A CRUSHING BLOW.
Buck Badger stared at a letter in a familiar handwriting which had come
to his room in the afternoon mail. He had delivered to Donald Pike that
threatening talk the night before, when Pike came back to the land of
sentient things after that awful choking.
The infliction of this punishment on Pike, and the feeling that Winnie
would stand by him in spite of everything, had so satisfied the
Westerner that he had been in an uncommonly comfortable frame of mind,
in spite of the fact that the powerful opposition of Fairfax Lee was yet
to be overcome. With Winnie true, and time and youth in their favor,
there seemed no good reason why he should be in the dumps.
But the letter at which he now gazed with starting eyes and anguished
face! It was from Winnie herself, and what it said was enough to make
the Kansan's brain reel:
"MR. BUCK BADGER: Father knows that we met last night, and he is
much displeased, as he has a right to be. I am very sorry I said to
you the things I did, for we can never be anything more to each
other. I have had time to think more clearly since I saw you, and
this is my decision. It will do no good to talk it over, for this
is final. Therefore, if you are a gentleman, you will not try to
see me again. I return to you by express your ring and the things
you have given me.
"WINNIE LEE."
"I can't understand it!" he gasped, as he recalled her words of the
evening before. "Yet she wrote it. There isn't any doubt whatever of
that. I wish there were, but I know that handwriting too well."
He read it over again and again, as if searching out some other meaning.
It seemed so impossible. Yet there it was. He got up and began to pace
round the room, stopping almost every time he passed the table to take
another look at the letter.
"Thrown over!" he groaned. "And after all we've been to each other! I
allow she couldn't stand up against her father. How in thunder did he
find out that we met last night? Some onery, spying Piute of a servant,
I reckon. Well, I seem to be rounded up now, and Winnie's given me the
branding-iron with her own white hand."
He mopped the sweat from his face.
"I won't accept it! That's whatever! She says that if I'm a gentleman,
I'll not try to see her again. Glad I ain't a gentleman! Glad I'm a
man--and I allow a man is a good deal bigger than a gentleman! I s'pose
a gentleman would sit down and twiddle his fingers, and do nothing.
Well, I ain't built that way! Not on your life! I'm going to see her
again, whether she wants to see me or not. I'll see her, if I have to
fight my way into that house! That's whatever!"
He gave his breast a thump, as if he fancied he was striking at an
enemy. His face was red and his neck veins stood out like cords. His
heavy shoulders were thrown back, and his broad white teeth gleamed in a
determined fashion.
"I'll find out just why she changed her mind so suddenly. Of course, it
was her father's work. He has kept her under his thumb so long that she
has come to the conclusion that she has to mind him in this, too! He
thinks I'm not good enough for her, I allow! Well, I ain't--no man on
earth is good enough for her--but I'm just as good as Fairfax Lee, any
day in the week! Hanged if I don't tell him so, too!
"Yes, I'll walk into his office, if I have to knock over that clerk to
do it, and I'll tell him what I think of him, if I'm arrested for it
next minute. In this beastly East, instead of meeting a man and fighting
him, the first thing a fellow thinks of, if he has a word with another,
is to call in the police. But I'm not afraid of the New Haven police!"
Badger's heart seethed like a volcano.
"See her! Well, I reckon! I'll see her if I die for it! I'll see her,
even if she refuses to speak to me! I'm going to find out what's at the
bottom of this!"
While the Westerner was thus storming, an expressman came with the
little package containing the ring and the trinkets which Badger had
given to Winnie. It contained no note, but the address was in Winnie's
handwriting.
Badger tore the package open almost before the expressman was out of the
room. A lump came into his throat as he looked at the ring. He
remembered so distinctly the time he gave it to her and all the words
then said. It seemed impossible that she had returned it now in this
curt manner.
"I'll ask her to take it back!" he muttered. He dropped the ring into a
pocket of the suit he was wearing, that he might be sure to have it with
him when he met her--for that he would meet her in some way or other he
was firmly resolved.
"Her father has driven her into this. It's not her wish, I know. But she
is so good and dutiful that she may stick by this decision, to please
him. I allow that there is where the trouble is going to come. But I
won't give her up! Not unless she tells me positively with her own lips
that everything is ended."
Badger now did something which he would never have dreamed of doing a
short time before. Even the thought of it would have been greeted with
scorn. He carefully put the letter in an inner pocket, put away the
trinkets which Winnie had returned, and set out to find Frank Merriwell.
The act did not even strike him as incongruous.
"Inza and Elsie will do anything for Merriwell! He can go in and out of
Lee's house as he wants to. I allow he will be glad to help me in this
thing, if he can. The trail looks to be so confoundedly tangled that a
bit of help in ciphering it out will be mighty welcome just now!"
He scowled as he crossed the campus and remembered the unpleasant
experience of the previous night. The tree in front of Durfee still bore
a large quantity of "fruit." The tab of Badger's shirt was there.
"Come over here and pick out your property!" shouted a student who was
standing in a group near the tree.
Badger strode on without a word, for he was in no humor for
pleasantries.
"Fruit!" squealed Danny Griswold.
"Where are you going, my pretty maid?" Bink Stubbs sang from his perch
on the fence.
"Going to hunt up those cats," said the Westerner, with sarcastic scorn.
"I hear their kittens squawling for them!"
Danny fell over against Bink.
"A joke from Badger!" he murmured. "Somebody fan me!"
"I'll fan you!" grunted Bink, who was not pleased with the Kansan's
retort, pushing Danny roughly from him.
"Do!" begged Danny. "That took my breath. What will happen next?"
Badger swung on at a swift, nervous pace, and mounted to Frank's room.
"Come in!" Frank sung out, as the Kansan's knuckles hammered on the
door.
He was rather surprised to see Badger at that hour. But he put away the
book he had been studying, and pushed out a chair.
"Take a seat!" he invited.
"I reckon you'll think it's mighty funny that I should come to you for
advice and help?"
"Why, no! It's a way my friends have. And they know that I am always
ready to do whatever I can for them."
"Well, it's about Winnie!" said Badger bluntly. Whereupon, in a few
words, he told his story.
"That rather stumps me, Badger," Frank admitted. "I think, though, that
the straight way is the best. If you're willing, I will see Lee in your
behalf. I shall have to admit to him that you were intoxicated at that
time, but I'll try to make him see that you are pretty straight goods,
for all of that. Perhaps a few words from one who knows you will be
helpful."
"If you will, Merry, I can't ever thank you enough. It will be about as
big a favor, I allow, as one man ever did for another, and I sha'n't
forget it."
Merriwell looked at his watch.
"I can't go to his office this afternoon, but I'll see him at his house
to-night. I may be late getting there, but I'll try to time it to be
there when he gets home from his club."
Badger went away as if walking on air. He could hardly think of anything
else throughout the remainder of the day, and night found him in the
vicinity of the Lee home, even though he had a feeling that Merriwell
would prefer he should keep away from there until the result of the
promised interview was known.
"I wish Merry would hurry," he thought, as he finally advanced to the
fence, drawn there by his intense desire to be near to Winnie. "I'll
speak to him before he goes in, and ask him to come right out as soon as
possible with the news."
As he stood thus by the fence, a light step sounded, and, looking over,
he recognized in the dim light the form of Winnie Lee. He was by her
side at a bound.
"You must not stand by that note!" he pleadingly began. "I allow that
you will see, when you think of it, that it isn't right by me!"
He did not attempt to touch her or stoop toward her. She had, in writing
that letter, forbidden familiarities. Their relations toward each other
were unchanged. He remembered the ring in his pocket.
"Buck! you silly fellow! Don't you know that I didn't mean to cast you
off?"
"But the note?" he gasped. "It was in your handwriting? And the ring?
You sent back the ring!"
"Yes, I wrote the letter because father commanded me to write it, and I
sent back the ring for the same reason. You ought to have known that!"
The change in his feelings was so great and sudden that he could hardly
repress a shout.
"I reckon I'm the biggest idiot unhung!" he confessed, as he took her in
his arms. "But when I saw that the writing was yours, I fancied your
father had by threats, or in some way, induced you to change your mind,
and that you really thought, in duty to him, you ought not to see me any
more. Say, I'm too happy to think! I'm----"
"You are just a silly fellow!"
"You never shot straighter! I'm a roaring idiot!"
He kissed her and held her face toward the light in a rather vain effort
to see its outline.
"I've been crazier since I got that note than any locoed cowboy that
ever tore up the ranges. I've simply been wild!"
"I am very sorry, Buck. Yet I think I must have suffered as much. Last
night father obtained from me a confession that I had met you in the
grounds here. He asked me if I had met you, and my confused looks made
my denials useless. Then he ordered me to write that note and to send
back the ring. He mailed them himself. And he made me promise that I
wouldn't meet you again. But when I made it, I realized that I couldn't
keep it."
"You're an angel!"
"I never heard that angels were disobedient."
"Some of them."
"And they were punished for it. Oh, Buck, I hope we will never regret
this--that there will be no punishment for this!"
"There won't be!" he grimly declared.
"Father is gone," she said. "Out of the city!"
"And I wanted Merry to see him here this evening," in a tone of regret,
"Merry is to have a talk with him and try to get him to see that I am
not such a soaking Piute as I've been painted!"
"I'm sorry, too, Buck--though I was glad."
"Glad?"
"I intended to ask you into the house. Is it very wrong?"
"I don't think so!" he whispered, joy and triumph in his voice. "Where
you lead I will follow. By and by I hope we will walk abreast."