She wrenched herself suddenly away, rising.
“I’m tired of supposing!” she cried.
“Then we’ll call it all real. What
of that?”
That colour was unmistakably high now; it ran down
from her cheeks and even stained the pure white of
the throat where the flap of the shirt was open.
He was excited as a hunter who has tracked some new
and dangerous animal and at last driven it to bay,
holding his gun poised, and not knowing whether or
not it will prove vulnerable.
He stepped close, eager, prepared for any wild burst
of temper; but she let him take her hands, let him
draw her close, bend back her head; hold her closer
still, till the warmth and softness of her body reached
him, but when his lips came close she said quietly:
“Are you a rotter, Bard?”
He stiffened and the smile went out on his lips.
He stepped back.
She repeated: “Are you a rotter?”
He raised the one hand which he still retained and
touched it to his lips.
“I am very sorry,” said Anthony, “will
you forgive me?”
And with her eyes large and grave upon him she answered:
“I wonder if I can!”
Butch Conklin looked up, raising his bandaged head
slowly, like a white flag of truce, with a stain of
red growing through the cloth. He stared at the
two, raised a hand to his head as though to rub away
the dream, found a pain too real for a dream, and
then, like a crab which has grown almost too old to
walk, waddled on hands and knees, slowly, from the
room and melted silently into the dark beyond.
FOOLISH HABITS
A sharp noise of running feet leaped from the dust
of the street and clattered through the doorway; the
two turned. A swarthy man, broad of shoulder,
was the first, and afterward appeared Nash.
“Conklin?” called Deputy Glendin, and
swept the room with his startled glance. “Where’s
Conklin?”
He was not there; only a red stain remained on the
floor to show where he had lain.
“Where’s Conklin?” called Nash.
“I’m afraid,” whispered Bard quickly
to the girl, “that it was more than a game of
suppose.”
He said easily to the other two: “He had
enough. His share of trouble came to-night; I
let him go.”
“Young feller,” growled Glendin, “you
ain’t been in town a long while, but I’ve
heard a pile too much about you already. What
you mean by takin’ the law into your own hands?”
“Wait,” said Nash, his keen eyes on the
two, “I guess I understand.”
“Let’s have it, then.”
Still the steady eyes of Nash passed from Sally Fortune
to Bard and back again.
“This feller bein’ a tenderfoot, he don’t
understand our ways; maybe he thinks the range is
a bit freer than it is.”
“That’s the trouble,” answered Glendin,
“he thinks too damned much.”
“And does quite a pile besides thinkin’,”
murmured Nash, but too low for the others to hear
it.
