The Last Straw Part 17

"And only a girl!" exclaimed Jane under her breath. "d.i.c.k, did you see it all?"

"A typical Western girl, I should say," he replied. "Your.... Your neighbor and a.s.sociate? Your companion, Jane?" he asked. "The sort you want to cast your lot with?"

"And a moment ago you thought her magnificent!" she taunted as she stepped down and offered him her hand.

"I'll meet you in, say, two hours, ma'am," Beck said.

"Very well; right here," she replied, and he left her as she turned to meet Hilton's unpleasant smile.

They began the return trip shortly after noon. Hilton had been with Jane when Tom returned and he stood beside the buckboard talking some minutes after Beck had picked up the reins and was ready to commence the drive. Occasionally d.i.c.k's eyes wandered from Jane to the other man's face but Tom sat, knees crossed, idly toying with the whip, as indifferent to what was being said as if the others were out of sight and hearing. Hilton made an obvious effort to exclude the Westerner but Beck's disregard of him was as genuine as it was evident. He sat patiently, with an easy sense of superiority and the contrast was not lost on Jane Hunter.

The town was far behind and below them, a mere cl.u.s.ter of miniature buildings, before either spoke. Then it was Jane.

"That girl.... There was something splendid about her, wasn't there?"

"There was," he agreed. "She sure expressed her opinion of men in general!"

"A newcomer, evidently."

Beck nodded. "Came in soon after you did, with her father, it looked like."

"And she wins the respect of strange men by blows!" she said.

"He deserved all he got, didn't he?" Beck asked, smiling. "I like to see a bad _hombre_ like that get set down by a woman. There's something humiliating about it that counts a lot more than the whippin'

she gave him."

"But wouldn't it have spoken more for the chivalry of the country if some man had done it for her?"

"That's likely. But there ain't much chivalry here, ma'am."

"And am I so fortunate as to have enjoyed the protection of what little there is?"

He looked at her blankly.

"I had to come clear to Ute Crossing to learn how one man defended me from the insult of another."

He stirred uneasily on the seat.

"That was nothin'," he growled. "I'd been waiting for a chance to land on Webb for a long time."

He did not look at her and his manner had none of its usual bluntness; clearly he was evasive and, more, uncomfortable.

"First, I want to thank you," Jane said after she had looked at him a moment. "You don't know how a woman such as I am can feel about a thing like that. I think it was the finest thing a man has ever done for me ... and many men have been trying to do fine things for me for a long time."

She was deeply touched and her voice was not just steady but when Beck did not answer, just looked straight ahead with his tell-tale flush deepening, a delight crept into her eyes and the corners of her pretty mouth quirked.

"Besides, it was a great deal to expect of a man who has made up his mind not to like me!"

They had topped the divide and the sorrels had been fighting the bits.

As she spoke Tom gave them their heads and the team swept the buckboard forward with a banging and clatter that would have drowned words anyhow, but the fact that he did not reply gave Jane a feeling of jubilation. Her thrust had p.r.i.c.ked his reserve, showing it to be not wholly genuine!

d.i.c.k Hilton had told her of the encounter Beck had had with Webb, told it jeeringly as he attempted to impress her with the distasteful phases of her environment. He had failed in that. He had impressed her only with the fact that Tom Beck had gone out of his way, had taken a chance, to protect her standing. Others of her men had heard her insulted, men from other ranches had been there, but of them all Beck had been her champion.

And it was Beck who had bullied her, had doubted her in the face of her best efforts to convince him of fitness! He had even challenged her to make herself his friend!

She had believed before she came into those hills that she knew men of all sorts but now she had found something new. Here was a man who, in her presence, would plot to humiliate her and yet when she could not see or hear his loyalty and his belief in her were outstanding.

And what was it, she asked herself, that made her pulse leap and her throat tighten? It was not wholly grat.i.tude. It was not merely because he resisted her efforts to win his open regard. Those things were potent influences, surely, but there was something more fundamental about him, a basic quality which she had not before encountered in men; she could not a.n.a.lyze it but daily she had sensed its growing strength.

Now she felt it ... felt, but could not identify.

Two-Bits opened the gate for them and Tom carried her bundles into the house.

At the corral, as Beck unharnessed, the homely cow puncher said:

"Gosh, Tommy, how'd it seem, ridin' all the way to town an' back with her settin' up beside you?"

"Just about like you was there, Two-Bits, only we didn't swear quite so much."

"I got lots of respect for you, Tommy, but I think you're a d.a.m.ned liar."

And Beck chuckled to himself as though, perhaps, the other had been right.

"Two weeks now since he wrote," Two-Bits sighed. "He sh.o.r.e ought to be comin'. Gosh, Tom, but he's a bright man!"

Again that night Jane Hunter looked from a window after the lights in the bunk house had gone out and the place was quiet, to see a tall, silent figure move slowly beneath the cottonwoods, watching the house, pausing at times as if listening. Then it went back through the shadows more rapidly, as though satisfied that all was well.

Many times she had watched this but tonight it seemed of greater significance than ever before. He denied her his friendship; he had made Webb his sworn enemy by defending her (she had not told him that part of the tale she heard in Ute Crossing) and yet disclaimed any great interest in her as a motive. Still, he patrolled her dooryard at night!

A sudden impulse to do something that would _make_ him give her that consideration in her presence which he gave before others came to life. His att.i.tude suddenly angered her beyond reason and she felt her body shaking as tears sprang into her eyes. The great thing which she desired was just there, just out of reach and the fact exasperated her, grew, became a fever until, on her knees at the window, hammering the sill with her fists, she cried:

"Tom Beck you're going to love me!"

CHAPTER VIII

AND NOW, THE CLERGY

Two-bits was the last into the bunkhouse the following evening. He had ridden his n.i.g.g.e.r horse in from the westward hills and had not come through the big gate so not until he stepped across the threshold were the others aware of his presence.

"Here he is!" said a rider from down the creek who was stopping for the night and the group in the center of the low room broke apart.

"Two-Bits, here's your brother," said Curtis.