CHAD HARRISON
As soon as Steve stepped into the dining-room he knew that the story of
his fight with Harrison had preceded him. His battered face became an
immediate focus of curious veiled glances. These exhibited an animated
interest rather than surprise.
Mrs. Seymour introduced him in turn to each of the other boarders, and
the furtive looks stared for a moment their frank questions at him. As
he drew in his chair beside a slender, tanned young woman, he knew with
some amusement that his arrival had interrupted a conversation of which
he had been the theme.
The film actress seated beside Yeager must have been in her very early
twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative
effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its
audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held an alert
been-through-it-all expression.
"I hope you like Los Robles, Mr. Yeager. Some of us don't, you know,"
she suggested.
"Like it fine, Miss Ellington," he answered with enthusiasm, accepting
from Ruth Seymour a platter of veal croquettes.
Daisy Ellington slanted mischievous eyes toward him. "Not much doing
here. It's a dead little hole. You'll be bored to death--if you haven't
been already."
"Me! I've found it right lively," retorted Steve, his eyes twinkling.
"Had all the excitement I could stand for one day. You see I come from
way back in the cow country, ma'am."
"And I came from New York," she sighed. "When it comes to little old
Broadway I'm there with bells on. What d'you mean, cow country? Ain't
this far enough off the map? Say, were you ever in New York?"
"Oncet. With a load of steers my boss was shipping to England. Lemme
see. It was three years ago come next October."
"Three years ago. Why, that was when I was in the pony ballet with
'Adam, Eve, and the Apple.' Did you see the show?"
"Bet I did."
Her eyes sparkled. "I was in the first row, third from the left in the
'Good-Night' chorus. Some kick to that song, wasn't there?"
"I should say yes. We're old friends, then, aren't we?" exclaimed Yeager
promptly. He buried her little hand in his big brown paw, a friendly
smile beaming through the disfigurements of his bruised face.
"He didn't do a thing to you, did he?" she commented, looking him over
frankly.
"Not a thing--except run me through a sausage-grinder, drop me out of
one of these aeroplanes, hammer my haid with a pile-driver, and jounce
me up and down on a big pile of sharp rocks. Outside of trifles like
that I had it all my own way."
"I don't see any alfalfa in _your_ hair," she laughed. Then, lowering
her voice discreetly, she added: "Harrison's a brute. I'll tell you
about him some time when Ruth isn't round."
"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room with
such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's
guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"
"Engaged to him--that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't
it give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a
stiff like Harrison?"
"What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover of
the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.
Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother!
What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess.
He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man
too, if he is a rotten bad lot."
The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light, inconsequent
fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet the badinage of
an extra sitting at an adjoining table.
After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left
on the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it
because his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he
did not happen to know when pay-day was.
Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:--
"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along,
Singing a song so gayly,
He laughed and sang till the merry woods rang
And he charmed the heart of a lady,
And he charmed--"
Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was in
the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.
"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner
so soon," she explained in a voice soft and low.
"That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table.
Don't let me disturb you."
Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, lean face that went so well with
the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red bruises
glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster stretched
diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's knuckles
had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as if it had
been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all the havoc
that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful smile.
The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you--were hurt."
He flashed a quick look at her. "Sho! Forget it, Miss Seymour. I wasn't
hurt any--none to speak of. It don't do a big husky like me any harm to
be handed a licking."
"You--hit him first, didn't you?"
"Yes, ma'am,--knocked him out cold before he knew where he was at. He
was entitled to a come-back. I'm noways hos-tile to him because he's a
better man than I am."
She stood with the pillow in her hands, shy as a fawn, but with a
certain resolution, too, the trouble of her soul still reflected on the
sweet face.
"Why do men--do such things?" she asked with a catch of her breath.
He scratched his curly head in apologetic perplexity. "Search me. I
reckon the cave man is lurking around in most of us. We hadn't ought to.
That's a fact."
"It was all a mistake, Miss Ellington says. You thought he was hurting
Miss Winters. Why didn't you tell him you were sorry? Then it would have
been all right."
The cowpuncher did not bat an eye at this innocent suggestion.
"That's right. Why didn't I think of that? Then of course he would have
laid off o' me."
"He--Mr. Harrison--is quick-tempered. I suppose all brave men are. But
he's generous, too. If you had explained--"
"I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he
gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for
your kindness in asking."
Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a
picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming
starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.
Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house. A
malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.
"How you feeling, young fella?"
"A hundred and eighty years old," answered the cowpuncher promptly with
a grin. "Every time I open my mouth my face cracks. You ce'tainly did
give me a proper trimming. I don't know sic-'em about this scientific
fight game."
Harrison scowled. "There's more at the same address any time you need
it."
"Not if I see you coming in time to make a getaway," retorted Steve with
a laugh.
As the range-rider passed lightly down the walk there drifted back to
the prizefighter the words of a cowboy song:--
"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,
In a narrow grave just six by three,
Where the wild coyotes will howl o'er me--
Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee."
Harrison ripped out an oath. There was a note of gentle irony about the
minor strain of the song that he resented. He had given this youth the
thrashing of his life, but he had apparently left his spirit quite
uncrushed. What he liked was to have men walk in fear of him.
The song presently died on the lips of Steve. Harrison was on his way to
call on Ruth. The man had somehow won her promise to marry him. It was
impossible for Yeager to believe that the child knew what she was doing.
To think of her as the future wife of Chad Harrison moved him to
resentment at life's satiric paradoxes. To give this sweet young
innocent to such a man was to mate a lamb with a tiger or a wolf. The
outrage of it cried to Heaven. What could her mother be thinking of to
allow such a wanton sacrifice?