Chapter Fourteen. Her Little Joke
A brief ten minutes of waiting beside the front door of the house, and then Ronicky Doone heard a swift pattering of feet on the stairs. Presently the girl was moving very slowly toward him down the hall. Plainly she was bitterly afraid when she came beside him, under the dim hall light. She wore that same black hat, turned back from her white face, and the red flower beside it was a dull, uncertain blur. Decidedly she was pretty enough to explain Bill Gregg's sorrow. Ronicky gave her no chance to think twice. She was in the very act of murmuring something about a change of mind, when he opened the door and, stepping out into the starlight, invited her with a smile and a gesture to follow. In a moment they were in the freshness of the night air. He took her arm, and they passed slowly down the steps. At the bottom she turned and looked anxiously at the house.
"Lady," murmured Ronicky, "they's nothing to be afraid of. We're going to walk right up and down this street and never get out of sight of the friends you got in this here house." At the word "friends" she shivered slightly, and he added: "Unless you want to go farther of your own free will." "No, no!" she exclaimed, as if frightened by the very prospect.
"Then we won't. It's all up to you. You're the boss, and I'm the cow-puncher, lady." "But tell me quickly," she urged. "I—I have to go back. I mustn't stay out too long." "Starting right in at the first," Ronicky said, "I got to tell you that Bill has told me pretty much everything that ever went on between you two. All about the correspondence-school work and about the letters and about the pictures." "I don't understand," murmured the girl faintly. But Ronicky diplomatically raised his voice and went on, as if he had not heard her. "You know what he's done with that picture of yours?" "No," she said faintly. "He got the biggest nugget that he's ever taken out of the dirt. He got it beaten out into the right shape, and then he made a locket out of it and put your picture in it, and now he wears it around his neck, even when he's working at the mine." Her breath caught. "That silly, cheap snapshot!" She stopped. She had admitted everything already, and she had intended to be a very sphinx with this strange Westerner.
"It was only a joke," she said. "I—I didn't really mean to—" "Do you know what that joke did?" asked Ronicky. "It made two men fight, then cross the continent together and get on the trail of a girl whose name they didn't even know. They found the girl, and then she said she'd forgotten—but no, I don't mean to blame you. There's something queer behind it all. But I want to explain one thing. The reason that Bill didn't get to that train wasn't because he didn't try. He did try. He tried so hard that he got into a fight with a gent that tried to hold him up for a few words, and Bill got shot off his hoss." "Shot?" asked the girl. "Shot?" Suddenly she was clutching his arm, terrified at the thought. She recovered herself at once and drew away, eluding the hand of Ronicky. He made no further attempt to detain her.
But he had lifted the mask and seen the real state of her mind; and she, too, knew that the secret was discovered. It angered her and threw her instantly on the aggressive.
"I tell you what I guessed from the window," said Ronicky. "You went down to the street, all prepared to meet up with poor old Bill—" "Prepared to meet him?" She started up at Ronicky. "How in the world could I ever guess—" She was looking up to him, trying to drag his eyes down to hers, but Ronicky diplomatically kept his attention straight ahead.
"You couldn't guess," he suggested, "but there was someone who could guess for you. Someone who pretty well knew we were in town, who wanted to keep you away from Bill because he was afraid—" "Of what?" she demanded sharply.
"Afraid of losing you." This seemed to frighten her. "What do you know?" she asked.
"I know this," he answered, "that I think a girl like you, all in all, is too good for any man. But, if any man ought to have her, it's the gent that is fondest of her. And Bill is terrible fond of you, lady—he don't think of nothing else. He's grown thin as a ghost, longing for you." "So he sends another man to risk his life to find me and tell me about it?" she demanded, between anger and sadness.
"He didn't send me—I just came. But the reason I came was because I knew Bill would give up without a fight." "I hate a man who won't fight," said the girl. "It's because he figures he's so much beneath you," said Ronicky. "And, besides, he can't talk about himself. He's no good at that at all. But, if it comes to fighting, lady, why, he rode a couple of hosses to death and stole another and had a gunfight, all for the sake of seeing you, when a train passed through a town." She was speechless.
"So I thought I'd come," said Ronicky Doone, "and tell you the insides of things, the way I knew Bill wouldn't and couldn't, but I figure it don't mean nothing much to you." She did not answer directly. She only said: "Are men like this in the West? Do they do so much for their friends?" "For a gent like Bill Gregg, that's simple and straight from the shoulder, they ain't nothing too good to be done for him. What I'd do for him he'd do mighty pronto for me, and what he'd do for me—well, don't you figure that he'd do ten times as much for the girl he loves? Be honest with me," said Ronicky Doone. "Tell me if Bill means anymore to you than any stranger?" "No—yes." "Which means simply yes. But how much more, lady?" "I hardly know him. How can I say?" "It's sure an easy thing to say. You've wrote to him. You've had letters from him. You've sent him your picture, and he's sent you his, and you've seen him on the street. Lady, you sure know Bill Gregg, and what do you think of him?" "I think—" "Is he a square sort of gent?" "Y-yes." "The kind you'd trust?" "Yes, but—" "Is he the kind that would stick to the girl he loved and take care of her, through thick and thin?" "You mustn't talk like this," said Caroline Smith, but her voice trembled, and her eyes told him to go on. "I'm going back and tell Bill Gregg that, down in your heart, you love him just about the same as he loves you!" "Oh," she asked, "would you say a thing like that? It isn't a bit true." "I'm afraid that's the way I see it. When I tell him that, you can lay to it that old Bill will let loose all holds and start for you, and, if they's ten brick walls and twenty gunmen in between, it won't make no difference. He'll find you, or die trying." Before he finished she was clinging to his arm.
"If you tell him, you'll be doing a murder, Ronicky Doone. What he'll face will be worse than twenty gunmen." "The gent that smiles, eh?" "Yes, John Mark. No, no, I didn't mean—" "But you did, and I knew it, too. It's John Mark that's between you and Bill. I seen you in the street, when you were talking to poor Bill, look back over your shoulder at that devil standing in the window of this house." "Don't call him that!" "D'you know of one drop of kindness in his nature, lady?" "Are we quite alone?" "Not a soul around." "Then he is a devil, and, being a devil, no ordinary man has a chance against him—not a chance, Ronicky Doone. I don't know what you did in the house, but I think you must have outfaced him in some way. Well, for that you'll pay, be sure! And you'll pay with your life, Ronicky. Every minute, now, you're in danger of your life. You'll keep on being in danger, until he feels that he has squared his account with you. Don't you see that if I let Bill Gregg come near me—" "Then Bill will be in danger of this same wolf of a man, eh? And, in spite of the fact that you like Bill—" "Ah, yes, I do!" "That you love him, in fact." "Why shouldn't I tell you?" demanded the girl, breaking down suddenly. "I do love him, and I can never see him to tell him, because I dread John Mark." "Rest easy," said Ronicky, "you'll see Bill, or else he'll die trying to get to you." "If you're his friend—" "I'd rather see him dead than living the rest of his life, plumb unhappy." She shook her head, arguing, and so they reached the corner of Beekman Place again and turned into it and went straight toward the house opposite that of John Mark. Still the girl argued, but it was in a whisper, as if she feared that terrible John Mark might overhear.
* * * * *
In the home of John Mark, that calm leader was still with Ruth Tolliver. They had gone down to the lower floor of the house, and, at his request, she sat at the piano, while Mark sat comfortably beyond the sphere of the piano light and watched her.
"You're thinking of something else," he told her, "and playing abominably." "I'm sorry." "You ought to be," he said. "It's bad enough to play poorly for someone who doesn't know, but it's torture to play like that for me." He spoke without violence, as always, but she knew that he was intensely angry, and that familiar chill passed through her body. It never failed to come when she felt that she had aroused his anger.
"Why doesn't Caroline come back?" she asked at length.
"She's letting him talk himself out, that's all. Caroline's a clever youngster. She knows how to let a man talk till his throat is dry, and then she'll smile and tell him that it's impossible to agree with him. Yes, there are many possibilities in Caroline." "You think Ronicky Doone is a gambler?" she asked, harking back to what he had said earlier.
"I think so," answered John Mark, and again there was that tightening of the muscles around his mouth. "A gambler has a certain way of masking his own face and looking at yours, as if he were dragging your thoughts out through your eyes; also, he's very cool; he belongs at a table with the cards on it and the stakes high." The door opened. "Here's young Rose. He'll tell us the truth of the matter. Has she come back, Rose?" The young fellow kept far back in the shadow, and, when he spoke, his voice was uncertain, almost to the point of trembling. "No," he managed to say, "she ain't come back, chief." Mark stared at him for a moment and then slowly opened a cigarette case and lighted a smoke. "Well," he said, and his words were far more violent than the smooth voice, "well, idiot, what did she do?" "She done a fade-away, chief, in the house across the street. Went in with that other gent." "He took her by force?" asked John Mark.
"Nope. She slipped in quick enough and all by herself. He went in last." "Damnation!" murmured Mark. "That's all, Rose." His follower vanished through the doorway and closed the door softly after him. John Mark stood up and paced quietly up and down the room. At length he turned abruptly on the girl. "Good night. I have business that takes me out." "What is it?" she asked eagerly.
He paused, as if in doubt as to how he should answer her, if he answered at all. "In the old days," he said at last, "when a man caught a poacher on his grounds, do you know what he did?" "No." "Shot him, my dear, without a thought and threw his body to the wolves!" "John Mark! Do you mean—" "Your friend Ronicky, of course." "Only because Caroline was foolish are you going to—" "Caroline? Tut, tut! Caroline is only a small part of it. He has done more than that—far more, this poacher out of the West!" He turned and went swiftly through the door. The moment it was closed the girl buried her face in her hands.
