Kitabı oku: «Over the Border: A Novel», sayfa 7
XI: GORDON’S DÉBUT
Starting “be guess an’ be God,” the train left Juarez at five the next morning. To avoid, as before, the jam in the one passenger-coach, Bull had climbed with his recruit on top of a box-car. Thus, when awakened by the jerk and rattle as the train plunged down and out of the first “shoo-fly” around a burned bridge; Gordon saw his first dawn break over the desert with a clear, fresh vision, intimacy of detail that could never be obtained through a Pullman window.
It was altogether different from the slow sunrises of his Eastern experience. A puff of hot, dry wind shook the velvet curtains of night, tossed and split them into shreds of black and crimson, suddenly revealing a wall of burnished brass behind. As yet the desert slept in purple shadow. But this paled to faint violet, then gray. As the sun rolled up out of crimson mists, the land appeared in all of its nakedness of hummocky sand a-bristle with cactus beard. There was also revealed the first of the burned trains and twisted rails which, with grave crosses and dead horses, were to run all day with the train, startling evidence of the cyclonic passion that had devastated the land.
“Destruction’s the one kind of work a Mexican really enjoys,” Bull answered Gordon’s question. “You orter see them at it. They run the loop of a big steel chain under the rails, hitch it to a hundred-ton engine, then go shooting down the track, ripping it up at twenty miles an hour, spikes flying like sparks from a blacksmith’s hammer. After cutting down the telegraph-poles, they hitch to the wires an’ yank a mile of it away at a time. As wreckers, they can’t be beat, for in four years they’ve completely destroyed mills, factories, smelters, railroads, property that took Porfirio Diaz and a thousand millions of foreign capital forty years to build.”
“Are they still at it?”
The sudden illumination of the young man’s face so palpably expressed hope that Bull had to grin. “Yes, farther south, where Valles is fighting the Federals. But this is his base line and he looks after it pretty close. Still” – his nod went beyond the distant mountains – “it’s pretty much all bandit out there. Now an’ then they attack the trains. There’s allus a fifty-fifty chance for a scrap.”
“That isn’t so bad.”
Bull grinned again as the young fellow turned with renewed interest to the scenery.
In comparison with the eons of time which have elapsed since man first took to walking uprightly, his written history is as a lightning flash in the night; civilization itself but a film over passions and instincts violent and deep. Now that every bunch of cactus offered a possible ambush, Gordon experienced a new sensation. Over the desert, vague as its shimmering heat, invisible but real, settled that atmosphere of fear in which primitive man, in common with all animals, lived and moved and had his being.
The wrecks occurred almost invariably near cuttings through shallow sand-hills. From the cactus chaparral that clothed their tops, the revolutionary lightnings had struck sometimes twice or thrice; and when the train ran into one, Gordon would feel a prickling at the roots of his hair.
It was not fear. Some centuries ago his hair would have bristled like the ruff of an angry dog. Through disuse it had lost the knack. But the feeling was the same, the expectancy, repressed excitement of an animal expecting attack. The veneer of home and college influences had peeled away, leaving him the young male of the tribe, eager to prove himself by deeds; the commonplace exit of the train on the other side left him always slightly disappointed. Not till it finally ran out of the hummocky sand into the far-reaching levels of the great Mexicanhaciendas did he lose hope and return to the contemplation of the scenery as such.
“I’m glad we’re up here.” From the engine, puffing away at the head of a dozen intervening coal-cars, he looked back at the passenger-coach far to their rear. “I wouldn’t exchange this for a Pullman.”
“Well, don’t imagine that you’re traveling second-class,” Bull grinned. “I had to slip the conductor five pesos extra. But it’s worth it. You’d suffocate down in that car; not to mention the chance of some peonspitting in your face. By the way, if that ever happens to you, take it an’ grin. Sure!” He answered the young fellow’s look of disgust. “That is, unless you want to feel a knife in your belly. If you’re German or English, or b’long to any other nationality that looks after its people, you might resent it an’ get away. But, thanks to our Government’s policy, it’s open season for Americans all the year round. They bag a few, too, every so long.”
“Would you stand for that?”
Bull shrugged. “Kain’t say, till I’ve been tried. But it’s good advice, nevertheless. Seeing, though, that you don’t like it, you’d better be toting a gun. Take one of mine till we get home.
“Here, here!” he hastily struck down the barrel as Gordon drew a bead on a telegraph-pole. “Valles shot eight of his own soldiers jest t’other day for plugging insulators. Besides, it’s waste. Every bullet is worth a life – mebbe your own.”
“Maybe his own!” Again Gordon felt the prickling hair – in fact, as they rattled and jerked along there was scarcely a mile of the road that failed to produce it. Here it was a station, sacked, and burned, with a few miserable peonas, ragged and half-starved, begging for centavos. There a huddle of bones, residue of a hanged wire-thief, at the foot of a telegraph-pole. A broken rifle-butt, rusted cartridge-clip, empty brass shell, told with eloquent tongues stories of which Bull supplied the details.
Somewhere between these two stations a Mexican general, a prisoner of war, had been thrust down between two cars and ground under the wheels! That great adobe house with black windows staring like empty eye sockets from the fire-scarred walls had been the home of a Spanishhacendado whose three lovely daughters had been carried off by raiders. Death and torture, ravishments, farms laid waste, lives maimed and ruined, the full tale of fire and sword belonged in the landscape.
Yet to youth, egotistic masculine youth, even horrors may be romantic. Awed pleasure inhered in the thought that he, so lately from Princeton, the spoiled son of a wealthy father, was a possible subject for bandit tortures!
He found it all so fascinating that the day passed like an hour. Before he was aware of it the sun’s great red orb sank behind a huge black mountain. The desert faded once more to gray, violet, purple. For a while the oil smoke from the laboring locomotive laid miles of soft dark pennon against a crimson sky. Then this also faded and left them rattling along through heated dusk. Sprawled at length on the running-board, the young fellow gazed up at the fiery desert stars, in a luxury of content. He was lost to the world when the train stopped at the station at midnight.
“We’d better go right on,” Bull said. “We’d get no sleep here for the fleas, an’ desert travel is easiest at night. By morning we’ll be into the grass country an’ kin take a nap while the animals graze.”
With an additional horse hired from the Mexican station agent they moved off at once and had passed into the range country before day broke over its long grassy rolls. Breakfast, a nap, then three hours’ more travel brought them to the shallow valley where the Three first saw Lee and Carleton charging the Colorados. Indeed, Bull was telling of it when, just as on that other day, she came galloping over the opposite rise in chase of a runaway mare with a colt at its side. Riata swinging in rhythm with her beast’s stride, she shot down the slope, made her cast, took a turn around the saddle-horn and brought the captive up skilfully as any vaquero.
“Pretty neat!” Gordon exclaimed. “That boy can ride!”
“You bet you!” Eyes sparkling with pride, Bull slyly added, “Sliver himself, that was born with a rope in his han’, don’t throw a better loop than Miss Lee.”
“What?” As, sighting them just then, Lee swung her hat, emitting a clear cowman’s yell, her knotted hair fell down on her shoulders, Gordon exclaimed, “Why, it – it is a girl! In this country do they usually wear – ”
“No more ’n they do in the Eastern States,” Bull dryly filled in the hiatus. “On one thing the Maine Methodist jines hands with the Mexican Catholic – they both cover their weemen from chin to toe-p’ints. Ever sence the revolution, Miss Lee’s been doing vaquero’s work, an’ what kind of a job d’you reckon she’d make of it going ’round in skirts? If you don’t mind, I’ll ride on an’ help her with that critter.”
The light that had flashed over the girl’s face at the sight of Bull spread into an illumination that included white teeth, mouth, and sparkling eyes when he rode up. She thrust out her hand with an impulsive feeling.
“Oh, I’m so glad you have come home! I missed you dreadfully.”
“Home!” And she was happy because he, “Bull” Perrin, the notorious rustler, had returned home! Earth held no terror that could have sent that tremble through his huge frame. It was with difficulty that he controlled his voice.
“Anything wrong? Sliver or Jake been misbehaving?”
“Indeed, no!” She laughed, merrily. “They’re like two old hens ’tending an orphan chick. But – well, you know a girl, even as independent as I, must have some one to lean on, and I was uneasy while you were gone.”
A dew of moisture quenched the brown fire in the giant’s eyes. His sudden seriousness issued from a vivid memory of his late debauch. Whereas for twenty years past they had been matters of course to be forgotten with the passing of the morning head, he now felt convicted of sin. The shadow marked a resolution.
He spoke very gently. “I hope that you’ll allus feel that way.” Then, with mock sternness that covered deep emotion, he went on: “But what are you doing out here on your lonely? Some one will get a wigging for this.”
She laughed saucily up in his face. “Then it is due to me. I gave them the slip. Who is – ” She nodded toward Gordon, who had almost caught up.
Bull briefly sketched his history. “Young chap I found dead broke in El Paso. He’s the right sort.” Perhaps because he divined the probable effect on her feminine psychology, he added: “He’s from the East – college man – wealthy family – turned out because he refused to marry a fortune. I tol’ him you’d likely hire him.”
“I would in ordinary times.” She looked at Gordon, who had now reined in. “But I cannot pay regular wages just now.”
“He’s willing to wait, like us,” Bull began. “He’s – ”
“ – out for experience,” Gordon put in. “To tell the truth, Miss Carleton, I am absolutely green. I doubt whether you’ll find me worth my board.”
He had doffed his hat and the attitude of respect accentuated the quiet reserve of his tone and manner. After a thoughtful pause, during which she took him in from top to toe in a quick, feminine survey, she broke out with a comical little laugh. “If it wasn’t so nice, it would be ridiculous. While the gringos on other haciendas are simply streaking for the border, you men insist on working here for nothing. Whatever is the matter with you?”
She may have read the answer in Gordon’s eyes and resented the indignity it offered her independence. Or the feeling underneath her sudden stiffening may have rooted deeper. Be a young man ever so comely, a girl ever so pretty, there will flash between them on first meeting the subtle challenge of sex; instinctive defiance based through love’s history to the far time when every girl ran like a deer from a possible lover and only gave in after he had proved his manhood by carrying her off. It passed in a flash, for, noticing her stiffen, Gordon reduced his gaze to respectful attention.
Subtle as it was, Bull had still noticed the by-play. “Looks like she’d taken a down on him.”
But even as the doubt formed in his mind it was removed by her laughing comment: “I suppose I’ll have to stand for it. But you must be starving. Let us get on to the house.”
As they rode along, moreover, Bull noted certain swift, stealthy glances with which she took complete census of Gordon’s clean profile, strong jaw, deep chest, flat flanks; signs of a secret and healthy curiosity.
“She’s a-setting up an’ taking notice.” He winked, as it were, at himself. “I reckon, Bull, you kin leave the rest to natur’.”
XII: THE RECRUIT IS TRIED OUT – IN SEVERAL WAYS
“Well, what do you-all think of him?”
Bull’s question emerged from the thick tobacco reek which invariably mitigated the severity of their evening deliberations.
It pertained, of course, to the new recruit, concerning whose merits or demerits Jake and Sliver had reserved judgment during this, his first week. When they had come from supper straight to the bunk-house, Gordon had taken his pipe and gone for a stroll around the compound, which was never more interesting than when clothed in the mystery of a hot brown dusk. The lights and fires, like golden or scarlet blossoms; the soft brown faces glimpsed in cavernous interiors by the rich glow of abrasero; the women’s subdued chatter; laughter wild and musical as the cooing of wood-pigeons – all had for him perpetual fascination; and while he sauntered here and there, looking, listening, the Three held session on his case.
“What do we think of him?” Jake slowly repeated the question. “It’s a bit soon to jedge, but if he’s half as good as he looks, he orter do.”
Sliver, however, was more critical. “Too darned nice-looking fer me. I hain’t got much use for these pretty boys.”
“Pretty yourself!” Bull swelled like a huge toad with indignation. “He ain’t no pretty boy! You-all orter ha’ seen him clan up that hotel lobby in El Paso.”
“A ho-tel clerk, an’ some bell-hops!” Sliver sneered. “Why, a good cowman ’u’d jest about as soon think of hitting a lady. ’Fore I allow him even a look-in with Lady-girl, he’s gotter show me. If you-all ain’t afraid he’ll spoil, jest send him an’ me out together to-morrow.”
“All right, señor, he’s your meat.” Bull’s grin, provoked by a sudden memory of the thwack with which the hotel clerk had hit the lobby floor, was veiled by tobacco reek that reigned beyond the lamp’s golden glimmer. “Only, don’t chew him. Kain’t afford to have his scenery damaged.”
“Nary a chew,” Sliver agreed. “Twon’t be necessary. I’ll take him in two swallows.”
In this wise was Gordon apprenticed to Sliver for the period of one day, to learn, in course thereof, such lessons in cow and other kinds of punching as it might bring forth. When they two rode out, armed cap-a-pie as it were, with rifles, saddle machetes, and a brace of Colt automatics, in addition to the usual cowman’s fixings, it is doubtful whether North America held a happier young man than he. Out of the thousand and one lovers who had awakened to the knowledge that this was their wedding-day, some might have been equally happy. But none more so, for Gordon was also espoused – to Adventure, the sweetest bride of real men. It may be safely stated that no bride ever surveyed her trousseau with more satisfaction than Gordon displayed in his “chaps,” spurs, guns, and riata.
This enthusiasm, however, he cloaked with a becoming nonchalance. He wasn’t in any hurry to tell all he knew. His few questions were to the point, and between them he maintained a decent reserve. Also he adapted himself quickly to new requirements. Sliver observed with satisfaction that, after one telling, his pupil abandoned the Eastern, high-trotting, park fashion in riding and settled down to a cowman’s lope. In fact, so quiet and biddable was he, Sliver began to feel secret qualms at the course he had marked out for himself; had to steel his resolution with thoughts of Lee.
“’Twon’t do to have no pretty boys pussy-footing around her,” he told himself. “He’s gotter show me, an’ if he don’t – out he goes.”
Opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a momentary relapse, on Gordon’s part, into the old habit of riding. Sliver seized it with brutal roughness.
“Hey! that milk-shake business may go with missies in pants that ride the parks back East, but if you-all expect to work this range you’ll have to try an’ look like a man.”
Gordon stared. It wasn’t so much the words as the accent that established the insult. Just as Bull had seen in El Paso, his hazel eyes were suddenly transmuted into hard blue steel flecked with hot brown specks. Sliver felt sure he was going to strike; experienced sudden disappointment when he rode on.
“Santa Maria Marrissima Me!” He swore to himself in sudden alarm. “Is he a-going to swallow it?” But the next moment brought relief. Gordon was rising in his stirrups with the regularity of a machine.
With the quick instinct of sturdy manhood, Sliver sensed the motive, the wise hesitancy of a new-comer in starting trouble. “Calculated it would get him in wrong with Lady-girl. He’s putting it up to me!”
Even more loath, now, to push than he had been to begin the quarrel, there was nothing left but to go on. So, riding alongside Gordon, he began to deliver himself of a forcible opinion concerning his mode of riding. “Why, you blankety, blank, blank of a blank – ”
The rest of it was cut off by a crack between the eyes that toppled him out of the saddle. He was up again, hard eyes flashing, as Gordon leaped down, and as he rushed, broad round body swaying above his short hairy chaps, Sliver looked for all the world like a charging bear.
A clever writer once described a terrific combat between two sailors in two words, “Poor McNab!” Sliver was almost as terse in describing his defeat to Bull and Jake that evening.
“Gentlemen, hush! He leaned over as I took my holt, grabbed me round the waist from behind, straightened, an’ away I flew over his shoulder an’ kem down spread-eagled all over the grass, plumb knocked out.”
Returning to the combat: When Sliver gathered his shocked wits together and sat up, Gordon stood looking down upon him, hands on his hips, quiet, determined, yet with an inquisitive twinkle in his eye.
Sliver answered the twinkle. “Say, that was sure a lallapaloo. I’ve wrestled with bears an’ once choked a cougar till he was gol-darned anxious to quit. But I draw the line at earthquakes. If you-all ’ll please to tell how you done it, I’ll shake han’s an’ call it squar’.”
“Done!” Gordon broke out in a merry laugh. “And I’ll promise, on my part, never to ride like that again.”
“For which I’ll be greatly obliged; that hippity-haw, side-racking gait does sure get on my nerves.”
Striking hands upon it, they mounted and rode on.
They were heading for a mountain valley, enormous green bowl hemmed in on all sides, that could only be reached by a single rough trail. Watered by a running stream and knee-deep in lush grass, the difficulty of approach and sequestration rendered it almost raider-proof. But as it afforded pasture for barely a third of Lee’s stock, it was their habit to send the animals out in relays to remain under charge of an ancianofor a week at a time.
As they rode along, Sliver’s secret satisfaction revealed itself in many a stealthy glance. At first they expressed that feeling alone, but presently there entered into them a leaven of doubt. Their way now led along the foot of the hog’s back from the crest of which Sliver had obtained his first view of the fonda on the other side, the discovery of which caused his first lapse from grace. The slight doubt was explained by the thought that accompanied his glance upward at the ridge.
“He’s a fine upstan’ing lad an’ kin take his own part. But that ain’t all. Supposing he drinks? We-all jest kedn’t stan’ for any young soak around Lady-girl.”
In view of his own shortcomings, his grave shake of the head was rather comical. Nevertheless, it was quite sincere; likewise his emendation: “’Course we wouldn’t have him no canting prig. He orter be able to take his two fingers like a gentleman, then leave it alone.”
Reining in suddenly, he asked, “D’you ever take a drink?”
Gordon looked surprised. “Why, yes, on occasion. But you don’t mean to say – ”
“Come on!” Sliver’s manner was quite that of the “mysterious stranger” of melodrama who demands absolute faith in those he is about to befriend. It is feared, however, that both it and his thought, “It’s a fine chance to try him out,” cloaked certain strong spirituous desires.
Quarter of an hour’s heavy scrambling up and down rutted cattle tracks brought them out in the fonda dooryard. From above Gordon had noted its golden walls nestling beside the stream in a bower of foliage. His eyes now went, first to the two ancianos, a wrinkled old man and woman, who dozed in the shade of the ramada; then to the girl who knelt by the stream pounding her soiled linen on its smooth boulders. Though he knew Spain only through pictures, the tinkling bells of a mule-train going up the cañon added the last touch, vividly raised in his mind the country inns of the Aragonian mountains. But for her darker colors the girl with her shapely poundage might easily have been one of their lusty daughters. She had risen at the sight of Sliver. With unerring instinct she now walked inside, let down the wooden bar window, and set out a bottle of tequila.
Through all, her big dusky eyes never left Gordon. With what would have been brazenness in a white girl she studied him. But her gaze was wide and curious as the stare of a deer, and caused him no offense. When their eyes met, she smiled, but, unskilled in the ways of her kind, he missed both its invitation and question till Sliver put it in words.
“She wants to know who you are an’ all about you,” he translated her rapid Spanish, in which her small hands, satin arms and shoulders played as large a part as her tongue. “She says her father an’ mother are about ready to cash in. If you’ll stay here an’ be her man, you’ll stan’ right in line for the fonda.”
It was sprung so suddenly, Gordon gasped. “Cash in? – the fonda? Say! You’re fooling?”
Sliver raised his right hand. “Take my oath!”
“Then she’s fooling.”
“Nary!” Sliver grinned. “She’s serious as a New England housewife in chase of a bedbug.”
Now Gordon’s merry laugh rang out. “Is this leap year, or does this sort of thing go all the time down here? Her proposal calls for a priest, I suppose, and a marriage license?”
“Nary.” Sliver grinned again. “Ladies of her class get along very nicely without them artificial aids to marriage. All she wants is for you to settle down here with her to housekeeping.”
“Why – but – ” He still half believed that Sliver was joking; but, looking at the girl, he saw for himself the smoldering flame in her dusky eyes. This time his laugh was a little confused. “Please tell her that I’m dreadfully sorry, that I appreciate the high compliment, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t expect to stay long in this country I would give her nice offer my most distinguished consideration.”
Any further doubts that he might have entertained would have been effectually dispersed by her dark disappointment when Sliver translated. A touch of pity mingled with his amusement; moved him to add, “I hope that you put it nicely.”
“Sure,” Sliver breezily answered. “I told her that you said for her to go to hell.”
“Oh, well” – Gordon recovered his breath again – “at least that puts the whole business beyond further doubt.”
“Don’t you believe it.” Sliver gave a third and last grin. “She says that you-all kin always find her here if you happen to change your mind.”
“Now that’s very nice.” Really pleased under his amusement, Gordon brought the little comedy to a graceful end. Unsnapping the leather watch-fob that bore his initials worked in gold, he laid it in the girl’s hand. “A fellow doesn’t get a proposal of marriage every day. Tell her for a little remembrance.”
“And now for another drink.”
But as Sliver reached for the bottle Gordon seized his arm, and any doubts as to his sobriety were removed then and there from the cowman’s mind. “You’ve had two already, and I’m not going to stand by and see you burn your stomach out. Come on, gol darn you! or I’ll hand you one.”
His smiling good humor removed the offense. Nevertheless, the curious brown specks were floating again in the blue of his eye.
Sliver knew the threat was real. “Just this one?”
“Well, if you’ll down it quick and come on.”
With feelings that had hovered between gratification at Gordon’s sobriety and regret for his own, Sliver drank, bade the girl “Adios,” and mounted again. Standing in the doorway, her glance followed them, enwrapping Gordon’s upright figure with its dark caress. Just as they crossed the stream at the foot of the path, her face lit with sudden remembrance. Turning at her call they saw her coming at a breathless run.
“Kain’t bear the parting,” Sliver interpreted the action.
But his grin faded as he listened to her voluble talk. “She says that four strange Mexicans stayed here last night. They didn’t belong to this country, an’ they questioned her closely about the different haciendas. They were ’specially curious about our horses. Us being gringos an’ her Mex, they naturally concluded she’d be ag’in us, and they would have been right but for the fancy she’s taken to you. So they opened right up; asked all about the mountain pastures an’ whether we kep’ a close guard. She says they was heading for there. While I go after ’em, you ride like the mill tails o’ hell an’ bring out Bull an’ Jake.”
That crude but strong expression accurately described Gordon’s progress homeward. While his beast scrambled like a cat up one side of the ravine, slid like a four-footed avalanche down the other, and streaked like a shooting star up and down the long earth rolls, he learned more of horsemanship than during all his previous years. Lee, who saw him coming from the upper gallery above the patio, nodded her approval. Such haste, of course, had but one interpretation – raiders; and by the time Gordon dashed into the compound she was already mounted and a fresh beast waiting for him.
“They are up in the Cañon del Norte,” she answered his inquiry for Bull and Jake. “Come on!”
“You are surely not thinking of – ”
Before he could finish, however, she shot under the gate arch; was off at a speed that kept him galloping his hardest to keep her in sight. Not until she slowed down on the rough trail that led into the cañon, within sight of Bull and Jake, who had just roped a foal for branding, did he catch her. But it was just as well, for that which he would have said came with more authority from the lips of Bull.
“All right, Missy. There’s on’y four, so you don’t need to be skeered. You kin go right back home with Gordon an’ leave us to take keer of them.”
“Indeed I won’t!” she exclaimed, hotly. “I’m going, too! I am! I am!” She cut off his remonstrance. “I am! I am! I am!”
It was the first time their wills had clashed. Bull glanced at Jake, who shook his head – not that he required support or intended to waste time in fruitless argument. “You mean that?” His glance, grave with stern disapproval, came back to Lee.
It hurt her. But though her lips quivered, she answered, doggedly: “I do! I won’t go back.”
“Very well. We’ve no time to waste. Ride on while I cut this foal loose.” But as she obeyed, with one flick of the wrist he roped her above the elbows from behind. Then, in spite of angry protests that ended in tears, he cinched her little feet from stirrup to stirrup.
“Now take her home.” Handing the lead rope to Gordon, he leaped into the saddle and galloped after Jake.
Till they disappeared, Lee looked after, wavering between anger and tears. Tears won. Bowing her fair head, she wept unreservedly for fully a minute. Realizing then that she was gaining nothing but swollen eyes and a red nose, she stopped crying and turned to Gordon with a little laugh.
“Isn’t this ridiculous? Please untie me.”
But now she found herself gazing into the sullen face of a young man who, through her, had been cut out of a real fight. He shook his head.
“You won’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You’d go after them.”
They looked at each other. Her eyes were now gleaming brightly above two red spots; but he met their gaze with stubborn obstinacy.
“You mean to say that you are going to take me home tied up like a veal calf?”
He nodded.
Biting her lips, she looked at him again. “Do you realize, sir, that you never set eyes on me till a week ago?”
“Sure!”
“Also that you are my hired man?”
He nodded again.
“Very well, you’re fired! Now untie this rope, then get off my land!”
But even this was turned against her. “I don’t have to. I’m no longer your servant. I’ll get off your land, yes – after I’ve delivered you at your home.”
If looks could kill, to use that hackneyed but still expressive term, he would have died there and then. But they don’t, and, masking his own disappointment with a hypocritically cheerful whistle, he turned his beast and rode down the cañon, towing her behind.
It was dreadfully humiliating, and, being a girl, she cried some more – this time for sheer anger. But soon her tears dried and she fell into deep musing. Soon a small smile restored its softness to her mouth. Her voice, seductively pleasant, mingled with the tramp of hoofs. “Won’t you please untie me? The rope is hurting my arms.”
He stopped, pulled her horse up alongside, and as he began to fumble with the ropes she turned her head so that he could not see her smile. It was transmuted into a flash of fury when, finding the rope a little loose, he drew it tighter.
“I thought you were a gentleman!” she shot it viciously at his back as he rode on. “Gentlemen don’t tie up ladies!”
“Ladies don’t fire men for obeying orders. You needn’t think I’m enjoying this. Just because you shoved in where you were not wanted, I have to go back.”
She did not like that, either. What girl would? Once more she bit her lip, yet, for all her anger, a touch of respect mingled with her resentment. Concerned principally with his own disappointment, he rode on without looking back and so missed the little persistent wriggles by which she gradually freed one hand. Soon she was able, by leaning forward, to reach and draw her saddle machete. Indeed, she worked with such caution that he got his first warning when, with one slash, she cut the rope between them. By the time he had swung his beast around she was going like the wind back up the cañon.
