She recoiled from him. “It was only a joke,
then? You didn’t mean it, John? Thank
Heaven for that!”
A savagery which, though generally concealed, was
never far from the surface, now broke out in him,
making the muscles of his face tense and his voice
metallic. “Get to your room,” he said
fiercely, “get to your room. I’ve
wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother,
and now a Western lout is to spoil what I’ve
done? I’ve a mind to wash my hands of all
of you—and sink you. Get to your room,
and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the
two I shall do.”
She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and
he followed her, trembling with rage.
“Or have you a choice?” he asked.
“Brother or lover, which shall it be?”
She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable
to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her
arms and laughed in her face. In mute terror
she fled to her room.
Old Scars
In his room Bill Gregg was striding up and down, throwing
his hands toward the ceiling. Now and then he
paused to slap Ronicky Doone on the back.
“It’s fate, Ronicky,” he said, over
and over again. “Thinking of waking up
and finding the girl that you’ve loved and lost
standing waiting for you! It’s the dead
come to life. I’m the happiest man in the
world. Ronicky, old boy, one of these days I’ll
be able—” He paused, stopped by the
solemnity of Doone’s face. “What’s
wrong, Ronicky?”
“I don’t know,” said the other gloomily.
He rubbed his arms slowly, as if to bring back the
circulation to numbed limbs.
“You act like you’re sick, Ronicky.”
“I’m getting bad-luck signs, Bill.
That’s the short of it.”
“How come?”
“The old scars are prickling.”
“Scars? What scars?”
“Ain’t you noticed ’em.”
It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat
and shirt. The rounded body, alive with playing
muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks—scars
left by healed wounds.
“At your age? A kid like you with scars?”
Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed
scars and gasped. “How come, Ronicky,”
he asked huskily in his astonishment, “that
you got all those and ain’t dead yet?”
“I dunno,” said the other. “I
wonder a pile about that, myself. Fact is I’m
a lucky gent, Bill Gregg.”
“They say back yonder in your country that you
ain’t never been beaten, Ronicky.”
“They sure say a lot of foolish things, just
to hear themselves talk, partner. A gent gets
pretty good with a gun, then they say he’s the
best that ever breathed—that he’s
never been beat. But they forget things that
happened just a year back. No, sir; I sure took
my lickings when I started.”
“But, dog-gone it, Ronicky, you ain’t
twenty-four now!”
