Knights of the Range. Zane Grey
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Название: Knights of the Range
Автор: Zane Grey
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Вестерны
isbn: 9781479453924
isbn:
His imperturbability lay only on the surface. Holly felt the throb of his sinewy hand and the blue flame of his eyes.
“Promise me,” she repeated, imperiously.
“Why should I, Lady?”
“Because you are more to me than just one of my cowboys.”
“Yore word is the only law I know. . . . Holly, do you care anythin’ aboot me atall?”
“Si, señor,” she replied, smiling, and gently endeavoring to remove her hand.
“When I fust come to this rancho you liked me a heap, Holly. An’ it kept me straight. You rode with me more’n any of yore riders. My land, how jealous they was! An’ I got my hopes up, Holly.”
“Hopes of what, you foolish boy?”
“Wal, thet you’d love me—an’ marry me some day,” he replied, with a soft frankness that touched Holly with contrition.
“Brazos, I do like you a heap. I am proud that I have kept you straight. But I do not love you.”
“Aw! . . . Thet night at the fandango—last summer. You let me kiss you!”
“No, Brazos.”
“But, Lady, you made no fuss. An’ you didn’t run off or—or slap me.”
“Brazos, please be honest. You kissed me, not by force, but by surprise.”
“My Gawd, girls air strange!—Holly, how aboot my puttin’ my arm around you thet night in the buckboard, when I drove you home from San Marcos?”
“Yes, you did. I was very foolish, Brazos—and cold, too.”
“Then it never meant nothin’ atall,” said Brazos, with pathos. “Not even at first?”
“Brazos, I asked you to be honest,” replied Holly, earnestly. “So I can be no less. . . . I never quite understood myself. I did have a—a sweet, romantic feeling for you. I did. But I had had that before. It didn’t last. And I’ve had it since. For that young army officer who came here wounded and we cared for him. It didn’t last, either. I am a fickle jade, Brazos. It must be my Spanish blood. But I do really love you, Brazos—as a sister. And I want you for a brother. I’m a lonely girl.”
“Shore. But I don’t want to be yore brother,” he replied, stubbornly. “I want to be yore husband. You need one, Holly. You’ll never leave Don Carlos’ Rancho. You ought to marry a cowman. Yore Dad would have wanted thet. An’ I’m as good as any of these ridin’ gents an’ better than most. . . . If you’d marry me—you’d come to love me some day. An’ I wouldn’t ask you to be my—my real wife till then. I could take care of you, Holly.”
“Brazos, dear, you do not grasp the situation. I don’t love you that way. I never will. . . . Why you’re not yet nineteen years old. And I am! . . . I feel like your mother. You’re only a boy.”
“Boy!—Holly, I’m as old as Britt, in the ways of the range. An’ this range is yore home. An’ if you can believe me or Tex or Britt or Buff Belmet, it’s gonna get powerful wild pronto. Holly, ain’t a man in the ootfit who wouldn’t give an eye to save you what Frayne saved you. He’s a darn good-lookin’ chap, educated, an’ was somebody once, as anyone could see. Buff Belmet knows the frontier. It’s only fair fer me to admit thet the ootfit took to Frayne. We’re scared of him, shore, but if he only takes to us he’ll be a round peg in a round hole.”
“Brazos, I hope Frayne, and all of them are as loyal and gallant as you,” rejoined Holly, feelingly. “Then I’ll have the outfit Britt has dreamed of. And Don Carlos’ Rancho will be the home for me that Dad prayed it would be.”
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