The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ though here and there the quarter moon shot its silver beams through the branches and created little lakes of light on the ground. The trail grew steeper, and once she slipped. Gillette caught her arm, and her body for the moment swayed against him—swayed and pulled away. "To your left, Tom," she murmured. They walked another hundred yards on a lesser trail. A cabin stood dimly before them, and Lorena opened the door and preceded him. Presently lamplight flooded the place; he went in.

      "I have a home," said she, with again that wistful pressure of lips. "It's my own. I don't owe a soul for it. I said I never again would ask a favour in this world. Sit in the chair, Tom. It's a guest chair. I'm going to cook you a meal."

      The cabin was old, with a hard dirt floor, a cast-iron stove, a pine bunk, and a pine board table. The chair was nothing more than a dry-goods box; there was but a single window, across which hung a square of burlap for a shade. A bare place, this cabin, yet swept clean and impressed, in the odd arrangements of her effects, by this girl's hand. She had spread an army blanket on the floor for a carpet, and somewhere in this corner of a man's world she had found white sheets and a slip for her bed. The smell of fresh paint hung over the room, a single red meadow flower decorated the table.

      She built a fire, she rummaged the basket and placed the dishes with a kind of sweet formality. She was humming quite softly to herself, and from time to time she glanced toward him, and again he had the feeling that she marked his features for her memory. There was a grace to her moving hands, a sturdiness to her small shoulders.

      "Say, you ought to be tired," he protested. "How about my wrangling this meal?"

      "This is my party—the first party I ever gave. I was tired. I'm not tired now."

      He went to the door. A small wind sighed in the treetops and eddied into the room. Away down the slope a camp fire cut an orange pattern in the night; coyotes howled along the distant ridges. What kind of a place was this for a girl like her? Things prowled these shadows. And here she was, all that was desirable in a woman, unprotected except for her own abundant courage. And that wasn't enough.

      "Sit down, Tom. Supper's ready. I ate mine at the restaurant."

      He closed the door. She had drawn the dry-goods box around to the far side of the table and when he sat down she dropped to the bunk and watched him.

      "Well..."

      "Not now. This is my party. You eat. Whatever is to come must wait. That was the best steak in the restaurant, Tom. I want you to enjoy it."

      All during the solitary supper she watched him, yet when he came to return the glance her eyes fell away. So it went until he had finished and made himself a cigarette, the questions rising. She saw them come, and she staved them off with a trace of confusion.

      "Now tell me what brought you here."

      "San Saba's in or about Deadwood," said he.

      She sat up. "Here? I haven't seen him."

      "Well, he wouldn't be the one to advertise himself. It may be he turned off the trail before he got this far, but I don't think so. For a man of his kind Deadwood is too good a hunting ground to pass."

      "What are you going to do, Tom?"

      His shoulders rose. The girl bent forward with so intent and sober a glance that it bothered him. And she divined his answer. "You don't mean to gamble on your life, do you?"

      "I guess it's not much of a gamble, Lorena."

      "Oh, yes, it is! He's a dangerous man, he's tricky. He doesn't fight fair, he never fought fair in his whole life. He'd throw you off guard and wait until you weren't looking. Then he'd shoot. Don't I know the man?"

      "Once I see him he'll never get out of my sight," replied Gillette quietly. Somehow he felt the need of justifying himself to her. "I'm not doing this for fun; Lorena. I'm fighting against my grain all the time I hunt for him. But the score's too heavy on one end to let him go. Either I've got to hold up my end or I've got to crawl out of Dakota like a yellow dog. The hounds are yapping at my heels. It's been a bad year for Circle G all around. Last week the P.R.N. tried to rustle me poor and one of my men was killed in the scrap. They'll let me alone until they think of some other pretty scheme." His right arm stretched toward her. "Look at it. A killer's hand. The P.R.N. foreman went down before my gun. I didn't ask trouble, but I can't back out now. And San Saba's got to answer for my dad."

      "You're not a killer," was her quick retort. "Don't say it of yourself. I hate to see you divided against yourself."

      "What else does it amount to? I reckon I should have stayed East and learned to like tea out of a china cup."

      "Don't be bitter, Tom. What good is that? You're too much of a man to be anything else than you are or to love any land but this. The East never helped you. It only hurt you."

      He ran a hand across his face, and she noticed how the brown skin wrinkled about his eyes, how dogged and unyielding his features could turn. It was so now; she wanted to go over and touch his arm—anything to sweep aside for the time the troubles he carried.

      "But this," he went on, indicating the room, "isn't fit for you, Lorena. It makes me cold all over to think of you here alone. You shouldn't do it."

      "Nothing can hurt me, Tom."

      "What's to become of you?" said he, still on the same thought. "Here you are all alone. You can't live like this—you can't travel the trail by yourself. And there's nobody fit for you in this part of the world. You're wasting the best part of your life. I'm saying it again—you don't belong here."

      "I've fought that out—don't bring it back to me. I said I'd never ask another favour of anybody and I never will. I won't ever give anybody the power to hurt me again. Here I came and here I stay until—?"

      "Until what?"

      She turned her head away, hands moving. "Oh, I don't know, Tom. This is as good a place as anywhere. Until I'm old, I guess."

      "You were not meant to live alone. It's unnatural."

      That brought the rose tint to her cheeks again. And still with her head averted she asked a muffled question. "Who would want me, Tom?"

      He sprang up, he crossed the small space at a single stride.

      "I want you, Lorena! Can't you see that all over me, as plain as daylight? I want you!"

      She rose, and for the moment he thought she meant to run out of the place. Such was the passing fright on her white face. It lasted only a moment, and then she was looking at him in the manner he knew so well. It took all the fight out of him, it made him humble. "That's what I've been trying to say," he went on quietly. "It's been with me ever since you ran off. What did you do that for? There's nothing behind me I'm ashamed of or afraid of. I waited a week to tell you that. There's no claims on me. Whatever you think of Kit Ballard and myself is wrong. It's wrong."

      "I would never have asked you that, Tom. I wanted to hear you say it, but I'd never have asked. I'll never mention her name. That's your own affair—I've got no part in it."

      "Well, you know now. I want you, Lorena."

      "Tom, it's only pity you feel. And I won't have pity! I'm not the girl you'd want. I can't be. What am I—what do I know or what can I do? I can't help your name any. I see it clearer every day."

      "That's СКАЧАТЬ