The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes narrowed slightly. "They have just gone—all but little Jimmie Tryon. He rides home with me."

      "Hang it! We never seem to be alone any more since you came back," complained the man.

      "Why should we?" asked the young woman, her gaze apparently as frank and direct as that of a boy.

      But he understood it for a challenge. "You didn't use to talk that way. You used to be glad enough to see me alone," he flung out.

      "Did I? One outgrows childish follies, I suppose," she answered quietly.

      "What's the matter with you?" he cried angrily. "It's been this way ever since——"

      He broke off.

      A faint, scornful smile touched her lips. "Ever since when, Tom?"

      "You know when well enough. Ever since I shot Buck Weaver."

      "And left me to pay forfeit," she suggested quickly, and as quickly broke off. "Hadn't we better talk of something else? I've tried to avoid this. Must we thrash it out?"

      "You can't throw me over like that, after what's been between us. I reckon you pretend to have forgotten that I used to keep company with you."

      A flush of annoyance glowed through the tan of her cheeks, but her eyes refused to yield to his. "Nonsense! Don't talk foolishness, Tom. We were just children."

      "Do you mean that everything's all off between us?"

      "We made a mistake. Let us be good friends and forget it, Tom," she pleaded.

      "What's the use of talking that way, Phyl?" He swung from the saddle, and came toward her eagerly. "I love you—always have since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. We're going to be married one of these days."

      She held up a hand to keep him back. "No—we're not. I know now that you're not the right man for me, and I'm not the right girl for you."

      "I'm the best judge of that," he retorted.

      She shook her head with certainty. It seemed a lifetime since this boy had kissed her at the dance and she had run, tingling, from his embrace. She felt now old enough in experience to be his mother.

      "No, Tom—let us both forget it. Go back to your other girls, and let me be just a friend."

      "I haven't any other girls," he answered sullenly. "And I won't be put off like that. You've got to tell me what has come between us. I've got a right to know, and I'm going to know."

      "Yes, you have a right—but don't press it. Just let it go at this: I didn't know my own mind then, and I do now."

      "It's something about the shooting of Buck Weaver," he growled uneasily.

      She was silent.

      "Well?" he demanded. "Out with it!"

      "I couldn't marry a man I don't respect from the bottom of my heart," she told him gently.

      "That's a dig at me, I reckon. Why don't you respect me? Is it because I shot Weaver?"

      "You shot him from ambush."

      "I didn't!" he protested angrily. "You know that ain't so, Phyl. I saw him riding down there, as big as coffee, and I let him have it. I wasn't lying in wait for him at all. It just came over me all of a heap to shoot, and I shot before——"

      "I understand that. But you shouldn't have shot without giving warning, even if it was right to shoot at all—which, of course, it wasn't."

      "Well, say I did wrong. Can't you forgive a fellow for making a mistake?"

      "It isn't a question of forgiveness, Tom. Somehow it goes deeper than that. I can't tell you just what I mean."

      "Haven't I told you I'm sorry?" he demanded, with boyish impatience.

      "Being sorry isn't enough. If you can't see it then I can't explain."

      "You're sore at me because I left you," he muttered, and for very shame his eyes could not meet hers.

      "No—I'm not sore at you, as you call it. I haven't the least resentment. But there's no use in trying to hide the truth. Since you ask for it, you shall have it. I don't want to be unkind, but I couldn't possibly marry you after that."

      The young man looked sulkily across the valley, his lips trembling with vexation and the shame of knowing that this girl had been a witness of that scene when he had fled like a scared rabbit and left her to bear the brunt of what he had done.

      "You told me to go, and now you blame me for doing what you said," he complained bitterly.

      She realized the weakness of his defense—that he had saved himself at the expense of the girl he claimed to love, simply because she had offered herself as a sacrifice in his place. She thought of another man, who, at the risk of his life, had held back the half dozen pursuers just to give a better chance to a girl he had not known a week. She thought of the cattleman who had ridden gayly into this valley of enemies, because he loved her, and was willing to face any punishment for the wrong he had done her. Her brother, too, pointed the same moral. He had defied the enemy, though he had been in his power. Not one of them would have done what Tom Dixon, in his panic terror, had allowed himself to do. But they were men, all of them—men of that stark courage that clings to self-respect rather than to life. This youth had met the acid test, and had failed in the assay. She had no anger toward him—only a kindly pity, and a touch of contempt which she could not help.

      "No—I don't blame you, Tom," she told him, very kindly. "But I can't marry you. I couldn't if you explained till Christmas. That is final. Now let us be friends."

      She held out her hand. He looked at it through the tears of mortification that were in his eyes, dashed it aside with an oath, swung to the saddle, and galloped down the road.

      Phyllis gave a wistful sigh. Tears filmed her eyes. He was her first lover, had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. Nor had she experience enough to know that this could not have endured, save as a form, after the wrench he had given it. Yet she knew him well enough now to be sure that it was his vanity and self-esteem that were hurt, and not his love. He would soon find consolation among the other ranch girls, upon whom he had been used to lavish his attentions at intervals when she was not handy to receive them.

      "Was Tom Dixon mean to you, teacher?"

      Little five-year-old Jimmie Tryon was standing before her, feet apart, fists knotted, and brow furrowed. She swooped upon her champion and snatched him up for a kiss.

      "Nobody has been mean to teacher, Jimmie, you dear little kiddikins," she cried. "It's all right, honey. Tom thinks it isn't, but before long he'll know it is."

      "Who'll tell him?" Jimmie wanted to know anxiously.

      "Some nice girl, little curiosity box. I don't know who yet, but it will be one of two or three I could name," she laughed.

      She harnessed the horse and hitched it to the trap in which Jimmie and she came to school. But before СКАЧАТЬ