by Zane Grey
“Child! I don’t love Jan atall,” cried Brazos, as one who rushed to his doom. “Leastways—only as a sister—as yore sister.”
“Do you swear that—Brazos?” asked the girl, emotionally.
“On a stack of Bibles a mile high,” declared Brazos, again possessing himself of her hands, and drawing her a little closer.
“Oh, dear Brazos—I’m happy again,” faltered June. “Yet I—I’m almost sorry you don’t love her, too. . . . If only she just likes you! Jan is strange these days.”
“Aw, she’s in love with Sisk.”
“Like hob she is! She likes Henry, better than any of her beaux, and she might have—”
“June, don’t waste so much time,” expostulated Brazos. “Heah we’ve been alone only a minute—the first time—an’ yu waste it.”
“But Brazos! We can’t spoon right under the noses of Dad—Jan—Jack—”
“Shore we can. An’ why Jack? June, I’m scared yu—yu like thet cowboy.”
“I do. Very much since Allen was—is gone. He was Allen’s best friend. But Jack is not you.”
“Darlin’, yu gotta do two things or I’ll go clean loco,” importuned Brazos.
“And what are they?”
“Wal, be more of a sweetheart—an’ wear somethin’ or give me some kind of a hunch yu’re June.”
“Brazos, I’ve been the—the faithfulest sweetheart you ever had. If you only knew!”
“June, I mean a lovin’ sweetheart. I’m the kind of a hombre thet’s got to have kisses—millions of kisses.”
She uttered a little laugh, easy to misinterpret. “I rather guessed that. You’re so sure of the number—I wonder if you’re as sure of where they’re all to come from.”
But she yielded easily to his tender clasp and shyly held up her lips. Her kiss was cool—sweet—quick, gathering something as it ended.
“There! one on account. . . . Wait! they’re calling me. I’ll be back soon.”
“June!” came the clamoring cry from outside the leafy bower.
She slipped away from Brazos, with a touch, a look that convinced him she wanted to stay there in his arms. Brazos stood staring after her in the gathering rosy gloom of the great barn. He did not attend particularly to the argument going on at the other end. He was still under the spell of June’s shy surrender, her half promise, and he waited with strong impatience for her return. There would surely be a moment more. Dusk was falling. The cows were lowing in the fields. Then the supper bell put an end to the animated discussion that had disrupted Brazos’ moment of bliss.
“Come on, Brazos,” yelled the merry voice of Jack Sain.
“Doggone!” muttered Brazos.
“Hey, Texas, we’re knockin’ off for supper,” called Bilyen.
Brazos stood there with a sense of blank disappointment, a letting down of his expectant mood, listening to the voices and footsteps receding. Then his heart leaped at a quick patter of feet that slowed, halted significantly outside the booth.
A slender form in white stood framed in the darkening doorway of foliage.
“Aw, heah yu air!” whispered Brazos, with a passionate regurgitation of feeling.
“Oh, I couldn’t see you. . . . They sent me back. . . .”
Perhaps it was his sudden looming right over her that checked her gay voice. He saw her face, pale against the background of leaves, her eyes unnaturally large and dark.
“Yu near found a daid man,” said Brazos, snatching her off her feet.
“Brazos!” All her slender form appeared to leap with a divinely startled convulsion, but it did not strike Brazos that it was resistance. His surprise attack gained something from his disappointment. He gathered her up tight in his arms and as he kissed her eyes shut she cried out: “Oh! . . . please don’t! . . . Mercy! . . . Ah!” And with that Brazos’ thirsty lips closed hers and he spent his ardor in long, lingering kisses.
“There! Thet shore was—comin’ to yu—Lady,” panted Brazos, as her head drooped back, her eyes closed under mystic lids.
They opened. “Cowboy devil!” she whispered, both tone and look impossible to read.
Nevertheless Brazos translated them in his own behalf.
“No—more,” she cried, frantically, and surprising Brazos with sudden strength she freed herself and fled.
Brazos followed, still in a transport. But as he got out of the gloom of the barn into the open where it was light he sustained a return of rationality.
One of the boys had waited and in a moment more Brazos recognized Henry Sisk.
“What’d you go back for?” he asked, in low voice.
“What’d you—drag June—away for?” panted the girl, as she reached him.
“I took her for you!” returned Sisk, in anguish.
“Ha! Ha!”
Janis’ sweet laugh not only silenced Sisk but also made a stone image of Brazos. The couple hurried on to catch up with the others down the lane. Brazos stood there in the summer twilight as suddenly stiff and cold as if he had been turned to stone, his consciousness capable of only one thought: “My Gawd, if it wasn’t Jan!”
Brazos had faced bad men, rustlers, wild beasts, outlaw mustangs, fire and flood with far less fear than it took to walk into the Neece dining room. But he had to go. To flee would have been a fatal blunder. Like a man going to his execution Brazos faced that merry table.
“Brazos, what made you so late? I called and called,” said one of the twins, her dark eyes full of laughter. That had to be June.
“I went back after him,” said the other twin, with her dark eyes lowered. “He’s no plains cowboy. He’s a woodland faun.”
“Wal, I reckon I don’t know what thet is,” Brazos drawled, in his old cool lazy voice. “But in the fall when the leaves air all gold an’ red I get kinda loco!”
CHAPTER
12
THE rest of the evening Brazos sought the safety of numbers. But just the same, he was conscious of June’s observance of him, as if she knew what a fool he was, and of Janis’ smiling radiance, as if she had a secret not to keep long from the world. One other shared it, of that Brazos was sure, and he was Henry Sisk. Jack Sain betrayed a curiosity beyond jealousy, but something that would eventually probe to the bottom of the mystery. And as the evening wore on Brazos began to grow suspicious of the others.
“Wal, folks,” he said at an opportune moment, “I’m gonna say good night an’ ride back to town.”
“What’s the sense in thet?” spoke up Neece, quickly. “This is your home. An’ Hank can fetch your pack tomorrow.”
“Please don’t go, Brazos,” added June, suddenly anxious.
“Brazos Keene, you’ve got a job,” piled on Janis with a merry subtlety impossible to interpret. “This Neece outfit is getting obstreperous. You can’t run it gallivanting to town.”
“Wal, I reckon I cain’t run it if I stay,” replied Brazos, for whom the humor of the situation had ceased.
“I was only fooling,” said Janis hurriedly.
“Why must you go?” pouted June.
“Wal, since yu call my hand,” drawled Brazos exaggerating his cool habit of speech, “the fact is there’s a couple of hombres in town thet I forgot aboot shootin’.”
Blank surprise and silence ensued upon Brazos’ reply. As Brazos had intended they could not tell whether he was in jest or earnest.
“So long. See yu-all in the mawnin’,” he concluded, and left the room. Hank Bilyen followed him out on the porch, and one of the twins caught up with them.
“Brazos—wait,” she faltered.
“Cowboy, I’ll have yore hawse heah in a jiffy,” said Hank, and thumped off the porch.
Brazos had taken a step down, but turned to look at the girl whose face was on a level with his.
“You are—angry?” she asked.
“Not atall. . . . An’ which one of these heah Neece girls air yu?”
“Brazos! I’m June. Don’t look at me like that. We were only in fun—and t
hey coaxed—nagged me into it.”
“Into what?” queried Brazos, bluntly. June’s distress told him there was something in the wind of which he had had no inkling.
“You’ve guessed it—haven’t you?”
“Ump-umm. I’m a pore guesser. An’ I’m a pore social cuss, too. I reckon I don’t belong heah.”
“Oh, Brazos, you are angry,” cried June, and she looked back to beckon Janis, who stood with white face and wide eyes in the light of the door. But Janis did not come. “See! Jan leaves it all on my shoulders. . . . And look at Dad and Jack! Laughing like hyenas. . . . Brazos, I don’t blame you. . . . But forgive me, darling.”
This was so astounding and delicious that Brazos could not resist prolonging it.
“Wal, June, I’m not a forgiving cuss, either—when I see I’m bein’ made fun of.”
“Now they’re making fun of me, too,” protested June. “They put up a job on us, Brazos.”
“Ahuh. Suppose yu tell me aboot it.”
“Darling!”
“Awful sweet talk, June, but not gettin’ us anywhere.”
“But don’t be such a stranger to me,” she wailed. “Brazos, would—would you be terribly angry if I—I confessed something I said about—about you and me?”
“No. If it was true I’d like yu the better.”
“You remember tonight before supper—when you and I were alone in the stall?”
“Wal, I’m not liable to forget.”
“We must have been there a long time. It was almost dark. They teased me unmercifully. Even Dad! I got mad. Jan didn’t help it any, believe me. So I said: I guess no one has a better right to be alone with Brazos Keene. And if this is all you called me for, I’m going back.’ . . . Well, Jack Sain grabbed me. They dragged me out of the barn. Oh, they were full of mischief. And then they sprang the joke on me. That same old trick that has got me into a peck of trouble lots of times! . . . Sent Janis back. Let her pretend to be me. She would string you along until we got in to supper, I objected. I did’t like it. I didn’t want to. But Jan did! And always I’d do anything under the sun for her. So I weakened and she went. Henry was the only one who was sore. He was sore. He waited. And Jan kept you there in the barn so long that all of us but Henry ran off. . . . When Jan came in alone with Henry, who was black as a thundercloud, and you didn’t come—then they guessed the joke hadn’t gone so good. Jan was mysterious. She kept mum. She didn’t care a whoop how mad Henry was. But she couldn’t fool me. Jan doesn’t have that white look and those black eyes for nothing. Something had happened while she was pretending to be me. . . . And I’ve been frantic ever since.”
“Wal, I shore took Jan for yu all right,” declared Brazos, with a grim satisfaction.
“Oh, Brazos—you—you didn’t—”
“Let yore imagination run high, wide, an’ handsome, June, an’ maybe yu’ll get somewhere.”
“Brazos! I’ll bet you were too smart for them. You knew Jan!” exclaimed June, hopefully. “You played up to them. Poor Jan! No wonder she was so strange—so tense. Served her right! Oh, Brazos, I’m horribly jealous, but if you guessed the trick I—I can stand it. . . . Only Jan worries me. . . . Do you forgive me, Brazos?”
“Shore, sweetheart. I’d forgive yu anythin’. But I’m not so shore aboot Jan an’ Jack an’ yore Dad.”
“Now you’re my old Brazos again,” murmured June. “I’ll be a match for them next time. . . . Brazos, let’s play a terrible joke on them.”
“I should smile. How aboot elopin’?”
“Oh! . . . Brazos, you’re not serious?” cried June, aghast yet intrigued at the idea.
“Shore am. We could slope off in the mawnin’—get to Dodge City long enough to slip the bridle on yu—then come back to the dance.”
“Glorious! But—but—”
“Then it wouldn’t make so much difference whether or not I took yu for Jan,” drawled Brazos, dryly.
“Wouldn’t it though?” flashed June. “Brazos Keene, I agree with Jan. Nobody can be quite sure of you.”
“If yu were my wife, wouldn’t yu feel tolerable safe?”
“Don’t tempt me, Brazos. If we eloped it’d hurt Dad. And there’s no need of hurry. I—I’d like it! But I mustn’t. Another thing—Jan would never forgive me.”
“For marryin’ me!” ejaculated Brazos.
“No. For not telling her. We’ll wait, Brazos dear—if you can be true to me.”
“I shore can if yu’ll only wear somethin’ or do somethin’ so I cain’t mistake yu for Jan again.”
“I guess you don’t really want to,” she said, reproachfully. “It must be great fun for a cowboy, especially when his fiancée’s sister doesn’t run away from him.”
“About as funny as bein’ piled off yore hawse. June, will you promise to give me a hunch, so I’ll know yu?”
“Yes. I promise, Brazos. I’ll think up something that no one else can tell.”
“June, do yu reckon they-all took yu to mean we air engaged?” asked Brazos, wistfully.
“No, they didn’t. Dad never mentioned it. And Jan laughed in my face. Then she tried to pump me. Oh, she worries me, Brazos.”
“Wal, if yu had my state of mind aboot thet girl yu’d be loco. . . . Have yu got any nerve, darlin’?”
“Nerve? Yes. For what?”
“Jan has backed into the room. Gosh, her eyes look like burnt holes in a blanket. They’re all peekin’ oot at us.. Makes me kinda sore. How aboot kissin’ me good night? Thet’ll fix them.”
“Oh, I haven’t that—much nerve,” faltered June. “I might—”
“Jan would have in yore place,” interrupted Brazos, a little bitterly.
“If I had your nerve I know what I’d do,” retorted June.
“Aw, heah comes Hank with my hawse.”
“Pooh! Who cares for Hank. . . . Brazos, Brazos, you may grab me—hug me like a bear—kiss me good night, then run.”
“June!”
“Yes—and explain to Dad tomorrow.”
Dared thus and spurred by June’s provocative smile Brazos brazenly availed himself of the sweet privilege. It made his head whirl so that he nearly fell down the steps.
“Say, cowboy, what’n hell’s got into yu?” queried Hank, in mild concern, as Brazos swung into his saddle.
“Gawd only knows, Hank,” drawled Brazos, with his cool laugh. “I might be ridin’ away from Don Carlos’ Rancho. So long, Texas.”
Brazos had a fleeting glimpse of the disheveled June standing slim and lovely in the light with her hands over her face.
Riding furiously away down the dark road Brazos’ sheer joy crowded out his other emotions. June, the little minx, had challenged that sweet madness. Janis had seen it, her father, Sain, and all of them. They would tease June into a confession of their plighted troth. Brazos thought himself not only the happiest of men but the most fortunate.
When he neared the town he slowed the spirited horse to a walk and his rushing mind slowed proportionately. Any cattle town had a quieting effect upon Brazos. And suddenly it struck him that he had never gone back to any town where he had engaged in a serious shooting fray. The cold stars, the breeze off the range, the dark avenues into the hills, the pale light that located Las Animas, these told him that love and happiness could not change the merciless truth that he was still Brazos Keene. He was hated by men he had frustrated. He would ever be marked by them and their allies. He could never enter that town without reverting to the hard steely vigilant gunman. The creed of border rustlers was that dead men did not fine or trail their tracks.
Brazos left his horse at the accustomed corral and walked up the side street into the main thoroughfare. That element of Las Animas which did not sleep at night, and the cowboys and cattlemen upon whom they preyed, were out in force. Saloons, dance halls and gambling dens hummed with their peculiar low ominous roar. Las Animas was growing. The hour was midnight and Brazos met many men, some accompanied by women. He peeped into the dives. He
stood back in dark doorways and watched. His conclusion was that Las Animas would never compare with Dodge, or Abilene, or Lincoln in the viciousness of those cattle towns in their heyday, but it was a hard town, and a center for rustling activities that no one man could clean up.
Brazos at last went to his room at Mexican Joe’s, and after lighting the lamp he broodingly unbuckled his gun belt and sat down on the bed.
“Better men than I am have been in the same kind of fix,” he mused, darkly. “I’m supposed to marry and settle down to quiet home life. An’ forget the men I’ve killed an’ thet there’s some left I ought to kill. . . . Ha! Thet’s the idee. Thet for Brazos Keene! . . . Wal, I’ll do even thet for June if they only let me. . . . Pore kid! It’s tough on her. She really never ought to have fallen in love with me. If I’d been half a man I’d never let her do it. But I did an’ she did! . . . Bless her lovin’ heart! . . . An’ I gotta hide this secret fear an’ watch as I never did in my life, hopin’ time will change things.”
Brazos slept late, a luxury he seldom indulged in. And after he awakened he lay in bed, realizing that in broad daylight, with the sun pouring golden in at his window, he could not feel the same as he did in the black midnight hours. He was wonderfully happy. And that exalted mood lasted until, booted, spurred and gun-belted, he walked out up the street of Las Animas.
He had not taken a dozen steps from Mexican Joe’s when a cowboy, a lean hard-faced youth, sauntered out of a doorway.
“Howdy, Keene,” he said, as if in casual greeting. “I been walkin’ the street for an hour watchin’ for you.”
“Howdy, cowboy,” returned Brazos, slowly.
“Gimme a match. Make this look natural,” returned the other.
“Ahuh. Heah yu air. Talk fast stranger.”
The cowboy took the match and lighted his cigarette leisurely, but he spoke rapidly.
“Last night at Hall’s—heerd two men talkin’—Brazos Keene in town—Knight swears we’re to git him at any cost—Bodkin’ rarin’.”
The cowboy raised his young hard visage, puffed a cloud of smoke and turned away.
