Kitabı oku: «Nan of Music Mountain», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXI
A TRY OUT
Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.
De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home–justly apprehensive of his intentions–made frantic efforts to get word to de Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph–a publicity that she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach him at Medicine Bend.
As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke’s efforts to get track of de Spain. Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his inquiries–and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its anticipation was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated, without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.
Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day–wild for a scrap of news, yet dreading one–she saddled her pony and rode alone into Sleepy Cat after nightfall to meet the train on which de Spain had told her he would return from the east. She rode straight to the hospital, instead of going to the livery-barn, and leaving her horse, got supper and walked by way of unfrequented streets down-town to the station to wait for the train.
Never had she felt so miserable, so helpless, so forsaken, so alone. With the thought of her nearest relative, the man who had been a father to her and provided a home for her as long as she could remember, seeking to kill him whose devotion had given her all the happiness she had ever known, and whose safety meant her only pledge of happiness for the future–her heart sank.
When the big train drew slowly, almost noiselessly, in, Nan took her place where no incoming passenger could escape her gaze and waited for de Spain. Scanning eagerly the figures of the men that walked up the long platform and approached the station exit, the fear that she should not see him battled with the hope that he would still appear. But when all the arrivals had been accounted for, he had not come.
She turned, heavy-hearted, to walk back uptown, trying to think of whom she might seek some information concerning de Spain’s whereabouts, when her eye fell on a man standing not ten feet away at the door of the baggage-room. He was alone and seemed to be watching the changing of the engines, but Nan thought she knew him by sight. The rather long, straight, black hair under the broad-brimmed Stetson hat marked the man known and hated in the Gap as “the Indian.” Here, she said to herself, was a chance. De Spain, she recalled, spoke of no one oftener than this man. He seemed wholly disengaged.
Repressing her nervous timidity, Nan walked over to him. “Aren’t you Mr. Scott?” she asked abruptly.
Scott, turning to her, touched his hat as if quite unaware until that moment of her existence. “Did Mr. de Spain get off this train?” she asked, as Scott acknowledged his identity.
“I didn’t see him. I guess he didn’t come to-night.” Nan noticed the impassive manner of his speaking and the low, even tones. “I was kind of looking for him myself.”
“Is there another train to-night he could come on?”
“I don’t think he will be back now before to-morrow night.”
Nan, much disappointed, looked up the line and down. “I rode in this afternoon from Music Mountain especially to see him.” Scott, without commenting, smiled with understanding and encouragement, and Nan was so filled with anxiety that she welcomed a chance to talk to somebody. “I’ve often heard him speak of you,” she ventured, searching the dark eyes, and watching the open, kindly smile characteristic of the man. Scott put his right hand out at his side. “I’ve ridden with that boy since he was so high.”
“I know he thinks everything of you.”
“I think a lot of him.”
“You don’t know me?” she said tentatively.
His answer concealed all that was necessary. “Not to speak to, no.”
“I am Nan Morgan.”
“I know your name pretty well,” he explained; nothing seemed to disturb his smile.
“And I came in–because I was worried over something and wanted to see Mr. de Spain.”
“He is buying horses north of Medicine Bend. The rain-storm yesterday likely kept him back some. I don’t think you need worry much over anything though.”
“I don’t mean I am worrying about Mr. de Spain at Medicine Bend,” disclaimed Nan with a trace of embarrassment.
“I know what you mean,” smiled Bob Scott. She regarded him questioningly. He returned her gaze reassuringly as if he was confident of his ground. “Did your pony come along all right after you left the foot-hills this afternoon?”
Nan opened her eyes. “How did you know I came through the foot-hills?”
“I was over that way to-day.” Something in the continuous smile enlightened her more than the word. “I noticed your pony went lame. You stopped to look at his foot.”
“You were behind me,” exclaimed Nan.
“I didn’t see you,” he countered prudently.
She seemed to fathom something from the expression of his face. “You couldn’t have known I was coming in,” she said quickly.
“No.” He paused. Her eyes seemed to invite a further confidence. “But after you started it would be a pity if any harm came to you on the road.”
“You knew Uncle Duke was in town?” Scott nodded. “Do you know why I came?”
“I made a guess at it. I don’t think you need worry over anything.”
“Has Uncle Duke been talking?”
“Your Uncle Duke doesn’t talk much, you know. But he had to ask questions.”
“Did you follow me down from the hospital to-night?”
“I was coming from my house after supper. I only kept close enough to you to be handy.”
“Oh, I understand. And you are very kind. I don’t know what to do now.”
“Go back to the hospital for the night. I will send Henry de Spain up there just as soon as he comes to town.”
“Suppose Uncle Duke sees him first.”
“I’ll see that he doesn’t see him first.”
“Where is Uncle Duke to-night, do you know?”
“Lefever says he is up-street somewhere.”
“That means Tenison’s,” said Nan. “You need not be afraid to speak plainly, as I must. Uncle Duke is very angry–I am deathly afraid of their meeting.”
Even de Spain himself, when he came back the next night, seemed hardly able to reassure her. Nan, who had stayed at the hospital, awaited him there, whither Scott had directed him, with her burden of anxiety still upon her. When she had told all her story, de Spain laughed at her fears. “I’ll bring that man around, Nan, don’t worry. Don’t believe we shall ever fight. I may not be able to bring him around to-morrow, or next week, but I’ll do it. It takes two to quarrel, you know.”
“But you don’t know how unreasoning Uncle Duke is when he is angry,” said Nan mournfully. “He won’t listen to anybody. He always would listen to me until now. Now, he says, I have gone back on him, and he doesn’t care what happens. Think, Henry, where it would put me if either of you should kill the other. Henry, I’ve been thinking it all over for three days now. I see what must come. It will break both our hearts, I know, but they will be broken anyway. There is no way out, Henry–none.”
“Nan, what do you mean?”
“You must give me up.”
They were sitting in the hospital garden, he at her side on the bench that he called their bench. It was here he had made his unrebuked avowal–here, he had afterward told her, that he began to live. “Give you up,” he echoed with gentleness. “How could I do that? You’re like the morning for me, Nan. Without you there’s no day; you’re the kiss of the mountain wind and the light of the stars to me. Without the thought of you I’d sicken and faint in the saddle, I’d lose my way in the hills; without you there would be no to-morrow. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, if I think of you strength wells into my heart like a spring. I never could give you up.”
He told her all would be well because it must be well; that she must trust him; that he would bring her safe through every danger and every storm, if she would only stick to him. And Nan, sobbing her fears one by one out on his breast, put her arms around his neck and whispered that for life or death, she would stick.
It was not hard for de Spain next morning to find Duke Morgan. He was anxious on Nan’s account to meet him early. The difficulty was to meet him without the mob of hangers-on whose appetite had been whetted with the prospect of a death, and perhaps more than one, in the meeting of men whose supremacy with the gun had never been successfully disputed. It required all the diplomacy of Lefever to “pull off” a conference between the two which should not from the start be hopeless, because of a crowd of Duke’s partisans whose presence would egg him on, in spite of everything, to a combat. But toward eleven o’clock in the morning, de Spain having been concealed like a circus performer every minute earlier, Duke Morgan was found, alone, in a barber’s hands in the Mountain House. At the moment Duke left the revolving-chair and walked to the cigar stand to pay his check, de Spain entered the shop through the rear door opening from the hotel office.
Passing with an easy step the row of barbers lined up in waiting beside their chairs, de Spain walked straight down the open aisle, behind Morgan’s back. While Duke bent over the case to select a cigar, de Spain, passing, placed himself at the mountain-man’s side and between him and the street sunshine. It was taking an advantage, de Spain was well aware, but under the circumstances he thought himself entitled to a good light on Duke’s eye.
De Spain wore an ordinary sack street suit, with no sign of a weapon about him; but none of those who considered themselves favored spectators of a long-awaited encounter felt any doubt as to his ability to put his hand on one at incomparably short notice. There was, however, no trace of hostility or suspicion in de Spain’s greeting.
“Hello, Duke Morgan,” he said frankly. Morgan looked around. His face hardened when he saw de Spain, and he involuntarily took a short step backward. De Spain, with his left hand lying carelessly on the cigar case, faced him. “I heard you wanted to see me,” continued de Spain. “I want to see you. How’s your back since you went home?”
Morgan eyed him with a mixture of suspicion and animosity. He took what was to him the most significant part of de Spain’s greeting first and threw his response into words as short as words could be chopped: “What do you want to see me about?”
“Nothing unpleasant, I hope,” returned de Spain. “Let’s sit down a minute.”
“Say what you got to say.”
“Well, don’t take my head off, Duke. I was sorry to hear you were hurt. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it easier for you to get to and from town while you are getting strong. Jeffries and I both feel there’s been a lot of unnecessary hard feeling between the Morgans and the company, and we want to ask you to accept this to show some of it’s ended.” De Spain put his left hand into his side pocket and held out an unsealed envelope to Morgan. Duke, taking the envelope, eyed it distrustfully. “What’s this?” he demanded, opening it and drawing out a card.
“Something for easier riding. An annual pass for you and one over the stage line between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat–with Mr. Jeffries’s compliments.”
Like a flash, Morgan tore the card pass in two and threw it angrily to the floor. “Tell ‘Mr.’ Jeffries,” he exclaimed violently, “to–”
The man that chanced at that moment to be lying in the nearest chair slid quietly but imperiously out from under the razor and started with the barbers for the rear door, wiping the lather from one unshaven side of his face with a neck towel as he took his hasty way. At the back of the shop a fat man, sitting in a chair on the high, shoe-shining platform, while a negro boy polished him, rose at Morgan’s imprecation and tried to step over the bootblack’s head to the floor below. The boy, trying to get out of the way, jumped back, and the fat man fell, or pretended to fall, over him–for it might be seen that the man, despite his size, had lighted like a cat on his feet and was instantly half-way up to the front of the shop, exclaiming profanely but collectedly at the lad’s awkwardness, before de Spain had had time to reply to the insult.
The noise and confusion of the incident were considerable. Morgan was too old a fighter to look behind him at a critical moment. No man could say he had meant to draw when he stamped the card underfoot, but de Spain read it in his eye and knew that Lefever’s sudden diversion at the rear had made him hesitate; the crisis passed like a flash. “Sorry you feel that way, Duke,” returned de Spain, undisturbed. “It is a courtesy we were glad to extend. And I want to speak to you about Nan, too.”
Morgan’s face was livid. “What about her?”
“She has given me permission to ask your consent to our marriage,” said de Spain, “sometime in the reasonable future.”
It was difficult for Duke to speak at all, he was so infuriated. “You can get my consent in just one way,” he managed to say, “that’s by getting me.”
“Then I’m afraid I’ll never get it, for I’ll never ‘get’ you, Duke.”
A torrent of oaths fell from Morgan’s cracked lips. He tried to tell de Spain in his fury that he knew all about his underhanded work, he called him more than one hard name, made no secret of his deadly enmity, and challenged him to end their differences then and there.
De Spain did not move. His left hand again lay on the cigar case. “Duke,” he said, when his antagonist had exhausted his vituperation, “I wouldn’t fight you, anyway. You’re crazy angry at me for no reason on earth. If you’ll give me just one good reason for feeling the way you do toward me, and the way you’ve always acted toward me since I came up to this country, I’ll fight you.”
“Pull your gun,” cried Morgan with an imprecation.
“I won’t do it. You call me a coward. Ask these boys here in the shop whether they agree with you on that. You might as well call me an isosceles triangle. You’re just crazy sore at me when I want to be friends with you. Instead of pulling my gun, Duke, I’ll lay it out on the case, here, to show you that all I ask of you is to talk reason.” De Spain, reaching with his left hand under the lapel of his coat, took a Colt’s revolver from its breast harness and laid it, the muzzle toward himself, on the plate-glass top of the cigar stand. It reduced him to the necessity of a spring into Morgan for the smallest chance for his life if Morgan should draw; but de Spain was a desperate gambler in such matters even at twenty-eight, and he laid his wagers on what he could read in another’s eye.
“There’s more reasons than one why I shouldn’t fight you,” he said evenly. “Duke, you’re old enough to be my father–do you realize that? What’s the good of our shooting each other up?” he asked, ignoring Morgan’s furious interruptions. “Who’s to look after Nan when you go–as you must, before very many years? Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you want to leave her to that pack of wolves in the Gap? You know, just as well as I do, the Gap is no place for a high-bred, fine-grained girl like Nan Morgan. But the Gap is your home, and you’ve done right to keep her under your roof and under your eye. Do you think I’d like to pull a trigger on a man that’s been a father to Nan? Damnation, Duke, could you expect me to do it, willingly? Nan is a queen. The best in the world isn’t good enough for her–I’m not good enough, I know that. She’s dear to you, she is dear to me. If you really want to see me try to use a gun, send me a man that will insult or abuse her. If you want to use your own gun, use it on me if I ever insult or abuse her–is that fair?”
“Damn your fine words,” exclaimed Morgan slowly and implacably. “They don’t pull any wool over my eyes. I know you, de Spain–I know your breed–”
“What’s that?”
Morgan checked himself at that tone. “You can’t sneak into my affairs any deeper,” he cried. “Keep away from my blood! I know how to take care of my own. I’ll do it. So help me God, if you ever take any one of my kin away from me–it’ll be over my dead body!” He ended with a bitter oath and a final taunt: “Is that fair?”
“No,” retorted de Spain good-naturedly, “it’s not fair. And some day, Duke, you’ll be the first to say so. You won’t shake hands with me now, I know, so I’ll go. But the day will come when you will.”
He covered his revolver with his left hand, and replaced it under his coat. The fat man who had been leaning patiently against a barber’s chair ten feet from the disputants, stepped forward again lightly as a cat. “Henry,” he exclaimed, in a low but urgent tone, his hand extended, “just a minute. There’s a long-distance telephone call on the wire for you.” He pointed to the office door. “Take the first booth, Henry. Hello, Duke,” he added, greeting Morgan with an extended hand, as de Spain walked back. “How are you making it, old man?”
Duke Morgan grunted.
“Sorry to interrupt your talk,” continued Lefever. “But the barns at Calabasas are burning–telephone wires from there cut, too–they had to pick up the Thief River trunk line to get a message through. Makes it bad, doesn’t it?” Lefever pulled a wry face. “Duke, there’s somebody yet around Calabasas that needs hanging, isn’t there? Yes.”
CHAPTER XXII
GALE PERSISTS
When within an hour de Spain joined Nan, tense with suspense and anxiety, at the hospital, she tried hard to read his news in his face.
“Have you seen him?” she asked eagerly. De Spain nodded. “What does he say?”
“Nothing very reasonable.”
Her face fell. “I knew he wouldn’t. Tell me all about it, Henry–everything.”
She listened keenly to each word. De Spain gave her a pretty accurate recital of the interview, and Nan’s apprehension grew with her hearing of it.
“I knew it,” she repeated with conviction. “I know him better than you know him. What shall we do?”
De Spain took both her hands. He held them against his breast and stood looking into her eyes. When he regarded her in such a way her doubts and fears seemed mean and trivial. He spoke only one word, but there was a world of confidence in his tone: “Stick.”
She arched her brows as she returned his gaze, and with a little troubled laugh drew closer. “Stick, Nan,” he repeated. “It will come out all right.”
She paused a moment. “How can you know?”
“I know because it’s got to. I talked it all over with my best friend in Medicine Bend, the other day.”
“Who, Henry?”
“Whispering Smith. He laughed at your uncle’s opposing us. He said if your uncle only knew it, it’s the best thing that could happen for him. And he said if all the marriages opposed by old folks had been stopped, there wouldn’t be young folks enough left to milk the cows.”
“Henry, what is this report about the Calabasas barns burning?”
“The old Number One barn is gone and some of the old stages. We didn’t lose any horses, and the other barns are all right. Some of our Calabasas or Gap friends, probably. No matter, we’ll get them all rounded up after a while, Nan. Then, some fine day, we’re going to get married.”
De Spain rode that night to Calabasas to look into the story of the fire.
McAlpin, swathed in bandages, made no bones about accusing the common enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn’t get out of the country.
But instead of getting out of the country, de Spain continued as a matter of energetic policy to get into it. He rode the deserts stripped, so to say, for action and walked the streets of Sleepy Cat welcoming every chance to meet men from Music Mountain or the Sinks. It was on Nan that the real hardships of the situation fell, and Nan who had to bear them alone and almost unaided.
Duke came home a day or two later without a word for Nan concerning his encounter with de Spain. He was shorter in the grain than ever, crustier to every one than she had ever known him–and toward Nan herself fiercely resentful. Sassoon was in his company a great deal, and Nan knew of old that Sassoon was a bad symptom. Gale, too, came often, and the three were much together. In some way, Nan felt that she herself was in part the subject of their talks, but no information concerning them could she ever get.
One morning she sat on the porch sewing when Gale rode up. He asked for her uncle. Bonita told him Duke had gone to Calabasas. Gale announced he was bound for Calabasas himself, and dismounted near Nan, professedly to cinch his saddle. He fussed with the straps for a minute, trying to engage Nan in the interval, without success, in conversation. “Look here, Nan,” he said at length, studiously amiable, “don’t you think you’re pretty hard on me, lately?”
“No, I don’t,” she answered. “If Uncle Duke didn’t make me, I’d never look at you, or speak to you–or live in the same mountains with you.”
“I don’t think when a fellow cares for you as much as I do, and gets out of patience once in a while, just because he loves a girl the way a red-blooded man can’t help loving her, she ought to hold it against him forever. Think she ought to, Nan?” he demanded after a pause. She was sewing and had kept silence.
“I think,” she responded, showing her aversion in every syllable, “before a man begins to talk red-blood rot, he ought to find out whether the girl cares for him, or just loathes the sight of him.”
He regarded her fixedly. Paying no attention to him, but bending in the sunshine over her sewing, her hand flying with the needle, her masses of brown hair sweeping back around her pink ears and curling in stray ringlets that the wind danced with while she worked, she inflamed her brawny cousin’s ardor afresh. “You used to care for me, Nan. You can’t deny that.” Her silence was irritating. “Can you?” he demanded. “Come, put up your work and talk it out. I didn’t use to have to coax you for a word and a smile. What’s come over you?”
“Nothing has come over me, Gale. I did use to like you–when I first came back from school. You seemed so big and fine then, and were so nice to me. I did like you.”
“Why didn’t you keep on liking me?”
Nan made no answer. Her cousin persisted. “You used to talk about thinking the world of me,” she said at last; “then I saw you one Frontier Day, riding around Sleepy Cat with a carriage full of women.”
Gale burst into a huge laugh. Nan’s face flushed. She bent over her work. “Oh, that’s what’s the matter with you, is it?” he demanded jocularly. “You never mentioned that before.”
“That isn’t the only thing,” she continued after a pause.
“Why, that was just some Frontier Day fun, Nan. A man’s got to be a little bit of a sport once in a while, hasn’t he?”
“Not if he likes me.” She spoke with an ominous distinctness, but under her breath. He caught her words and laughed again. “Pshaw, I didn’t think you’d get jealous over a little thing like that, Nan. When there’s a celebration on in town, everybody’s friendly with everybody else. If you lay a little thing like that up against me, where would the rest of the men get off? Your strawberry-faced Medicine Bend friend is celebrating in town most of the time.”
Her face turned white. “What a falsehood!” she exclaimed hotly. Looking at her, satisfied, he laughed whole-heartedly again. She rose, furious. “It’s a falsehood,” she repeated, “and I know it.”
“I suppose,” retorted Gale, regarding her jocosely, “you asked him about it.”
He had never seen her so angry. She stamped her foot. “How dare you say such a thing! One of those women was at the hospital–she is there yet, and she is going to die there. She told Uncle Duke’s nurse the men they knew, and whom they didn’t know, at that place. And Henry de Spain, when he heard this miserable creature had been taken to the hospital, and Doctor Torpy said she could never get well, told the Sister to take care of her and send the bills to him, because he knew her father and mother in Medicine Bend and went to school with her there when she was a decent girl. Go and hear what she has to say about Henry de Spain, you contemptible falsifier.”
Gale laughed sardonically. “That’s right. I like to see a girl stick to her friends. De Spain ought to take care of her. Good story.”
“And she has other good stories, too, you ought to hear,” continued Nan undismayed. “Most of them about you and your fine friends in town. She told the nurse it’s you who ought to be paying her bills till she dies.”
Gale made a disclaiming face and a deprecating gesture. “No, no, Nan–let de Spain take care of his own. Be a sport yourself, girlie, right now.” He stepped nearer her. Nan retreated. “Kiss and make up,” he exclaimed with a laugh. But she knew he was angry, and knew what to guard against. Still laughing, he sprang toward her and tried to catch her arm.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried, jumping away with her hand in her blouse.
“You little vixen,” he exclaimed with an oath, “what have you got there?” But he halted at her gesture, and Nan, panting, stood her ground.
“Keep away!” she cried.
“Where did you get that knife?” thundered Gale.
“From one who showed me how to use it on a coward!”
He affected amusement and tried to pass the incident off as a joke. But his dissimulation was more dangerous, she knew, than his brutality, and he left her the prey to more than one alarm and the renewed resolve never to be taken off her guard. That night he came back. He told her uncle, glancing admiringly at Nan as he recounted the story, how she had stood her ground against him in the morning.
Nor did Nan like the way her uncle acted while he listened–and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get killed to stop it, and that if she had any sense she would get ready to marry her cousin peaceably, adding, that if she didn’t have sense, he would see himself it was provided for her.
His threats left Nan aghast. For two days she thought them all over. Then she dressed to go to town. On her way to the barn her uncle intercepted her. “Where you going?”
“To Sleepy Cat,” returned Nan, regarding him collectedly.
“No, you’re not,” he announced bluntly.
Nan looked at him in silence. “I don’t want you running to town any more to meet de Spain,” added Duke, without any attempt to soften his injunction.
“But I’ve got to go to town once in a while, whether I meet Henry de Spain or not, Uncle Duke.”
“What do you have to go for?”
“Why, for mail, supplies–everything.”
“Pardaloe can attend to all that.”
Nan shook her head. “Whether he can or not, I’m not going to be cut off from going to Sleepy Cat, Uncle Duke–nor from seeing Henry de Spain.”
“Meaning to say you won’t obey, eh?”
“When I’m going to marry a man it isn’t right to forbid me seeing him.”
“You’re not going to marry him; you’re going to marry Gale, and the quicker you make up your mind to it the better.”
“You might better tell me I am going to marry Bull Page–I would marry him first. I will never marry Gale Morgan in the living world, and I’ve told you so more than once.”
He regarded his niece a moment wrathfully and, without replying, walked back to the house. Nan, upset but resolute, went on to the barn and asked Pardaloe to saddle her pony. Pardaloe shuffled around in an obliging way, but at the end of some evasion admitted he had orders not to do it. Nan flamed at the information. She disliked Pardaloe anyway, not for any reason she could assign beyond the fact that he had once been a chum of Gale’s. But she was too high-spirited to dispute with him, and returned to the house pink with indignation. Going straight to her uncle, she protested against such tyranny. Duke was insensible alike to her pleas and her threats.
But next morning Nan was up at three o’clock. She made her way into the barn before a soul was stirring, and at daybreak was well on her way to Sleepy Cat. She telephoned to de Spain’s office from the hospital and went to breakfast. De Spain joined her before she had finished, and when they left the dining-room she explained why she had disappointed him the day before. He heard the story with misgivings.
“I’ll tell you how it looks to me, Nan,” he said when she had done. “You are like a person that’s being bound tighter every day by invisible cords. You don’t see them because you are fearless. You are too fearless, Nan,” he added, with apprehension reflected in the expression of his face. “I’ll tell you what I wish you’d do, and I say it knowing you won’t do it,” he concluded.
She made light of his fears, twisting his right hand till it was helpless in her two hands and laughing at him. “How do you know I won’t do it?”
“Because I’ve asked you before. This is it: marry me, now, here, to-day, and don’t take any more chances out there.”
“But, Henry,” protested Nan, “I can’t marry you now and just run away from poor Uncle Duke. If you will just be patient, I’ll bring him around to our side.”
“Never, Nan.”
“Don’t be so sure. I know him better than you do, and when he comes for anybody, he comes all at once. Why, it’s funny, Henry. Now that I’m picking up courage, you’re losing it!”
