THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT by EMILIE BAKER LORING (classic fiction .txt) 📕

man. You--you are such a good-looking boy." She was the incarnation of girlish diablerie indulging an irresistible desire to torment. The color burned to Courtlandt's temples. He caught the bridle and drew Patches close. His eyes compelled Jerry's.

"Do you know what happens to a person who rocks a boat, Mrs. Courtlandt?" he demanded autocratically.

"Do you know what happens when a person gets unbearably dictatorial, Mr. Courtlandt? This!" She slapped her horse smartly on the hip. Patches threw up his head and broke from Steve's hold. The girl looked over her shoulder. Lips and eyes challenged in unison as she sang mischievously:

"'My road calls me, lures me West, east, south and north; Most roads lead me homewards, But my road leads----'"

Patches stepped in a gopher hole, which, feat brought the song to an abrupt termination.

When she met him in the late afternoon on the terrace which overlooked the court Jerry was as coolly friendly as though the little passage-at-arms, which had left Steve's pulses hammering, had never taken place. The piano had been moved out and the outfit, in its Sunday best, occupied the rustic seats and benches and overflowed to the turf paths. The girl felt choky as the men rose to greet her. They looked so big and fine, so like eager, wistful boys. She smiled at them through a mist.

"I'll sing what I think you'll like, then you must ask for anything you want. Please smoke," she added, as she realized what it was that had made them seem so unfamiliar. They looked from her to Steve. He nodded. With delighted grins they dropped back to their places and proceeded with the business of rolling cigarettes.

Courtlandt and Benson took their places on the edge of the terrace. Overhead the sky spread like a flawless turquoise; cameoed against the blue were snow-tipped mountains. The court was gay and fragrant with blossoms. In the dark shadow of the open doorway Ming and Hopi Soy made a patch of Oriental brilliance. Jerry in her filmy pink frock looked not unlike a flower herself, against the rosewood background of the raised piano top, Courtlandt thought. He looked from her to the rapt, weather-browned faces of his men. His gaze came back and rested in fascinated interest on her foot in its pink slipper on the pedal of the instrument.

Jerry sang as she had never sung before, ballads, rollicking melodies. The men drew nearer. When she stopped a swarthy Italian stepped as near the piano as the terrace would permit. His black eyes seemed too big for his thin face, his plastered-down hair suggested infinite labor with brush and pomade.

"What is it, Tony?" Jerry asked with a smile.

"Hava you the one grand opera song?" he asked shyly. Jerry was nonplussed. She had not thought of opera for these men. As she turned over her music she asked:

"You like opera, Tony?"

"Vera much, Signora. At home we taka the leetle seester to grand opera even if we have not mucha to eat. We feel that eef the leetle seester hear great music, she be fine lady, not common, not bad--never." His earnest voice broke as he realized that he was being stared at in amazement by the outfit. He mumbled an apology and hurried back to his seat. With a smile at Tony, Jerry placed Tales of Hoffmann on the rack. She sang the Barcarole. As the exquisite, langorous notes floated out over the court the shadows lengthened, the sun dropped behind the mountains. There was no applause when she finished, no one was smoking, the men sat motionless. Where were their thoughts, the girl wondered. With a glance at the crimsoning foot-hills she struck a few chords and sang softly:

"'Day is dying in the west; Heaven is touching earth with rest; Wait and worship while the night Sets her evening lamps alight Thro' all the sky.'"

With the second verse the men took up the song. To most of them it brought a vivid picture of mother and home and the village church at sunset. They sang until with the last line mountains and foot-hills took up the words and sent them pealing into space.

That closed the musicale. One by one the men came forward and thanked Jerry as she stood between Courtlandt and Benson. As the last one left the court Tommy turned to the girl.

"I'll say that was a wonderful thing to do, Mrs. Steve." With a quick change of tone he spoke to Courtlandt. "Marks and Schoeffleur weren't here; did you miss them?"

"Would you expect them to be here?"

"I should have expected it until to-day. Ever since Marks blew in here from nowhere two months ago I've been wondering where the dickens I'd seen him. When that airplane passed over to-day memory flipped into place the missing piece of the puzzle. He was a mechanician at the hangar where I tried to develop wings in 1917."

"You are sure of that, Tommy?"

"Sure as shootin'. What's up? Why that 'Fee, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman' scowl, old dear?"

"Nothing, except that your information confirms me in my suspicion that Marks and Schoeffleur signaled to that pilot when he went over."

"'And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew,'"

contributed Benson in mock amazement.

Up from the corral floated a chorus of men's voices singing:

"'Wait and worship while the night Sets her evening lamps alight Thro' all the sky.'"

CHAPTER XI

Courtlandt's fine brow puckered in a thoughtful crease as he waited in the living-room of the Double O for Jerry the next evening. Benson, on the arm of a chair, bent forward to get the light from the lamp on the book he had picked up. Through the open windows came the scent of pine and dewy fields, the murmur of the distant stream as it thundered and rippled its never-ending triumphal march to the sea, the occasional soft lowing of cattle.

Jerry had been tremendously pleased and excited over Greyson's invitation to dine, Steve thought as he lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke toward Goober. The dog was regarding him with an air of watchful waiting. Was he to be invited to jump on the running-board of the automobile which stood in the drive outside the front door? Courtlandt remembered as clearly as though it had been yesterday what she had answered the first night they met when he had asked her if she liked the city. He could see her eyes now with their golden lights, hear her musical voice:

"I love it. It is so big, so beautiful, so faulty. I--I like people; I should starve for companionship, not food, in a wilderness."

And this was the girl who had been on the Double O ranch for over three months and not a person outside it, except Doc Rand and some neighboring ranchmen, had she seen before she made the trip to the B C. He had been too busy to think of it before and--and he had intentionally kept out of her way. He had thought that he had his course set to avoid danger, but he had come mighty near going to pieces on an uncharted rock yesterday. He tossed away his cigarette as Jerry's door opened. He took an involuntary step forward, then thrust his hands into his pockets. Lord, how impellingly beautiful she was! Her gold-color gown, all film where it wasn't glistening paillettes, was as simple as the most expensive modiste in New York could make it. Her lovely arms were bare. The ranch life had deepened the coloring of her face and throat till her shoulders looked startlingly white in contrast. Steve noted, with a surge of primitive triumph, that the only jewels she wore were a string of softly gleaming pearls and her wedding ring. Sir Peter had given her the pearls when she was married. They had been worn by his wife and before that by his mother. Steve heard Tommy give vent to a sound that was a cross between a swallow and a gasp before he struck an attitude and paraphrased theatrically:

"But soft! What light through yonder doorway breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun."

Jerry laughed and blew him a kiss. Her teeth rivaled in beauty the pearls below them. Ming Soy, more rice-papery than ever in the resplendent embroideries she wore in the evening, followed the girl from her room with a shimmering wrap over her arm.

"Were you casting aspersions on the brilliancy of my costume, Mr. Tommy Benson? This is the first invitation I have received to dine since I left the metropolis and I acknowledge I have splurged. Do--do you like me, Steve?" Her attitude was demure but her smile was adorably mischievous. Courtlandt's eyes flamed, then smoldered.

"You'll do," with an edge of sarcasm. He hated himself as he saw her smile fade. Oh, why the dickens couldn't they have met--Tommy swept into the breach:

"Oh boy, hear the lady, Steve. 'Will I do?' just as though she didn't know that

"'Alack there lies more peril in thine eyes Than twenty of their swords.'"

"Gracias, señor! Alas, if it weren't for you, Tommy, I should go down to my grave unwept, unhonored and unsung. Now that you have fully absorbed the glory of my raiment hold my cloak for me, that's a dear. Now this maline over my hair. I don't wish to appear before the guests from the effete East like a Meg Merriles."

"You couldn't," encouraged Benson fervently. "You'd----"

"Let's go!" cut in Courtlandt sharply, and led the way to the automobile. He sent the leaping, barking dog back with a curt command which caused Goober to regard him in drooping, tawny-eyed reproach. He took the wheel of the roadster. He kept his eyes resolutely on the road as he drove though he felt as though a magnet of the nth power was drawing his eyes to the girl who snuggled down between him and Benson. At the door of the X Y Z ranch-house Greyson met them.

"It's mighty good of you all to come." His voice was nervous, hurried.

"Good of us! Bruce, you're a public benefactor. You're a candidate for a specially designed, specially gilded halo. Do you realize what a risk you have taken introducing me to your city friends? It is so long since I have dined in state that I am quite capable of committing some horrible social blunder."

Steve's anger flared. Why did she have to admit to Greyson that she had been bored? It was still flickering as he entered the big living-room, a room lined with books from floor to ceiling, with color only in the crimson rug and heavy hangings.

"You see I've come to help you bear your exile, Steve!" greeted a laughing voice. Jerry and Tommy, who had preceded Courtlandt, turned involuntarily. He met the girl's startled eyes. He reddened furiously before he turned to answer the golden-haired woman who had stepped from behind a screen.

"Felice! Where did you come from?" His tone was dazed and strugglingly cordial.

"Have you lost both manners and memory, Stevie? You haven't offered to shake hands; you have apparently forgotten that I wrote you that while he was at the Manor Mr. Greyson discovered that I had been at school with his sister.