Max Brand (16 page)

Shakra was his to ride over the mountains. And why stop there? There was
no mark on her, and his brand would make her his. She would be safe in
an Eastern racing stable before they even dreamed of pursuit. And when
her victories on the track had built his fortune he could return her,
and raise a breed of peerless horses. A theft? Yes, but so was the
stealing of the fire from heaven for the use of mankind.

He would have been glad to leave the Garden of Eden at once, but that
was not in David's scheme of things. To him a departure into the world
beyond the mountains was as a voyage into an uncharted sea. His dignity
kept him from asking questions, but it was obvious that he was painfully
anxious to learn the necessity of Connor's going.

That night in the patio he held forth at length of the things they would
do together when the gambler returned. "The Garden is a book," he
explained. "And I must teach you to turn the pages and read in them."

There was little sleep for Connor that night. He lay awake, turning over
the possibilities of a last minute failure, and when he finally dropped
into a deep, aching slumber it was to be awakened almost at once by the
voice of David calling in the patio. He wakened and found it was the
pink of the dawn.

"Shakra waits at the gate of the patio. Start early, Benjamin, and
thereby you will return soon."

It brought Connor to his feet with a leap. As if he required urging!
Through the hasty breakfast he could not retain his joyous laughter
until he saw David growing thoughtful. But that breakfast was over, and
David's kind solicitations, at length. Shakra was brought to him; his
feet were settled into the stirrups, and the dream changed to a sense of
the glorious reality. She was his—Shakra!

"A journey of happiness for your sake and a speed for mine, Benjamin."

Connor looked down for the last time into the face of the master of the
Garden, half wild and half calm—the face of a savage with the mind of a
man behind it. "If he should take my trail!" he thought with horror.

"Good-by!" he called aloud, and in a burst of joy and sudden
compunction, "God bless you, David!"

"He has blessed me already, for He has given to me a friend."

A touch of the rope—for no Eden Gray would endure a bit—whirled Shakra
and sent her down the terraces like the wind. The avenue of the
eucalyptus trees poured behind them, and out of this, with astonishing
suddenness, they reached the gate.

The fire already burned, for the night was hardly past, and Joseph
squatted with the thin smoke blowing across his face unheeded. He was
grinning with savage hatred and muttering.

Connor knew what profound curse was being called down upon his head, but
he had only a careless glance for Joseph. His eye up yonder where the
full morning shone on the mountains, his mind was out in the world, at
the race track, seeing in prospect beautiful Shakra fleeing away from
the finest of the thoroughbreds. And he saw the face of Ruth, as her
eyes would light at the sight of Shakra. He could have burst into song.

Connor looking forward, high-headed, threw up his arm with a low shout,
and Shakra burst into full gallop down the ravine.

When Ruth Manning read the note through for the first time she raised
her glance to the bearer. The boy was so sun-blackened that the paler
skin of the eyelids made his eyes seem supremely large. He was now
poised accurately on one foot, rubbing his calloused heel up and down
his shin, while he drank in the particulars of the telegraph office. He
could hardly be a party to a deception. She looked over the note again,
and read:

DEAR MISS MANNING:

I am a couple of miles out of Lukin, in a place to which the
bearer of this note will bring you. I am sure you will come,
for I am in trouble, out of which you can very easily help me.
It is a matter which I cannot confide to any other person in
Lukin. I am impatiently expecting you.

BEN CONNOR.

She crumpled the note in her hand thoughtfully, but, on the verge of
dropping it in the waste basket, she smoothed it again, and for the
third time went over the contents. Then she rose abruptly and confided
her place to the lad who idled at the counter.

"The wire's dead," she told him. "Besides, I'll be back in an hour or
so."

And she rode off a moment later with the boy. He had a blanket-pad
without stirrups, and he kept prodding the sliding elbows of the horse
with his bare toes while he chattered at Ruth, for the drum of the
sounder had fascinated him and he wanted it explained. She listened to
him with a smile of inattention, for she was thinking busily of Connor.
Those thoughts made her look down to the dust that puffed up from the
feet of the horses and became a light mist behind them; then, raising
her head, she saw the blue ravines of the farther mountains and the sun
haze about the crests. Connor had always been to her as the ship is to a
traveler; the glamour of strange places was about him.

Presently they left the trail, and passing about a hillside, came to an
old shack whose unpainted wood had blackened with time.

"There he is," said the boy, and waving his hand to her, turned his pony
on the back trail at a gallop.

Connor called to her from the shack and came to meet her, but she had
dismounted before he could reach the stirrup. He kept her hand in his
for a moment as he greeted her. It surprised him to find how glad he was
to see her. He told her so frankly.

"After the mountains and all that," he said cheerfully, "it's like
meeting an old chum again to see you. How have things been going?"

This direct friendliness in a young man was something new to the girl.
The youths who came in to the dances at Lukin were an embarrassed lot
who kept a sulky distance, as though they made it a matter of pride to
show they were able to resist the attraction of a pretty girl. But if
she gave them the least encouragement, the merest shadow of a friendly
smile, they were at once all eagerness. They would flock around her,
sending savage glances to one another, and simpering foolishly at her.
They had stock conversation of politeness; they forced out prodigious
compliments to an accompaniment of much writhing. Social conversation
was a torture to them, and the girl knew it.

Not that she despised them. She understood perfectly well that most of
them were fine fellows and strong men. But their talents had been
cultivated in roping two-year-olds and bulldogging yearlings. They could
encounter the rush of a mad bull far more easily than they could
withstand a verbal quip. With the familiarity of years, she knew, they
lost both their sullenness and their starched politeness. They became
kindly, gentle men with infinite patience, infinite devotion to their
"womenfolk." Homelier girls in Lukin had an easier time with them. But
in the presence of Ruth Manning, who was a more or less celebrated
beauty, they were a hopeless lot. In short, she had all her life been in
an amphibious position, of the mountain desert and yet not of the
mountain desert. On the one hand she despised the "slick dudes" who now
and again drifted into Lukin with marvelous neckties and curiously
patterned clothes; on the other hand, something in her revolted at the
thought of becoming one of the "womenfolk."

As a matter of fact, there are two things which every young girl should
have. The first is the presence of a mother, which is the oldest of
truisms; the second is the friendship of at least one man of nearly her
own age. Ruth had neither. That is the crying hurt of Western life. The
men are too busy to bother with women until the need for a wife and a
home and children, and all the physical destiny of a man, overwhelms
them. When they reach this point there is no selection. The first girl
they meet they make love to.

And most of this Ruth understood. She wanted to make some of those
lumbering, fearless, strong-handed, gentle-souled men her friends. But
she dared not make the approaches. The first kind word or the first
winning smile brought forth a volley of tremendous compliments, close on
the heels of which followed the heavy artillery of a proposal of
marriage. No wonder that she was rejoiced beyond words to meet this
frank friendliness in Ben Connor. And what a joy to be able to speak
back freely, without putting a guard over eyes and voice!

"Things have gone on just the same—but I've missed you a lot!"

"That's good to hear."

"You see," she explained, "I've been living in Lukin with just half a
mind—the rest of it has been living off the wire. And you're about the
only interesting thing that's come to me except in the Morse."

And what a happiness to see that there was no stiffening of his glance
as he tried to read some profound meaning into her words! He accepted
them as they were, with a good-natured laughter that warmed her heart.

"Sit down over here," he went on, spreading a blanket over a chairlike
arrangement of two boulders. "You look tired out."

She accepted with a smile, and letting her head go back against the
upper edge of the blanket she closed her eyes for a moment and permitted
her mind to drift into utter relaxation.

"I
am
tired," she whispered. It was inexpressibly pleasant to lie
there with the sense of being guarded by this man. "They never guess how
tired I get—never—never! I feel—I feel—as if I were living under the
whip all the time."

"Steady up, partner." He had picked up that word in the mountains, and
he liked it. "Steady, partner. Everybody has to let himself go. You tell
me what's wrong. I may not be able to fix anything, but it always helps
to let off steam."

She heard him sit down beside her, and for an instant, though her eyes
were still closed, she stiffened a little, fearful that he would touch
her hand, attempt a caress. Any other man in Lukin would have become
familiar long ago. But Connor did not attempt to approach her.

"Turn and turn about," he was saying smoothly. "When I went into your
telegraph office the other night my nerves were in a knot. Tell you
straight I never knew I
had
real nerves before. I went in ready to
curse like a drunk. When I saw you, it straightened me out. By the Lord,
it was like a cool wind in my face. You were so steady, Ruth; straight
eyes; and it ironed out the wrinkles to hear your voice. I blurted out a
lot of stuff. But when I remembered it later on I wasn't ashamed. I knew
you'd understand. Besides, I knew that what I'd said would stop with
you. Just about one girl in a million who can keep her mouth shut—and
each one of 'em is worth her weight in gold. You did me several thousand
dollars' worth of good that night. That's honest!"

She allowed her eyes to open, slowly, and looked at him with a misty
content. The mountains had already done him good. The sharp sun had
flushed him a little and tinted his cheeks and strong chin with tan. He
looked more manly, somehow, and stronger in himself. Of course he had
flattered her, but the feeling that she had actually helped him so much
by merely listening on that other night wakened in her a new
self-reverence. She was too prone to look on life as a career of manlike
endeavor; it was pleasant to know that a woman could accomplish
something even more important by simply sitting still and listening. He
was watching her gravely now, even though she permitted herself the
luxury of smiling at him.

All at once she cried softly: "Thank Heaven that you're not a fool, Ben
Connor!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I don't think I can tell you." She added hastily: "I'm not trying to be
mysterious."

He waved the need of an apology away.

"Tell you what. Never knew a girl yet that was worth her salt who could
be understood all the time, or who even understood herself."

She closed her eyes again to ponder this, lazily. She could not arrive
at a conclusion, but she did not care. Missing links in this
conversation were not vitally important.

"Take it easy, Ruth; we'll talk later on," he said after a time.

She did not look at him as she answered: "Tell me why?"

There was a sort of childlike confiding in all this that troubled Ben
Connor. He had seen her with a mind as direct and an enthusiasm as
strong as that of a man. This relaxing and softening alarmed him,
because it showed him another side of her, a new and vital side. She was
very lovely with the shadows of the sombrero brim cutting across the
softness of her lips and setting aglow the clear olive tan of her chin
and throat. Her hand lay palm upward beside her, very small, very
delicate in the making. But what a power was in that hand! He realized
with a thrill of not unmixed pleasure that if the girl set herself to
the task she could mold him like wax with the gestures of that hand. If
into the softness of her voice she allowed a single note of warmth to
creep, what would happen in Ben Connor? He felt within himself a chord
ready to vibrate in answer.

Now he caught himself leaning a little closer to study the purple stain
of weariness in her eyelids. Even exhaustion was attractive in her. It
showed something new, and newly appealing. Weariness gave merely a new
edge to her beauty. What if her eyes, opening slowly now, were to look
upon him not with the gentleness of friendship, but with something
more—the little shade of difference in a girl's wide eyes that admits a
man to her secrets—and traps him in so doing.

Ben Connor drew himself up with a shake of the shoulders. He felt that
he must keep careful guard from now on. What a power she was. What a
power! If she set herself to the task who could deal with her? What man
could keep from her? Then the picture of David jumped into his mind out
of nothingness. And on the heels of that picture the inspiration came
with a sudden uplifting of the heart, surety, intoxicating insight. He
wanted to jump to his feet and shout until the great ravine beneath them
echoed. With an effort he remained quiet. But he was thinking
rapidly—rapidly. He had intended to use her merely to arrange for
shipping Shakra away from Lukin Junction. For he dared not linger about
the town where expert horse thieves might see the mare. But now
something new, something more came to him. The girl was a power? Why not
use her?