The Range Dwellers Part 13

She turned her eyes calmly toward me, and--their power had not weakened, at all events. I felt as if I had taken hold of a battery with all the current turned on.

"Why, I suppose I like it here in summer. You're here, yourself; don't you like it?"

I wanted to say something smart, there, and I have thought of a dozen bright remarks since; but at the time I couldn't think of a blessed thing that came within a mile of being either witty or epigrammatic. Love-making was all new to me, and I saw right then that I wasn't going to shine.

I finally did remark that I should like it better if her father would be less belligerent and more peaceful as a neighbor.

"You told me, last summer, that you enjoyed keeping up the feud," she reminded, smiling whimsically down at me.

She made a wrong play there; she let me see that she did remember some things that I said. It boosted my courage a notch.

"But that was last summer," I countered. "One can change one's view-point a lot in twelve months. Anyway, you knew all along that I didn't mean a word of it."

"Indeed!" It was evident that she didn't quite like having me take that tone.

"Yes, 'indeed'!" I repeated, feeling a rebellion against circ.u.mstances and at convention growing stronger within me. Why couldn't I put her on my horse and carry her off and keep her always? I wondered crazily. That was what I wanted to do.

"Do you ever mean what you say, I wonder?" she mused, biting her pencil-point like a schoolgirl when she can't remember how many times three goes into twenty-seven.

"Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more." I set my teeth, closed my eyes--mentally--and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. "For instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether you want to or not, because I shall _make_ you, I mean every word of it--and a lot more."

That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn't dare breathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pa.s.s, all golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight together that they ached afterward.

The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraid to look. "Do you? How very odd!" Her voice sounded queer, as if it had been squeezed dry of every sort of emotion. "And--Edith?"

I looked at her then, fast enough. "Edith?" I stared at her stupidly.

"What the--what's Edith got to do with it?"

"Possibly nothing"--in the same squeezed tone. "Men are so--er--irresponsible; and you say you don't always mean--Still, when a man writes pages and _pages_ to a girl every week for nearly a year, one naturally supposes--"

"Oh, look here!" I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough with her. "Edith doesn't care a rap about me, and you know it. And she knows I don't care, and--and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr.

Terence Weaver."

"_My_ Mr. Terence Weaver?" She was looking down at me sidewise, in a perfectly maddening way. "You are really very--er--funny, Mr. Carleton."

"Well," I rapped out between my teeth, "I don't _feel_ funny. I feel--"

"No? But, really, you know, you act that way."

I saw she was getting all the best of it--and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.

"That depends on the view-point," I grinned. "Would you think it funny if I carried you off--really, you know--and--er--married you and made you live happy--"

"You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all--"

"Necessary?" I hinted.

"Plausible," she supplied sweetly.

"But would you think it funny, if I did?"

She regarded her broken pencil ruefully--or pretended to--and pinched her brows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood--But, there, no Barney for me.

"I--might," she decided at last. "It _would_ be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you'd manage it; I'm not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn't be easy to--er--carry me off. Would you wear a mask--a black velvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say: 'Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!' Would you?" She leaned toward me, and her eyes--well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish.

I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I was master.

"No," I told her grimly. "If I saw that you were going to do anything so foolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and--kiss you till you were glad to be sensible about it."

Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to look insulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking a good bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept her hand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and it felt--oh, thunder!

"Let's play something else," she said, after a long minute. "I--I never did admire highwaymen particularly, and I must go home."

"No, you mustn't," I contradicted. "You must--"

She looked at me with those wonderful, heavy-lashed eyes, and her lips had a little quiver as if--Oh, I don't know, but I let go her hand, and I felt like a great, hulking brute that had been teasing a child till it cried.

"All right," I sighed, "I'll let you go this time. But I warn you, little girl. If--no, _when_ I find you out from King's Highway by yourself again, that kidnaping is sure going to come off. The Lord intended you to be Mrs.

Ellis Carleton. And forty feuds and forty fathers can't prevent it.

I don't believe in going against the decrees of Providence; a _wise_ Providence."

She bit her lip at the corner. "You must have a little private Providence of your own," she retorted, with something like her old a.s.surance. "I'm sure mine never hinted at such a--a fate for me. And one feud is as good as forty, Mr. Carleton. If you are anything like your father, I can easily understand how the feud began. The Kings and the Carletons are fond of their own way."

"Thy way shall be my way," I promised rashly, just because it sounded smart.

"Thank you. Then there will be no melodramatic abductions in the shadow of White Divide," she laughed triumphantly, "and I shall escape a most horrible fate!" She went, still laughing, down to where her horse was waiting.

I followed--rather, I kept pace with her. "All the same, I dare you to ride out alone from King's Highway again," I defied. "For, if you do, and I find you--"

"Good-by, Mr. Carleton. You'd be splendid in vaudeville," she mocked from her saddle, where she had got with all the ease of a cowboy, without any help from me. "Black velvet mask and gadzooks, madam--I must certainly tell Edith. It will amuse her, I'm sure."

"No, you won't tell Edith," I flung after her, but I don't know if she heard.

She rode away down the steep slope, the roan leaning back stiffly against the incline, and I stood watching her like a fool. I didn't think it would be good policy to follow her. I tried to roll a cigarette--in case she might look back to see how I was taking her last shot. But she didn't, and I threw the thing away half-made. It was a case where smoke wouldn't help me.

If I hadn't made my chance any better, I knew I couldn't very well make it worse; but there was mighty little comfort in that reflection. And what a bluff I had put up! Carry her off and marry her? Lord knows I wanted to, badly enough! But--

CHAPTER XIV.

Frosty Disappears.

On the way back to the ranch I overtook Frosty mooning along at a walk, with his shoulders humped in the way a man has when he's thinking pretty hard. I had left Frosty with the round-up, and I was pretty much surprised to see him here. I didn't feel in the mood for conversation, even with him; but, to be decent, I spurred up alongside and said h.e.l.lo, and where had he come from? There was nothing in that for a man to get uppish about, but he turned and actually glared at me.

"I might be an inquisitive son-of-a-gun and ask you the same thing," he growled.

"Yes, you might," I agreed. "But, if you did, I'd be apt to tell you to depart immediately for a place called Gehenna--which is polite for h.e.l.l."