Six Feet Four Part 20

Winifred Waverly looked steadily into Buck Thornton's eyes, suddenly determined that she would see in them the guile which must be there.

Surely a man could not do the things which this man so brazenly did, and not show something of it! And she saw a glance as steady as her own, eyes as clear and filled with a very frank admiration. In spite of her, her color rose and her eyes wavered a little. Then she noticed that Mrs.

Sturgis's keen eyes were upon her, and swiftly drove the expression from her own eyes and returned Thornton's greeting indifferently. Some day her uncle would accuse this man, but she did not care to give her personal affair over to the tongue of gossip, nor did she care to have her name linked in any way with Buck Thornton's.

"May I have this dance, Miss Waverly?"

He had put out his arm as though her affirmative were a foregone conclusion. She stared at him, wondering where were the limits to this man's audacity. Then, before she could reply, Mrs. Sturgis had answered for her. For Mrs. Sturgis was a born match maker, Buck was like a son to her motherly heart, Winifred Waverly was the "sweetest little thing"

she had ever seen, and they had in them the making of such a couple as Mrs. Sturgis couldn't find every day of the week.

"Go 'long with you, Buck Thornton!" she cried, making a monumental failure of the frown with which she tried to draw her placid brows.

"Here I thought all the time you was goin' to ask me!"

Then she jerked him by the arm, dragging him nearer, playfully pushed the girl toward him, and before she well knew what had happened Winifred found herself in Thornton's arms, whirling with him to the merry-fiddled music, putting out her little slipper by the side of his big boot to the step of the rye-waltz. And Mrs. Sturgis, drawing her twinkling eyes away from them and turning upon Ben Broderick, who had arrived just too late, with as much malice in her smile as she knew how to put into it, remarked meaningly,

"A little slow, Mr. Broderick! You got to keep awake when there's a man like Buck around."

And she seemed very much pleased with the look in Broderick's eyes, a look of blended surprise and irritation.

"Thornton and her uncle are not just exactly friends," he retorted coolly.

"If they was," she flung back at him, "I'd think a heap sight more of ol' Ben Pollard!"

Mrs. Sturgis's manoeuvre had so completely taken the girl by surprise that as she floated away in the cowboy's arms she was for a little undecided what to do. She did not want to dance with Thornton; it had been upon the tip of her tongue to make the old excuse and tell him that she was engaged for this waltz. In that way the whole episode would have pa.s.sed unnoticed. But now, if they stopped, if she had him take her to her seat and leave her, everybody would see, everybody would talk, gossip would remember that when she had first come to Hill's Corners John Smith had ridden with her as far as the Bar X, and that Smith had told there how Buck Thornton had ridden as far as his place with her; and then gossip would go on into endless speculation as to what had happened upon the trail which now made her refuse to dance with him.

That was why she hesitated, undecided, at first. Then Thornton began to speak and she wanted to know what he was going to say. Besides, she admitted to herself, begrudgingly, that she had never known a man dance as this man danced, and the magic of the waltz was on her.

"I had to return something you left at Harte's Camp," were his first words. "That's the reason I rode over tonight."

"What is it?" she asked quickly.

Now suddenly there rose up into her heart a swift hope that after all he was not entirely without principle, that he had grown ashamed of having taken from a girl the money with which she had been entrusted and that he was bringing it back to her. If he were man enough to do this ... the blood ran up higher in her cheeks at the thought ... she could almost forgive him for that other thing he had done.

So they moved on in the dance, her hand resting lightly in his, his fingers closing about it with no hint of a pressure to tell her that again he would take what small advantage he could, his eyes looking gravely down into the eyes which flashed up at him with her question.

"Didn't you lose anything that night?" he countered. "In the cabin after I went for the horses?"

"Well?" she countered, the quick hope leaping higher within her.

"You did?"

She wondered why his eyes were so grave, so stern now, why they had ceased to say flattering things of her and merely hinted of a mind at work on a puzzle. How could she know that while she was thinking of a yellow, cloth lined envelope, he was thinking of a horse lamed with a knife, and hoping to learn from her something of the man who had wounded the animal?

"Well?" she asked again, hardly above a whisper. Did he dare even talk of it here, among all these men and women? She glanced about her anxiously to see if Pollard were in the room. "You are going to give it back to me?"

Her wonderment was hardly more than Thornton's. Why should she show this eager excitement, because of a lost spur rowel?

"I rode over to give it to you," he answered, swinging her clear of an eddy in the swirl of dancers and to the edge of the crowd. "First, though, I want you to tell me something. A man came into the cabin about three minutes before you came out to the barn, didn't he?"

She had lowered her eyes, aware that people were noticing them, her looking up so earnestly, him looking down into her face so gravely. But now, in spite of her, she looked up at him again.

"Why do you ask that?" she demanded with a flash of anger that he should continue this useless pretence. "Do you think I am a fool?"

"No. I am asking because I want to know. It's a safe gamble that the man you had a tussel with is the man who lamed my horse."

"Is it?" she asked with cool sarcasm. "And it's just as safe a gamble that he is a coward and a ... brute!"

"I don't know about his being a coward, and I don't care about his being a brute," he told her steadily. "But I do want to know what he looks like."

Again she called herself a little fool and bit her lip in the surge of her vexation. She had been glad and over eager just now to restore her faith to this big brut of a man; at a mere word from him she had been ready to condone a crime and forgive an insult.... She felt her face grow hot; he had kissed her rudely and she had been willing to find excuses, she had even felt as odd sort of thrill tingling through her.

And now this eternal play-acting of his, this insane pretence....

"Mr. Thornton, this is getting us nowhere," she reminded him coldly. "If you care to be told I can a.s.sure you that I know perfectly well who the man was who ... who came into the cabin that night. And I think that it would be for the best if you returned ... my property!"

"I'm going to return it. Now, will you answer my question? Will you tell me who that man was?"

"Why do you pretend in this stupid way?" she demanded hotly.

"Why don't you tell me who he was?" he returned, frowning a little.

For a moment she did not answer. Then, her voice very low, she said, speaking slowly,

"I don't tell you, Mr. Thornton, because you know as well as I do!"

She saw nothing but blank amazement in his eyes.

"If I knew I wouldn't be asking you," he informed her.

Again she looked up at him, their eyes meeting steadily, searchingly.

"You say that you don't know who it was?" she challenged. And the eyes into which she looked were as clear of guile as a mountain lake when he answered:

"No. I don't know!"

Then through lips which were moulded to a pa.s.sionate scorn no less of self than of him, in a fierce whisper, she paid him in the coin of her contempt with the one word: "_Liar_!"

She saw the anger leap up into his eyes and the red run into his bronzed skin, she felt the arm about her contract tensely until for one dizzy second she thought that he would crush her. And then they were swinging on through the dance to the merry beat of the music and above the music she heard his soft laugh.

He did not look at her, nor did she again lift her eyes to his. But both of them saw Broderick where he stood near the door, his hands shoved down into his pockets, his tall, gaunt form leaning against the wall.

His eyes had been following them, and there was in them an expression hard to read. It might have been anger or distrust or suspicion.

And both Thornton and Winifred as they turned in the dance caught a quick glimpse of the face of another man. It was Henry Pollard. He had evidently just come in and as evidently had not seen Thornton and his niece dancing together until this moment. And the look in his eyes springing up naked and startled was a thing easy to read. For it was the look of fear!

Winifred Waverly tried to tell herself that it was fear for her, at seeing her in Thornton's arms. But she knew that it was not. Nor was it fear for himself, not mere physical fear of Thornton. Already she knew of her uncle that the man was no coward. It was not that kind of fear; it was a fear that was apprehension, dread lest something might happen.

What? "_Dread that something he did not want her to know might become known to her in her talk with Buck Thornton!_"

It was as though a voice had shouted it in her ear. Where so many things were muddled in inexplicability this one matter seemed suddenly perfectly clear to her. He had not wanted her to talk with Buck Thornton! Why?

Thornton, with no further word to her, had bowed to her, his eyes hard and stern, and taking a paper-wrapped packet from his vest pocket had given it to her, and had walked swiftly to the door near which Broderick stood. In spite of her her eyes had gone down the room after the tall figure. And then something happened which could have meant nothing to any one else in the house, but which brought leaping up into the girl's heart both fear and gladness. And, at last, understanding.