Part 30 (2/2)
There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. ”'There's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are,'” she quoted.
”Not if I love you and you love me. By G.o.d, I trample down everything that comes between us.”
He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young, lissom body held her own.
”Must we go through that again?” she asked gently.
”Again and again until you see reason.”
She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.
”There is something else I haven't told you.” The embarra.s.sed lashes lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look.
”I don't think--that I--care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at my--fickleness. But I don't--not with the full of my heart.”
His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed.
”Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you.”
Sheba nodded her dusky little head in nave candor. ”I think there will be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know.”
”I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as a guidepost to what I mean to do.”
”I know,” the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race.
”I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You have given work to thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made.”
”Then I'll make a new code for you,” he said, smiling. ”Just do as I say and everything will come out right.”
Faintly her smile met his. ”My grandmother might have agreed to that.
But we live in a new world for women. They have to make their own decisions. I suppose that is a part of the penalty we pay for freedom.”
Diane came into the room and Macdonald turned to her.
”I have just been telling Sheba that I am going to marry her--that there is no escape for her. She had better get used to the idea that I intend to make her happy.”
The older cousin glanced at Sheba and laughed with a touch of embarra.s.sment. ”Whether she wants to be happy or not, O Cave Man?”
”I'm going to make her want to.”
Sheba fled, but from the door she flung back her challenge. ”I don't think so.”
CHAPTER XX
GORDON FINDS HIMSELF UNPOPULAR
Macdonald kept his word to Sheba. He used his influence to get Elliot released, and with a touch of cynicism quite characteristic went on the bond of his rival. An information was filed against the field agent of the Land Department for highway robbery and attempted murder, but Gordon went about his business just as if he were not under a cloud.
None the less, he walked the streets a marked man. Women and children looked at him curiously and whispered as he pa.s.sed. The sullen, hostile eyes of miners measured him silently. He was aware that feeling had focused against him with surprising intensity of resentment, and he suspected that the whispers of Wally Selfridge were largely responsible for this.
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