The Ramblin' Kid Part 45

There was a brief, questioning silence.

"What th' h.e.l.l!" he breathed.

"What the--'_h.e.l.l_--yourself!" she laughed nervously. "Is--this--is this a hold-up?"

"What are _you_ doin' here--this time of night--an' on that filly?" he asked without heeding her question.

"I'm riding that--this--filly!" Carolyn June shot back independently.

"And what are _you_ doing here--at this time of--Oh," she added, before he could answer, "I--I--believe my saddle's slipping!" and she swung lightly from the back of the outlaw mare.

"That filly'll kill you," he began.

"She will not!" Carolyn June interrupted with a pout. "I--I--guess you're not the only one, Mister 'Nighthawk,' that knows the way to the heart of a horse! If you were just as wise about--" but she stopped, her blush hidden as she turned her back to the rising moon.

"They was made for each other!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered to himself.

Then he spoke aloud: "I reckon you know," he said slowly, "why I'm ridin' at night--about me killin' Sabota--I'm leavin'--"

"But Sabota isn't dead," she interrupted again. "You don't need to go away!"

"Sabota ain't dead!" the Ramblin' Kid exclaimed. "Then I'll go back to Eagle b.u.t.te instead of--Mexico!"

"Why?" Carolyn June asked.

"To finish th' job!" and his voice was dangerously soft.

"You can't finish it," she laughed. "He isn't in Eagle b.u.t.te! The Greek has gone away and--well, it--it--was a good 'job'--good enough the way you did it! I--I--don't want you 'teetotally' to kill him--clear, all the way dead," she stammered. "The way it is you--you--won't have to--leave!"

"What's th' difference?" he said dully. "It's time I was ramblin'

anyhow!"

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"Listen, Ramblin' Kid," she broke in, "I--I--know all about everything--about what started the fight--"

"You do?" looking quickly and keenly at her. "Who told you?"

"Skinny," she answered; "he saw it. Said it was a pale pink ribbon or something with a little silver 'do-funny' on it!" she finished with a laugh.

"I--I--reckon you want it back, then?" the Ramblin' Kid said, reaching to his left breast. "You wouldn't want--"

"Did I say I wanted it?" Carolyn June questioned naively.

"And I know," she hurried on, "about you being drugged the day of the race! Why didn't you say you were sick? We--we--thought you were drunk!"

"n.o.body asked me," he answered without interest.

"Does everybody have to--to--ask you everything?" she questioned suggestively. "Don't you ever--ever--'ask' anybody anything yourself?"

"What are you tryin' to do?" he said almost brutally, "play with me like you played with them other blamed idiots th' night of th' dance?"

"You're mean--" she started to say.

"Am I?" he interrupted, and spoke with sudden intenseness. "Maybe you think I am. Maybe you think a lot of things. Maybe you think G.o.d put them brown eyes in your face just so you could coax men, with a look out of them, to love you an' then laugh because th' d.a.m.ned fools do it!"

"You're unfair!" she replied. "I was just paying the boys back the night of the dance for--for--'framing' up on Ophelia and me the way they did!"

For a moment they looked squarely into each other's eyes. Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick nosed each other over the shoulders of their dismounted riders.

"Oh, well, it don't matter," the Ramblin' Kid finally said, wearily; "it don't matter, you're what you are an' I reckon you can't help it!"

Carolyn June said nothing.

"I--I--was goin' to turn th' filly back to th' range," he continued in the same emotionless voice, "but--well, you can have her--I'll trade her to you for--for--th' thing that started th' fight. You can ride th'

maverick till you go back east--"

"I'm not going back east," she said in a hurt tone, "at least not for a long time. Dad is going to--to--get me a stepmother! He's going to marry some female person and he doesn't need me so I'm going to live--most of the time--with Uncle Josiah and Ophelia! Anyhow I--I--like it out west--or that is--I did like it--"

There was another little period of silence between them.

"Ramblin' Kid," Carolyn June spoke suddenly very softly, "Ramblin'

Kid--why--why do you hate me?"

"Me hate you?" he answered slowly. "I don't hate _you_--I hate myself!"

"Yourself?" with a questioning lift of her voice.

"Yes, myself!" he replied with a short, bitter laugh. "Why shouldn't I--bein' an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!'"

Carolyn June flinched as he repeated the cruel words she herself had spoken, it seemed, now so long ago.

"You are right!" she said, after a pause, while a ripple of quivering, mischievous laughter leaped from her lips and she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Ramblin' Kid, you are indeed an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!' You are 'ign'rant,'" she continued while he looked at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes, "of the ways of a woman's heart; you are 'savage'--in the defense of a woman's honor; you are 'stupid'--not to see that it is the _man_ a woman wants and not the thin social veneer; you are a 'brute'--an utter brute, Ramblin' Kid-- to--to--make a girl almost tell you--tell you--that she--she--"

The sentence was not finished.

The Ramblin' Kid caught her by both shoulders. He pushed her back--arm's length--and held her while the clean moonlight poured down on her upturned face and his black eyes searched her own as though to read her very soul.

An instant she was almost frightened by the agony that was in his face.

Then she opened her mouth and laughed--such a laugh as comes only from the throat of a woman when love is having its way!

"By G.o.d!" he whispered, his voice hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion, his hot breath fanning the brown hair on her forehead; "this has gone far enough! I'll tell you what you want me to say--I'll say it! And it's the truth--I love you--love you--_love you_! Yes!" And he shook her toward him. "Do you hear me? I love you--love you--so much it hurts! Now laugh! Now make fun of me! I know I'm a fool. I know where I stand! I know I don't belong in your crowd--I ain't fit to mix with 'em! I ain't been raised like you was raised. You don't need to tell me that! I know it already!

I know there's somethin' a man has to have besides what he gets on th'

open range among th' cattle--an' th' bronchos--an' th'

rattlesnakes--he's got to be ground in th' mill of schoolin'--of books; he's got to be hammered into shape under th' heels of 'civilization'; he's got to be trained to jump through and roll over an' know which fork to eat with before a girl like you--"

His hands relaxed, but before his fingers loosened their grip on her shoulders Carolyn June's own soft palms reached up and caught the man's sun-tanned cheeks between them. Her eyes burned back into its own. Once more the laugh rippled from the full pulsing throat.