The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

      "Oh, go to the devil," grunted Lispenard. He was about to add that he was infernally sick of his former comrade's tolerant amusement, but he checked this churlishness and scowled at Gillette's back until the latter was out of sight. Turning into the main cabin he settled himself by the table, his heavy, bulging eyes staring at nothing in particular. When Christine came from her room he appeared to be unaware of her presence until she spoke.

      "Claudie, why the sulks?"

      He raised himself from the chair—a trace of politeness that remained from his former training—and fell quickly back. "It bores me," said he, in all frankness. "Bores me to extinction."

      The cook arrived with the girl's belated breakfast, rolling his eyes at Lispenard as he retreated. "The king has been gracious enough to command me to inform you," grunted Lispenard, "that he would be back in a couple of hours and take you for a ride."

      "How very nice of him—how unpleasant of you. Claude, you don't display your talents in such a temper. Why do you call him that?"

      "I mean it quite literally, Kit. Don't for a moment doubt his power over this ranch and the yokels on it. It's a blessed feudal estate. He is the law. Oh, quite so! Quaint Western manner. He drives 'em like a pack of dogs. Why they stand it I don't understand. Observe, when you ride with him, how he'll stop on a ridge and look over the country. A king could do it no better. As much as to say, 'This is mine. I command.'"

      She made a wry face at the coffee and observed the heavy slabs of bacon with evident resignation. "I must be a Spartan," she murmured, and then smiled at the man. "Well, Claudie, why not the grand manner if it is all his own?"

      "Rot! It irks me. I detest self-sufficiency. They shout about equality out here—every man as good as another. More tosh. I've been an alien every blessed minute—made to feel like one. They dislike me as much as I dislike them."

      She moved her hand slightly. "Do you know something about yourself, Claudie? You played the conquering hero once, and now you hate to see another go above you."

      "Above me!" cried Lispenard. "Don't be ridiculous."

      She put down her coffee cup and turned toward him, serious. "Let me tell you. Tom Gillette has grown head and shoulders above you. Unpleasant, isn't it, my dear boy? Then you shouldn't be discourteous to a woman before breakfast."

      "So you come to be another herald at his court?" He rose. "What did you come here for, anyway?"

      "I answer no direct questions before ten o'clock," said she, gay again.

      "Work fast," he muttered, grimly amused, "or you'll lose him."

      "Claude!"

      "Oh, don't assume your airs with me, my dear Kit. I know you quite well. Much better, in fact, than friend Tom knows you."

      Colour stained her cheeks. "Once that manner became you. It doesn't now."

      He brushed it aside, bold eyes looking down at her. "In fact, you are much like I am. So much so that I can tell you what's below those fine gestures and that charming smile."

      She bit her lip, anger glowing in her eyes. "You deserve to be whipped, Claude!"

      He laughed at her; a high, mirthless laugh that rang against the poles and died. "Let anyone hereabouts try it. I'd welcome the exercise. Well, my dear Kit, wish me luck. I'm going to rid you of my unwelcome presence before the week is out. Fact. I imagine you'll feel easier to have me gone."

      "Going back East to cadge off your friends again, Claudie?"

      "Quite a cruel thrust. I said we were much alike, didn't I? No, I'm not going East. They'll never see me again back there. I'm going—God knows where." The fresh sun flamed through the window and struck his long yellow hair. The girl had a full view of his profile—its hard jaw bones, its over-heavy outline of eyes and forehead. He disappeared without a backward glance, and she heard him ride away.

      "If I were a man," she murmured to herself, "I'd give him a fine whipping."

      But all marks of anger were erased by the time Gillette returned. She had got into a riding habit, and when she trailed across the yard to the horse that was to be hers she was quite gay and beautiful. Together they cantered east, rising and falling with the swell of the earth; the sun was a blood disk beneath the threat of which the land quivered. The river, sucked into the sands, showed only a rivulet of water. It seemed wholly impossible that man or beast could find sustenance in the expanse of tortured prairie stretching its endless leagues into the smoky horizon; and for all her determination to be a good Spartan, Christine Ballard felt the weight of that searing, oppressive day. It was as if some unseen giant crushed her and blew his breath into her face. Her pleasantries became harder to manage, and at the end of several miles, when he stopped her on a commanding ridge and began to point out the extent of the range, she interrupted. "Tom, it's magnificent. Really it is. But—do you ever feel that you are wasting the best of yourself out here?"

      "What's the best of me, Kit?"

      "Oh, putting your talents in a place where they'll make you great. Why, Tom, back East you could be splendidly successful. How many of our friends have told me you were able to break through any kind of opposition. You could be in high places."

      He drew his arm around the horizon. "I'm humbler than that, Kit. You can't live under this sky, having it as a sort of next- door neighbour all the time, and not lose a lot of pretensions. What good are high places to a man if he's not satisfied? Why fight for something you've got no heart in? And what more could any man want than this? Look at the prairie sweeping off there. It's mine to ride on. I sleep sound at night. I go out in the morning and look at the sun coming up and I feel as if the day was made for me and nobody else. A fellow loses himself and his troubles. Time doesn't count. Everything marches along slow and a man lives slow—which is the way folks ought to live. What's better?"

      "Sometimes," said she, "I think it's criminal in a man not to achieve all he is able to achieve."

      "For instance?"

      "Why, you could go up politically, you could make a fortune of your own choice. Look at my father."

      He shook his head. She thought she had never heard him say a more solemn word. "I've gone back to the blanket, Kit. Don't drag out the torture machines again."

      It was so definite, so final that she forbore to press him further. And in one of those swift flashes of wisdom she sometimes permitted herself, she saw events marching alon to that last gamble when she would be putting herself up am saying, "Take me on your own terms." The thought should have dispirited her. Yet it was otherwise. A current of emotion bore her along on a flood tide, and with it came a strange pleasure. She who stepped so carefully around the crater of life was on the point of throwing herself willingly into it. She, Christine Ballard!

      He had discovered something on the ground that interested him, and they followed it a hundred yards before he spoke again. "Trail. I think it's Blondy's horse. But we'll just have a look."

      No more was said for a good while. The hoof prints led them into coulees, over ridges, and through extremely broken pieces of ground. The girl, obedient to his humour, kept her peace, wondering at the watchfulness that came over his face. More than once they galloped away from the trail and into the recesses of a box canon, or detoured below the horizon and crawled slowly to the ridge tops again. Somewhat to the right of them stood a butte, black and forbidding, at which Gillette constantly glanced. And at last Christine ventured a question. "What is it?"

      He drew himself from his study. "I'm trying to make up the story in this. There's always some kind of a yarn in a set of hoof prints. And when you see hoof prints mixed with boot prints that story usually promises a suprise ending."

      Quite of a sudden his head came up, turning sidewise. She thought she heard a faint sound floating through the morning drone. And again she marked the strange shift of his expression. "Come on," he muttered. His horse raced up a slope, Kit lagging. He stopped an instant on the backbone of the ridge; then she saw him rise in his stirrups and fling the quirt down on the pony's rump. When she rode to the crest he was a hundred