Part 14 (1/2)

”I won't try, Mother.”

”Go to her, then, and fill her with the hope you've given me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

From a thick clump of trees Pan had watched Lucy, spied upon her with only love, tenderness, pity in his heart. But he did not know her. It seemed incredible that he could confess to himself he loved her. Had the love he had cherished for a child suddenly, as if by magic, leaped into love for a woman? What then was this storm within him, this outward bodily trembling from the tumult within?

Lucy stood like a statue, gazing into nothingness. Then she paced to and fro, her hands clenched on her breast. This was a secluded nook, where a bench had been built between two low-branching trees, on the bank of the stream. Pan stealthily slipped closer, so he could get clearer sight of her face. Was her love for him the cause of her emotion?

Presently he halted, at a point close to one end of her walk, and crouched down. It did not occur to him that he was trespa.s.sing upon her privacy. She was a stranger whom he loved because she was Lucy Blake, grown from child to woman. He was concerned with finding himself, so that when he faced her again he would know what to do, to say.

Pan had not encountered a great many girls in the years he had ridden the ranges. But he had seen enough to recognize beauty when it was thrust upon him. And Lucy had that. As she paced away from him the small gold head, the heavy braid of hair, the fine build of her, not robust, yet strong and full, answered then and there the wondering query of his admiration. Then she turned to pace back. This would be an ordeal for him. She was in trouble, and he could not hide there much longer. Yet he wanted to watch her, to grasp from this agitation fuel for his kindling pa.s.sion. She had been weeping, yet her face was white. Indeed she did look older than her seventeen years. Closer she came. Then Pan's gaze got as far as her eyes and fixed there.

Unmasked now, true to the strife of her soul, they betrayed to Pan the thing he yearned so to know. Not only her love but her revolt!

That was enough for him. In a few seconds his feelings underwent a tremendous gamut of change, at last to set with the certainty of a man's love for his one woman. This conviction seemed consciously backed by the stern fact of his cool reckless spirit. He was what the cowboys' range of that period had made him. Perhaps only such a man could cope with the lawless circ.u.mstances in which Lucy had become enmeshed. By the time she had paced her beat again and was once more approaching his covert, he knew what the situation would demand and how he would meet it. But he would listen to Lucy, to his mother, to his father, in the hope that they might extricate her from her dilemma. He believed, however, that only extreme measures would ever free her and her father. Pan knew men of the Hardman and Matthews stripe.

He stepped out to confront Lucy, smiling and cool.

”Howdy, Lucy,” he drawled, with the cowboy sang-froid she must know well.

”Oh!” she cried, startled, and drawing back. Then she recovered. But there was a single instant when Pan saw her unguarded self expressed in her face.

”I was hiding behind there,” he said, indicating the trees and bushes.

”What for?”

”I wanted to _see_ you really, without you knowing.”

”Well?” she queried, gravely.

”As I remember little Lucy Blake she never had any promise of growing so--so lovely as you are now.”

”Pan, don't tease--don't flatter me now,” she implored.

”Reckon I was just stating a fact. Let's sit down on the seat there, and get acquainted.”

He put her in the corner of the bench so she would have to face him, and he began to talk as if there were no black trouble between them.

He wanted her to know the story of his life from the time she had seen him last; and he had two reasons for this, first to bridge that gap in their acquaintance, and secondly to let her know what the range had made him. It took him two hours in the telling, surely the sweetest hours he had ever spent, for he watched her warm to intense interest, forget herself, live over with him the lonely days and nights on the range, and glow radiant at his adventures, and pale and trembling over those b.l.o.o.d.y encounters that were as much a part of his experience as any others.

”That's my story, Lucy,” he said, in conclusion. ”I'd have come back to you and home long ago, if I'd known. But I was always broke. Then there was the talk about me. Panhandle Smith! So the years sped by.

It's over now, and I've found you and my people all well, thank G.o.d.

Nothing else mattered to me. And your trouble and Dad's bad luck do not scare me.... Now tell me your story.”

He had reached her. It had been wise for him to go back to the school days, and spare nothing of his experience. She began at the time she saw him last--she remembered the day, the date, the clothes he wore, the horse he rode--and she told the story of those lonely years when his few letters were epochs, and the effect it had when they ceased.

So, with simple directness, she went on to relate the downfall of her father and how the disgrace and heartbreak had killed her mother. When she finished her story she was crying.

”Lucy, don't cry. Just think--here we are!” he exclaimed, as she ended.