Another Sunday man and horse and dog roved the Piedmont hills. And
again Daylight and Dede rode together. But this time her surprise at
meeting him was tinctured with suspicion; or rather, her surprise was
of another order. The previous Sunday had been quite accidental, but
his appearing a second time among her favorite haunts hinted of more
than the fortuitous. Daylight was made to feel that she suspected him,
and he, remembering that he had seen a big rock quarry near Blair Park,
stated offhand that he was thinking of buying it. His one-time
investment in a brickyard had put the idea into his head--an idea that
he decided was a good one, for it enabled him to suggest that she ride
along with him to inspect the quarry.
So several hours he spent in her company, in which she was much the
same girl as before, natural, unaffected, lighthearted, smiling and
laughing, a good fellow, talking horses with unflagging enthusiasm,
making friends with the crusty-tempered Wolf, and expressing the desire
to ride Bob, whom she declared she was more in love with than ever. At
this last Daylight demurred. Bob was full of dangerous tricks, and he
wouldn't trust any one on him except his worst enemy.
"You think, because I'm a girl, that I don't know anything about
horses," she flashed back. "But I've been thrown off and bucked off
enough not to be over-confident. And I'm not a fool. I wouldn't get on
a bucking horse. I've learned better. And I'm not afraid of any other
kind. And you say yourself that Bob doesn't buck."
"But you've never seen him cutting up didoes," Daylight said.
"But you must remember I've seen a few others, and I've been on several
of them myself. I brought Mab here to electric cars, locomotives, and
automobiles. She was a raw range colt when she came to me. Broken to
saddle that was all. Besides, I won't hurt your horse."
Against his better judgment, Daylight gave in, and, on an unfrequented
stretch of road, changed saddles and bridles.
"Remember, he's greased lightning," he warned, as he helped her to
mount.
She nodded, while Bob pricked up his ears to the knowledge that he had
a strange rider on his back. The fun came quickly enough--too quickly
for Dede, who found herself against Bob's neck as he pivoted around and
bolted the other way. Daylight followed on her horse and watched. He
saw her check the animal quickly to a standstill, and immediately, with
rein across neck and a decisive prod of the left spur, whirl him back
the way he had come and almost as swiftly.
"Get ready to give him the quirt on the nose," Daylight called.
But, too quickly for her, Bob whirled again, though this time, by a
severe effort, she saved herself from the undignified position against
his neck. His bolt was more determined, but she pulled him into a
prancing walk, and turned him roughly back with her spurred heel.
There was nothing feminine in the way she handled him; her method was
imperative and masculine. Had this not been so, Daylight would have
expected her to say she had had enough. But that little preliminary
exhibition had taught him something of Dede's quality. And if it had
not, a glance at her gray eyes, just perceptibly angry with herself,
and at her firm-set mouth, would have told him the same thing.
Daylight did not suggest anything, while he hung almost gleefully upon
her actions in anticipation of what the fractious Bob was going to get.
And Bob got it, on his next whirl, or attempt, rather, for he was no
more than halfway around when the quirt met him smack on his tender
nose. There and then, in his bewilderment, surprise, and pain, his
fore feet, just skimming above the road, dropped down.
"Great!" Daylight applauded. "A couple more will fix him. He's too
smart not to know when he's beaten."
Again Bob tried. But this time he was barely quarter around when the
doubled quirt on his nose compelled him to drop his fore feet to the
road. Then, with neither rein nor spur, but by the mere threat of the
quirt, she straightened him out.
Dede looked triumphantly at Daylight.
"Let me give him a run?" she asked.
Daylight nodded, and she shot down the road. He watched her out of
sight around the bend, and watched till she came into sight returning.
She certainly could sit her horse, was his thought, and she was a sure
enough hummer. God, she was the wife for a man! Made most of them
look pretty slim. And to think of her hammering all week at a
typewriter. That was no place for her. She should be a man's wife,
taking it easy, with silks and satins and diamonds (his frontier notion
of what befitted a wife beloved), and dogs, and horses, and such
things--"And we'll see, Mr. Burning Daylight, what you and me can do
about it," he murmured to himself! and aloud to her:--
"You'll do, Miss Mason; you'll do. There's nothing too good in
horseflesh you don't deserve, a woman who can ride like that. No; stay
with him, and we'll jog along to the quarry." He chuckled. "Say, he
actually gave just the least mite of a groan that last time you fetched
him. Did you hear it? And did you see the way he dropped his feet to
the road--just like he'd struck a stone wall. And he's got savvee
enough to know from now on that that same stone wall will be always
there ready for him to lam into."
When he parted from her that afternoon, at the gate of the road that
led to Berkeley, he drew off to the edge of the intervening clump of
trees, where, unobserved, he watched her out of sight. Then, turning to
ride back into Oakland, a thought came to him that made him grin
ruefully as he muttered: "And now it's up to me to make good and buy
that blamed quarry. Nothing less than that can give me an excuse for
snooping around these hills."
But the quarry was doomed to pass out of his plans for a time, for on
the following Sunday he rode alone. No Dede on a chestnut sorrel came
across the back-road from Berkeley that day, nor the day a week later.
Daylight was beside himself with impatience and apprehension, though in
the office he contained himself. He noted no change in her, and strove
to let none show in himself. The same old monotonous routine went on,
though now it was irritating and maddening. Daylight found a big
quarrel on his hands with a world that wouldn't let a man behave toward
his stenographer after the way of all men and women. What was the good
of owning millions anyway? he demanded one day of the desk-calendar,
as she passed out after receiving his dictation.
As the third week drew to a close and another desolate Sunday
confronted him, Daylight resolved to speak, office or no office. And as
was his nature, he went simply and directly to the point She had
finished her work with him, and was gathering her note pad and pencils
together to depart, when he said:--
"Oh, one thing more, Miss Mason, and I hope you won't mind my being
frank and straight out. You've struck me right along as a
sensible-minded girl, and I don't think you'll take offence at what I'm
going to say. You know how long you've been in the office--it's years,
now, several of them, anyway; and you know I've always been straight
and aboveboard with you. I've never what you call--presumed. Because
you were in my office I've tried to be more careful than if--if you
wasn't in my office--you understand. But just the same, it don't make
me any the less human. I'm a lonely sort of a fellow--don't take that
as a bid for kindness. What I mean by it is to try and tell you just
how much those two rides with you have meant. And now I hope you won't
mind my just asking why you haven't been out riding the last two
Sundays?"
He came to a stop and waited, feeling very warm and awkward, the
perspiration starting in tiny beads on his forehead. She did not speak
immediately, and he stepped across the room and raised the window
higher.
"I have been riding," she answered; "in other directions."
"But why...?" He failed somehow to complete the question. "Go ahead
and be frank with me," he urged. "Just as frank as I am with you. Why
didn't you ride in the Piedmont hills? I hunted for you everywhere.
"And that is just why." She smiled, and looked him straight in the
eyes for a moment, then dropped her own. "Surely, you understand, Mr.
Harnish."
He shook his head glumly.
"I do, and I don't. I ain't used to city ways by a long shot. There's
things one mustn't do, which I don't mind as long as I don't want to do
them."
"But when you do?" she asked quickly.
"Then I do them." His lips had drawn firmly with this affirmation of
will, but the next instant he was amending the statement "That is, I
mostly do. But what gets me is the things you mustn't do when they're
not wrong and they won't hurt anybody--this riding, for instance."
She played nervously with a pencil for a time, as if debating her
reply, while he waited patiently.
"This riding," she began; "it's not what they call the right thing. I
leave it to you. You know the world. You are Mr. Harnish, the
millionaire--"
"Gambler," he broke in harshly
She nodded acceptance of his term and went on.
"And I'm a stenographer in your office--"
"You're a thousand times better than me--" he attempted to interpolate,
but was in turn interrupted.
"It isn't a question of such things. It's a simple and fairly common
situation that must be considered. I work for you. And it isn't what
you or I might think, but what other persons will think. And you don't
need to be told any more about that. You know yourself."
Her cool, matter-of-fact speech belied her--or so Daylight thought,
looking at her perturbed feminineness, at the rounded lines of her
figure, the breast that deeply rose and fell, and at the color that was
now excited in her cheeks.
"I'm sorry I frightened you out of your favorite stamping ground," he
said rather aimlessly.
"You didn't frighten me," she retorted, with a touch of fire. "I'm not
a silly seminary girl. I've taken care of myself for a long time now,
and I've done it without being frightened. We were together two
Sundays, and I'm sure I wasn't frightened of Bob, or you. It isn't
that. I have no fears of taking care of myself, but the world insists
on taking care of one as well. That's the trouble. It's what the world
would have to say about me and my employer meeting regularly and riding
in the hills on Sundays. It's funny, but it's so. I could ride with
one of the clerks without remark, but with you--no."
"But the world don't know and don't need to know," he cried.
"Which makes it worse, in a way, feeling guilty of nothing and yet
sneaking around back-roads with all the feeling of doing something
wrong. It would be finer and braver for me publicly..."
"To go to lunch with me on a week-day," Daylight said, divining the
drift of her uncompleted argument.
She nodded.
"I didn't have that quite in mind, but it will do. I'd prefer doing
the brazen thing and having everybody know it, to doing the furtive
thing and being found out. Not that I'm asking to be invited to
lunch," she added, with a smile; "but I'm sure you understand my
position."
"Then why not ride open and aboveboard with me in the hills?" he urged.
She shook her head with what he imagined was just the faintest hint of
regret, and he went suddenly and almost maddeningly hungry for her.
"Look here, Miss Mason, I know you don't like this talking over of
things in the office. Neither do I. It's part of the whole thing, I
guess; a man ain't supposed to talk anything but business with his
stenographer. Will you ride with me next Sunday, and we can talk it
over thoroughly then and reach some sort of a conclusion. Out in the
hills is the place where you can talk something besides business. I
guess you've seen enough of me to know I'm pretty square. I--I do
honor and respect you, and ... and all that, and I..." He was
beginning to flounder, and the hand that rested on the desk blotter was
visibly trembling. He strove to pull himself together. "I just want to
harder than anything ever in my life before. I--I--I can't explain
myself, but I do, that's all. Will you?--Just next Sunday? To-morrow?"
Nor did he dream that her low acquiescence was due, as much as anything
else, to the beads of sweat on his forehead, his trembling hand, and
his all too-evident general distress.