Part 11 (2/2)
”How long since you've seen him?”
”Oh, quite a while. Since I was three years old.”
”And how long ago was that?”
”You got me. I heard about him. He's a preacher. My, oh my, but _she_'ll like him. He's smart, like she is.”
His manner was high elation and he spoke breathlessly, and while they trotted on he chattered in his high voice, eulogizing the virtues of this brother he had not seen since infancy, regaling the other with long and vague tales of his accomplishments. Pressed for details he could not offer them because his knowledge of the relative had come to him verbally through the devious channels of the cattle country, but this did not shake his conviction that the Reverend Beal was peerless.
Tom's mind was not on the extravagant talk of Two-Bits. Curiously, it persisted in thinking of Jane Hunter.
Two days before he had thought this girl from the east was a rattle-brained piece of inconsequence with her selection of a foreman by the drawing of straws. Now he was not so sure that she did not possess at least several admirable qualities. He had offended her, gently bullied her, only last evening; he had sensed the waning of her own feeling of superiority, had understood that, behind her pique, she took to heart the things he had said, things which he had said not because he thought she should know them but because he wanted to see how she would react to blunt truths.
She wanted something very badly. Not money; that had been a means.
Perhaps it was that vague thing, Herself, of which he had spoken. He did not understand, but he liked her determination.... And what was this other stranger, this man, to her?
He put his horse into a lope with a queer misgiving. He was taking this woman seriously! He was saying slighting things about her and yet hoping that other men would speak about her highly! He had never taken many things--particularly women--seriously before and his experience with women had not been meager. It frightened him....
They dismounted before the saloon which adjoined the hotel, eased their cinches and approached the doorway.
In the shadow of the next building two men were talking and Beck eyed the figures closely. One, he knew, was Hepburn, and the other, from the intonation of his cautiously lowered voice, he took to be Pat Webb, the rancher of whom he had spoken to Jane Hunter, telling her that his presence in the country was not an a.s.set for her.
He went inside, rather absorbed. Sam McKee was there, one of Webb's riders, the one on whom Beck had inflicted terrible punishment for cruelty to a horse. McKee looked away, a nasty light playing across his gray eyes, but Beck did not even give him a glance. What was Hepburn doing in close talk with Webb? he asked himself. For years Webb had been under suspicion as a thief and a friend of the lawless. Colonel Hunter had never trusted him, and now the foreman of the HC was talking with him, secretly....
A moment later Hepburn entered and lounged up to the bar and shortly afterwards Webb came in. He was a small man with sharp features and bright, b.u.t.ton-like eyes which roved restlessly. His skin was mottled, his lips hard and cruel; his body seemed to be all nerves for he was in constant motion.
Webb ordered a drink and glanced about, eyeing Beck and Two-Bits with a suggestive smile. He drank with a swagger and wiped his lips with a sharp smack, still smiling as though some unpleasant thought amused him.
A man at the far end of the bar moved closer to Hepburn.
”How's the new boss?” he said with a grin, and Hepburn said, in his benevolent manner, that he believed she would do very well.
Others, interested, came closer and more questions followed. Then Webb broke in:
”I shouldn't think that you HC waddies 'uld be in town nights any more,”--his glittering eyes on them rather jubilantly.
The talk stopped, for Webb, unsavory as to reputation, was still a figure in the country and his manner as he spoke was laden with significance.
”How's that, Webb?” Hepburn asked.
”How's that!” the other mocked. ”I've seen her, ain't that enough?
There's only two reasons why men want to come to this hole nights; one's booze, an' th' other's women. You can carry your booze out home an'--”
He went on with his blackguard inference and when he had ended a laugh went up, a ribald, obscene, barroom laugh. It had reached its height when Tom Beck, whose eyes had been on Hepburn as Webb gave voice to his insult, elbowed the foreman from his way and faced the one who had occasioned that laugh.
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