by B. M. Bower
“You told me, last summer, that you enjoyed keeping up the feud,” she reminded, smiling whimsically down at me.
She made a wrong play there; she let me see that she did remember some things that I said. It boosted my courage a notch.
“But that was last summer,” I countered. “One can change one’s view-point a lot in twelve months. Anyway, you knew all along that I didn’t mean a word of it.”
“Indeed!” It was evident that she didn’t quite like having me take that tone.
“Yes, ‘indeed’!” I repeated, feeling a rebellion against circumstances and at convention growing stronger within me. Why couldn’t I put her on my horse and carry her off and keep her always? I wondered crazily. That was what I wanted to do.
“Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?” she mused, biting her pencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can’t remember how many times three goes into twenty-seven.
“Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more.” I set my teeth, closed my eyes—mentally—and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. “For instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether you want to or not, because I shall make you, I mean every word of it—and a lot more.”
That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn’t dare breathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, all golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight together that they ached afterward.
The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraid to look. “Do you? How very odd!” Her voice sounded queer, as if it had been squeezed dry of every sort of emotion. “And—Edith?”
I looked at her then, fast enough. “Edith?” I stared at her stupidly. “What the—what’s Edith got to do with it?”
“Possibly nothing”—in the same squeezed tone. “Men are so—er—irresponsible; and you say you don’t always mean—Still, when a man writes pages and pages to a girl every week for nearly a year, one naturally supposes—”
“Oh, look here!” I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough with her. “Edith doesn’t care a rap about me, and you know it. And she knows I don’t care, and—and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr. Terence Weaver.”
“My Mr. Terence Weaver?” She was looking down at me sidewise, in a perfectly maddening way. “You are really very—er—funny, Mr. Carleton.”
“Well,” I rapped out between my teeth, “I don’t feel funny. I feel—”
“No? But, really, you know, you act that way.”
I saw she was getting all the best of it—and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.
“That depends on the view-point,” I grinned. “Would you think it funny if I carried you off—really, you know—and—er—married you and made you live happy—”
“You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all—”
“Necessary?” I hinted.
“Plausible,” she supplied sweetly.
“But would you think it funny, if I did?”
She regarded her broken pencil ruefully—or pretended to—and pinched her brows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood—But, there, no Barney for me.
“I—might,” she decided at last. “It would be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you’d manage it; I’m not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn’t be easy to—er—carry me off. Would you wear a mask—a black velvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say: ‘Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!’ Would you?” She leaned toward me, and her eyes—well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish.
I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I was master.
“No,” I told her grimly. “If I saw that you were going to do anything so foolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and—kiss you till you were glad to be sensible about it.”
Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to look insulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking a good bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept her hand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and it felt—oh, thunder!
“Let’s play something else,” she said, after a long minute. “I—I never did admire highwaymen particularly, and I must go home.”
“No, you mustn’t,” I contradicted. “You must—”
She looked at me with those wonderful, heavy-lashed eyes, and her lips had a little quiver as if—Oh, I don’t know, but I let go her hand, and I felt like a great, hulking brute that had been teasing a child till it cried.
“All right,” I sighed, “I’ll let you go this time. But I warn you, little girl. If—no, when I find you out from King’s Highway by yourself again, that kidnaping is sure going to come off. The Lord intended you to be Mrs. Ellis Carleton. And forty feuds and forty fathers can’t prevent it. I don’t believe in going against the decrees of Providence; a wise Providence.”
She bit her lip at the corner. “You must have a little private Providence of your own,” she retorted, with something like her old assurance. “I’m sure mine never hinted at such a—a fate for me. And one feud is as good as forty, Mr. Carleton. If you are anything like your father, I can easily understand how the feud began. The Kings and the Carletons are fond of their own way.”
“Thy way shall be my way,” I promised rashly, just because it sounded smart.
“Thank you. Then there will be no melodramatic abductions in the shadow of White Divide,” she laughed triumphantly, “and I shall escape a most horrible fate!” She went, still laughing, down to where her horse was waiting.
I followed—rather, I kept pace with her. “All the same, I dare you to ride out alone from King’s Highway again,” I defied. “For, if you do, and I find you—”
“Good-by, Mr. Carleton. You’d be splendid in vaudeville,” she mocked from her saddle, where she had got with all the ease of a cowboy, without any help from me. “Black velvet mask and gadzooks, madam—I must certainly tell Edith. It will amuse her, I’m sure.”
“No, you won’t tell Edith,” I flung after her, but I don’t know if she heard.
She rode away down the steep slope, the roan leaning back stiffly against the incline, and I stood watching her like a fool. I didn’t think it would be good policy to follow her. I tried to roll a cigarette—in case she might look back to see how I was taking her last shot. But she didn’t, and I threw the thing away half-made. It was a case where smoke wouldn’t help me.
If I hadn’t made my chance any better, I knew I couldn’t very well make it worse; but there was mighty little comfort in that reflection. And what a bluff I had put up! Carry her off and marry her? Lord knows I wanted to, badly enough! But—
CHAPTER XIV
Frosty Disappears
On the way back to the ranch I overtook Frosty mooning along at a walk, with his shoulders humped in the way a man has when he’s thinking pretty hard. I had left Frosty with the round-up, and I was pretty much surprised to see him here. I didn’t feel in the mood for conversation, even with him; but, to be decent, I spurred up alongside and said hello, and where had he come from? There was nothing in that for a man to get uppish about, but he turned and actually glared at me.
“I might be an inquisitive son-of-a-gun and ask you the same thing,” he growled.
“Yes, you might,” I agreed. “But, if you did, I’d be apt to tell you to depart immediately for a place called Gehenna—which is polite for hell.”
“Well, same here,” he retorted laconically; and that ended our conversation, though we rode stirrup to stirrup for eight miles.
I can’t say that, after the first shock of surprise,
I gave much time to wondering what brought Frosty home. I took it he had had a row with the wagon-boss. Frosty is an independent sort and won’t stand a word from anybody, and the wagon-boss is something of a bully. The gait they were traveling, out there with the wagons, was fraying the nerves of the whole bunch before I left. And that was all I thought about Frosty.
I had troubles of my own, about that time. I had put up my bluff, and I kept wondering what I should do if Beryl King called me. There wasn’t much chance that she would, of course; but, still, she wasn’t that kind of girl who always does the conventional thing and the expected thing, and I had seen a gleam in her eyes that, in a man’s, I should call deviltry, pure and simple. If I should meet her out somewhere, and she even looked a dare—I’ll confess one thing: for a whole week I was mighty shy of riding out where I would be apt to meet her; and you can call me a coward if you like.
Still, I had schemes, plenty of them. I wanted her—Lord knows how I wanted her!—and I got pretty desperate, sometimes. Once I saddled up with the fixed determination of riding boldly—and melodramatically—into King’s Highway, facing old King, and saying: “Sir, I love your daughter. Let bygones be bygones. Dad and I forgive you, and hope you will do the same. Let us have peace, and let me have Beryl—” or something to that effect.
He’d only have done one of two things; he’d have taken a shot at me, or he’d have told me to go to the same old place where we consign unpleasant people. But I didn’t tempt him, though I did tempt fate. I went over to the little butte, climbed it pensively, and sat on the flat rock and gazed forlornly at the mouth of the pass.
I had the rock to myself, but I made a discovery that set the nerves of me jumping like a man just getting over a—well, a season of dissipation. In the sandy soil next the rock were many confused footprints—the prints of little riding-boots; and they looked quite fresh. She had been there, all right, and I had missed her! I swore, and wondered what she must think of me. Then I had an inspiration. I rolled and half-smoked eight cigarettes, and scattered the stubs with careful carelessness in the immediate vicinity of the rock. I put my boots down in a clear spot of sand where they left marks that fairly shouted of my presence. Then I walked off a few steps and studied the effect with much satisfaction. When she came again, she couldn’t fail to see that I had been there; that I had waited a long time—she could count the cigarette stubs and so form some estimate of the time—and had gone away, presumably in deep disappointment. Maybe it would make her feel a little less sure of herself, to know that I was camping thus earnestly on her trail. I rode home, feeling a good deal better in my mind.
That night it rained barrelsful. I laid and listened to it, and gritted my teeth. Where was all my cunning now? Where were those blatant footprints of mine that were to give their own eloquent message? I could imagine just how the water was running in yellow streams off the peak of that butte. Then it came to me that, at all events, some of the cigarette-stubs would be left; so I turned over and went to sleep.
I wish to say, before I forget it, that I don’t think I am deceitful by nature. You see, it changes a fellow a lot to get all tangled up in his feelings over a girl that doesn’t seem to care a rap for you. He does things that are positively idiotic At any rate, I did. And I could sympathize some with Barney MacTague; only, his girl had a crooked nose and no eyebrows to speak of, so he hadn’t the excuse that I had. Take a girl with eyes like Beryl—
A couple of days after that—days when I hadn’t the nerve to go near the little butte—Frosty drew six months’ wages and disappeared without a word to anybody. He didn’t come back that night, and the next day Perry Potter, who knows well the strange freaks cowboys will sometimes take when they have been working steadily for a long time, suggested that I ride over to Kenmore and see if Frosty was there, and try my powers of persuasion on him—unless he was already broke; in which case, according to Perry Potter, he would come back without any persuading. Perry Potter added dryly that it wouldn’t be out of my way any, and would only be a little longer ride. I must say I looked at him with suspicion. The way that little dried-up sinner found out everything was positively uncanny.
Frosty, as I soon discovered, was not in Kenmore. He had been, for I learned by inquiring around that he had passed the night there at that one little hotel. Also that he had, not more than two hours before—or three, at most—hired a rig and driven on to Osage. A man told me that he had taken a lady with him; but, knowing Frosty as I did, I couldn’t quite swallow that. It was queer, though, about his hiring a rig and leaving his saddle-horse there in the stable. I couldn’t understand it, but I wasn’t going to buy into Frosty’s affairs unless I had to. I ate my dinner dejectedly in the hotel—the dinner was enough to make any man dejected—and started home again.
CHAPTER XV
The Broken Motor-car
Out where the trail from Kenmore intersects the one leading from Laurel to and through King’s Highway, I passed over a little hill and came suddenly upon a big, dark-gray touring-car stalled in the road. In it Beryl King sat looking intently down at her toes. I nearly fell off my horse at the shock of it, and then my blood got to acting funny, so that my head felt queer. Then I came to, and rode boldly up to her, mentally shaking hands with myself over my good luck. For it was good luck just to see her, whether anything came of it or not.
“Something wrong with the wheelbarrow?” I asked her, with a placid superiority.
She looked up with a little start—she never did seem to feel my presence until I spoke to her—and frowned prettily; but whether at me or at the car, I didn’t know.
“I guess something must be,” she answered quite meekly, for her. “It keeps making the funniest buzz when I start it—and it’s Mr. Weaver’s car, and he doesn’t know—I—I borrowed it without asking, and—”
“That car is all right,” I bluffed from my saddle. “It’s simply obeying instructions. It comes under the jurisdiction of my private Providence, you see. I ordered it that you should be here, and in distress, and grateful for my helping hand.” How was that for straight nerve?
“Well, then, let’s have the helping hand and be done. I should be at home, by now. They will wonder—I just went for a—a little spin, and when I turned to go back, it started that funny noise. I—I’m afraid of it. It—might blow up, or—or something.”
She seemed in a strangely explanatory mood, that was, to say the least, suspicious. Either she had come out purposely to torment me, or she was afraid of what she knew was in my mind, and wanted to make me forget it. But my mettle was up for good. I had no notion of forgetting, or of letting her.
“I’ll do what I can, and willingly,” I told her coolly. “It looks like a good car—an accommodating car. I hope you are prepared to pay the penalty—”
“Penalty?” she interrupted, and opened her eyes at me innocently; a bit too innocently, I may say.
“Penalty; yes. The penalty of letting me find you outside of King’s Highway, alone,” I explained brazenly.
She tried a lever hurriedly, and the car growled up at her so that she quit. Then she pulled herself together and faced me nonchalantly.
“Oh-h. You mean about the black velvet mask? I’m afraid—I had forgotten that funny little—joke.” With all she could do, her face and her tone were not convincing.
I gathered courage as she lost it. “I see that I must demonstrate to you the fact that I am not altogether a joke,” I said grimly, and got down from my horse.
I don’t, to this day, know what she imagined I was going to do. She sat very still; the kind of stillness a rabbit adopts when he hopes to escape the notice of an enemy. I could see that she hardly breathed, even.
But when I reached her, I only got a wrench out of the tool-box and yanked open the hood to see what ailed the motor. I knew something of that make of car; in fact, I had owned one before I got the Yellow Peril, and I had a suspicion that there wasn’t much wrong; a loosened nut will sometimes sound a good deal more se
rious than it really is. Still, a half-formed idea—a perfectly crazy idea—made me go over the whole machine very carefully to make sure she was all right.
When I was through I stood up and found that she was regarding me curiously, yet with some amusement. She seemed to feel herself mistress of the situation, and to consider me as an interesting plaything. I didn’t approve that attitude.
“At all events,” she said when she met my eyes, and speaking as if there had been no break in our conversation, “you are rather a good joke. Thank you so much.”
I put away the wrench, fastened the lid of the tool-box, and then I faced her grimly. “I see mere words are wasted on you,” I said. “I shall have to carry you off—Beryl King; I shall carry you off if you look at me that way again!”
She did look that way, only more so. I wonder what she thought a man was made of, to stand it. I set my teeth hard together.
“Have you got the—er—the black velvet mask?” she taunted, leaning just the least bit toward me. Her eyes—I say it deliberately—were a direct challenge that no man could refuse to accept and feel himself a man after.
“Mask or no mask—you’ll see!” I turned away to where my horse was standing eying the car with extreme disfavor, picked up the reins, and glanced over my shoulder; I didn’t know but she would give me the slip. She was sitting very straight, with both hands on the wheel and her eyes looking straight before her. She might have been posing for a photograph, from the look of her. I tied the reins with a quick twist over the saddle-horn and gave him a slap on the rump. I knew he would go straight home. Then I went back and stepped into the car just as she reached down and started the motor. If she had meant to run away from me she had been just a second too late. She gave me a sidelong, measuring glance, and gasped. The car slid easily along the trail as if it were listening for what we were going to say.
