Man Size Part 31

In spite of the heat a little s.h.i.+ver ran down her spine.

Silence became too significant. She was afraid of it. So she talked, persistently, at times a little hysterically. Her memory was good. If she liked a piece of poetry, she could learn it by reading it over a few times. So, in her desperation, she "spoke pieces" to this man whose face was a gray mask, just as the girls had done at her school in Winnipeg.

Often, at night camps, she had recited for her father. If she had no dramatic talent, at least she had a sweet, clear voice, an earnestness that never ranted, and some native or acquired skill in handling inflections.

"Do you like Shakespeare?" she asked. "My father's very fond of him.

I know parts of several of the plays. 'Henry V' now. That's good.

There's a bit where he's talking to his soldiers before they fight the French. Would you like that?"

"Go on," he said gruffly, sultry eyes on the fire.

With a good deal of spirit she flung out the gallant lines. He began to watch her, vivid, eager, so pathetically anxious to entertain him with her small stock of wares.

"But, if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive."

There was about her a quality very fine and taking. He caught it first in those two lines, and again when her full young voice swelled to English Harry's prophecy.

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers: For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

As he watched her, old memories stirred in him. He had come from a good family in the Western Reserve, where he had rough-and-tumbled up through the grades into High School. After a year here he had gone to a Catholic School, Sacred Heart College, and had studied for the priesthood. He recalled his mother, a gentle, white-haired old lady, with fond pride in him; his father, who had been the soul of honor. By some queer chance she had lit on the very lines that he had learned from the old school reader and recited before an audience the last day prior to vacation.

He woke from his reveries to discover that she was giving him Tennyson, that fragment from "Guinevere" when Arthur tells her of the dream her guilt has tarnished. And as she spoke there stirred in him the long-forgotten aspirations of his youth.

"... for indeed I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden pa.s.sion for a maid, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

His eyes were no longer impa.s.sive. There was in them, for the moment at least, a hunted, haggard look. He saw himself as he was, in a blaze of light that burned down to his very soul.

And he saw her too transformed--not a half-breed, the fair prey of any man's pa.s.sion, but a clean, proud, high-spirited white girl who lived in the spirit as well as the flesh.

"You're tired. Better lie down and sleep," he told her, very gently.

Jessie looked at him, and she knew she was safe. She might sleep without fear. This man would not harm her any more than Beresford or Morse would have done. Some chemical change had occurred in his thoughts that protected her. She did not know what it was, but her paean of prayer went up to heaven in a little rush of thanksgiving.

She did not voice her grat.i.tude to him. But the look she gave him was more expressive than words.

Out of the storm a voice raucous and profane came to them faintly.

"Ah, c.r.a.paud Wulf, pren' garde. Yeu-oh! (To the right!) Git down to it, Fox. Sacre demon! Cha! Cha! (To the left!)"

Then the crack of a whip and a volley of oaths.

The two in the cabin looked at each other. One was white to the lips.

The other smiled grimly. It was the gambler that spoke their common thought.

"Bully West, by all that's holy!"

CHAPTER XXIV

WEST MAKES A DECISION

Came to those in the cabin a string of oaths, the crack of a whip las.h.i.+ng out savagely, and the yelps of dogs from a crouching, cowering team.

Whaley slipped a revolver from his belt to the right-hand pocket of his fur coat.

The door burst open. A man stood on the threshold, a huge figure crusted with snow, beard and eyebrows ice-matted. He looked like the storm king who had ridden the gale out of the north. This on the outside, at a first glance only. For the black scowl he flung at his partner was so deadly that it seemed to come red-hot from a furnace of hate and evil pa.s.sion.

"Run to earth!" he roared. "Thought you'd hole up, you d.a.m.ned fox, where I wouldn't find you. Thought you'd give Bully West the slip, you'n' that li'l' h.e.l.l-cat. Talk about Porcupine Creek, eh? Tried to send me mus.h.i.+n' over there while you'n' her--"

What the fellow said sent a hot wave creeping over the girl's face to the roots of her hair. The gambler did not speak, but his eyes, filmed and wary, never lifted from the other's bloated face.

"Figured I'd forget the ol' whiskey cache, eh? Figured you could gimme the double-cross an' git away with it? h.e.l.l's hinges, Bully West's no fool! He's forgot more'n you ever knew."

The man swaggered forward, the lash of the whip trailing across the puncheon floor. Triumph rode in his voice and straddled in his gait.

He stood with his back to the fireplace absorbing heat, hands behind him and feet set wide. His eyes gloated over the victims he had trapped. Presently he would settle with both of them.

"Not a word to say for yoreselves, either one o' you," he jeered.

"Good enough. I'll do what talkin' 's needed, then I'll strip the hide off'n both o' you." With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.

She shrank back against the wall, needlessly. It was a threat, not an attack; a promise of what was to come.

"Let her alone." They were the first words Whaley had spoken. In his soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched tenseness. If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest panther, more feline, but just as dangerous.

The convict looked at him, eyes narrowed, head thrust forward and down. "What's that?"

"I said to let her alone."

West's face heliographed amazement. "Meanin'--?"

"Meaning exactly what I say. You'll not touch her."

It was a moment before this flat defiance reached the brain of the big man through the penumbra of his mental fog. When it did, he strode across the room with the roar of a wild animal and s.n.a.t.c.hed the girl to him. He would show whether any one could come between him and his woman.

In three long steps Whaley padded across the floor. Something cold and round pressed against the back of the outlaw's tough red neck.

"Drop that whip."

The order came in a low-voiced imperative. West hesitated. This man--his partner--would surely never shoot him about such a trifle.

Still--

"What's eatin' you?" he growled. "Put up that gun. You ain't fool enough to shoot."

"Think that hard enough and you'll never live to know better. Hands off the girl."