On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane

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СКАЧАТЬ are you children chattering about in there?” cried Kitty Bonnair, and Hardy, after a guilty silence, replied:

      “The ways of the weary world. Won’t you come in and have the last word?”

      He stepped out and held Pinto by the head, and Kitty dropped off and sank wearily into a rawhide chair.

      “Oh, I’m too tired to talk, riding around trying to find those cattle –– and just as I was tired out we saw them coming, away out on The Rolls. Lucy, do put on your riding habit and go back on Pinto –– you haven’t been out of the house to-day!”

      As half an hour later Lucy Ware trotted obediently away, riding up the cañon toward the distant bawling of cattle, Kitty turned suddenly upon Hardy with half-closed, accusing eyes.

      “You seem to be very happy with Lucy,” she said, with an aggrieved smile. “But why,” she continued, with quickening animus, “why should you seek to avoid me? Isn’t it enough that I should come clear down here to see you? But when I want to have a word with you after our long silence I have to scheme and manage like a gypsy!”

      She paused, and flicked her booted leg with the lash of a horsehair quirt, glancing at him furtively with eyes that drooped with an appealing sadness.

      “If I had known how hard-hearted you could be,” she said, after a silence, “I should never have spoken as I did, if the words choked me. But now that I have come part way and offered my poor friendship again, you might –– oh Rufus, how could you be so inconsiderate! No one can ever know what I suffered when you left that way. Every one knew we were the best of friends, and several people even knew that you had been to see me. And then, without a word, without a sign, with no explanation, to leave and be gone for years –– think what they must have thought! Oh, it was too humiliating!”

      She paused again, and to Hardy’s apprehensive eyes she seemed on the verge of tears. So he spoke, blindly and without consideration, filled with a man’s anxiety to stave off this final catastrophe.

      “I’m sorry,” he began, though he had never meant to say it, “but –– but there was nothing else to do! You –– you told me to go. You said you never wanted to see me again, and –– you were not very kind to me, then.” He paused, and at the memory of those last words of hers, uttered long ago, the flush of shame mantled his cheeks.

      “Every man has his limit,” he said bluntly, “and I am no dog, to be scolded and punished and sent away. I have been ashamed many times for what I did, but I had to keep my own respect –– and so I left. Is it too much for a man to go away when he is told?”

      Kitty Bonnair fixed him with her dark eyes and shook her head sadly.

      “Ah, Rufus,” she sighed, “when will you ever learn that a woman does not always mean all she says? When you had made me so happy by your tender consideration –– for you could be considerate when you chose –– I said that I loved you; and I did, but not in the way you thought. I did mean it at the moment, from my heart, but not for life –– it was no surrender, no promise –– I just loved you for being so good and kind. But when, taking advantage of what I said in a moment of weakness, you tried to claim that which I had never given, I –– I said more than I meant again. Don’t you understand? I was hurt, and disappointed, and I spoke without thinking, but you must not hold that against me forever! And after I have come clear down here –– to avoid me –– to always go out with Lucy and leave me alone –– to force me to arrange a meeting –– ”

      She stopped, and Hardy shifted uneasily in his seat. In his heart of hearts he had realized from the first his inequality in this losing battle. He was like a man who goes into a contest conquered already by his ineptitude at arms –– and Kitty would have her way! Never but once had he defied her power, and that had been more a flight than a victory. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it turned to water before her. He despised himself for it; but all the while, in a shifting, browbeaten way, he was seeking for an excuse to capitulate.

      “But, Kitty,” he pleaded, “be reasonable. I have my duties down here –– the sheep are trying to come in on us –– I have to patrol the river. This morning before you were awake I was in the saddle, and now I have just returned. To-morrow I shall be off again, so how can I arrange a meeting?”

      He held out his hands to her appealingly, carried away by the force of his own logic.

      “You might at least invite me to go with you,” she said. “Unless you expect me to spend all my time getting lost with Judge Ware,” she added, with a plaintive break in her voice.

      “Why, yes –– yes,” began Hardy haltingly. “I –– I have asked Lucy to go with me to-morrow, but –– ”

      “Oh, thank you –– thank you!” burst out Kitty mockingly. “But what?”

      “Why, I thought you might like to come along too,” suggested Hardy awkwardly.

      “What? And rob her of all her pleasure?” Kitty smiled bitterly as she turned upon him. “Why, Rufus Hardy,” she exclaimed, indignantly, “and she just dotes on every word you say! Yes, she does –– any one can see that she simply adores you. I declare, Rufus, your lack of perception would make an angel weep –– especially if it was a lady angel. But you may as well understand once and for all that I will never deprive dear, patient, long-suffering Lucy of anything she sets her heart on. No, I will not go with you the next day. If you haven’t consideration enough to invite me first, I have sense enough to stay away. It was only yesterday that you took Lucy up to Hidden Water, and to-day I find you with her again; and to-morrow –– well, I perceive that I must amuse myself down here. But –– oh, look, look! There’s a cowboy –– up on that high cliff!”

      She started up, pointing at a horseman who was spurring furiously along the side of the cañon after a runaway steer.

      “Oh, look!” she cried again, as Hardy surveyed him indifferently. “He is whirling his lasso. Oh! He has thrown it over that big cow’s horns! Goodness me, where is my horse? No, I am going on foot, then! Oh, Lucy –– Lucy dear,” she screamed, waving her hand wildly, “do let me have Pinto, just for a moment! All right –– and Lucy –– wasn’t that Mr. Creede?” She lingered on the ground long enough to give her an ecstatic kiss and then swung up into the saddle. “Yes, I knew it –– and isn’t he just perfectly grand on that big horse? Oh, I’ve been wanting to see this all my life –– and I owe it all to you!”

      With a smile and a gay salutation, she leaned forward and galloped out into the riot and confusion of the rodéo, skirting the edge of the bellowing herd until she disappeared in the dust. And somehow, even by the childlike obliviousness with which she scampered away, she managed to convey a pang to her errant lover which clutched at his heart for days.

      And what days those were for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the rodéo boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot’s ability to make trouble, who soberly assigned his fair disciple to guard a pass over which no cow could possibly come. And Kitty, sensing the deceit, had as soberly amused herself by gathering flowers among the rocks. But the next day, having learned her first lesson, she struck for a job to ride, and it was the giddy-headed lover who permitted her to accompany him –– although not from any obvious or selfish motives.

      Miss Bonnair was the guest of the ranch, her life and welfare being placed for the time СКАЧАТЬ