The Max Brand Megapack (310 page)

But now David turned again, and this time he was talking by the side of Abra as they came up the hill. He talked with many gestures, and the girl was laughing down to him.

“God bless her!” muttered Connor impulsively. “She’s a true-blue one!”

He remembered his part in the nick of time as they came closer, and David helped the girl down from the saddle and brought her forward. The gambler drew himself up and made his face grave with disapproval. Now or never he must prove to David that there was no shadow of a connection between him and the girl. Yet he was by no means easy. There was something forced and stereotyped in the smile of the girl that told him she had been through a crucial test and was still near the breaking point.

David presented them to one another uneasily. He was even a little embarrassed under the accusing eye of Connor.

“I make you known, Ruth,” he said, “to my brother Benjamin. He is that man of whom I told you.”

“I am happy,” said the girl, “to be known to him.”

“That much I cannot say,” replied the gambler.

He turned upon David with outstretched arm.

“Ah, David, I have warned you!”

“As Abraham warned me against you, Benjamin. And dying men speak truth.”

The counter-attack was so shrewd, so unexpected, that the gambler, for the moment, was thrown completely off his guard.

He could only murmur: “You are the judge for yourself, David.”

“I am. Do not think that the power is in me. But God loves the Garden and His voice is never far from me. Neither are the spirits of the four who lived here before me and made this place. When there is danger they warn me. When I am in error the voice of God corrects me. And just as I heard the voice against the woman, Ruth, and heed it not.”

He seemed to have gathered conviction for himself, much needed conviction, as he spoke. He turned now toward the girl.

“Be not wroth with Benjamin; and bear him no malice.”

“I bear him none in the world,” she answered truthfully, and held out her hand.

But Connor was still in his rôle. He folded his arms and pointedly disregarded the advance.

“Woman, let there be peace and few words between us. My will is the will of David.”

“There speaks my brother!” cried the master of the valley.

“And yet,” muttered Connor, “why is she here?”

“She came to buy a horse.”

“But they are not sold.”

“That is true. Yet she has traveled far and she is in great need of food and drink. Could I turn her away hungry, Benjamin?”

“She could have been fed at the gate. She could surely have rested there.”

It was easy to see that David was hardpressed. His eye roved eagerly to Ruth. Then a triumphant explanation sparkled in his eye.

“It is the horse she rides, a gelding from my Garden. His lot in the world has been hard. He is scarred with the spur and the whip. I have determined to take him back, at a price. But who can arrange matters of buying and selling all in a moment? It is a matter for much talk. Therefore she is here.”

“I am answered,” said Connor, and turning to Ruth he winked broadly.

“It is well,” said David, “and I foresee happy days. In the meantime there is a duty before me. Abraham must be laid in his grave and I leave Ruth to your keeping, Benjamin. Bear with her tenderly for my sake.”

He stepped to the girl.

“You are not afraid?”

“I am not afraid,” she answered.

“My thoughts shall be near you. Farewell.”

He had hardly reached the gate of the patio when Joseph, going out after finishing his labor at the fountain, passed between the gambler and the girl. Connor stopped him with a sign.

“The whip hasn’t fallen, you see,” he said maliciously.

“There is still much time,” replied Joseph. “And before the end it will fall. Perhaps on you. Or on that!”

He indicated the girl with his pointing finger; his glance turned savagely from one to the other, and then he went slowly out of the patio and they were alone. She came to Connor at once and even touched his arm in her excitement.

“What did he mean?”

“That’s the one I told you about. The one David beat up with the whip. He’d give his eye teeth to get back at me, and he has an idea that there’s going to be hell to pay because another person has come into the valley. Bunk! But—what happened down the hill?”

“When he stopped me? Did you see that?”

“My heart stopped the same minute. What was it?”

“He had just heard the last words of Abraham. When he stopped me on the hill his face was terrible. Like a wolf!”

“I know that look in him. How did you buck up under it?”

“I didn’t. I felt my blood turn to water and I wanted to run.”

“But you stuck it out—I saw! Did he say anything?”

“He said: ‘Dying men do not lie. And I have been twice warned. Woman, why are you here?’”

“And you?” gasped Connor. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. My head spun. I looked up the terrace. I wanted to see you, but you weren’t in sight. I felt terribly alone and absolutely helpless. If I’d had a gun, I would have reached for it.”

“Thank God you didn’t!”

“But you don’t know what his face was like! I expected him to tear me off the horse and smash me with his hands. All at once I wanted to tell him everything—beg him not to hurt me.” Connor groaned.

“I knew it! I knew that was in your head!”

“But I didn’t.”

“Good girl.”

“He said: ‘Why are you here? What harm have you come to work in the Garden?’”

“And you alone with him!” gasped Connor.

“That was what did it. I was so helpless that it made me bold. Can you imagine smiling at a time like that?”

“Were you able to?”

“I don’t know how. It took every ounce of strength in me. But I made myself smile—straight into his face. Then I put out my hands to him all at once.

“‘How could I harm you?’ I asked him.

“And then you should have seen his face change and the anger break up like a cloud. I knew I was safe, then, but I was still dizzy—just as if I’d looked over a cliff—you know?”

“And yet you rode up the hill after that laughing down to him! Ruth, you’re the gamest sport and the best pal in the world. The finest little act I ever saw on the stage or off. It was Big Time stuff. My hat’s off, but—where’d you get the nerve?”

“I was frightened almost to death. Too much frightened for it to show. When I saw you, my strength came back.”

“But what do you think of him?”

“He’s—simply a savage. What do I think of an Indian?”

“No more than that?”

“Ben, can you pet a tiger after you’ve seen his claws?”

He looked at her with anxiety.

“You’re not going to break down later on—feeling as if he’s dynamite about to explode all the time?”

“I’m going to play the game through,” she said with a sort of fierce happiness. “I’ve felt like a sneak thief about this. But now it’s different. He’s more of a wolf than a man. Ben, I saw murder in his face, I swear! And if it isn’t wrong to tame wild beasts it isn’t wrong to tame him. I’m going to play the game, lead him as far as I can until we get the horses—and then it’ll be easy enough to make up by being good the rest of my life.”

“Ruth—girl—you’ve covered the whole ground. And when you have the coin—” He broke off with laughter that was filled with drunken excitement. “But what did you think of my game?”

She did not hear him, and standing with her hands clasped lightly behind her she looked beyond the roof of the house and over the tops of the western mountains, with the sun-haze about them.

“I feel as if I were on the top of the world,” she said at last. “And I wouldn’t have one thing changed. We’re playing for big stakes, but we’re taking a chance that makes the game worth while. What we win we’ll earn—because he’s a devil. Isn’t it what you’d call a fair bet?”

“The squarest in the world,” said Connor stoutly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

They
had no means of knowing when David would return and the ominous shadow of Joseph, lingering near the patio, determined Connor on a walk out of any possible earshot. They went down to the lake with the singing of the men on the other side of the hill growing dim as they descended. The cool of the day was beginning, and they walked close to the edge of the water with the brown treetrunks on one side and the green images floating beyond. Peace lay over Eden valley and the bright river that ran through it, but Ben Connor had no mind to dwell on unessentials.

He had found in the girl an ally of unexpected strength. He expected only a difficult tool filled with scruples, drawing back, imperiling his plans with her hesitation. Instead, she was on fire with the plan. He thought well to fan that fire and keep it steadily blazing.

“It’s better for David; better for him than it is for us. Look at the poor fool! He’s in prison here and doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s happy, but he’s simply kidding himself. In six months I’ll have him chatting with millionaires.”

“Let a barber do a day’s work on him first.”

“No. It’s just the long-haired nuts like that who get by with the high-steppers. He has a lingo about flowers and trees that’ll knock their eye out. I know the gang. Always on edge for something different—music that sounds like a riot in a junk shop and poetry that reads like a drunken printing-press. Well, David ought to be different enough to suit ’em. I’ll boost him, though: ‘The Man that Brought Out the Eden Grays!’ He’ll be headline stuff!”

He laughed so heartily that he did not notice the quick glance of criticism which the girl cast at him.

“I’m not taking anything from him, really,” went on Connor. “I’m simply sneaking around behind him so’s I can pour his pockets full of the coin. That’s all there is to it. Outside of the looks, tell me if there’s anything crooked you can see?”

“I don’t think there is,” she murmured. “I almost hope that there isn’t!”

She was so dubious about it that Connor was alarmed. He was fond of Ruth Manning, but she was just “different” enough to baffle him. Usually he divided mankind into three or four categories for the sake of fast thinking. There were the “boobs,” the “regular guys,” the “high steppers,” and the “nuts.” Sometimes he came perilously close to including Ruth in the last class—with David Eden. And if he did not do so, it was mainly because she had given such an exhibition of cool courage only a few moments before. He had finished his peroration, now, with a feeling of actual virtue, but the shadow on her face made him change his tactics and his talk.

He confined himself, thereafter, strictly to the future. First he outlined his plans for raising the cash for the big “killing.” He told of the men to whom he could go for backing. There were “hard guys” who would take a chance. “Wise ones” who would back his judgment. “Fall guys” who would follow him blindly. For ten percent he would get all the cash he could place. Then it remained to try out the grays in secret, and in public let them go through the paces ridden under wraps and heavily weighted. He described the means of placing the big money before the great race.

And as he talked his figures mounted from tens to hundreds to thousands, until he was speaking in millions. In all of this profit she and David and Connor would share dollar for dollar. At the first corner of the shore they turned she had arrived at a snug apartment in New York. She would have a housekeeper-companion. There would be a cosy living room and a paneled dining room. In the entrance hall of the apartment house, imitation of encrusted marble, no doubt.

But as they came opposite a little wooded island in the lake she had added a maid to the housekeeper. Also, there was now a guest room. Some one from Lukin would be in that room; some one from Lukin would go through the place with her, marveling at her good fortune.

And clothes! They made all the difference. Dressed as she would be dressed, when she came into a room that queer, cold gleam of envy would be in the eyes of the women and the men would sit straighter!

Yet when they reached the place where the shore line turned north and west her imagination, spurred by Connor’s talk, was stumbling along dizzy heights. Her apartment occupied a whole floor. Her butler was a miracle of dignity and her chef a genius in the kitchen. On the great table the silver and glass were things of frosted light. Her chauffeur drove a monster automobile with a great purring engine that whipped her about the city with the color blown into her cheeks. In her box at the opera she was allowing the deep, soft luxury of the fur collar to slide down from her throat, while along the boxes, in the galleries, there was a ripple of light as the thousand glasses turned upon her. Then she found that Connor was smiling at her. She flushed, but snapped her fingers.

“This thing is going through,” she declared.

“You won’t weaken?”

“I’m as cold as steel. Let’s go back. He’ll probably be in the house by this time.”

Time had slipped past her unnoticed, and the lake was violet and gold with the sunset as they turned away; under the trees along the terraces the brilliant wild flowers were dimmed by a blue shadow.

“But I never saw wild flowers like those,” she said to Connor.

“Nobody else ever did. But old Matthew, whoever he was, grew ’em and kept crossing ’em until he got those big fellows with all the colors of the rainbow.”

“Hurry! We’re late!”

“No, David’s probably on top of that hill, now; always goes up there to watch the sun rise and the sun set. Can you beat that?”

He chuckled, but a shade had darkened the face of the girl for a moment. Then she lifted her head resolutely.

“I’m not going to try to understand him. The minute you understand a thing you stop being afraid of it; and as soon as I stop being afraid of David Eden I might begin to like him—which is what I don’t want.”

“What’s that?” cried Connor, breaking in on her last words. When Ruth began to think aloud he always stopped listening; it was a maxim of his to never listen when a woman became serious.

“It’s that strange giant.”

“Joseph!” exclaimed Connor heavily. “Whipping did him no good. He’ll need killing one of these days.”