The Ramrodders Part 4

Kyle balked. His face showed it.

Presson had never seen his old friend in such a fury. He menaced the girl with his fists as though about to forget that she was a woman. But she did not retreat. The picture was that of the kitten and the mastiff.

Her sparkling eyes followed him. The scarlet of an anger as ready as his own leaped to the soft curves of her cheeks.

"You've got my orders, Kyle. I stand behind them."

Without taking her eyes off Thornton, the girl reached behind her and jerked a revolver from its holster.

"You shoot my dogs, Kyle, and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to a milder form of femininity, it was impudence. Yet her beauty made its appeal to him. The old man lunged toward her, but the politician seized his arm.

"Thelismer," he protested, "you are going too far. I don't know the girl, or what the main trouble is, but you're acting like a ten-year-old."

Thelismer Thornton knew it, and the knowledge added to his helpless rage. He pulled himself out of Presson's grasp.

He began to revile the girl in language that made Presson set his little eyes open and purse his round mouth.

"d.a.m.n it, you don't understand," roared the Duke, whirling on his friend. Presson had faced him at last with protest that stung. "I know it's no kind of talk to use to any one. I'm no ruffian. I'm ashamed to have to use it. But the other kind don't work--not with her. Land-pirate Kavanagh is welcome to the ten thousand acres of timber-land that he stole from me; but when his red-head daughter proposes to steal my grandson, and laugh at me to my face while she's doing it, she'll take what I have to give her if she wants to stay and listen. Look at her, Presson! Look at her! Is that the kind of a girl for any young chap? A rattlebrained imp with a horse between her knees from daylight to dark, riding the country wild, insulting old age, and laughing at me and putting the devil into the head of my grandson! Kyle, get your men and run her across the river into her Canuck country! She isn't even an American citizen, Luke. Do you hear me, Kyle?"

Presson saw that the girl was not looking at her enemy then. From the back of her horse she could see farther up the road than they. She had spied a horseman coming. She recognized him. She uttered a shrill call that he understood, for he forced his horse into a gallop, and came into the yard before Thornton had gathered himself to continue his tirade.

The Duke had seen his grandson almost as soon as she, and the pa.s.sion went out of his face. He looked suddenly old and tired and troubled.

There was appeal in the gaze he turned on his grandson. He stepped forward.

"Don't let her make any more trouble between us, Harlan, not till you understand how she--"

But the girl forestalled him. She had fought her battle alone until he came. She slid off her horse and ran across the yard, sobbing like a child. And now Presson saw how young she was. On her horse, defiant almost to the point of impudence, she had a manner that belied her years. But when she fled to her champion, she was revealed as only a little girl with a child's impulsiveness in speech and action. The young man slipped his foot from a stirrup and held his hand to her. She sprang to him, standing in the stirrup.

"He called me wicked names, Harlan! I was only trying to help you. I wanted you to come, for I thought you ought to know! You've come. I knew you'd come. You won't let him send you away. You'll not let him call me those names ever again!"

He gently swung her down, alighted and faced his grandfather. He had the stalwart frame of Thelismer Thornton, and with it the poise of youth, clean-limbed, bronzed, and erect. He flashed a pair of indignant brown eyes at the old man. The Duke recognized the Thornton challenge to battle in the sparkle of those eyes.

"Let's talk this over by ourselves, Harlan," he advised. "Send the girl along about her business. She has messed things between us badly enough as it is."

"Have you been talking to this poor little girl as she tells me you have talked?" demanded young Thornton, narrowing his eyes.

"That isn't the tone to use to me, boy," warned the Duke. There had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning. But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl p.r.i.c.ked him. She was still in the hook of Harlan's arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him. "Not that tone from grandson to grandfather."

"It's man to man just now, sir. You know how I feel toward this little friend of mine. If you have abused our friendship here at our home, you'll apologize, grandfather or no grandfather--and that's the first disrespectful word I ever gave you, sir. But this is a case where I have the right to speak."

The Duke stiffened and his face was gray.

"I talked to her the way Land-pirate Kavanagh's daughter ought to be talked to when she comes here mocking me. Now, Harlan, if you want this in the open instead of in private, where it ought to be, I'll give it to you straight from the shoulder. You're not going to marry that girl. She shan't steal you and spoil you. I've told you so before. I give it to you now before witnesses."

The girl ran toward him. She was furious. It was evident that shame as well as anger possessed her.

"Have I ever said I wanted to marry your grandson? Has he ever said he wanted to marry me? Is it because you have such a wicked old mind that you think we cannot always be the true friends we have been? I do not want a husband. But I have a friend, and you shall not take him away from me!"

"You have heard, sir. Do you realize how you have insulted both of us?

You shall apologize, Grandfather Thornton!"

For reply the old man walked up to him, snapped the fingers of both hands under his nose, and walked away. "Give me ten words more of that talk and I'll take you across my knee," he called over his shoulder.

"There are some men that never grow old enough to get beyond the spanking age."

Presson, interested spectator, looked for the natural outburst of youth at that point. But he stared at the young man, and decided that he truly had inherited the Thornton grit and self-restraint which the Duke seemed now to have lost all at once after all the years.

Harlan gazed after his grandfather, lips tightening. He was an embodiment of wholesome young manhood, as he stood there, struggling with the pa.s.sion that prompted him to unfilial reproaches. Then he turned to the girl. He had a wistful smile for her.

"I'm sorry, little Clare," he said, softly. She slipped her hands under the belt of his corduroy jacket and gazed up at him tearfully.

"He had no right to say that I--that I--oh, he doesn't understand friendship!" she cried.

"No, and we'll not try to explain--not now! But I have some serious matters to talk over with my grandfather. Ride home, dear; I'll see you before I go back to the woods again."

"And you _are_ going back to the woods? You are not going to let them send you away where you'll forget your best friends?"

"I never shall forget my friends. And I can't believe that you heard right, little girl. My grandfather will not put me in politics. Don't worry. I'll straighten it all out before I leave."

He lifted her to her horse and sent her away with a pat. She went unprotesting, with a trustful smile. The hounds raced wildly after her.

"Woof!" remarked the Hon. Luke Presson to himself, "there's a kitten that's been fed on plenty of raw meat!" And as he always compared all women with his daughter, reigning beauty of the State capital, he added: "I'd like to have Madeleine get a glimpse of that. She'd be glad that it's the style to bring girls up on a cream diet."

He hurried away behind Harlan, who had given him rather curt greeting, and had followed the Duke around to the front of the house. The old man was tramping the porch from end to end.

The boarding creaked under him as he strode, his gait a lurch that moved one side of his body at a time. The smoke from his cigar streamed past his ears.

It was silent at the front of the big house, and in that silence the three of them could hear the occasional shouts that greeted demagogic oratory down in the village. The comment of the lord of Canibas was the anathema that he growled to himself.

His grandson faced him twice on his turns along the porch, protest in his demeanor. But the old man brushed past.

"Grandfather, I want a word with you," Harlan ventured at last.

"You talk girl to me just now, young fellow, and you won't find it safe!"

He marched on, and the grandson resolutely waited his return.

"I'm going to talk business, sir. I want this thing understood. Is it true what I hear? Do you propose to put my name before that caucus? I want to say--"

But the old man strode away from him again.

"He says he's going to do it, and it's fool business," confided Presson.

"You've got to stop him. There's no reason in it."

"I've got _my_ reasons. If you don't know enough to see 'em, it isn't my fault," snapped the Duke, pa.s.sing them and overhearing.

"Then I've got this to say." The young man stopped his grandfather--as big, as determined, as pa.s.sionate--Thornton against Thornton. "I'll not go to the legislature."

The old man shouted his reply.