Over the Border Part 27

With Lee's exclamation the props trembled beneath the widow's plot, but Sliver restored their stability. "It's cheap at the price. Many's the man up home that gets as bad or worse an' is stuck, to boot, for lawyer's fees an' al'mony. Don't you bother 'bout me, Lady-girl. All I need is a bit of salve, an' Maria kin get me that."

As Sliver rode on, the widow looked at Lee, who returned her meaning glance. Neither looked at Gordon, who discreetly watched Betty. But the thought was the same in the minds of all three. "Thank goodness, she's gone."

For a while Lee hesitated and debated whether, after all, she ought not to go back, and she reined in, startled, when a long howl presently drifted over the rise behind which Sliver had disappeared. A coyote, in its death agony, might have equaled the sound. But as, presently, the tortured notes resolved into the opening bars of "The Cowboy's Lament,"

she giggled and rode on for another five miles. Sliver was happy!

While Lee was kissing Betty good-by the widow managed to pa.s.s a whisper to Gordon. "Now don't let her escape! And remember-look out for Ramon to-morrow."

He nodded and, looking back from behind the crest of the next rise, she saw for herself how well he obeyed. Lee had made to get off at a gallop, but had reined in when he spoke, and now they were riding side by side, deep in earnest conversation.

Nodding, the widow rode on, but stopped again for a last look while she could still see over the rise. She was practically invisible when Lee looked back, protesting, as Gordon grabbed her bridle and pulled her beast alongside. Her pointing finger said, quite plainly:

"They will see!"

The widow gasped, for with one swift reach he s.n.a.t.c.hed Lee out of the saddle and set her before him.

XXIV: UNDERSTANDING

Had she heard the conversation which preceded that bold action, Mrs.

Mills would have been still more impressed. Determination is the natural foe of diplomacy. Warned by one single, furtive glance that Lee intended to make off, Gordon plunged at one smash through her fence of reserve.

"Do you intend to keep that engagement?"

Coming from a young man whom one hated so vindictively that one could "just kill any other girl that tried to take him," the question was well calculated to arrest attention. Neither was its force lessened by the fact that it was _his_, not _hers_-perish the thought!-outrageous conduct which had caused said engagement!

The audacity of it caused her first to gasp, then draw rein and stare at him in utter surprise; finally to ride slowly on while preparing an answer that should not only wither him, there, in the saddle, but also hide the tumult of fright and pleasure in her own breast.

Her glance said, "You certainly have got your gall with you!" But her answer was much more dignified, "By what right do you ask?"

"The right of a man who loves you."

It was a fine stroke; established at once his freedom to meddle with her affairs. His right in the premises would have been upheld in any ancient court of love. Though she tried to conceal it from herself, it was so conceded by one girl's fluttering heart. As a matter of fact, she had been aching for a week to hear him say it; yet, with that natural cruelty which is displayed alike by cats and maids in torturing mice and men, she proceeded to deny it.

"Yes?" she raised cool brows. "Judging by what I saw in the canon-it must be recent."

She looked for him to wither, but-the fellow refused! He did not even flinch. On the contrary, he just looked at her with s.h.i.+ning earnestness; sat his saddle so trim, erect, irritatingly handsome, that she couldn't help taking notice. No, he was not to be side-tracked by such light subterfuge! He swept it away with masculine bluntness.

"I thought so myself-but now I know. It was all so strange, wonderful, picturesque, this new life, that I was blinded. I knew that I liked you, but never paused to a.n.a.lyze my feelings, and it wasn't till you shot that announcement at me a week ago that I awoke-awoke to the fact that all of it, the beauty, romance, centered on you. Since then, the life and light have faded, leaving it drab and drear."

This was not all. Laying it down, as it were, for his major premise, he built thereon, worked, and enlarged, and embroidered while she played with the coils of her _riata_. As an oratorical effort, it could not compare with fire and pa.s.sion, melodious swing of Ramon's rhythmical Spanish. But what it lacked in eloquence it made up in sincere, vibrant feeling. The stronger for its reserves, it was just such a talk any honest young Anglo-Saxon might make to his lady-love. And if judged by its effects, it must be regarded as successful, for long before he finished two large tears made small splashes on her pommel.

"When-when did you find this out?"

She had intended it to be light, if not satirical; but the little hesitation, helped out by a sympathetic quiver, basely betrayed her hunger for more.

Be certain she got it-in detail, not a thing left out. With a touch of poetry, now, he told of his marvelous discovery on the morning they had ridden over to the widow's together that the sunlight proceeded from her hair; also the freshness of the morning, roll of tawny plains, breath of the chaparral, all that was beautiful in creation.

There was also some mention of the hair in connection with a certain Java forest, with pa.s.sing reference to the Chinese Wall and a voyage he had intended to make up the great Asian rivers. Not having personal experience in their navigation, said references were rather vague, but her imagination abundantly supplied the requisite flora and fauna from magazine articles and pictures. Porcelain towers, orchids, giant palms; deep jungle temples; the crowded boat life of the Yangtse-Kiang, junks and sampans with their cargoes of saffron-faced, slant-eyed Celestials, men, women, and children-especially children-her imagination improved on the lovely dreams she had so cruelly disrupted. He concluded with that:

"And you smashed it-all to smithereens."

For a while she rode in silence. Apprehension and fright had given place to sorrow that contended tumultuously with delight for possession of her soul. "I'm sorry," she spoke at last. "_So_ sorry, but-you provoked it."

"Why! How?"

He was reminded, of course, that he "lost interest in girls after they grew up." She added, a little vindictively, "And _you_ didn't flirt with Mrs. Mills?"

"Only in self-defense. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, isn't it?"

But she denied this bit of ancient wisdom. "No, it isn't! And-and you _kissed_ that dreadful girl! I-oh, I could have _killed_ you!"

"Why?"

She was looking at him now, and the compound of bright anger, pleading and defiance, regret, love, hope, and despair that alternately flashed and swam in the wet eyes gave sufficient answer. It was then he plucked her from the saddle; crushed her to him with force that squeezed out, for the moment, the anger, regret, despair, left only love and hope.

Ensued the usual delirious moment when poor mortals conquer time and eternity, set at naught the black riddle of existence. Her face buried in his shoulder, his in her hair, they clung to each other while his horse moved slowly forward and hers went careering on over the next earth roll.

Elsewhere on this globe some three thousand millions of souls were coming and going on the ordinary business of life at trade, barter; feasting or fasting; mourning or making merry; dying, some hundreds of them, every second, to make way for a new sp.a.w.n of life. Beyond the blue loom of the mountains men were robbing and murdering, hunting one another like beasts of the jungle in the name of this or that "cause"; committing frightful infamies in the sacred name of love. Swaying hither and thither, that tide of l.u.s.t and carnage might sweep at any moment over these sunlit plains.

Yet, blind to it all, oblivious of the past and future, conscious only of the present that had bloomed in sudden glory, sufficient to themselves as the first man and woman in Eden, they rode forward lost in an illumined dream.

It lasted, that wonderful, bright ecstasy, until, turning up her face, he made to kiss her. Then, by a thought of Ramon, was she abruptly recalled to unpleasant realities. She laid a determined, if gentle, hand over his mouth.

"You mustn't."

"Why?"

"You forget-I am still engaged."

"Why-so you are!" Laughing, he tried to dodge her hand, but desisted when he saw she was in earnest. "You surely don't intend-"

"No, indeed!" She read his thought. "I had believed, at first, that I ought. But Mrs. Mills showed me how unfair it would be to marry Ramon while-"

"Say it."

"While I loved _you_."

For a girl who had just restated her engagement to another man, she behaved most disgracefully during a long silence that was broken only by the measured tread of the horse. Snuggling in closer, she re-entered that illumined dream, and made no attempt to check the kisses he showered on the soft palm of the restraining hand. It was, no doubt, some realization of her misbehavior that caused her to sit up, presently, and pull it away.

"This won't do. For the present we'll have to behave like ordinary persons."

"But your horse is gone," he protested when she gently put away his arm.

"You can't walk."