The Range Boss Part 13

She was much impressed with his earnestness, and she looked quickly at him, nearly convinced. But again the memory of the tragic moment became vivid in her thoughts, and she shuddered.

"It's too horrible to think of!" she declared.

"I reckon it's no picnic," he admitted. "I ain't never been stuck on shootin' men. I reckon I didn't sleep a heap for three nights after I shot Pickett. I kept seein' him, an' pityin' him. But I kept tellin'

myself that it had to be either him or me, an' I kind of got over it.

Pickett _would_ have it, ma'am. When I turned my back to him I was hopin'

that he wouldn't try to play dirt on me. Do you reckon he oughtn't to have been made to tell you that he had been wrong in tacklin' you? Why, ma'am, I kind of liked Pickett. He wasn't all bad. He was one of them kind that's easy led, an' he wasn't a heap responsible; he fell in with the wrong kind of men--men like Chavis. I've took a lot from Pickett."

"You might have shown him in some other way that you liked him," she said with unsmiling sarcasm. "It seems to me that men who go about thinking of shooting each other must have a great deal of the brute in them."

"Meanin' that they ain't civilized, I reckon?"

"Yes. Mr. Masten had the right view. He refused to resort to the methods you used in bringing Pickett to account. He is too much a gentleman to act the savage."

For an instant Randerson's eyes lighted with a deep fire. And then he smiled mirthlessly.

"I reckon Mr. Masten ain't never had anybody stir him up right proper,"

he said mildly. "It takes different things to get a man riled so's he'll fight--or a woman, either. Either of 'em will fight when the right thing gets them roused. I expect that deep down in everybody is a little of that brute that you're talkin' about. I reckon you'd fight like a tiger, ma'am, if the time ever come when you had to."

"I never expect to kill anybody," she declared, coldly.

"You don't know what you'll do when the time comes, ma'am. You've been livin' in a part of the country where things are done accordin' to hard an' fast rules. Out here things run loose, an' if you stay here long enough some day you'll meet them an' recognize them for your own--an'

you'll wonder how you ever got along without them." He looked at her now with a subtle grin. But his words were direct enough, and his voice rang earnestly as he went on: "Why, I reckon you've never been tuned up to nature, ma'am. Have you ever hated anybody real venomous?"

"I have been taught differently," she shot back at him. "I have never hated anybody."

"Then you ain't never loved anybody, ma'am. You'd be jealous of the one you loved, an' you'd hate anybody you saw makin' eyes at them."

"Well, of all the odd ideas!" she said. She was so astonished at the turn his talk had taken that she halted her pony and faced him, her cheeks coloring.

"I don't reckon it's any odd idea, ma'am. Unless human nature is an odd idea, an' I reckon it's about the oldest thing in the world, next to love an' hate." He grinned at her unblus.h.i.+ngly, and leaned against the saddle horn.

"I reckon you ain't been a heap observin', ma'am," he said frankly, but very respectfully. "You'd have seen that odd idea worked out many times, if you was. With animals an' men it's the same. A kid--which you won't claim don't love its mother--is jealous of a brother or a sister which it thinks is bein' favored more than him, an' if the mother don't show that she's pretty square in dealin' with the two, there's bound to be hate born right there. What do you reckon made Cain kill his brother, Abel?

"Take a woman--a wife. Some box-heads, when their wife falls in love with another man, give her up like they was takin' off an old shoe, sayin'

they love her so much that they want to see her happy--which she can't be, she says, unless she gets the other man. But don't you go to believin' that kind of fairy romance, ma'am. When a man is so willin' to give up his wife to another man he's sure got a heap tired of her an'

don't want her any more. He's got his eye peeled for Number Two, an' he's thankin' his wife's lover for makin' the trail clear for the matrimonial wagon. But givin' up Number One to the other man gives him a chance to pose a lot, an' mebbe it's got a heap of effect on Number Two, who sort of thinks that if she gets tied up to such a sucker she'll be able to wrap him around her finger. But if he loves Number Two, he'll be mighty grumpy to the next fellow that goes to makin' sheeps eyes at her."

"That is a highly original view," she said, laughing, feeling that she ought to be offended, but disarmed by his ingenuousness. "And so you think that love and hate are inseparable pa.s.sions."

"I reckon you can't know what real love is unless you have hated, ma'am.

Some folks say they get through life without hatin' anybody, but if you'll look around an' watch them, you'll find they're mostly an unfeelin' kind. You ain't one of them kind, ma'am. I've watched you, an'

I've seen that you've got a heap of spirit. Some of these days you're goin' to wake up. An' when you do, you'll find out what love is."

"Don't you think I love Mr. Masten?" she said, looking at him unwaveringly.

He looked as fairly back at her. "I don't reckon you do, ma'am. Mebbe you think so, but you don't."

"What makes you think so?" she demanded, defiantly.

"Why, the way you look at him, ma'am. If I was engaged to a girl an' she looked at me as critical as you look at him, sometimes, I'd sure feel certain that I'd drawed the wrong card."

Still her eyes did not waver. She began to sense his object in introducing this subject, and she was determined to make him feel that his conclusions were incorrect--as she knew they were.

"That is an example of your wonderful power of observation," she said, "the kind you were telling me about, which makes you able to make such remarkable deductions. But if you are no more correct in the others than you are in trying to determine the state of my feelings toward Mr.

Masten, you are entirely wrong. I _do_ love Mr. Masten!"

She spoke vehemently, for she thought herself very much in earnest.

But he grinned. "You're true blue," he said, "an' you've got the grit to tell where you stand. But you're mistaken. You couldn't love Masten."

"Why?" she said, so intensely curious that she entirely forgot to think of his impertinence in talking thus to her. "Why can't I love Mr.

Masten?"

He laughed, and reddened. "Because you're goin' to love me, ma'am," he said, gently.

She would have laughed if she had not felt so indignant. She would have struck him as she had struck Chavis had she not been positive that behind his words was the utmost respect--that he did not intend to be impertinent--that he seemed as natural as he had been all along. She would have exhibited scorn if she could have summoned it. She did nothing but stare at him in genuine amazement. She was going to be severe with him, but the mild humor of his smile brought confusion upon her.

"You don't lack conceit, whatever your other shortcomings," she managed, her face rosy.

"Well now, I'm thankin' you, ma'am, for lettin' me off so easy," he said.

"I was expectin' you'd be pretty hard on me for talkin' that way. I've been wonderin' what made me say it. I expect it's because I've been thinkin' it so strong. Anyway, it's said, an' I can't take it back. I wouldn't want to, for I was bound to tell you some time, anyway. I reckon it ain't conceit that made me say it. I've liked you a heap ever since I got hold of your picture."

"So that is where the picture went!" she said. "I have been hunting high and low for it. Who gave it to you?"

"Wes Vickers, ma'am." There was disgust in his eyes. "I never meant to mention it, ma'am; that was a slip of the tongue. But when I saw the picture, I knowed I was goin' to love you. There ain't nothin' happened yet to show that you won't think a lot of me, some day."

"You frighten me," she mocked.

"I reckon you ain't none frightened," he laughed. "But I expect you're some disturbed--me sayin' what I've said while you're engaged to Masten.

I'm apologizing ma'am. You be loyal to Masten--as I know you'd be, anyway. An' some day, when you've broke off with him, I'll come a-courtin'."

"So you're sure that I'm going to break my engagement with Masten, are you?" she queried, trying her best to be scornful, but not succeeding very well. "How do you know that?"

"There's somethin' that you don't see that's been tellin' me, ma'am.

Mebbe some day that thing will be tellin' you the same stuff, an' then you'll understand," he said enigmatically.

"Well," she said, pressing her lips together as though this were to be her last word on the subject; "I have heard that the wilderness sometimes makes people dream strange dreams, and I suppose yours is one of them."

She wheeled her pony and sent it scampering onward toward the ranchhouse.

He followed, light of heart, for while she had taunted him, she had also listened to him, and he felt that progress had been made.

CHAPTER XI

HAGAR'S EYES