Essential Western Novels - Volume 4. Max Brand

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СКАЧАТЬ don't know," she replied. "Perhaps it is just a woman's intuition."

      "Well, you must have seen a lot of them," he said. "You've been here some time, haven't you?"

      "Yes," she answered, "I have; but they have not always been here all the time. They go away occasionally, some times for a week or ten days, Cory's looking after cattle interests."

      "He has cattle interests?" asked Marvel.

      "And a mine, too, he says," replied Dora.

      "Well, he hasn't been looking after them much lately," said Marvel.

      "They got back from a trip about three weeks before you came to the ranch," she said; "and it must have been a hard one, too, for they were all in for a couple of days afterward. I guess Cory's a pretty hard rider, too. His horse dropped dead in the corral the morning they got in from that last trip. Bud told me about it."

      "Wasn't Bud with them?" asked Marvel.

      "No, he stays here and sort of looks after the dude ranch for Cory while he is away."

      "Bud seems to be a pretty nice fellow."

      "Yes, he is a nice boy," said the girl. "Everybody likes Bud."

      They rode on for a while in silence that was finally broken by the girl. "I can't understand why it is," she said, "that I have that peculiar feeling about Cory Blaine. He has always been pleasant and accommodating, but away down inside somewhere I don't seem to be able to trust him. What do you think of him, Bruce?"

      "Oh, I have no reason to have anything against him," replied the man. "He's always been decent enough to me, though it has probably been hard work for him to be decent to a tenderfoot."

      "You can't have much use for Butts though; he has certainly been nasty enough to you."

      "Butts is like having fleas," he replied. "They may annoy you, but you can't really hate them. A thing's got to have brains before a man could hate it. When the Lord was dishing out brains, He must have sort of overlooked Butts."

      Dora laughed. "When you first came to the ranch I used to think that maybe He had overlooked you, too, Bruce," she said; "but I know now that He didn't."

      "Thanks," said Marvel.

      At the head of the little party, trailing at comfortable distances through the hills, rode Cory Blaine and Kay White. The man had been unusually quiet, even taciturn; but the girl, alert and eager for each new beauty of this unaccustomed trail, was glad for the long silences.

      Sometimes her thoughts reverted to the harrowing incident of yesterday's lion hunt. Annoyingly persistent was the memory of a strong arm about her and of her own arms about a man's neck. The recollection induced no thrills, perhaps, but it had aroused a lively consciousness of the man that she had not felt before. It reminded her of the strength and courage and resourcefulness that his act had revealed, transforming him from a soon-to-be- forgotten incident in her life to a position of importance, where he would doubtless remain enshrined in her memory always. She had never given him much consideration. He had been agreeable in a self-effacing sort of way, and he was undeniably good-looking; but until yesterday he had never greatly aroused her interest.

      We have all had similar experiences with chance acquaintances who were but additional names in the chaotic files of memory until some accident, perhaps trivial, precipitated them into the current of our lives, never to be entirely lost sight of or forgotten again, or perhaps to influence or direct our courses through rough or tranquil waters.

      Her reveries were interrupted when Cory Blaine finally broke his long silence. "I can't help thinking," he said.

      She waited for him to continue, but he did not. "Thinking what?" she asked.

      "Thinking that everything is wrong. A fellow starts wrong and then he never gets the right break."

      "What in the world are you talking about?"

      "I never saw a girl like you before," he continued, "and now that I have found you, it is too late. I am what I am, and a fellow can't change in a minute. I might grow to be more like your kind, but that would take too long."

      "You are all right as you are," she said.

      "No, I'm not. If I was, you might love me as I love you."

      "That has nothing to do with it," she said. "Love is unreasoning. It is purely instinctive. People are attracted to one another in that way or they are not. Haven't you often wondered lots of times what some married people saw in their mates that would have caused them to select the one they did above all others in the world?"

      "I've wondered that about nearly all of them," admitted Blaine, "especially Benson Talbot; and that offers me some encouragement. One of them must have been attracted to the other first, like I am attracted to you; and then in some way the other one was won over. Don't you suppose, Kay, that I might win you?"

      She shook her head. "No, Cory," she said. "I do not love you and that is all there is to it. Please don't talk about it anymore. It can only make us both unhappy."

      "All right," he said, "I won't talk about it;" and then under his breath he muttered, "But by God, I'm going to have you."

      They stopped presently in a grove of trees beside a mountain stream to rest and water their horses. Some of them had brought sandwiches; and when these were eaten, they mounted and rode on again; but this time Kay rode beside Bruce Marvel, and it was evident to Cory Blaine that the girl had arranged it so deliberately. He found himself paired off now with Birdie Talbot; and, being a good business man, he sought to be agreeable, though in his heart he had suddenly conceived an intense loathing for her, from her high heeled shoes to her ill-fitted sombrero.

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      VIII

      FOURFLUSHERS, ALL

      KAY WHITE, on the other hand, found relief in her escape from Blaine's society, which, with the avowal of his love, she had found depressing and embarrassing. Marvel was companionable in that he was silent when she did not wish to talk; or equally willing to uphold his end of the conversation when she felt in the mood for it, though even then the brunt of it fell upon her, to which, being a woman, she was, naturally, not averse.

      They had spoken casually of various things of interest along the trail and there had been long silences. It spoke well for the companionship of both of them that no matter how long these silences they never became strained; and then their conversation wandered to their horses, as conversations between horse lovers always do.

      "I can't understand why Lightfoot behaved as he did yesterday," she said, speaking of her own mount.

      "Most any horse loses his head easy," he said. "They are not like mules or cows. A mule isn't so nervous. If they get tangled up in something they usually lie still and wait for somebody to untangle them; but a horse will either kick himself free or to death, and he doesn't seem to care much which it is. Of course, they are not all alike. I saw an old horse once that had stood all night with one foot caught in a wire fence, and he hadn't moved. He just stood there СКАЧАТЬ