CHAPTER TWELVE
IN THE ARROYO
Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella. The girl had, during thestruggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of terror.Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands behind her,ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.
"What are you going to do?" she demanded, her voice unnatural.
She received no reply. The man reached out and took her by the arm.
And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch hadbroken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had overlaidBuck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke out. Hetwisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back, and, with theshort piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries to "hog-tie" cattle,he lashed her wrists together. Then he arose panting, his square blackbeard rising and falling with the rise and fall of his great chest.
Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been fairlyground into the alkali. There she had choked and strangled and gaspedand sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with terror. She kept appealingto him in a hoarse voice, but could get no reply, no indication that hehad even heard. This terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursedsteadily and accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.
The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson's soul. When he had touchedEstrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had lost. It wasnot the woman--her he despised. But the dreams! All at once he knewwhat they had been to him--he understood how completely the verysubstance of his life had changed in response to their slowsoul-action. The new world had been blasted--the old no longer existedto which to return.
Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred. Why,it was atrocious! He had done nothing to deserve it! Why had they notleft him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the trail? He had beenhappy. His dull eyes fell on the causes of the ruin.
And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had been tricked ofhis life, his happiness, his right to well-being, the whole force ofthe man's anger flared. Brent Palmer lay there cursing himartistically. That man had done it; that man was in his power. Hewould get even. How?
Estrella, too, lay huddled, helpless and defenseless, at his feet. Shehad done it. He would get even. How?
He had spoken no word. He spoke none now, either in answer toEstrella's appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief fromsuspense, or in response to Brent Palmer's steady stream of insults andvituperations. Such things were far below. The bitterness and angerand desolation were squeezing his heart. He remembered the sillylittle row of potatoes sewn in the green hide lying along the top ofthe adobe fence, some fresh and round, some dripping as the rawhidecontracted, some black and withered and very small. A fierce andsavage light sprang into his eyes.
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