The Heart of Thunder Mountain. Edfrid A. Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ Gaylord.”

      “I knew that.”

      “But you have never seen me before!”

      “No. But that’s one of Huntington’s horses, and Miss Gaylord is a guest at his house. You see, I am more courteous than you after all. I answer your questions.”

      “Perhaps I’ll answer yours when I know what right you have to ask them.”

      A light began to dawn upon him.

      “Do you mean–you don’t know where you are?”

      “No.”

      He gave her a long, searching look before he spoke again.

      “My name is Philip Haig,” he said, leaning forward with a curious smile.

      The result was all that he could have wished for. Until that moment she had remained seated, firm in her determination not to be disturbed by him. But now she rose slowly to her feet, her face reddening, her lips parted, a frightened look in her eyes. The shoe was on the other foot, with a vengeance.

      He saw all this, and without compunction, seized his advantage. With a grim smile he threw the reins over the pony’s head, swung himself out of the saddle, and stepped toward her. As he came on he removed his dilapidated hat with a gesture that made her forget it was dilapidated,–a mocking, insolent gesture though it was. In spite of her embarrassment she let none of his features escape her quickening interest. She saw that he was tall, erect, alert; handsome in some strange and half-repellent way, with his pale dark face, rather long in contour, and with his black, curly hair matted on the broad forehead. But she almost recoiled when, on his drawing nearer, she saw for the first time–it had been hidden by the shadow of his slouched hat–an ugly scar that ran from the outer corner of his left eye down to the jawbone below the ear. It gave to one side of his face a singularly sinister expression that vanished when he turned and disclosed a profile that was not without nobility and charm.

      Then suddenly her mystification was complete. Their eyes met, not as before, but very near, so close had he come to her, still smiling. And instantly, instinctively, she lowered hers; for she felt as if she had been caught peering through a window at something she had no right to see. Yet the next instant she was looking again, half-guiltily, but irresistibly drawn. The eyes were of a curious color,–smoky black, or dark gray-blue, or somber purple,–liquid and deep like a woman’s, but with a steady, dull glow in their depths that was unlike anything she had ever seen or imagined. What was it that burned there? Suffering? Hunger? Evil? Sorrow? Shame? It gave her something to think about for many a day and night. Meanwhile–

      “I see you have heard of me,” he said mockingly.

      She had no reply. She was realizing slowly that she had trespassed, that she had perhaps seriously compromised her cousin, and, most humiliating of all, that she had assumed quite the wrong attitude toward the man.

      “You really didn’t know you were on my land?” he demanded, with a little less offensiveness in his tone.

      “No,” she answered weakly.

      “And Huntington didn’t send you here?”

      “No.”

      “I believe you, of course. But it’s rather queer. How did you happen–if you don’t mind–”

      She did not mind in the least–was eager, indeed, to explain her presence there.

      “I’m just learning to ride,” she began impulsively.

      “This was my first venture off the valley road, and I–”

      “And you came straight to me!” he exclaimed, chuckling.

      At that a strange thing happened. He had meant only that she, the guest and cousin of Seth Huntington, his bitter foe, had blundered straight into the camp of the enemy; and that was a rare joke on Huntington. But she was a girl; her little adventure was already rosy with romance; and the effect of his careless speech was as if he had looked into her heart, and read aloud for her something she had not known was there. To his surprise and wonder the girl’s fair face turned red to the roots of her tawny hair, and a look of helpless confusion came into the clear, blue eyes that until now, for all her embarrassment, had frankly met his own. She looked suddenly away from him.

      “You make me ashamed,” she said at length, stealing a look at him.

      “If you know anything about my difficulty with Huntington,” he began, “you’ll understand that–”

      “I do. I do understand!” she interrupted eagerly. “I don’t know much about it–the trouble. They haven’t told me. I’ve only overheard some talk–and I didn’t ask. I rode down the valley this morning trying to do it like a cowboy. And there was a branch road–and then the break in the fence–and before I knew it I’d fallen asleep. That’s all–except–” She shot a half-mischievous glance at him “–you spoiled a very beautiful dream.”

      But this was all lost upon him. His face was clouding again.

      “Where is it–the break in the fence?”

      Chagrined at the failure of her bit of coquetry, she merely pointed in the direction whence she had come.

      “Thank you!” he said. “At last!”

      With that he went swiftly to his pony, mounted, and started to ride away. But suddenly he reined up again, whirled his horse savagely around, and faced Marion with the sunlight full upon the scarred side of his face, now ugly with menace.

      “If that fence has been cut,” he said, in a hard and level tone, “it’s been cut by Huntington or his men. You tell him for me, please–and you’ll be doing him a favor not to forget it–tell him that he’s a fool to anger me. I’ve been very patient in this business, but I don’t claim patience as one of my virtues. Do you hear? Tell him he’s a fool to anger me!”

      She watched him gallop to the gap in the barb-wire fence; she watched him dismount to examine the severed wires; she watched him leap on his horse again, and ride furiously down the road until he was lost to view below the dip in the slope toward the valley. And still for some minutes she stood staring at the place where he had disappeared. Then, left alone with her pent-up emotions, she no longer resisted them. Tears of vexation started in her eyes; chagrin, resentment, anger swept over her in turn. She dug the heel of one small boot into the unoffending soil–his soil–and thrust her clenched hands down at her side.

      “Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried, over and over again, striding forward and back across some yards of pasture, trampling lilies and harebells under her heedless feet, turning her flaming face at intervals toward the spot in the smiling landscape that had last held the figure of Philip Haig.

      The shame of it! She had never–never–never been treated so outrageously. It was unendurable–and she had endured it! She flung herself down on the ground and wept.

      Marion was now facing life alone. Her nearest remaining relative was her cousin, Claire Huntington. Her mother–a Southern girl who might have stepped out of a panel by Fragonard, so fine and soft and Old-World-like was her beauty–had died when she was still a child. Her father, Doctor Gaylord, was the antithesis of the sprite-like creature he had married,–a big, athletic, outdoor sort of man, with truly violent red hair and beard, whose favorite expression about himself had been that a very capable pirate had been sacrificed to make a tolerable physician. But СКАЧАТЬ