The Forfeit Part 27

"In the Cathills."

"The Lightfoot gang?"

"Yes. That's what he called it. You knew of them?"

There was a slight movement of the woman's shoulders. It was the faintest possible shrug.

"Everybody in Calthorpe heard of them."

Then she turned and faced him. The mask with which she confronted him was perfect. Her dark beauty was unimpaired by a sign of emotion.

Even her cheeks had returned to their customary delicate bloom. Her eyes shone with a world of sympathy as she came toward him.

"Jeff, don't think of it all--now, dear. It's too, too dreadful.

Guess I was wrong to let you tell me. I certainly was. It's past.

It's done with. Nothing can ever bring him back to you. To dwell upon it, to think and feel that way, will only serve to embitter your life.

Say, try, Jeff. I'll help you, dear. I will. Sure. Sure. Won't you try, for--my sake?"

The man took her hands in his. He drew her toward him. The strained expression of his eyes melted before her perfect beauty.

"I'll try, Evie," he said, without conviction. Then he kissed her.

After a while she looked up.

"And the stores, Jeff?"

The man smiled down in response.

"Sure--the stores."

CHAPTER XV

THE HOME-COMING

Six weeks of all she had ever hoped for, dreamed of, in the lean years of heart starvation. The complete devotion of a strong man, a man who held a place in the world she knew. Every luxury wealth could purchase at her disposal, even to satiation. Her every whim ministered to, and even antic.i.p.ated. This was something of the ripe fruit literally heaped into Elvine's lap. She had longed for it, schemed for it, and Providence had permitted all her efforts complete success.

Now, with those six weeks behind her, she gazed upon the balance-sheet.

She looked for the balance of happiness. To her horror it was blotted out, smudged out of all recognition. Oh, yes, the figures had been entered, but now they were completely obscured.

It was the last stage of her journey to her new home. It was a journey being made in the saddle. Their baggage, a large number of trunks loaded with the precious gleanings from the great stores during the honeymoon, had been sent on ahead by wagon. There was nothing, so far as could be seen, to rob the home-coming of its proper sense of delight. Yet delight was more than far off. Elvine was a prey to a hopelessness which nothing seemed able to relieve.

Summer was not yet over, although the signs of the coming fall were by no means lacking. The hard trail, like some carefully set out terra-cotta ribbon upon a field of tawny green, took them through a region of busy harvesting. The tractors and threshers were busily engaged in many directions. Great stacks of straw testified to the ample harvest in progress. Fall ploughing had already begun, and high-wheeled wagons bore their burden of produce toward the distant elevators. Then, too, human freight pa.s.sed them, happy, smiling freight of old and young, whose sun-scorched faces reflected something of the joy of life and general prosperity prevailing.

A radiant sun looked down upon the scenes through which they pa.s.sed.

It was the wonderful ripening G.o.d almost wors.h.i.+pped of these people who lived by the fruits of the earth. Jeffrey Masters understood it all, and reveled in the pleasant senses it stirred. For he, too, lived by the fruits of the earth, although his harvest was garnered in the flesh of creature kind.

Elvine looked on with eyes that beheld but saw nothing of that which inspired her husband. Remembrance claimed her. Too well she remembered. And gladly would she have shut out such sights altogether, for more and more surely they crushed her already depressed spirits to a depth from which it seemed impossible to raise them.

Nor was her beautiful face without some reflection of this. Her smile was ready for the man at her side. She laughed and talked in a manner so care-free that he could never have suspected. But in repose, when no eyes were upon her, a lurking, hunted dread peered furtively out of her dark eyes, and the fine-drawn lines gathered about her shapely lips, and seriously marred the serenity of their youthful contours.

She had one purpose now, one only. It was to ward off the blow which she knew might fall at any moment when she reached her new home. The threat of it was with her always. It drove her to panic in the dark of night. It left her watchful and fearful in the light of day. At all times the memory of her husband's words dinned through her brain like the haunt of some sickening melody.

"Now I only hope the good G.o.d'll let me come up with the man who took the price of his blood."

It had been spoken coldly. It had been spoken with an intensity of bitterness that left an impression as hard as flint. The tone had set her shuddering. Then the look in those cold blue eyes when at last she had turned confronting them. No, there had been no mercy in them. No mercy, she told herself, for--anybody.

At that moment she had known that the earth could hold no future peace for her. She felt that Fate had pa.s.sed sentence on her, and she was powerless to stay its execution. Her husband demanded vengeance upon the man who had accepted the price of his brother's blood.

For the moment she had been stunned. Then had risen up in her a desperate courage. She would fight. She would fight for herself, she would fight for the love which all unbidden, all undesired, had come to her. Then, in the end, if defeat should overtake her, she would, yes, she could, submit to the punishment his hand should mete out to her.

Strangely, from that moment her love for this man seemed to increase a thousandfold. He grew in her heart a towering colossus of wors.h.i.+p.

The primitive in her bowed down before his image ready to yield to his lightest word, while, by every art, she was ready to cajole and foster his love.

It was all she knew, understood. It was the woman in her who possessed no other weapons of defense. She loved him, she desired him, then nothing was too small to cling to with the wild hope of the drowning.

When the day came that he should turn and rend her soul she could submit. But until that day she would cling to every straw that offered.

While the scenes through which they were pa.s.sing preoccupied the man, the silence of the wide plains left Elvine to her fears. The great breadth of the world about her added to her hopelessness. And after a silence which had become unduly protracted, she took refuge in talk for which she had no real desire.

"It's beautiful, but--oppressive," she said, and the words were the inspiration of genuine thought.

But the man was like one who has spent a world of love and devotion upon carving a beautiful setting and is now about to complete his work by securing in place the crowning jewel. He had no room for any feeling of oppression. He shook his head.

"Say, Evie," he cried, "I just can't allow you the word 'oppressive.'

I just can't. Look--look right out there toward the hills we're making. Take the colors as they heap up to the distance. Every shade, I guess, from green to purple. It makes me feel good. It gives me room to stretch myself. It sort o' sweeps away a whole heap of fusty city smells, and gives us something a deal more worth breathing. It's a man's place. And it's full of man's work. Guess Providence got busy an' set it all out for us. Providence guessed we'd have to use it.

But Providence didn't just guess how far crazy human nature really was.

She didn't foresee we'd gather around in the musty dump-holes we call cities. She didn't figure on our tastes for the flesh-pots, and the indulgence of the senses she'd handed us. But then Providence knows her power to fix us right when she feels that way." Then he spread out his arms with an inexpressible suggestion of longing. "Say, I'm crazy--plumb crazy to get the first peek at that dandy home I've had fixed for you."

The woman's eyes sought her husband's with a smile that was a caress.

"You're good to me, Jeff," she said. Then she added: "So good." Her smile deepened. "You'd hand me the world with--with a fence around it, if I asked. Why? Why are you like that?"

It was the love in her seeking rea.s.surance. Nor was she disappointed.

"Why?" The man laughed. And the sound of it was good to hear. It was deep, and seemed to come from the depths of his soul. His blue eyes shone with a world of devotion. "Guess I love you--just that," he said. Then he pointed at the distant hills. "I can't tell you all I feel, Elvie," he said, "but get those hills. See them. There, that peak, sitting right up over its fellows, with a cap of snow on it I don't guess the sun could ever melt. That's thousands of feet up. I'd say man's foot was never set there, nor bird's, nor animal's either.

Well, if that peak was a throne it 'ud give you pleasure to occupy, why, I guess I'd just go the limit to have you sit there."

Elvine was gazing at the mountain crest, but she was not thinking of it. She was thinking of the love which the extravagant words expressed, and she was wondering at the bigness of it. She was caught in its power, and it thrilled her with an even greater appreciation of her danger. What would be the result upon such a nature as this man's when--he knew?

"I believe you would," she said, her eyes coming back to the strong, flushed face. Then she added: "Now."

"Now?"

There was a quick lifting in the man's fair brows. There was incredulity in his tone. To him it seemed impossible, the implied doubt in her final word.

"I don't change easy, Elvie," he protested. "I kind of get things hard. It's my way, and it's no doing of mine. Life's a full-sized proposition, and I don't guess we can see far through it. But I can't imagine a thing that could come before you in my thoughts."