Big Timber Part 21

"What did I say to you yesterday?" Fyfe opened his mouth at last. "But then I might have known I was wasting my breath on you!"

"Well," Monohan retorted insolently, "what are you going to do about it?

This isn't the Stone Age."

Fyfe laughed unpleasantly.

"Lucky for you. You'd have been eliminated long ago," he said. "No, it takes the present age to produce such rotten specimens as you."

A deep flush rose in Monohan's cheeks. He took a step toward Fyfe, his hands clenched.

"You wouldn't say that if you weren't armed," he taunted hoa.r.s.ely.

"No?" Fyfe cast the rifle to one side. It fell with a metallic clink against a stone. "I do say it though, you see. You are a sort of a yellow dog, Monohan. You know it, and you know that I know it. That's why it stings you to be told so."

Monohan stepped back and slipped out of his coat. His face was crimson.

"By G.o.d, I'll teach you something," he snarled.

He lunged forward as he spoke, shooting a straight-arm blow for Fyfe's face. It swept through empty air, for Fyfe, poised on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, ducked under the driving fist, and slapped Monohan across the mouth with the open palm of his hand.

"Tag," he said sardonically. "You're It."

Monohan pivoted, and rus.h.i.+ng, swung right and left, missing by inches.

Fyfe's mocking grin seemed to madden him completely. He rushed again, launching another vicious blow that threw him partly off his balance.

Before he could recover, Fyfe kicked both feet from under him, sent him sprawling on the moss.

Stella stood like one stricken. The very thing she dreaded had come about. Yet the manner of its unfolding was not as she had visualized it when she saw Fyfe near at hand. She saw now a side of her husband that she had never glimpsed, that she found hard to understand. She could have understood him beating Monohan senseless, if he could. A murderous fury of jealousy would not have surprised her. This did. He had not struck a blow, did not attempt to strike.

She could not guess why, but she saw that he was playing with Monohan, making a fool of him, for all Monohan's advantage of height and reach.

Fyfe moved like the light, always beyond Monohan's vengeful blows, slipping under those driving fists to slap his adversary, to trip him, mocking him with the futility of his effort.

She felt herself powerless to stop that sorry exhibition. It was not a fight for her. Dimly she had a feeling that back of her lay something else. An echo of it had been more than once in Fyfe's speech. Here and now, they had forgotten her at the first word. They were engaged in a struggle for mastery, sheer brute determination to hurt each other, which had little or nothing to do with her. She foresaw, watching the odd combat with a feeling akin to fascination, that it was a losing game for Monohan. Fyfe was his master at every move.

Yet he did not once attempt to strike a solid blow, nothing but that humiliating, open-handed slap, that dexterous swing of his foot that plunged Monohan headlong. He grinned steadily, a cold grimace that reflected no mirth, being merely a sneering twist of his features.

Stella knew the deadly strength of him. She wondered at his purpose, how it would end.

The elusive light-footedness of the man, the successive stinging of those contemptuous slaps at last maddened Monohan into ignoring the rules by which men fight. He dropped his hands and stood panting with his exertions. Suddenly he kicked, a swift lunge for Fyfe's body.

Fyfe leaped aside. Then he closed. Powerful and weighty a man as Monohan was, Fyfe drove him halfway around with a short-arm blow that landed near his heart, and while he staggered from that, clamped one thick arm about his neck in the strangle-hold. Holding him helpless, bent backwards across his broad chest, Fyfe slowly and systematically choked him; he shut off his breath until Monohan's tongue protruded, and his eyes bulged gla.s.sily, and horrible, gurgling noises issued from his gaping mouth.

"Jack, Jack!" Stella found voice to shriek. "You're killing him."

Fyfe lifted his eyes to hers. The horror he saw there may have stirred him. Or he may have considered his object accomplished. Stella could not tell. But he flung Monohan from him with a force that sent him reeling a dozen feet, to collapse on the moss. It took him a full minute to regain his breath, to rise to unsteady feet, to find his voice.

"You can't win all the time," he gasped. "By G.o.d, I'll show you that you can't."

With that he turned and went back the way he had come. Fyfe stood silent, hands resting on his hips, watching until Monohan pushed out a slim speed launch from under cover of overhanging alders and set off down the lake.

"Well," he remarked then, in a curiously detached, impersonal tone.

"The lightning will begin to play by and by, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" Stella asked breathlessly.

He did not answer. His eyes turned to her slowly. She saw now that his face was white and rigid, that the line of his lips drew harder together as he looked at her; but she was not prepared for the storm that broke.

She did not comprehend the tempest that raged within him until he had her by the shoulders, his fingers crus.h.i.+ng into her soft flesh like the jaws of a trap, shaking her as a terrier might shake a rat, till the heavy coils of hair cascaded over her shoulders, and for a second fear tugged at her heart. For she thought he meant to kill her.

When he did desist, he released her with a thrust of his arms that sent her staggering against a tree, shaken to the roots of her being, though not with fear. Anger had displaced that. A hot protest against his brute strength, against his pa.s.sionate outbreak, stirred her. Appearances were against her, she knew. Even so, she revolted against his cave-man roughness. She was amazed to find herself longing for the power to strike him.

She faced him trembling, leaning against the tree trunk, staring at him in impotent rage. And the fire died out of his eyes as she looked. He drew a deep breath or two and turned away to pick up his rifle. When he faced about with that in his hand, the old mask of immobility was in place. He waited while Stella gathered up her scattered hairpins and made s.h.i.+ft to coil her hair into a semblance of Order. Then he said gently:

"I won't break out like that again."

"Once is enough."

"More than enough--for me," he answered.

She disdained reply. Striking off along the path that ran to the camp, she walked rapidly, choking a rising flood of desperate thought. With growing coolness paradoxically there burned hotter the flame of an elemental wrath. What right had he to lay hands on her? Her shoulders ached, her flesh was bruised from the terrible grip of his fingers. The very sound of his footsteps behind her was maddening. To be suspected and watched, to be continually the target of jealous fury! No, a thousand times, no. She wheeled on him at last.

"I can't stand this," she cried. "It's beyond endurance. We're like flint and steel to each other now. If to-day's a sample of what we may expect, it's better to make a clean sweep of everything. I've got to get away from here and from you--from everybody."

Fyfe motioned her to a near-by log.

"Sit down," said he. "We may as well have it out here."

For a few seconds he busied himself with a cigar, removing the band with utmost deliberation, biting the end off, applying the match, his brows puckered slightly.

"It's very unwise of you to meet Monohan like that," he uttered finally.

"Oh, I see," she flashed. "Do you suggest that I met him purposely--by appointment? Even if I did--"

"That's for you to say, Stella," he interrupted gravely. "I told you last night that I trusted you absolutely. I do, so far as really vital things are concerned, but I don't always trust your judgment. I merely know that Monohan sneaked along sh.o.r.e, hid his boat, and stole through the timber to where you were sitting. I happened to see him, and I followed him to see what he was up to, why he should take such measures to keep under cover."

"The explanation is simple," she answered stiffly. "You can believe it or not, as you choose. My being there was purely unintentional. If I had seen him before he was close, I should certainly not have been there. I have been at odds with myself all day, and I went for a walk, to find a quiet place where I could sit and think."

"It doesn't matter now," he said. "Only you'd better try to avoid things like that in the future. Would you mind telling me just exactly what you meant a minute ago? Just what you propose to do?"

He asked her that as one might make any commonplace inquiry, but his quietness did not deceive Stella.

"What I said," she began desperately. "Wasn't it plain enough? It seems to me our life is going to be a nightmare from now on if we try to live it together. I--I'm sorry, but you know how I feel. It may be unwise, but these things aren't dictated by reason. You know that. If our emotions were guided by reason and expediency, we'd be altogether different. Last night I was willing to go on and make the best of things. To-day,--especially after this,--it looks impossible. You'll look at me, and guess what I'm thinking, and hate me. And I'll grow to hate you, because you'll be little better than a jailer. Oh, don't you see that the way we'll feel will make us utterly miserable? Why should we stick together when no good can come of it? You've been good to me.

I've appreciated that and liked you for it. I'd like to be friends. But I--I'd hate you with a perfectly murderous hatred if you were always on the watch, always suspecting me, if you taunted me as you did a while ago. I'm just as much a savage at heart as you are, Jack Fyfe. I could gladly have killed you when you were jerking me about back yonder."

"I wonder if you are, after all, a little more of a primitive being than I've supposed?"

Fyfe leaned toward her, staring fixedly into her eyes--eyes that were bright with unshed tears.

"And I was holding the devil in me down back there, because I didn't want to horrify you with anything like brutality," he went on thoughtfully. "You think I grinned and made a monkey of _him_ because it pleased me to do that? Why, I could have--and ached to--break him into little bits, to smash him up so that no one would ever take pleasure in looking at him again. And I didn't, simply and solely because I didn't want to let you have even a glimpse of what I'm capable of when I get started. I wonder if I made a mistake? It was merely the reaction from letting him go scot-free that made me shake you so. I wonder--well, never mind. Go on."

"I think it's better that I should go away," Stella said. "I want you to agree that I should; then there will be no talk or anything disagreeable from outside sources. I'm strong, I can get on. It'll be a relief to have to work. I won't have to be the kitchen drudge Charlie made of me.