Brand Blotters. William MacLeod Raine

      There was a sound of hard, grim laughter in his 46 throat. “No, and I ain’t going to deny it. Are you ready to go yet?”

      His repulse of her little tentative advance was like a blow on the face to her.

      She made a movement to rise. While she was still on her knees he stooped, put his arms around her, and took her into them. Before she could utter her protest he had started down the trail toward the house.

      “How dare you? Let me go,” she ordered.

      “You’re not able to walk, and you’ll go the way I say,” he told her shortly in a flinty voice.

      Her anger was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with her passion.

      Once he spoke. “Tell me where it was you saw this rustler—the exact place near as you can locate it.”

      She answered only by a look.

      The deputy strode into the living room of the ranch with her in his arms. Lee was reading a newspaper Jack had brought with him from Mesa. At sight of them he started up hurriedly.

      “Goddlemighty, what’s the matter, Jack?”

      “Only a ricked ankle, Champ. Slipped on a stone,” Flatray explained as he put Melissy down on the lounge. 47

      In two minutes the whole house was upset. Hop Ling was heating water to bathe the sprain. A rider from the bunkhouse was saddling to go for the doctor. Another was off in the opposite direction to buy some liniment at Mammoth.

      In the confusion Flatray ran up his horse from the pasture, slapped on the saddle, and melted into the night.

      An hour later Melissy asked her father what had become of him.

      “Doggone that boy, I don’t know where he went. Reckon he thought he’d be in the way. Mighty funny he didn’t give us a chanct to tell him to stay.”

      “Probably he had business in Mesa,” Melissy answered, turning her face to the wall.

      “Business nothing,” retorted the exasperated rancher. “He figured we couldn’t eat and sleep him without extra trouble. Ain’t that a fine reputation for him to be giving the Bar Double G? I’ll curl his hair for him onct I meet up with him again.”

      “If you would put out the light, I think I could sleep, dad,” she told him in the least of voices.

      “Sure, honey. Has the throbbing gone out of the ankle?” he asked anxiously.

      “Not entirely, but it’s a good deal better. Good-night, dad.”

      “If Doc comes I’ll bring him in,” Lee said after he had kissed her.

      “Do, please.” 48

      But after she was left alone Melissy did not prepare herself for sleep. Her wide open eyes stared into the darkness, while her mind stormily reviewed the day. The man who for years had been her best friend was a scoundrel. She had proved him unworthy of her trust, and on top of that he had insulted her. Hot tears stung her eyes—tears of shame, of wounded self-love, of mortification, and of something more worthy than any of these.

      She grieved passionately for that which had gone out of her life, for the comradeship that had been so precious to her. If this man were a waddy, who of all her friends could she trust? She could have forgiven him had he done wrong in the heat of anger. But this premeditated evil was beyond forgiveness. To make it worse, he had come direct from the doing of it to meet her, with a brazen smile on his lips and a lie in his heart. She would never speak to him again—never so long as she lived.

       49

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

THE MAN WITH THE CHIHUAHUA HAT

       Table of Contents

      A little dust cloud was traveling up the trail toward the Bar Double G, the center of which presently defined itself as a rider moving at a road gait. He wore a Chihuahua hat and with it the picturesque trappings the Southwest borrows on occasion from across the border. Vanity disclosed itself in the gold-laced hat, in the silver conchos of the fringed chaps, in the fine workmanship of the saddle and bit. The man’s finery was overdone, carried with it the suggestion of being on exhibition. But one look at the man himself, sleek and graceful, black-haired and white-toothed, exuding an effect of cold wariness in spite of the masked smiling face, would have been enough to give the lie to any charge of weakness. His fopperies could not conceal the silken strength of him. One meeting with the chill, deep-set eyes was certificate enough for most people.

      Melissy, sitting on the porch with her foot resting on a second chair, knew a slight quickening of the blood as she watched him approach.

      “Good evenin’, Miss M’lissy,” he cried, sweeping his sombrero as low as the stirrup. 50

      “Buenos tardes, Señor Norris,” she flung back gayly.

      Sitting at ease in the saddle, he leisurely looked her over with eyes that smoldered behind half-shuttered lids. To most of her world she was in spirit still more boy than woman, but before his bold, possessive gaze her long lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the warm blood was beating. Her long, free lines were still slender with the immaturity of youth, her soul still hesitating reluctantly to cross the border to womanhood toward which Nature was pushing her so relentlessly. From a fund of experience Philip Norris read her shrewdly, knew how to evoke the latent impulses which brought her eagerly to the sex duel.

      “Playing off for sick,” he scoffed.

      “I’m not,” she protested. “Never get sick. It’s just a sprained ankle.”

      “Sho! I guess you’re Miss Make Believe; just harrowing the feelings of your beaux.”

      “The way you talk! I haven’t got any beaux. The boys are just my friends.”

      “Oh, just friends! And no beaux. My, my! Not a single sweetheart in all this wide open country. Shall I go rope you one and bring him in, compadre?”

      “No!” she exploded. “I don’t want any. I’m not old enough yet.” Her dancing eyes belied the words.

      “Now I wouldn’t have guessed it. You look to 51 me most ready to be picked.” He rested his weight on the farther stirrup and let his lazy smile mock her. “My estimate would be sixteen. I’ll bet you’re every day of that.”

      “I only lack three months of being eighteen,” she came back indignantly.

      “You don’t say! You’ll ce’tainly have to be advertising for a husband soon, Miss Three-Quarters-Past-Seventeen. Maybe an ad in the Mesa paper would help. You ain’t so awful bad looking.”

      “I’ll let you write it. What would you say?” she demanded, a patch of pink standing out near the curve of the cheek bone.

      He swung from the saddle and flung the reins to the ground. With jingling spurs he came up the steps and sat on the top one, his back against a pillar. Boldly his admiring eyes swept her.

      “Nina, I couldn’t do the subject justice. Honest, I haven’t got the vocabulary.”

      “Oh, you!” Laughter was in the eyes that studied him with a side tilt of the chin. “That’s a fine way to get out of it when your bluff is called.”

      He leaned back against the