On the road he passed Miss Brewster--for the Alder school boasted two
teachers!--and under her kindly, rather faded smile he felt a great
desire to stop and take her into his confidence; ask her what Betty Neal
had been doing all these months. Instead, he touched Grey Molly with the
spurs, and she answered like a watch-spring uncurling beneath him. The
rush of wind against his face raised his spirits to a singing pitch, and
when he flung from the saddle before the school he shouted: “Oh, Betty!”
Up the sharply angling steps in a bound, and at the door: “Oh, Betty!”
His voice filled the room with a thick, dull echo, and there was Betty
behind her desk looking up at him agape; and beside her stood Blondy
Hansen, big, good looking, and equally startled. Fear made the glance
of Vic Gregg swerve--to where little Tommy Aiken scribbled an arithmetic
problem on the blackboard--afterschool work for whispering in class, or
some equally heinous crime. The tingling voices of the other children
on their way home, floated in to Tommy, and the corners of his mouth
drooped.
To regain his poise, Vic tugged at his belt and felt the weight of the
holster slipping into a more convenient place, then he sauntered up
the aisle, sweeping off his sombrero. Every feeling in his body, every
nerve, disappeared in a crystalline hardness, for it seemed to him that
the air was surcharged by a secret something between Betty and young
Hansen. Betty was out from behind her desk and she ran to meet him and
took his hand in both of hers. The rush of her coming took his breath,
and at her touch something melted in her.
“Oh, Vic, are you all through?”
Gregg stiffened for the benefit of Hansen and Tommy Aiken.
“Pretty near through,” he said carelessly. “Thought I'd drop down
to Alder for a day or two and get the kinks out. Hello, Blondy. Hey,
Tommy!”
Tommy Aiken flashed a grin at him, but Tommy was not quite sure that the
rules permitted speaking, even under such provocation as the return of
Vic Gregg, so he maintained a desperate silence. Blondy had picked up
his hat as he returned the greeting.
“I guess I'll be going,” he said, and coughed to show that he was
perfectly at ease, but it seemed to Vic that it was hard for Blondy to
meet his eye when they shook hands. “See you later, Betty.”
“All right.” She smiled at Vic--a flash--and then gathered dignity of
both voice and manner. “You may go now, Tommy.”
She lapsed into complete unconsciousness of manner as Tommy swooped on
his desk, included hat and book in one grab, and darted towards the door
through which Hansen had just disappeared. Here he paused, tilting, and
his smile twinkled at them with understanding. “Good-night, Miss Neal.
Hope you have a good time, Vic.” His heel clicked twice on the steps
outside, and then the patter of his racing feet across the field.
“The little mischief!” said Betty, delightfully flushed. “It beats
everything, Vic, how Alder takes things for granted.”
He should have taken her in his arms and kissed her, now that she had
cleared the room, he very well knew, but the obvious thing was always
last to come in Gregg's repertoire.
“Why not take it for granted? It ain't going to be many days, now.”
He watched her eyes sparkle, but the pleasure of seeing him drowned the
gleam almost at once.
“Are you really almost through? Oh, Vic, you've been away so long, and
I--” She checked herself. There was no overflow of sentiment in Betty.
“Maybe I was a fool for laying off work this way,” he admitted, “but I
sure got terrible lonesome up there.”
Her glance went over him contentedly, from the hard brown hands to the
wrinkle which labor had sunk in the exact center of his forehead. He was
all man, to Betty.
“Come on along,” he said. He would kiss her by surprise as they reached
the door. “Come on along. It's sure enough spring outside. I been eating
it up, and--we can do our talking over things at the dance. Let's ride
now.”
“Dance?”
“Sure, down to Singer's place.”
“It's going to be kind of hard to get out of going with Blondy. He asked
me.”
“And you said you'd go?”
“What are you flarin' up about?”
“Look here, how long have you been traipsin' around with Blondy Hansen?”
She clenched one hand beside her in a way he knew, but it pleased him
more than it warned him, just as it pleased him to see the ears of Grey
Molly go back.
“What's wrong about Blondy Hansen?”
“What's right about him?” he countered senselessly.
Her voice went a bit shrill. “Blondy is a gentleman, I'll have you
know.”
“Is he?”
“Don't you sneer at me, Victor Gregg. I won't have it!”
“You won't, eh?”
He felt that he was pushing her to the danger point, but she was
perfectly, satisfyingly beautiful in her anger; he taunted her with the
pleasure of an artist painting a picture.
“I won't!” she repeated. Something else came to her lips, but she
repressed it, and he could see the pressure from within telling.
“Don't get in a huff over nothing,” he urged, in real alarm. “Only, it
made me kind of mad to see Blondy standing there with that calf-look.”
“What calf-look? He's a lot better to look at than you'll ever be.”
A smear of red danced before the vision of Gregg.
“I don't set up for no beauty prize. Tie a pink ribbon in Blondy's hair
and take him to a baby show if you want. He's about young enough to
enter.”
If she could have found a ready retort her anger might have passed away
in words, but no words came, and she turned pale. It was here that Gregg
made his crucial mistake, for he thought the pallor came from fear,
fear which his sham jealousy had roused in her, perhaps. He should have
maintained a discreet silence, but instead, he poured in the gall of
complacency upon a raw wound.
“Blondy's all right,” he stated beneficently, “but you just forget about
him tonight. You're going to that dance, and you're going with me. If
there's any explanations to be made, you leave 'em to me. I'll handle
Blondy.”
“You handle Blondy!” she whispered. Her voice came back; it rang: “You
couldn't if he had one hand tied behind him.” She measured him for
another blow. “I'm going to that dance and I'm going with Mr. Hansen.”
She knew that he would have died for her, and he knew that she would
have died for him; accordingly they abandoned themselves to sullen fury.
“You're out of date, Vic,” she ran on. “Men can't drag women around
nowadays, and you can't drag me. Not--one--inch.” She put a vicious
little interval between each of the last three words.
“I'll be calling for you at seven o'clock.”
“I won't be there.”
“Then I'll call on Blondy.”
“You don't dare to. Don't you try to bluff me. I'm not that kind.”
“Betty, d'you mean that? D'you think that I'm yaller?”
“I don't care what you are.”
“I ask you calm and impersonal, just think that over before you say it.”
“I've already thought it over.”
“Then, by God,” said Gregg, trembling, “I'll never take one step out of
my way to see you again.”
He turned, so blind with fury that he shouldered the door on his way out
and so, into the saddle, with Grey Molly standing like a figure of rock,
as if she sensed his mood. He swung her about on her hind legs with a
wrench on the curb and a lift of his spurs, but when she leaped into a
gallop he brought her back to the walk with a cruel jerk; she began to
sidle across the field with her chin drawn almost back to her breast,
prancing. That movement of the horse brought him half way around towards
the door and he was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty
Neal was standing there, begging him with her eyes. But the great,
sullen pain conquered; he straightened out the mare for the gate.
Betty was indeed at the door, leaning against it in a sudden weakness,
and even in her pain she felt pride in the grace and skill of Vic's
horsemanship. The hearts of both of them were breaking, with this rather
typical difference: that Gregg felt her to be entirely at fault, and
that she as fully accepted every scruple of the blame. He had come
down tired out and nervous from work he had done for her sake, she
remembered, and if he would only glance back once--he must know that she
was praying for it--she would cry out and run down to him; but he went
on, on, through the gate.
A flash of her passion returned to her. “I shall go with Blondy--if it
kills me.” And she flung herself into the nearest seat and wept.
So when he reached the road and looked back at last, the doorway yawned
black, empty, and he set his teeth with a groan and spurred down the
road for Alder. He drew rein at Captain Lorrimer's and entered with curt
nods in exchange for the greetings.
“Red-eye,” he ordered, and seized bottle and glass as Lorrimer spun them
deftly towards him.
Captain Lorrimer picked up the bottle and gazed at it mournfully when
Vic had poured his drink.
“Son,” he murmured, “you've sure raised an awful thirst.”