans and the dishes were on the table. One by one the men of the outfit came dismally, sheepishly in. Tom put Christine at the head of the table and amid a dead silence introduced her.

"Boys, this is Christine Ballard of New York. She has come on a visit. Now, behave yourselves. I have already pointed out to her which of you are the lady killers. So beware."

The charge was so manifestly outrageous that the agitation only increased; not a man raised his eyes from the dead centre of his plate. Lispenard came in and took his seat. Tom, quite cheerful, began to relate the salient points of the more outstanding members. "That's Quagmire. Yes, the one with the extremely guilty look. Oh, they all look guilty, but he seems to look guiltier than the rest. He has a wife in each state and territory between here and Texas, Montana excepted. The reason he has no wife in Montana is because he has never been to Montana. Whitey Almo, the one with the bad sunburn—or is that sunburn, Whitey?—collects interiors. Jail interiors. I have never known Whitey to pass a new jail without entering to see the wall decorations. Usually he doesn't pay much attention to these walls until the next morning, when his eyes begin to function again. Why did they cease to function, did you ask? Well, it has been rumoured that Whitey drinks water with his whisky. I'd shoot him like a dog if I thought it were the truth."

There was the sound of somebody strangling in his coffee. Thirteen heads bent nearer the table; a knife dropped, and thirteen bodies started. Tom grinned affectionately. "I have probably the most completely assorted bunch of liars and scoundrels ever gathered under one roof. Quite possibly I shall be neatly shot in the back before break of day. Slim, it you stoop any lower you'll dye your moustache in that coffee cup. Oh, don't mention it. You're quite obliged."

The proximity of a woman utterly ruined the meal; Tom Gillette's frank lies and pointing finger served to reduce them to a state from which air and solitude only could effect a recovery. The first to finish eating slunk out of the cabin with the countenance of one who hoped he wasn't watched but was sure the spotlight played upon him. Thus they departed; and presently from the corral came a high skirling of words from a man whose soul was in labour. Lispenard, who had been wrapped in his own thoughts throughout the affair, quietly left.

Tom grinned. "It has taken me a long time to get even."

"But what have they done to you?"

"Nothing," he answered, rolling a cigarette. "No finer outfit ever rode. I love 'em like brothers. That's why I'm abusing 'em."

The old cook slipped away with his pans; the lamplight strayed against the girl's soft face, accenting her utter femininity; she sat quite still, hands folded and seemingly placid. Yet beneath the surface a hundred cross-currents of thought ran free. The puzzle of this familiar yet so startling unfamiliar man was being attacked from a dozen different angles. She loved a conventional world, as all women do; even so, she could on occasion be both reckless and daring. Daring enough to tell Tom she had come west to plead her case—and then to hide the stark truth of it beneath those quick and subtle changes of spirit that were so much a part of her. It didn't matter what had changed her mind regarding him. She wasn't sure she knew why, or if she did know she refused to be truthful with herself. It didn't matter. What mattered was that, once having changed her mind, she meant to see the affair to the very end; to play the game with all the skill, all the shrewdness and impetuousness she owned. The shrewdness had always been a part of her, but the impetuousness was new, and born, perhaps, of the knowledge that she had made a mistake concerning Tom Gillette and that she grew no younger. It was even new enough to disturb her whole outlook upon life and to set her off on a trip half across the continent unchaperoned. And it was disturbing enough to have created in her one irrevocable decision: she would win back Tom Gillette if she could, surrendering as little as she must, but if parsimony failed then she was willing to throw every last coin and possession upon the table and say, "There it is, I will not haggle. Take it." That was the story of Christine Ballard, as much as it was given anyone, even herself, to know.

The room grew cold with the coming of night. Gillette touched the kindling with a match, and she relaxed to the heat, one hand idly trailing over the chair arm. "That one—Quagmire—I thought was quaint."

He shook his head. "Wrong word, Kit. Quagmire's been hurt so bad he couldn't cry. He's loyal down to the last drop of blood. A more scorching pessimism never came from the lips of a mortal, but that's only a false front to cover a heart as soft as a woman's."

Silence a moment; the girl made another long detour and came to rest on a distant topic. "Tom, I remember once something you told me about what your father had said. When you left for the East. I've often wondered, often thought—something about a man's word."

Gillette dropped the cigarette. Fine lines sprang along his face—a rugged face and handsome in a purely masculine fashion. There was a flash down in the deep wells of his eyes. And it took just such a shrewd observer as Christine Ballard to detect how he held back the upthrust of feeling; held it back so rigidly that his words were dry, almost bleak.

"He told me always to remember that a man's word was a piece of the man himself and never to betray it."

Of a sudden she rose. "I'm tired, Tommy. Do I sleep in front of the fire or up in the attic?"

"Doctor's already put your possibles in my room." He went over and opened the bedroom door. Passing through, she turned and hesitated. The perfume of her clothing clung to his nostrils, and for one long moment he was carried back to the days of his schooling. Her arm fell against his shoulder. He kissed her; and then as the door closed, her tinkling, elusive laugh escaped through. "Au 'voir, Tommy. Are you quite sure you've buried all the old bones?"

It was not for some time that he realized why she had brought up his father's remark about the word of a man. His fist struck the table resoundingly. "By God, I will not be stripped for torture again!"

The cabin became too small to hold Kit Ballard and himself at the same time; he passed out, glancing up to the full, lemon- silver surface of the moon. The bunkhouse light cut a clear path across the river. Quagmire stepped athwart that pathway, advancing.

"Hey, Tom. Yo' been ridin' to'rds that black butte to-day or yestidy?"

"No. Why?"

"Tracks," answered Quagmire succinctly. The tip of his cigarette made a crimson trail in the darkness. "Somebody's been havin' a look at our stuff. Question is, what for do they want to look?"

"There's a fight coming up, Quagmire. We'll be one man against ten."

Quagmire digested the remark. "Man is mortal. An' numbers don't mean nothin'. What yo' aimin' to do about it?"

"Why, I told Grist I wasn't selling out," said Tom. "Starting to-morrow we'll keep a man hidden on top of that butte. Just to see what he can see. No use in being played for a sucker."

"It was my idear, likewise," murmured Quagmire. "Then, of course, it might've been the tracks o' yo' friend."

"Blondy? Yes, it might. He circles the country quite a bit. I'd better ask him."

But Quagmire only brought up the supposition to introduce a new fact. "It mighta been him, but it wasn't Last three days runnin' he's travelled across the river." And after another long silence, he added an entirely unrelated and cryptic thought. "I hate a talebearer."

Tom divined that Quagmire possessed information he wished to divulge and that it troubled both his habit of secrecy and his sense of loyalty. He could have made it no plainer he stood willing to speak if pressed. Gillette watched a cloud sail across the face of the moon. "Well, Quagmire when the clothes are all washed the dirt will come up. Let it ride like that."

"Yeah," grunted Quagmire and turned toward the bunkhouse. Tom followed. Lispenard, he noted, already had rolled in.

Exercising her prerogative, Christine Ballard slept through breakfast. Gillette, having business over on a corner of his range, carefully instructed the cook to keep a hot meal simmering until she rose. On his way out he met Lispenard. "Tell Kit I'll be back within two or three hours and we'll go for a trip round the place."

"Good enough," agreed the man. He seemed extraordinarily quiet, on the borderland of one of his fits of sullen humour. Tom grinned. "What's the itch, Blondy? Dees she remind you of the fleshpots you have left behind?"

"Oh, go to the devil," grunted Lispenard. He was about to add that he was infernally sick of his former comrade's tolerant amusement, but he checked this churlishness and scowled at Gillette's back until the latter was out of sight. Turning into the main cabin he settled himself by the table, his heavy, bulging eyes staring at nothing in particular. When Christine came from her room he appeared to be unaware of her presence until she spoke.

"Claudie, why the sulks?"

He raised himself from the chair—a trace of politeness that remained from his former training—and fell quickly back. "It bores me," said he, in all frankness. "Bores me to extinction."

The cook arrived with the girl's belated breakfast, rolling his eyes at Lispenard as he retreated. "The king has been gracious enough to command me to inform you," grunted Lispenard, "that he would be back in a couple of hours and take you for a ride."

"How very nice of him—how unpleasant of you. Claude, you don't display your talents in such a temper. Why do you call him that?"

"I mean it quite literally, Kit. Don't for a moment doubt his power over this ranch and the yokels on it. It's a blessed feudal estate. He is the law. Oh, quite so! Quaint Western manner. He drives 'em like a pack of dogs. Why they stand it I don't understand. Observe, when you ride with him, how he'll stop on a ridge and look over the country. A king could do it no better. As much as to say, 'This is mine. I command.'"

She made a wry face at the coffee and observed the heavy slabs of bacon with evident resignation. "I must be a Spartan," she murmured, and then smiled at the man. "Well, Claudie, why not the grand manner if it is all his own?"

"Rot! It irks me. I detest self-sufficiency. They shout about equality out here—every man as good as another. More tosh. I've been an alien every blessed minute—made to feel like one. They dislike me as much as I dislike them."

She moved her hand slightly. "Do you know something about yourself, Claudie? You played the conquering hero once, and now you hate to see another go above you."

"Above me!" cried Lispenard. "Don't be ridiculous."

She put down her coffee cup and turned toward him, serious. "Let me tell you. Tom Gillette has grown head and shoulders above you. Unpleasant, isn't it, my dear boy? Then you shouldn't be discourteous to a woman before breakfast."

"So you come to be another herald at his court?" He rose. "What did you come here for, anyway?"

"I answer no direct questions before ten o'clock," said she, gay again.

"Work fast," he muttered, grimly amused, "or you'll lose him."

"Claude!"

"Oh, don't assume your airs with me, my dear Kit. I know you quite well. Much better, in fact, than friend Tom knows you."

Colour stained her cheeks. "Once that manner became you. It doesn't now."

He brushed it aside, bold eyes looking down at her. "In fact, you are much like I am. So much so that I can tell you what's below those fine gestures and that charming smile."

She bit her lip, anger glowing in her eyes. "You deserve to be whipped, Claude!"

He laughed at her; a high, mirthless laugh that rang against the poles and died. "Let anyone hereabouts try it. I'd welcome the exercise. Well, my dear Kit, wish me luck. I'm going to rid you of my unwelcome presence before the week is out. Fact. I imagine you'll feel easier to have me gone."

"Going back East to cadge off your friends again, Claudie?"

"Quite a cruel thrust. I said we were much alike, didn't I? No, I'm not going East. They'll never see me again back there. I'm going—God knows where." The fresh sun flamed through the window and struck his long yellow hair. The girl had a full view of his profile—its hard jaw bones, its over-heavy outline of eyes and forehead. He disappeared without a backward glance, and she heard him ride away.

"If I were a man," she murmured to herself, "I'd give him a fine whipping."

But all marks of anger were erased by the time Gillette returned. She had got into a riding habit, and when she trailed across the yard to the horse that was to be hers she was quite gay and beautiful. Together they cantered east, rising and falling with the swell of the earth; the sun was a blood disk beneath the threat of which the land quivered. The river, sucked into the sands, showed only a rivulet of water. It seemed wholly impossible that man or beast could find sustenance in the expanse of tortured prairie stretching its endless leagues into the smoky horizon; and for all her determination to be a good Spartan, Christine Ballard felt the weight of that searing, oppressive day. It was as if some unseen giant crushed her and blew his breath into her face. Her pleasantries became harder to manage, and at the end of several miles, when he stopped her on a commanding ridge and began to point out the extent of the range, she interrupted. "Tom, it's magnificent. Really it is. But—do you ever feel that you are wasting the best of yourself out here?"

"What's the best of me, Kit?"

"Oh, putting your talents in a place where they'll make you great. Why, Tom, back East you could be splendidly successful. How many of our friends have told me you were able to break through any kind of opposition. You could be in high places."

He drew his arm around the horizon. "I'm humbler than that, Kit. You can't live under this sky, having it as a sort of next- door neighbour all the time, and not lose a lot of pretensions. What good are high places to a man if he's not satisfied? Why fight for something you've got no heart in? And what more could any man want than this? Look at the prairie sweeping off there. It's mine to ride on. I sleep sound at night. I go out in the morning and look at the sun coming up and I feel as if the day was made for me and nobody else. A fellow loses himself and his troubles. Time doesn't count. Everything marches along slow and a man lives slow—which is the way folks ought to live. What's better?"

"Sometimes," said she, "I think it's criminal in a man not to achieve all he is able to achieve."

"For instance?"

"Why, you could go up politically, you could make a fortune of your own choice. Look at my father."

He shook his head. She thought she had never heard him say a more solemn word. "I've gone back to the blanket, Kit. Don't drag out the torture machines again."

It was so definite, so final that she forbore to press him further. And in one of those swift flashes of wisdom she sometimes permitted herself, she saw events marching alon to that last gamble when she would be putting herself up am saying, "Take me on your own terms." The thought should have dispirited her. Yet it was otherwise. A current of emotion bore her along on a flood tide, and with it came a strange pleasure. She who stepped so carefully around the crater of life was on the point of throwing herself willingly into it. She, Christine Ballard!

He had discovered something on the ground that interested him, and they followed it a hundred yards before he spoke again. "Trail. I think it's Blondy's horse. But we'll just have a look."

No more was said for a good while. The hoof prints led them into coulees, over ridges, and through extremely broken pieces of ground. The girl, obedient to his humour, kept her peace, wondering at the watchfulness that came over his face. More than once they galloped away from the trail and into the recesses of a box canon, or detoured below the horizon and crawled slowly to the ridge tops again. Somewhat to the right of them stood a butte, black and forbidding, at which Gillette constantly glanced. And at last Christine ventured a question. "What is it?"

He drew himself from his study. "I'm trying to make up the story in this. There's always some kind of a yarn in a set of hoof prints. And when you see hoof prints mixed with boot prints that story usually promises a suprise ending."

Quite of a sudden his head came up, turning sidewise. She thought she heard a faint sound floating through the morning drone. And again she marked the strange shift of his expression. "Come on," he muttered. His horse raced up a slope, Kit lagging. He stopped an instant on the backbone of the ridge; then she saw him rise in his stirrups and fling the quirt down on the pony's rump. When she rode to the crest he was a hundred yards away.

Directly in his path and another fifty yards to the fore a pair of horses stood idle. Her eyes caught them first; then, as Gillette swerved, she saw two figures locked together, struggling. Gillette was off his horse, sand spurting up beneath his boots, and racing onward. The pair had split; two men in a fight. One of them was Lispenard. Kit galloped ahead.

The other was not a man, but a girl dressed in man's clothing; quite striking of features and at this moment trembling with exhaustion. Certainly it wasn't fear, for her black eyes sparkled with outraged emotion, and she was crying, "You dam' dog! I could kill you! I could!" Then Christine Ballard heard Gillette break in; and there was such a suppressed fury in his words that she felt the stab of an emotion hitherto quite alien—jealousy.

"I am going to whip you, Blondy," he was saying. "It ought to be a gun, but I'll give you your own weapons. Put up your hands, you damned yellow cur! You are going to get a lesson you have needed all your life."

Lispenard's heavy lips pulled back from his teeth; a spotty, purplish colour stood along his cheeks. He was sullen, vindictive. "You fool!" he cried. "I've had enough of your fine manners! I'm weary of 'em, hear me! By heavens, I've sickened on your cursed air of superiority!"

"Put up your hands."

"Don't get on a pedestal for the women!" shouted Lispenard; he flung back his shoulders and the knotted muscles rippled through his shirt. He had never bulked so immense, so destructively powerful as at that moment; he stood half a head over Gillette, he was thicker, more massive in every respect; and as he took a step forward, knees suddenly springing a little under the weight of his body, he seemed like a wild animal from the jungle. "I have always whipped you, my lad! And I'll smash your ribs until you won't walk so upright and almighty—And then I'll take my leave! I'm cursed tired of your ways!"

"Save your breath, Blondy."

The great body went across the interval as if shot from a catapault. Fists struck so swiftly that Christine Ballard couldn't follow them. She screamed, but above the shrillness of it she heard the impact of bodies, the expelling of great breaths, the shuffling of feet in the sand. It was quite impossible that large men could move with that agility; Lispenard's yellow head made a complete circle under the sun; arms feinted, drew back, feinted again and smashed against their targets. Tom sagged, supporting himself on one knee; Lispenard's face blazed with the killer's instinct. "Get up and fight! Always did lack guts! Get up and fight before I kick you to pieces!" Gillette was up. Again Lispenard's great frame snapped across the space. Gillette was off his guard, and he was flung back by a single sledgelike blow. In falling he caught Lispenard's arm and together they sprawled on the ground, rolled, arm wrenching at arm, knees striking like pistons. Body crushed against body. They were on their feet once more and Tom Gillette's face was crimson and his shirt had been ripped from collar to belt.

Lispenard came on, crouching, a strangled cry in his throat. And the rip and smash of flesh so sickened Christine Ballard that she had to support herself in the saddle with both hands. They had gone mad, all reason and all sense of pain had deserted them. They fought as only the most brutal type of animals could fight, bent on the kill. And now and then, as Lispenard's choking yell broke the silence of the prairie, she recalled his remark. "Beneath, I'm a seething furnace. Oh, quite so." He had been truthful to her; hell could not distill a more insane fury than that which trembled on his smeared and distorted face.

She was not a man, or she would have noticed, as the fight drew out, that it was Lispenard whose head went down and whose charges grew the more aimless and broken; whose breath came out of him like a sob. Gillette was checking the other's attack. Through a dimming vision he found his mark easier to strike. He pressed, he saw his opponent's face at odd angles as his fists smashed it and rolled it back. Lispenard's bulging eyes lost their firmness, and at that point Gillette summoned whatever was left of his strength. He had been taught fine blows once, he had been instructed in sportsmanship. All that went overboard with the rest of the Eastern junk. He could not hit hard enough to satisfy the urge of his will. He could only follow on and on, past the blur of a woman on a horse, past the blur of a woman crouching to the ground; lashing out and feeling a numb reaction run through his arms. To strike again and follow in the endless circle until, through the red film, he saw only the glare of the horizon. His throbbing body felt no return blow; and he looked down in a hazy wonder. The Blond Giant lay senseless.

He turned, seeking his horse. He wanted something to lean against before his legs gave way, he wanted to see the prairie again before he went blind. There was a shadow in front of him; he thought it was Lispenard returning to fight. A girl's voice spoke in warning. "No—don't hit at me, Tom! No—Tom, it's all over. He's down. Put your arms around me! Your poor, poor face."

He sat on the ground, a cool hand pressed against his temple and a cloth skirted across his mouth. It was all over, and Lorena was on her knees trying to wipe away the blood. The ringing died out of his ears, he began to feel the ache of his body where terrific blows had punished him. But they were lesser things. Lesser things. It was Lorena who kept doubling back the bandana to find a dry spot; and what was a woman thinking about and what was a woman feeling whose eyes were like this girl's? God alone knew, but that expression would trouble him from now on, sleeping or waking.

"I think," he mumbled, "I'd better smoke. I'm comin' back down the tunnel. For a time I went twenty feet away from myself."

Talking dispelled the mists. He rose uncertainly. "If he'd hit me a few more times I'd be knocking on the gates." He felt light- hearted, without a trace of resentment. The smoke of the cigarette stung the bruises of his lips, and he threw it away. Lispenard was reviving; as for Christine Ballard, she sat very still in the saddle, which reminded him of something.

"Kit, this is Lorena Wyatt, next neighbour to me. Christine Ballard, Lorena. She's a guest from the East."

It seemed a little queer that neither of them spoke—only bowed. He turned away and left them together while he confronted Lispenard. The latter pushed himself upright.

"I could always whip you—until you got stung," he muttered. "All right. No love lost, my boy. And we'll forget about shaking hands, too. I'm not through with this yet."

"I'll donate you the horse," replied Gillette. "Travel in any direction you want—but not back to the ranch. If I see you on my range again I'll use a gun. You're rotten fruit, Blondy. I've suspected it for some time."

He followed Lispenard and stood beside the latter's horse.

"They say it's every man for himself out here," mused Lispenard. "Well, I'll be on my way. But just put this in your bonnet, old-timer: I don't consider it over with. I'll balance the ledger if it takes me a thousand years. Put it down in red ink."

The fight had drained them of animus; so they stood and looked at each other, a world apart in every respect, utter strangers. Then Lispenard got in the saddle and spurred away. Gillette turned to the women.

Neither had spoken a word; all that while they were exchanging glances, Lorena's clear face thoughtfully wrinkled, Christine Ballard sitting very straight on her horse. Lorena made a small motion with her hand and turned to Tom; and it seemed to him she marked him then for whatever he was and stored it in her memory. Never before had she touched him, save to accept his hand, and though he had no reason for it he felt a distinct warning when she brushed his arm with the tips of her fingers. And smiled a crooked little smile. "Tom, heat some water for your face when you get home. And this is the girl?" Her voice sank to the barest whisper. "Oh, I knew it all the time. Even if you didn't tell me." His hat still lay on the ground; she stooped and retrieved it and with just a touch of possession in her gesture she put it on his head. "You've made another enemy and you've gotten more scars—because of me. A woman can cause so much trouble. That's why I wish I were a man."

She ran to her horse and stepped into the saddle. Dust rose up from the turning hoofs. Her hand came out to him and he heard a faint, "Be good, Tom," as she raced away.

Gillette swung up, ranged beside Christine Ballard, and started homeward.

"She's very pretty," observed Christine.

"Yes," said he, turning to look. She was far along the ridge and dipping from sight. His fingers tightened on the reins, and the pony stopped. That last phrase sounded like a farewell. Christine studied him with so queer an expression that he pressed forward, puzzled and depressed and not knowing why.