The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey

back. Let’s see—twenty is it? My, you make me feel old—but you say I haven’t changed much.”

      “You haven’t. A little bit of gray, a number of tiny wrinkles about your eyes”—the tips of two dainty fingers touched them lightly—“and you’re a bit thinner—that’s all. Why you look so good to me, Uncle Martin, I could fall in love with you myself, if you weren’t auntie’s husband.”

      It was an innocent remark, and he understood it as such, but its effect on him was dynamic.

      “You always were as pretty as a picture,” he said slowly, his nerves tingling, “if a farmer’s opinion is worth anything in that line.”

      This was twaddle, of course, and Martin knew it. Rather it was the city person’s point of view he was inclined to belittle. He had the confidence in his superiority that comes from complete economic security and his pride of place was even more deeply rooted. Men of Martin’s class who are able to gaze, in at least one direction, as far as eye can see over their own land, are shrewd, sharp, intelligent, and far better informed on current events and phases of thought than the people of commercial centers even imagine. There is nothing of the peasant about them. Martin knew quite well that dressed in his best clothes and put among a crowd of strange business men he would be taken for one of their own—so easy was his bearing, so naturally correct his speech.

      Something of all this had already registered in Rose’s mind. “Come on, Uncle Martin,” she laughed, “flatter me. I just love it!”

      “Very well, then, I’ll say that you’ve come back as pretty a little woman as ever I’ve laid eyes on.”

      “Is that all? Oh, Uncle Martin, just pretty? The boys usually say I’m beautiful.”

      “You are beautiful—as beautiful as a rose. That’s what you are, a red, red rose of Sharon—with your dove’s eyes, your little white teeth like a flock of even sheep and your sweet, pretty lips like a thread of scarlet.”

      “Why, Uncle Martin!” exclaimed the girl, a trifle puzzled by the intensity of his quiet tone, and stressing their relationship ever so lightly. “You’re almost a poet.”

      “You mean old King Solomon was,” he retrieved himself quickly. “Don’t you ever read the Bible?”

      “I didn’t know you did!”

      “Oh, your old Uncle reads a little of everything,” he returned with a reassuring commonplaceness of manner. He was thunderstruck at his outburst. Never had he had occasion to talk in that vein. He remembered how blunt he had been with the older Rose twenty years before—how he had jumped to the point at the start and landed safely; clinched his wooing, as he had since realized, by calling her his Rose of Sharon, and now he was saying the same thing over again, but, oh, how differently. If only he were thirty-four today, and unmarried!

      “You always were the most wonderful person,” beamed Rose, completely at her ease once more, “I used to simply adore you, and I’m beginning to adore you again.”

      “That’s because you don’t know what a glum old grouch I really am.”

      “You—a grouch? Oh, Uncle Martin!” Her merry, infectious laugh left no doubt of how ridiculous such a notion seemed.

      “Oh, yes; I am.”

      “Nonsense. You’ll have to prove it to me.”

      “Ask your aunt or Bill; they’ll tell you.” The acrimony in his tone did not escape her.

      “Then they’ll have to prove it to me,” she corrected, her gaiety now a trifle forced. Aunt Rose never had appreciated him, was her quick thought. Even as a child she had sensed that.

      “How are they?” she added quickly. “Bill must be a great boy by this time.”

      “Only a few inches shorter than I am,” Martin answered indifferently. “He’s one of the kind who get their growth early—by the time he’s fifteen he’ll be six feet.”

      “I’m crazy to see them.”

      “Well, there’s your aunt now,” he resumed drily as they drew up before the little house that contrasted so conspicuously with the fine brick silos and imposing barns. Gleaming with windows, they loomed out of the twilight, reminding one, in their slate-colored paint, of magnificent battleships.

      The bright glare of the auto picked Mrs. Wade out for them as mercilessly as a searchlight. Where she had been stout thirteen years before, she was now frankly fat. Four keen eyes noted the soft, cushiony double chin, the heavy breasts, ample stomach, spreading hips, and thick shoulders, rounded from many years of bending over her kitchen table. Kansas wind, Kansas well-water and Kansas sun had played their usual havoc, giving her skin the dull sand color so common in the Sunflower State. She had come from her cooking and she was hot, beads of sweat trickling from the deep folds of her neck. Withal, there was something so comfortable and motherly about her, the kind, wise eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses were so misty with welcome and unspoken thoughts of the dear mother Rose had lost, that the girl went out to her sincerely even as she marvelled that the same years on the same farm which had given one person added polish and had made him even more good looking than ever, could have changed another so completely and turned her into such a toil-scarred, frumpy, oldish woman. Why, when she had been talking with Uncle Martin he had seemed no older than herself—well, not quite that, of course, but she had just forgotten about his age altogether—until she saw Aunt Rose. No wonder whenever he spoke of his wife every intonation told how little he loved her. How could he care any more—that way?

      Rose’s first look of astonishment and her darting glance in his own direction were not lost on Martin. With an imperceptible smile, he accepted the unintended compliment, but he felt a pang when he noticed that to her Aunt went the same affectionate, impetuous embrace that she had given to him at the station.

      “You’re losing your head,” he told himself sternly, driving into the garage, where, stopping his engine, he continued to sit motionless at the wheel. “That ought to be a lesson to you; she’s just naturally warm-hearted and loving. Always was. You’re no more to her than anybody else. Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.” Yet, deeper than his admitted thought was the positive conviction that already something was up between them. If not, why this excitement and wild happiness? To be sure, nothing had been said—really. It had all been so light. Rose was just a bit of a born flirt. But he, having laughed at love all his life, loved her deeply, desperately. Well, so much the worse for himself—it couldn’t lead anywhere. Yet in spite of all his logic he knew that something was going to happen. Hang it all—just what? He was afraid to answer his own question; not because of any dread of what his wife might do—he was conscious only of a new, cold, impersonal hatred toward her because she stood between him and his Rose; nor was it qualms about his ability to win the girl’s heart. Already, despite his inexperience with love technique, he was, in some mysterious manner, making progress. The community—his position in it? This was food for thought certainly, but it was not what worried him. Then why this feeling of dismay when he wanted to be only glad?

      The question was still unanswered when he finally left the garage. With all his powers of introspection, he had not yet fathomed the fact that it was a fear of his own, until now utterly unsuspected, capacity for recklessness. Heretofore, he had been able to count on the certainty that his best judgment would govern all his actions. Now, he felt himself clutching, almost frantically, at the hard sense of proportion that never before had so much as threatened to desert him. He went about his chores in a grave, automatic way, absorbed in anything but agriculture. Hardly ever did he pass through his barn without paying homage to his own progressiveness and oozing approval of the mechanical milker, driven by his own electrical dynamo, the James Way stanchions with electric lights above, the individual drinking fountains at the head of each cow, the cork-brick floors, the scrupulously white-washed walls, and the absence of odor, with the one exception of sweet, fermented silage. But, tonight, he was not seeing these symbols of material superiority. Instead he was thinking of a girl with eyes as soft as a dove’s, lips like a thread of scarlet and small white teeth as even