Part 17 (1/2)
”You'll do all this and then give him to me when he's gentled and broken--if that can be done? Then why do you want him?”
”I want to show him that he's got a master. He's played with me and plumb fooled me all these weeks. I want to get on him and show him he's beat.” His fierce joy in the thought was contagious. ”I want to make him turn when I pull on the reins. I'll have him start when I want to start and stop when I want to stop. I'll make him glad when I talk soft to him and shake when I talk hard. He's made a fool of me; I'll make a fool and a show of him. Lady, will you say yes?”
He had swept her off her feet and with a mind full of a riot of imaginings--the frantic stallion, the clinging rider, the struggle for superiority--she breathed: ”Yes, yes! A thousand times yes--and good luck, Mr. Perris.”
He tossed his arms above his head and cried out joyously.
”Lady, it's more'n ten years of life to me!”
”But wait!” she said, suddenly aware of Hervey, lingering in the background. ”I haven't the power to let you stay. It's Mr. Hervey who has authority while my father is away.”
The lips of Red Jim twitched to a sneering malevolence mingled with gloom.
”It's up to him?” he echoed. ”Then I might of spared myself all of this talk.”
It would all be over in a moment. The foreman would utter the refusal.
Red Perris would be in his saddle and bound towards the mountains.
And that thought gave Marianne sudden insight into the fact that the Valley of the Eagles would be a drear, lonely place without Red Jim.
”You don't know Mr. Hervey,” she broke in before the foreman could speak for himself. ”He'll bear no malice to you. He's forgotten that squabble over--”
”Sure I have,” said Lew Hervey. ”I've forgotten all about it.
But the way I figure, Miss Jordan, is that Perris is like a chunk of dynamite on the ranch. Any day one of the boys may run into him and there'll be a killing. They're red-hot against him. They might start for him in a gang one of these days, for all I know. For his own sake, Perris had better leave the Valley.”
He had advanced his argument cunningly enough and by the way Marianne's eyes grew large and her color changed, he knew that he had made his point.
”Would they do that?” she gasped. ”Have we such men?”
”I dunno,” said Lew. ”He sure rode 'em hard that morning.”
”Then go,” cried Marianne, turning eagerly to Red Jim. ”For heaven's sake, go at once! Forget Alcatraz--forget the mares--but start at once, Mr. Perris!”
Even a blind man might have guessed many things from the tremor of her voice. Lew Hervey saw enough to make his eyes contract to the brightness of a ferret's as he glanced from the girl to handsome Jim Perris. But the red-headed adventurer was quite blind, quite deaf.
No matter how the thing had been done, he knew that the girl and the foreman were now both combined to drive him from the ranch, from Alcatraz. For a moment of blind anger he wanted to crush, kill, destroy. Then he turned on his heel and strode towards the arch which led into the patio.
”Mind you!” called Lew Hervey in warning. ”It's on your own head, Perris. If you don't leave, I'll throw you off!”
Red Jim flashed about under the shade of the arch.
”Come get me, and be d.a.m.ned,” he said.
And then he was gone. The cowpunchers, furious at this open defiance of them all, boiled out into the patio, growling.
”You see?” said Hervey to the girl. ”He won't be satisfied till there's a killing!”
”Keep them back!” she pleaded. ”Don't let them go, Mr. Hervey. Don't let them follow him!”
One sharp, short order from Hervey stopped the foremost as they ran for the entrance. In fact, not one of them was peculiarly keen to follow such a trail as this in the darkness. Breathless silence fell over the patio, and then they heard the departing beat of the hoofs of Red's horse. And the shock of every footfall struck home in the heart of Marianne and filled her with a great loneliness and terror. And then the noise of the gallop died away in the far-off night.