She lay prone upon the floor, kicking her heels together, frowningly
intent upon her book. Outside the sky was crimson with the sunset.
Inside the room, every corner was filled with the gay fantoms of the age
of chivalry. Jac would not raise her head, for if she kept her eyes upon
the printed page it seemed to her that the armored knights were trooping
about her rooms. A board creaked. That was from the running of some
striped page with pointed toes. The wind made a soft rustling. That was
the stir of the nodding plumes of the warriors. The pageantry of
forgotten kings flowed brightly about her.
“Jac!”
Jacqueline frowned and shrugged her shoulders.
“Jac!”
She raised her head. The dreary board walls of her room looked back at
her, empty, barren, a thousand miles and a thousand years from all
romance. She closed her book as the door of her room opened and her
father stood in the entrance.
“Readin’ again!” said Jim During in infinite disgust. “Go down an’ wait
on the table. The cook’s gone an’ got drunk. I’ve give him the run.
Hurry up.”
She shied the book into a corner and rose.
“How many here for chow?” she asked.
“Maurice Gordon an’ a lot of others,” said her father. “Start movin’!”
She started. Handsome Maurice Gordon! She had only to close her eyes and
there he stood in armor--Sir Maurice de Gordon!
You might have combed the cattle ranges for five hundred miles north,
east, south, and west, and never found so fine a figure of a man as
Maurice Gordon. Good looks are rather a handicap than a blessing in the
mountain desert, but “Maurie” Gordon was notably ready at all times for
anything from a dance to a fight, and his reputation was accordingly as
high among men as among women.
He made a stir wherever he went, and now as he sat in the dining-room of
Jim During’s crossroads hotel, all eyes were upon him. He withstood
their critical admiration with the nonchalant good-nature of one who
knew that, from his silk bandanna to his fine riding-boots, his outfit
represented the beau-ideal of the cow-puncher.
“Where you bound for?” asked the proprietor of the hotel as the supper
drew toward its close.
“The dance over to Bridewell,” said Maurie. “Damnation!”
For as he mentioned the dance, Jac, who was bringing him his second cup
of coffee, started so violently that a drop of the hot liquid splashed
on the back of Maurie’s neck.
“Oh!” she cried, and seized her apron to wipe away the coffee.
“’Scuse me,” growled Maurie, seeing that he had sworn at a woman. “But
you took me by surprise.”
With that he stopped the hand which was bearing the soiled apron toward
his neck, and produced from his pocket--marvelous to behold!--a
handkerchief of stainless white, with which he rubbed away the coffee.
“Jacqueline!” rumbled her father, and his accent made the name far more
emphatic than Maurie’s “damnation.”
That was her given title, but to every cow-puncher on the ranges she was
known as “Jac” During, who rode, shot, and sometimes swore as well as
any man of them all. She was Jacqueline to her father alone, and to him
only at such a time as this.
“Well?” she said belligerently, and her eyes fixed on her father as
steadily and as angrily as those of a man.
“Your hands was made for feet! Go back to the kitchen. We don’t need you
till the boys is through with their coffee. Too bad, Maurie.”
“Nothin’ at all!” said the latter heartily, and waved the matter out of
existence.
He might banish Jac from his thoughts with a gesture, but he could not
drive away her thoughts of him so easily, it seemed; for she stopped in
the shadow of the doorway which led into the kitchen and stared back
with big eyes at the cow-puncher.
“Who you takin’ to the dance?” said her father.
“Dolly Maxwell,” said Maurie, naming the prettiest girl in many, many
miles.
“That pale-faced--thing!” muttered Jac, relapsing into a feminine
vocabulary at this crisis. But she sighed as she turned back into the
kitchen.
She threw open the door of the stove so that the light flamed on her red
hair, which was tied in a hard knot on top of her head--the quickest,
easiest, and unquestionably the most ugly manner of dressing hair. A
vast and unreasoning rage made her blood hot.
The anger was partly for her own blunder in spilling the hot coffee. It
was even more because of Maurie’s ejaculation. With that one word he had
banished the vision of Sir Maurice de Gordon. The plumed helmet had
fallen from his head; his bright armor had blown away on a gust of
reality. In the fury of her chagrin Jac caught up the poker and raked
the grate of the stove loudly. The rattling helped to relieve her as
swearing, perhaps, relieves a man. In the midst of the racket she heard
a chuckle from the dining-room, and her blood went cold at the thought
that some one might understand the deeps of her shame and wrath.
She ran to the door. There she sighed again, but it was relief this
time. At least it was not Maurie who laughed. He was deep in
conversation with his neighbor. She swept the other faces with a quick
glance that halted at a pair of bright, quizzical eyes. Only one man had
apparently understood the meaning of her racket at the stove.
“That bum!” said Jac, and turned on her heel.
But something made her stop and look back. Perhaps it was the brightness
of those eyes; certainly nothing else could have made her look twice at
this fellow. Even among these rough citizens of the mountain desert he
was wild and ragged. His shirt was soiled and frayed from elbow to
wrist. A bush of black hair was so long that it almost entirely hid his
ears, and his face, apparently untouched by a razor for months, was
covered by a tremendous growth of whiskers. She could only faintly guess
at the features behind that mask.
It was very puzzling, but Jac would not waste time thinking of such a
caricature of a man as he of the many whiskers. She turned back into the
kitchen and broke off her meditations by kicking a box across the floor.
It smashed against the wall. Jac sat down to think, and stared gloomily
straight before her. Her throat swelled and in her heart was that
feeling of infinite age which comes upon women at all periods of their
life, but most of all during the interim when a girl knows that she is
mature and the rest of the world has not yet found it out.
“Why was I made like this?” said Jac miserably.
And from within a still, small voice that was _not_ conscience answered
her.
“Aw,” said the voice, “quit kiddin’ yourself!”
“Why,” repeated Jac dolorously, “was I tied to such a face?”
“You might as well be askin’,” said the voice, “how the colors are
painted on a pinto.”
“Them colors never rub out.”
“Neither will your face.”
“It’s awful.”
“It is.”
She stood in front of the speckled mirror.
“There’s something wrong with the way I fix my hair,” she muttered.
It was tied so tightly that it pulled up the skin of her forehead and
raised her eyebrows to a look of continual plaintiveness.
“There’s _certainly_ something wrong with the way I do my hair!”
“Is that all that’s wrong with your face?” whispered the voice.
“My hair is red,” said Jac.
“Like paint,” said the voice.
“There’s no help?”
“None!”
To escape from this merciless dialogue, Jac went back to her post of
vantage. The square shoulders of Maurie Gordon were just disappearing
through the outer door. All the others were gone, with the exception of
her father, her brother Harry, and the man of many whiskers. The last
was hardly to be considered as a human being. She felt practically alone
with her family, so she entered the dining-room and sat on the edge of
the table swinging her feet.
“Harry,” she said, “d’you see anything the matter with the way I fix my
hair?” Her brother glanced at her with unseeing eyes. The man of many
whiskers stopped stirring his coffee and glanced up with the keen
twinkle which Jac had seen before. She turned her shoulder upon him.
“Throw me your tobacco, pa,” said Harry.
“Did you hear me ask you a question?” said Jac fiercely.
Harry rolled his cigarette before he answered.
“Don’t get so sore you rope an’ tie yourself. What did you say?”
“I asked you if you was goin’ to the dance at Bridewell.”
The stranger chuckled softly.
“Say, what’s eatin’ you, Whiskers?” snapped Jac, but without turning.
“Sure I’m going,” said Harry. “It’s going to be a big bust.”
“What girl are you takin’?”
“Nobody. I’ll find plenty to dance with when I get there.”
Jac blinked her eyes once, twice, and again.
“Why not take me?”
The cigarette fell from Harry’s lips.
“What the--” he began. “Say, Jac, are you sick?”
The ache came in Jac’s throat again. Her face changed color and the
freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out with a startling
distinctness.
“Don’t I dance good enough, Harry?” He had evidently been bracing
himself for a straight-from-the-shoulder retort. At this gentle question
he gasped and rose with a look of brotherly concern.
“Jac, if you was a man I’d say you’d been hittin’ the red-eye too much.”
“Oh,” said Jac.
Harry touched her under the chin and tilted back her head. The deep-blue
eyes stared miserably up to him.
“What’s the matter with her, pa?” he asked.
“Plain foolishness!” said the latter.
Jac struck the hand from her chin and leaped from the table to her feet.
“Harry,” she said, “if I was a man I’d hang a bunch of fives on your
chin!”
The chuckle of the stranger made her whirl.
“Get out, Whiskers,” she commanded, “or I’ll pull a gun an’ give you a
free shave.”
The man rose obediently and went from the room to the porch. Harry
followed him out and swung into the saddle of his horse. His father
delayed an instant.
“Now cut out this talk of goin’ to the dance,” said Jim During. “You
stay right here, an’ if any of the boys come in late fix them up some
chow. I got to slide over to see old Jones on some--some business.”
“Sure you do,” said Jac scornfully. “I know that kind of business. It
comes five in a hand and you draw to it.”
The hair of her father seemed to take on a deeper tinge of red.
“Well?” he said.
“Well?” she replied no less angrily. “If I couldn’t play no better hand
of poker than you do, I’d go no farther than solitaire, believe me.”
“Jacqueline!”
“Don’t swear at me!” said Jac. “If you think I ain’t right, just sit
down and play a hand with me.”
Her father was so swelled with wrath that he could make no rejoinder. At
length he whirled on his heel and strode toward the door, pulling his
sombrero down over his eyes.
At the door he turned back and pointed a long, angry arm.
“An’ if I catch you leavin’ this place to-night--” he began.
“Well?”
His face altered and the anger faded from his eyes.
“Jac,” he said gently, “why in hell wasn’t you born a boy?”
He went on out and a moment later his horse clattered down the road.
“Why?” repeated Jac.