The Branding Iron Part 13

"You, Mabel, don't you go home," she said.

She had not spoken loudly, but her voice beat against the walls of the court as though it could have filled the whole moonlight night with dangerous beauty. The listener outside lifted his head with a low, startled exclamation. Suddenly the world was alive with adventure and alarm.

"Mind your own business, you wild cat," answered a man's raucous voice. "She's my wife, which is somethin' that your sort knows nothin'

about. Come on, you Mabel. You think that outlaw can keep me from takin' home my wife, you're betting wrong."

Another silence; then the voice again, a little louder, as though the speaker had stepped out into the center of the room.

"Mabel is not a-goin' home with you," it said; and the listener outside threw back his head with the gesture of a man sensitive to music who listens to some ecstatic melody. "She happens to be stoppin'

here with us to-night. You say that she's your wife, but that don't mean that she belongs to you, body and soul, Bill Greer--not to you, who don't possess your own body, or soul. Why, you can't keep your feet steady, you can't pull your hand away from mine. You can't hold your tipsy eyes on mine. Do you call that ownin' your own body? And as fer your soul, it's a h.e.l.l of rage and dirty feelin's that I'd hate to burn my eyes by lookin' closely at."

A deep, short, alarming chorus of laughter interrupted the speech. The speaker evidently had her audience.

"So you don't own anything to-night," went on the extraordinary, deliberate voice; "surely you don't own Mabel. You can't get a claim on her, not thataway. She's her own. She belongs to her own self. When you're fit to take her, why, then come and tell us about it, and if we judge you're a-tellin' us the truth, mebbe we'll let her go. Till then--" a pause which was filled with a rapid shuffling of feet. The door flew open and in its lighted oblong the observer saw a huddled figure behind which rose a woman's black and shapely head. "Till then," repeated the deep-toned, ringing voice, "_get out_!" And the huddled man came on a staggering run which ended in a backward fall on the cobbles of the court.

The man who watched trod lightly past him and came to the open door.

Inside, firelight beat on the golden log walls and salmon-colored timber ceiling; a lamp hanging from a beam threw down a strong, conflicting arc of white light. A dozen brown-faced, booted young men stood about, three musicians were ready to take up their interrupted music, the little fat man who had called out the figures of the quadrille, stood on a barrel, his arms folded across his paunch. A fair-haired girl, her face marred by recent tears, drooped near him.

Two of the young men were murmuring rea.s.surances to her; others surrounded a stout, red-faced girl who was laughing and talking loudly. The Jew's eyes wandered till they came to the fireplace. There another woman leaned against the wall.

The music struck up, the dancing began again, the two other girls, quickly provided with partners, began to waltz, the superfluous men stood up together and went at it with gravity and grace. No one asked this woman, who stood at ease, watching the dancers, her hands resting on her hips, her head tilted back against the logs. As he looked at her, the intruder had a queer little thrill of fright. He remembered something he had once seen--a tame panther which was to be used in some moving-picture play. Its confident owner had led it in on a chain and held it negligently in a corner of the room, waiting for his cue.

The panther had stood there drowsily, its eyes s.h.i.+fting a little, then, watching people, its inky head had begun to move from side to side. He remembered the way the loose chain jerked. The animal's eyes half-closed, it lowered its head, its upper lip began to draw away from its teeth. All at once it had dropped on its belly. Some one cried out, "Hold your beast!"

This young woman by the fireplace had just that panther-air of perilous quietness. She was very haggard, very thin; she wore her ma.s.sive, black hair drawn away hideously from brow and temple, and out of this lean, unshaded face a pair of deep eyes looked drowsily, dangerously. Her mouth was straightened into an expression of proud bitterness, her round chin thrust forward; there was a deep, scowling line that rose from the bridge of her straight, short nose almost to the roots of her hair. It cut across a splendidly modeled brow. She was very graceful, if such a bundle of bones might be said to have any grace. Her pose was arresting. There was a tragic force and attraction about her.

The man by the door appraised her carefully between his narrowed lids.

He kept in mind the remembered melody of her voice, and, after a few moments, he strolled across the floor and came up to her.

"Will you dance?" he said.

He had a very charming and subtle smile, a very charming and sympathetic look. The woman was startled, color rose into her face.

She stared at him.

"I'm not dancing, Mr. Morena," she answered.

"You know my name," smiled Morena; "and I don't know yours. I've been on Mr. Yarnall's ranch for a month. Why haven't I seen you?"

"Fer not lookin', I suppose." She had given him that one startled glance, and now she had turned her eyes back to the dancers and wore a grim, contemptuous air. Her speeches, though they were cut into short, crisp words, were full of music of a sharp, metallic quality different from the tone of her other speech, but quite as beautifully expressive.

"May I smoke?" asked Morena. He was still smiling his charming smile and watching her out of the corners of his eyes.

"I'm not hinderin' you any," said she.

Morena smiled deeper. He took some time making and lighting his cigarette.

"You don't smoke, yourself?" he asked.

"No."

"Nor dance?"

"No."

"Nor behave prettily to polite young men?"

Again the woman looked at him. "You ain't so awful young, are you?"

He laughed aloud.

"I amuse you, don't I? Well, I'm not always so all-fired funny,"

drawled the creature, lowering her head a little.

"No. I've heard that you're not. You rather run things here, I gather; got the boys 'plumb-scared'?"

"Did Mr. Yarnall tell you that?"

"Yes. I've just in the last few minutes remembered who you are. You're Jane. You cook for the 'outfit,' and Yarnall was telling us the other night how he sent one of the boys out for a cook, the last one, a man, having been beaten up, and how the boy had brought you back behind him on his saddle. He said you'd kept order for him ever since, were better than a foreman. Who was the man you threw out to-night?"

"Perhaps," drawled Jane, "he was just a feller who asked too many questions?"

Again Morena's smile deepened into his cheeks. He gave way, in the Jewish fas.h.i.+on so deceptively suggestive of meekness and timidity, when it is, at its worst, merely pliable insolence, at its best, pliable determination. "You must pardon me, Miss Jane," he said in his murmuring, cultivated voice. "You see I've had a great misfortune.

I've never been in your West. I've lived in New York where good manners haven't time or s.p.a.ce to flourish. I hadn't the least intention of being impertinent. Do you want me to go?"

He moved as if to leave her, and she did not lift a finger to detain him.

"I'm not carin'. Do as you please," she said with entire indifference.

"Oh," said Morena, looking back at her, "I don't stay where people are 'not carin'.'"

She gave him an extraordinarily intelligent look. "I should say that's the only place you'd be wantin' to stay in at all--where you're not exactly urged to come," she said.

Morena flushed and his lids flickered. He was for an instant absurdly inclined to anger and made two or three steps away. But he came back.

He bowed and spoke as he would have spoken to a great lady, suavely, deferentially.

"Good-night. I wish I could think that you have enjoyed our talk as greatly as I have, Miss Jane. I should very much like to be allowed to repeat it. May I be stupidly personal and tell you that you are very beautiful?" He bowed, gave her an upward look and went out, finding his way cleverly among the dancers.

Outside, in the moonlit court, he stood, threw back his head and laughed, not loudly but consumedly. He was remembering her white face of mute astonishment. She looked almost as if his compliment had given her sharp pain.

Morena went laughing to his room in the opposite wing. He wanted to describe the interview to his wife.

CHAPTER II

MORENA'S WIFE

Betty Morena was sitting in a rustic chair before an open fire, smoking a cigarette. She was a short woman, so slenderly, even narrowly built, as to appear overgrown, and she was a mature woman so immaturely shaped and featured as to appear hardly more than a child. Her curly, russet hair was parted at the side, her wide, long-lashed eyes were set far apart, her nose was really a finely modeled snub,--more, a boy's nose even to a light sprinkling of freckles,--and her mouth was provokingly the soft, red mouth of a sorrowful child. She lounged far down in her chair, her slight legs, clad in riding-breeches of perfect cut, stretched out straight, her limber arms along the arms of the chair, her chin sunk on her flat chest, and her big, clear eyes staring into the fire. It was an odd figure of a wife for Jasper Morena, a Jew of thirty-eight, producer and manager of plays.