LITMIR.BIZ

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could not have guessed the antagonism that ran between them, enduring as life.

      Leroy gave the signal for breaking up by looking at his watch. “Afraid I must say 'Lights out.' It's past eleven. We'll have to be up and on our way with the hooters. Sleep well, Miss Mackenzie. You don't need to worry about waking. I'll have you called in good time. Buenos noches.”

      He held the door for her as she passed out; and, in passing, her eyes rose to meet his.

      “—Buenos noches, senor;—I'm sure I shall sleep well to-night,” she said.

      It had been the day of Alice Mackenzie' life. Emotions and sensations, surging through her, had trodden on each other's heels. Woman-like, she welcomed the darkness to analyze and classify the turbid chaos of her mind. She had been swept into sympathy with an outlaw, to give him no worse name. She had felt herself nearer to him than to some honest men she could name who had offered her their love.

      Surely, that had been bad enough, but worse was to follow. This discerning scamp had torn aside her veils of maiden reserve and exposed the secret fancy of her heart, unknown before even to herself. She had confessed love for this big-hearted sheriff and frontiersman. Here she could plead an ulterior motive. To save his life any deception was permissible. Yes, but where lay the truth? With that insistent demand of the outlaw had rushed over her a sudden wave of joy. What could it mean unless it meant what she would not admit that it could mean? Why, the man was impossible. He was not of her class. She had scarce seen him a half-dozen times. Her first meeting with him had been only a month ago. One month ago—

      A remembrance flashed through her that brought her from the bed in a barefoot search for matches. When the candle was relit he slipped a chamoisskin pouch from her neck and from it took a sealed envelope. It was the note in which the sheriff on the night of the train robbery had written his prediction of how the matter would come out. She was to open the envelope in a month, and the month was up to-night.

      As she tore open the flap it came to her with one of her little flashing smiles that she could never have guessed under what circumstances she would read it. By the dim flame of a guttering candle, in a cotton nightgown borrowed from a Mexican menial, a prisoner of the very man who had robbed her and the recipient of a practical confession of love from him not three hours earlier! Surely here was a situation to beggar romance. But before she had finished reading the reality was still more unbelievable.

      I have just met for the first time the woman I am going to marry if God is good to one. I am writing this because I want her to know it as soon as I decently can. Of course, I am not worthy of her, but then I don't know any man that is.

      So the fact goes—I'm bound to marry her if there's nobody else in the way. This isn't conceit. It is a deep-seated certainty I can't get away from, and don't want to. When she reads this, she will think it a piece of foolish presumption. My hope is she will not always think so. Her Lover,

      VAL COLLINS.

      Her swift-pulsing heart was behaving very queerly. It seemed to hang delightfully still, and then jump forward with odd little beats of joy. She caught a glimpse of her happy face, and blew out the light for shame, groping her way back to bed with the letter carefully guarded against crumpling by her hand.

      Foolish presumption indeed. Why, he had only seen her once, and he said he would marry her with never a by-your-leave! Wasn't that what he had said? She had to strike another match to learn the lines that had not stuck word for word in her mind, and after that another match to get a picture of the scrawl to visualize in the dark.

      How dared he take her for granted? But what a masterly way of wooing for the right man! What idiotic folly if he had been the wrong one! Was he, then, the right one? She questioned herself closely, but came to no more definite answer than this—that her heart went glad with a sweet joy to know he wanted to marry her.

      She resolved to put him from her mind, and in this resolve she fell at last into smiling sleep.

      Chapter 19.

       A Villon of the Desert

       Table of Contents

      When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.

      The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.

      Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle, wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. “What's the matter, Reilly?”

      “Was I saying anything was the matter?”

      “You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say it instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks—like letting down the corral-bars?”

      Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then descended with truculent defiance from the fence.

      “Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I think; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve—”

      His master encouraged him with ironic derision. “That's right, Reilly. Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game.”

      “By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr.”

      “Yes?” Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently on the malcontent. “Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off.”

      “That's the point.” The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his comrade's support. “Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy your game, cap.”

      “Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?” scoffed his chief, eying him scornfully.

      “No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like the way things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean, anyhow?” His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting for Leroy to join him. “Two days ago this world wasn't big enough to hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night—champagne corks popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's this Miss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it ambling our way. It looks darned funny.”

      “That's the ticket, York,” derided Leroy. “Come again. Turn your wolf loose.”

      “Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think.”

      “I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's a field fox you there.”

      “I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy.”

      “That's whatever,” chipped in Reilly.

      “Put a name to it.”

      “Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in.”

      “Think you're getting the double-cross?” asked Leroy pleasantly, his vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.

      “Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There he sits”—with another thumbjerk at Collins—“and I'm a Chink if he ain't carryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and one here the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what I do say is—how about it?”

      Leroy did some thinking out loud. “Of course I might tell you boys to go to the devil.

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