The Roof Tree Part 32

He drew back his shoulders then, and enlightened, "Sometimes I gits thetaway. I fell ter thinkin' of them days when you an' me used ter gather them 'simmons tergether, little gal."

"When we was kids," she answered, nodding her head. "We hed fun, didn't we?"

"G.o.d Almighty," he exclaimed, impetuously and suddenly. "How I loved ye!"

The girl drew away, and her answer was at once sympathetic and defensive. "Thet war all a right long time back, Bas."

The defeated lover came to his feet and stood looking at her with a face over which the pa.s.sion of his feeling came with a sweep and surge that he made no effort to control.

In that instant something had slipped in Bas Rowlett and the madman that was part of him became temporarily all of him.

"Hit hain't so long a time ago," he vehemently declared, "thet I've changed any in hits pa.s.sin'. So long es I lives, Dorothy, I'll love ye more an' more--till I dies."

She drew back another step and shook her head reprovingly, and in the gravity of her eyes was the dawning of indignation, disappointment, and astonishment.

"Bas," she said, earnestly, "even ef Cal hadn't of come, I couldn't nuver hev wedded with ye. He did come, though, an'--in thet way of carin'--thar hain't no other man in the world fer me. I kain't never pay ye back fer all thet I'm beholden ter ye ... fer savin' him an' fotchin'

him in when thet craven shot him ... fer stayin' a friend when most men would hev got ter be enemies. I knows all them things--but don't seek ter spile none of 'em by talkin' love ter me.... Hit's too late.... I'm married."

For an instant he stood as though long-arrested pa.s.sions were pounding against the dams that had held them; then his words came like the torrent that makes driftwood of its impediments.

"Ter h.e.l.l with this man Thornton! Ye didn't never hev no chanst ter know yore own mind.... Ye jest thinks ye loves him because ye pitied him. Hit won't last noways."

"Bas," she spoke his name with a sharp and stinging note of command, "I'm willin' ter look over what ye've said so fur--because of what I owes ye--but don't say no more!"

In a frenzy of wild and sensuous abandon he laughed. Then leaping forward he seized her and crushed her to him with her arms pinioned in his and her body close against his own.

Her struggles were as futile as those of a bird held in a human hand--a hand that takes no thought of how severely it may bruise but only of making firm its imprisoning hold.

"I said 'ter h.e.l.l with him'," repeated the man in a low voice but one of white-hot pa.s.sion. "I says. .h.i.t ergin! From ther time thet ye fust begun ter grow up I'd made up my mind thet ye belonged ter me--an' afore I quits ye're _goin'_ ter belong ter me. Ye talks erbout bein' wedded an'

I says ter h.e.l.l with thet, too! Mebby ye're his wife but ye're goin' ter be my woman!"

The senses of the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that held her powerless, and they seemed to her hours.

The hot breath of the face which had suddenly grown unspeakably horrible to her burned her like a blast, and through her reeling faculties rose that same impression of nightmare that had come to Parish when he lay wounded on his bed: the need of altering at a flash her whole conception of this man's loyal steadfastness to a realization of unbelievable and b.e.s.t.i.a.l treachery.

The fact was patent enough now, and only the hideous possibilities of the next few minutes remained doubtful. His arms clamped her so tightly that she gasped stranglingly for breath, and the convulsive futility of her struggles grew fainter. Consciousness itself wavered.

Then Rowlett loosened one arm and bent her head upward until he could crush his lips against hers and hold them there while he surfeited his own with an endlessly long kiss.

When again her eyes met his, the girl was panting with the exhaustion of breath that sounded like a sob, and desperately she sought to fence for time.

"Let me go," she panted. "Let me go--thar's somebody comin'!"

That was a lie born of the moment's desperation and strategy but, somewhat to her surprise, it served its ephemeral purpose. Rowlett released his hold and wheeled to look at the road, and with a flas.h.i.+ng swiftness his victim leaped for the door and slammmed it behind her.

CHAPTER XXIII

An instant later, with a roar of fury, as he realized the trick that had been played upon him, Bas was beating his fists against the panels and hurling against them the weight of his powerful shoulders. But those hot moments of agitation and mental riot had left him breathless, too, and presently he drew away for a quieter survey of the situation. He strolled insolently over to the window which was still open and leaned with his elbows on the sill looking in. The room was empty, and he guessed that Dorothy had hurried out to bar the back door, forgetting, in her excitement, the nearer danger of the raised sash.

Bas had started to draw himself up over the sill when caution prompted him to turn first for a look at the road.

He ground his teeth and abandoned his intention of immediate entry for there swinging around the turn, with her buxom vigour of stride, came Elviry Prooner.

Rowlett scowled as he folded his arms and leaned by the window, and then he saw Dorothy appear in the back door of the room and he cautioned her in a low voice: "Elviry's comin' back. I warns ye not ter make no commotion."

But to his astonishment Dorothy, whose face was as pale as paper no longer, wore in her eyes the desperation of terror or the fluttering agitation that seemed likely to make outcry. In her hand she held a kitchen knife which had been sharpened and re-sharpened on the grindstone until its point was as taperingly keen as that of a dirk.

She laid this weapon down on the table and hastily rearranged her dishevelled hair, and then she said in a still and ominous voice, more indicative of aggressive temerity than shrinking timidity:

"Don't go yit, Bas, I'm comin' out thar ter hev speech with ye--an' ef ye fails ter hearken ter me--G.o.d knows I pities ye!"

Waiting a little while to recover from the pallid advertising of her recent agitation she opened the front door and went firmly out as Elviry, with a toss of her head that ignored the visitor, pa.s.sed around the house to the rear.

Dorothy's right hand, armed with the blade, rested inconspicuously under her ap.r.o.n, but the glitter in her eyes was unconcealed and to Bas, who smiled indulgently at her arming, she gave the brief command, "Come out hyar under ther tree whar Elviry won't hear us."

Curious and somewhat mystified at the transformation from helplessness to aggression of bearing the man followed her and as she wheeled to face him with her left hand groping against the bark, he dropped down into the gra.s.s with insolent mockery in his face and sat cross-legged, looking up at her.

"Ef I'd hed this knife a minute ago," she began in a low voice, throbbing like a m.u.f.fled engine, "I'd hev cut yore heart out. Now I've decided not ter do hit--jest yit."

"Would ye ruther wait an' let ther man with siv'ral diff'rent names ondertake hit fer ye?" he queried, mockingly, and Dorothy Thornton shook her head.

"No, I wouldn't hev him dirty his hands with no sich job," she answered with icy disdain. "Albeit he'd t'ar hit out with his bare fingers, I reckon--ef he knowed."

Bas Rowlett's swarthy face stiffened and his teeth bared themselves in a snarl of hurt vanity, but as he started to speak he changed his mind and sat for a while silent, watching the splendid figure she made as she leaned against the tree with a breast rising and falling to the storm tide of her indignation.

Rowlett's thoughts had been active in these minutes since the craters of his sensuous nature had burst into eruption, and already he was cursing himself for a fool who had prematurely revealed his hand.

"Dorothy," he began, slowly, and a self-abasing pretence of penitence sounded through his words, "my reason plum left me a while ago an' I was p'int blank crazed fer a spell. I've got ter crave yore pardon right humbly--but I reckon ye don't begin ter know how much I loves ye."

"How much ye loves me!" She echoed the words with a scorn so incandescent that he winced. "Love's an honest thing, an' ye hain't nuver knowed ther meanin' of honesty!"

"Ye've got a right good license ter git mad with me, Dorothy," he made generous concession, "an' I wouldn't esteem ye ef ye hedn't done hit--but afore ye lets thet wrath settle inter a fixed hate ye ought ter think of somethin' ye've done fergot."

He paused but received no invitation to present his plea in extenuation, so he proceeded without it:

"I kissed ye erginst yore will, an' I cussed an' d.a.m.ned yore husband, but I did both them things in sudden heat an' pa.s.sion. Ye ought ter take thought afore ye disgusts me too everlastin'ly much thet I've done loved ye ever since we was both kids tergither. I've done been compelled ter put behind me all ther hopes I ever hed endurin' my whole lifetime an'

hit's been makin' a h.e.l.l of tormint outen my days an' nights hyar of late."

He had risen now, and into his argument as he bowed a bared and allegedly stricken head he was managing to put an excellent semblance of sincerity.

But it was before a court of feminine intuition that Bas Rowlett stood arraigned, and his specious contriteness fell flat as it came from his lips. Dorothy was looking at him now in the glare of revelation--and seeing a loathsome portrait.

"An hour ago," she declared with no relenting in the deep blaze of her eyes, "I believed all good of ye. Now I sees ye fer what ye air an' I suspicions iniquities thet I hedn't nuver dreamp' of afore. I wouldn't put hit past ye ter hev deevised Cal's lay-wayin' yoreself. I wouldn't be none astonished ef ye hired ther man thet shot him ... an' yit I'd nigh cut my tongue afore I'd drap a hint of thet ter him."

That last statement both amazed and gratified the intriguer. He had now two avowed enemies in this house and each stood pledged to a solitary reckoning. His warfare against one of them was prompted by murder-l.u.s.t and against the other by love-l.u.s.t, but the cardinal essence of good strategy is to dispose of hostile forces in detail and to prevent their uniting for defence or offence. It seemed to Bas that, in this, the woman was preparing to play into his hands, but he inquired, without visible eagerness: