The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

Ballard stubbornness in me, you know. That was my professed reason. But one day I ran across Jimmy Train, and he showed me a letter you had written him. So I came to plead."

      "Kit!"

      "Oh, I have no modesty left. My suitors are all married—I grow old and lonely."

      The colored cook stepped inside the place and cast one comprehensive glance at the pair, vanishing with a twist of his body. "Boss sho' looks 'sif he got a mizry," he murmured. Quagmire, loitering by the corral motioned him to stay away from the house; Old Mose's white teeth flashed.

      Gillette's fingers were laced together; he sat forward in his chair, studying the floor, and the girl noted how his hair curled back from the temples as well as the dogged and resolute set of his lips. And for the first time in her life she lost faith in her ability to command men. No hint of that doubt, however, crept into her half-bantering words. She was relaxed, her head thrown back, looking across the interval with a slanting gaze—such a look as he had once said distinguished her from all other women. How was it he did not notice it now? And, fearing his silence, she broke through it "I would give more than a penny for your thoughts, Tommy."

      "It's good to see you again, Kit. But, my dear, you must not drag any more string across the floor for me to grasp at."

      "Meaning—I have played with you?"

      The answer was so sudden, so vehement that it startled her, "Can you doubt it—can you consider it anything else?"

      "We all make mistakes, Tommy. Perhaps I—"

      "No, don't say it that way, Kit. You are fencing again. Listen, my dear, I have thought of you all along the trail. Every day, every night. Never a sunset or a sunrise but what your picture wasn't somewhere in it. Once there was a stampede, a man was killed, and even when I saw the boys throwing mud over him, I thought of you. Do you see? Lord, I couldn't help myself. I wanted you. Up until the moment I stepped inside this cabin I wanted you."

      "But, Tommy, here I am."

      He broke through with a swift move of his hand, and to her that was another mark of the change in him. Once he would have been quieted at her least whisper; and now he commanded her not to interrupt.

      "Let me finish. What have I said? That I wanted you until the very moment I saw you sitting there. But, Kit, you come just as I've finished the battle. You bring all that—that damnable misery with you. Misery! Well, you must not torture me any more. I've put myself beyond it. I've licked the wounds dry. They're still in here, understand, my dear. But they're dry. And I won't have 'em opened again."

      Her smile was brilliant, a little as if the light of her eyes passed through a film. "You are blunt, Tommy!"

      "I've gone back to the blanket," he muttered, lowering his head once more.

      "What does that mean?"

      "It means when an Indian has gotten his white man education he goes back to the reservation, throws away all his civilized clothes, and takes up the old ways."

      "You are no Indian, Tommy."

      "No? They called me the barbarian once. It still sticks. I'm in my own land. I've thrown away every blessed thing the East gave me. Chucked it overboard. The old gods are mine. And, by the Lord, Kit, I'm beginning to live once more."

      "Have you chucked away everything, Tommy?" she asked quite softly. "Everything?"

      He looked up to her; his eyes betrayed the uncertainty in him, and the girl, at this unconscious revelation, let her whole body go limp; laughter tinkled in her throat. She bent forward, hands making little motions in her lap, and the laughter died. "Tommy, supposing I haven't come to torture you? Supposing..."

      "You gave me my answer once," said he stubbornly. "You've had your sport."

      "Oh, why did you have to be so deadly serious about it all the while? My dear, did you think to pursue and win in a day? Don't you suppose a woman has to be shown—to be convinced?"

      "And to be amused," he added. "Remember, Kit, I'm not open to torture any longer."

      But she was wise with Eve's wisdom; she had seen him falter. So she turned the conversation in her own inimitable way. "Tom, I heard about your father. Did they ever catch the man?"

      "Not yet."

      "But they will," she reassured him. "The law will get him." There was something so grimly sardonic on his face that she asked, "What is it?"

      "The law out here expects a man to take care of his own troubles. I shall get him—I shall kill him."

      "Why, Tom, isn't that—isn't it murder?"

      "I told you I had gone back to the old gods, didn't I?"

      She bit into her lip; a tinge of colour stood against the soft whiteness of her flesh. "I thought it was only woman's privilege to be unfathomable, Tommy. I'm sorry I mentioned it."

      The colored cook's shadow fell athwart the door again, and Tom nodded at him. Presently the grub pans and the dishes were on the table. One by one the men of the outfit came dismally, sheepishly in. Tom put Christine at the head of the table and amid a dead silence introduced her.

      "Boys, this is Christine Ballard of New York. She has come on a visit. Now, behave yourselves. I have already pointed out to her which of you are the lady killers. So beware."

      The charge was so manifestly outrageous that the agitation only increased; not a man raised his eyes from the dead centre of his plate. Lispenard came in and took his seat. Tom, quite cheerful, began to relate the salient points of the more outstanding members. "That's Quagmire. Yes, the one with the extremely guilty look. Oh, they all look guilty, but he seems to look guiltier than the rest. He has a wife in each state and territory between here and Texas, Montana excepted. The reason he has no wife in Montana is because he has never been to Montana. Whitey Almo, the one with the bad sunburn—or is that sunburn, Whitey?—collects interiors. Jail interiors. I have never known Whitey to pass a new jail without entering to see the wall decorations. Usually he doesn't pay much attention to these walls until the next morning, when his eyes begin to function again. Why did they cease to function, did you ask? Well, it has been rumoured that Whitey drinks water with his whisky. I'd shoot him like a dog if I thought it were the truth."

      There was the sound of somebody strangling in his coffee. Thirteen heads bent nearer the table; a knife dropped, and thirteen bodies started. Tom grinned affectionately. "I have probably the most completely assorted bunch of liars and scoundrels ever gathered under one roof. Quite possibly I shall be neatly shot in the back before break of day. Slim, it you stoop any lower you'll dye your moustache in that coffee cup. Oh, don't mention it. You're quite obliged."

      The proximity of a woman utterly ruined the meal; Tom Gillette's frank lies and pointing finger served to reduce them to a state from which air and solitude only could effect a recovery. The first to finish eating slunk out of the cabin with the countenance of one who hoped he wasn't watched but was sure the spotlight played upon him. Thus they departed; and presently from the corral came a high skirling of words from a man whose soul was in labour. Lispenard, who had been wrapped in his own thoughts throughout the affair, quietly left.

      Tom grinned. "It has taken me a long time to get even."

      "But what have they done to you?"

      "Nothing," he answered, rolling a cigarette. "No finer outfit ever rode. I love 'em like brothers. That's why I'm abusing 'em."

      The old cook slipped away with his pans; the lamplight strayed against the girl's soft face, accenting her utter femininity; she sat quite still, hands folded and seemingly placid. Yet beneath the surface a hundred cross-currents of thought ran free. The puzzle of this familiar yet so startling unfamiliar man was being attacked from a dozen different angles. She loved a conventional world, as all women do; even so, she could on occasion be both reckless and daring. Daring enough to tell Tom she had come west to plead her case—and then to hide the stark truth of it beneath those quick and subtle changes of spirit that were so much a part of her. It didn't matter what had changed her mind regarding him. She wasn't sure