The Trail of Conflict Part 14

And this was the girl who had been on the Double O ranch for over three months and not a person outside it, except Doc Rand and some neighboring ranchmen, had she seen before she made the trip to the B C. He had been too busy to think of it before and--and he had intentionally kept out of her way. He had thought that he had his course set to avoid danger, but he had come mighty near going to pieces on an uncharted rock yesterday.

He tossed away his cigarette as Jerry's door opened. He took an involuntary step forward, then thrust his hands into his pockets. Lord, how impellingly beautiful she was! Her gold-color gown, all film where it wasn't glistening paillettes, was as simple as the most expensive modiste in New York could make it. Her lovely arms were bare. The ranch life had deepened the coloring of her face and throat till her shoulders looked startlingly white in contrast. Steve noted, with a surge of primitive triumph, that the only jewels she wore were a string of softly gleaming pearls and her wedding ring. Sir Peter had given her the pearls when she was married. They had been worn by his wife and before that by his mother. Steve heard Tommy give vent to a sound that was a cross between a swallow and a gasp before he struck an att.i.tude and paraphrased theatrically:

"But soft! What light through yonder doorway breaks?

It is the east and Juliet is the sun."

Jerry laughed and blew him a kiss. Her teeth rivaled in beauty the pearls below them. Ming Soy, more rice-papery than ever in the resplendent embroideries she wore in the evening, followed the girl from her room with a shimmering wrap over her arm.

"Were you casting aspersions on the brilliancy of my costume, Mr. Tommy Benson? This is the first invitation I have received to dine since I left the metropolis and I acknowledge I have splurged. Do--do you like me, Steve?" Her att.i.tude was demure but her smile was adorably mischievous. Courtlandt's eyes flamed, then smoldered.

"You'll do," with an edge of sarcasm. He hated himself as he saw her smile fade. Oh, why the d.i.c.kens couldn't they have met--Tommy swept into the breach:

"Oh boy, hear the lady, Steve. 'Will I do?' just as though she didn't know that

"'Alack there lies more peril in thine eyes Than twenty of their swords.'"

"_Gracias, senor!_ Alas, if it weren't for you, Tommy, I should go down to my grave unwept, unhonored and unsung. Now that you have fully absorbed the glory of my raiment hold my cloak for me, that's a dear.

Now this maline over my hair. I don't wish to appear before the guests from the effete East like a Meg Merriles."

"You couldn't," encouraged Benson fervently. "You'd----"

"Let's go!" cut in Courtlandt sharply, and led the way to the automobile. He sent the leaping, barking dog back with a curt command which caused Goober to regard him in drooping, tawny-eyed reproach. He took the wheel of the roadster. He kept his eyes resolutely on the road as he drove though he felt as though a magnet of the nth power was drawing his eyes to the girl who snuggled down between him and Benson.

At the door of the X Y Z ranch-house Greyson met them.

"It's mighty good of you all to come." His voice was nervous, hurried.

"Good of us! Bruce, you're a public benefactor. You're a candidate for a specially designed, specially gilded halo. Do you realize what a risk you have taken introducing me to your city friends? It is so long since I have dined in state that I am quite capable of committing some horrible social blunder."

Steve's anger flared. Why did she have to admit to Greyson that she had been bored? It was still flickering as he entered the big living-room, a room lined with books from floor to ceiling, with color only in the crimson rug and heavy hangings.

"You see I've come to help you bear your exile, Steve!" greeted a laughing voice. Jerry and Tommy, who had preceded Courtlandt, turned involuntarily. He met the girl's startled eyes. He reddened furiously before he turned to answer the golden-haired woman who had stepped from behind a screen.

"Felice! Where did you come from?" His tone was dazed and strugglingly cordial.

"Have you lost both manners and memory, Stevie? You haven't offered to shake hands; you have apparently forgotten that I wrote you that while he was at the Manor Mr. Greyson discovered that I had been at school with his sister. Paula has come out for the summer and brought me with her. I adore the ranch. Steve, we'll have some rides that will make those we used to have take on a pale anemic blue." She linked her arm within his and smiled up at him beguilingly.

"Hmp, vamp-stuff!" Courtlandt heard Tommy confide to Jerry before he disengaged his arm from Mrs. Denbigh's clasp and reminded:

"Have you seen Mrs. Courtlandt, Felice? Jerry, you remember Mrs.

Denbigh?"

"Perfectly. She is one of those persons one never forgets. Mrs. Denbigh, may I present Mr. Benson? Mr. Greyson, back up your statement, show me that Hopi saddle-blanket which you claimed yesterday had Uncle Nick's licked to a finish. That phrase is your bit of choice Americana, not mine, remember."

Steve's eyes followed Jerry as she moved away with her host. There was a slightly scornful tilt to her lips. Greyson looked as though he had been caught stealing sheep, he decided. Was there a sinister undercurrent at the X Y Z as well as a Double O? If there were he'd get to the bottom of that, too. Regardless of Benson's proximity he burst out:

"Why did you intimate that I had been corresponding with you, Felice?"

The woman's super decollete frock was no greener than her eyes, her elaborately coiffured yellow hair glittered; it hadn't the satiny sheen of Jerry's; her hands were frosty with diamonds. Even her laugh had a metallic ring as she answered:

"What a literal person you are, Stevie. Have you been bitten with the nothing-but-the-truth mania? Can't I interest you in a saddle-blanket?

It makes an excellent smoke-screen for a tete-a-tete." Her laugh tinkled maliciously as she nodded toward the corner where her host stood with Jerry Courtlandt. Steve deliberately turned his back and inquired irrelevantly:

"How was little ol' New York when you left, Felice?"

It wasn't to be wondered at that Jerry liked people, people so evidently adored her, Courtlandt thought as coffee was being served in the living-room after dinner. Paula Vance, who though no older than Felice Denbigh, already showed symptoms of middle-age curves, was officiating behind the ma.s.sive silver tray with its rare, antique appointments. Her husband, with those three unmistakable L's, liquor, lobster and leisure writ large on his portly person from his terraced chin to his shining patent leathers, Greyson and Benson were listening to Jerry as, with eyes like stars, cheeks flushed, she sat at the piano. She played a low, rippling accompaniment as, in answer to a question from her host, she gave an account of her visit to Bear Creek ranch. Felice Denbigh also had her eyes on the group. She divided her attention between it and her coffee. Her light lashes swept her cheeks as she tapped her cigarette against her thumb-nail and drawled:

"Better give young Benson his time, Steve. Isn't that ranch parlance for discharge? He's in love with Mrs. Courtlandt." The man beside her reddened angrily.

"Don't bring your tainted ideas out into this clean, glorious country, Felice. Benson is----" he broke off to watch Greyson's j.a.p, a little man with a face like the mask of tragedy who was speaking to Jerry.

"Are you sure that he said Mrs. Courtlandt?" Steve heard her ask in surprise. Then as the man reiterated his message she excused herself to the men about her and left the room. Tommy looked after her anxiously before his eyes flashed to Steve. The latter gave an imperceptible nod and with a murmured excuse to Felice followed Jerry. As he stepped to the porch he saw the golden gleam of the girl's gown at the farther end.

She was talking earnestly with a man, a man who was holding a saddled horse. The moon shone down upon the animal's wet sides; he had evidently been ridden hard. What did it mean? Had Glamorgan, by any chance, sent for his daughter? As he strode toward them he heard the girl say breathlessly:

"No! No! Don't wait! Ride as fast as you can. I'll get there some way."

"Jerry!" in his anxiety Steve sent his voice ahead of him. At the sound the man leaped to the horse's back and galloped away into the dusk of the road. The girl strained her eyes after him before she turned.

"There is something queer about that man, Steve; he is a man of mystery," she confided as though Courtlandt's materialization out of the dark was quite what she expected.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted me. Don't look so incredulous. I may be an acquired taste like olives but--some people like me." She abandoned her teasing tone and hurried on, "That man is the range-rider at Bear Creek ranch. Mrs.

Carey has been taken suddenly ill, there,--there is a baby coming, you know, Steve. He wanted me to go to her. Her husband is away. They haven't had a telephone put in and it may take hours to get the doctor and nurse from town, he may not be able to get them at all and so--and so he asked me to go and stay with her until he could get help."

"But you can't go, girl, at this time of night."

"Oh, yes, I can, Steve. I'm going. Please ask Tommy to drive me. We'll make better time going in the machine even by the roundabout wagon road.

If I rode I'd have to go home first and change my clothes. He can come back for you. Hurry!"

"Back for me! Do you think you go off this ranch to-night with anyone but me? It's rank folly for you to go----"

She caught the lapel of his coat and looked up at him with dewy eyes.

"Suppose,--suppose that it were I, Steve----"

Even in the dim light he could see the soft color steal to her hair. He turned away with a sharp:

"Get your wrap while I go for the car, and give Benson his orders. He'll have to keep a date for me."

The star-spangled night was clear and still as Courtlandt slowed down in front of the Bear Creek ranch-house. The girl beside him shivered as she looked at the lighted windows. He laid one hand on hers.

"Steady, little girl, steady. You won't be able to help if you lose your nerve."

"I know, Steve, I'll be all right as soon as I get busy. I have never seen----" She sprang from the car and ran up the path, her golden gown gleaming in the dim light. As she opened the door Courtlandt heard a sound which sent him from the car. He couldn't sit still. Lips set he paced back and forth, back and forth while a voice inside his head, which didn't seem his voice at all, kept repeating, "Suppose--just suppose it were I, Steve?"

Other thoughts crowded in upon him as he paced like a sentinel, a sentinel in dinner clothes, before the little house. The dawn crept slowly up in the east spraying the dark sky overhead with gorgeousness.

It transformed the world into the fairyland of the pantomimes of his boyhood, a world full of magic pa.s.swords and talismans. He almost expected to see a shimmering, masked Harlequin tap on the cabin door with his supple wand and a dainty Columbine pirouette out in response.

Whatever it might be outside, there was no illusion behind that closed door. It was raw reality. What wonders women were, some of them, Steve amended. He thought of the girls with whom he had dined and danced in the last two years. Many of them sensation-seeking privateers. Was it after-war reaction which made them so recklessly, flagrantly determined in their attempts to lure? They had succeeded only in repelling him but they had plenty of victims. How they crackled the glaze of their reputations. How they married and unmarried, those people whom he knew, and with what tragic consequences to their children. Felice was a product of the atmosphere in which she lived. He realized now that she would have no scruples in coming between him and the girl he had married if she could. A fragment from Kant which had been the text for a college theme teased at the tip Of his tongue. He had it! "No one of us can do that, which if done by all, will destroy society." If this divorce business kept up it would destroy society. Did luxurious social life breed inconstancy of purpose, contempt of covenants?