A Texas Ranger Part 20

"It don't seem only four days since you did that, honey," he murmured.

"Did I do that?" Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.

"Don't, sweet. I deserved what I got and more. I'm ready with that apology you didn't want then, Peggy."

"But I don't want it now, either. I won't have it. Didn't I tell you I wouldn't? Besides," she added, with a little leap of laughter in her voice, "why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant to--to----"

He finished it for her.

"To marry, Peggy. I didn't know it then, but I knew it before you said good-by with your whip."

"And I didn't know it till next morning," she said.

"Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?"

"That was why I was so mean to you. I had to punish myself and you because I--liked you so well."

She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.

It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance of their common happiness. His joy pealed now delightedly.

"I can't believe it--that four days ago you wasn't on the earth for me.

Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sa.s.sy ways."

"That's just the way I feel about you. It's really scandalous that in less than a week--just a little more than half a week--we should be engaged. We are engaged, aren't we?"

"Very much."

"Well, then--it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right.

Isn't it?"

"It ce'tainly is."

"But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers.

I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me."

"Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy."

"And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already."

She paused, startled at the impossible thought.

"It must have happened before I can remember, then," he laughed.

"Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern people do, they say."

"Then I'm an exception."

"And me--you don't know anything about me."

"A fellow has to take some risk or quit living," he told her gaily.

"When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?"

"The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating," he conceded. "I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting."

"Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk it."

And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss awaiting her.

CHAPTER XII -- EXIT DUNKE

Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of pa.s.sion. Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed.

"Got onto you, didn't she?"

Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat.

"I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still," he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the face.

Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp.

"What--what did you do--that for?" His furtive ratlike face looked venomous in its impotent anger. "I'll pay you for this--and don't you--forget it, Joe Dunke!"

"You'd shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance."

"I ain't looking for no such chance. I--"

"That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively."

Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated.

He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level, pa.s.sed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.

"I'll arrange to get you out of here to-night and have you run across the line. I'm going to give you three hundred dollars. That's the last cent you'll ever get out of me. If you ever come back to this country I'll see that you're hanged as you deserve."

With that Dunke turned on his heel and was gone. But his contempt for the ruffian he had cowed was too fearless. He would have thought so if he could have known of the shadow that dogged his heels through the tunnel, if he could have seen the bare fangs that had gained Struve his name of "Wolf," if he could have caught the flash of the knife that trembled in the eager hand. He did not know that, as he shot up in the cage to the sunlight, the other was filling the tunnel with imprecations and wild threats, that he was hugging himself with the promise of a revenge that should be sure and final.

Dunke went about the task of making the necessary arrangements personally. He had his surrey packed with food, and about eleven o'clock drove up to the mine and was lowered to the ninth level. An hour later he stepped out of the cage with a prisoner whom he kept covered with a revolver.

"It's that fellow Struve," he explained to the astonished engineer in the shaft-house. "I found him down below. It seems that Fraser took him down the Jackrabbit and he broke loose and worked through to our ground."

"Do you want any help in taking him downtown, sir? Shall I phone for the marshal?"

His boss laughed scornfully.

"When I can't handle one man after I've got him covered I'll let you know, Johnson."