"I thought maybe peace and quiet could be established through her if she could be made to see things in a civilized way."
Vesta made no rejoinder at once. She put her foot on the step as if to leave him, withdrew it, faced him gravely.
"It"s nothing to me, Duke, only I don"t want to see her lead you into another fire. Keep your eyes open and your hand close to your gun when you"re visiting with her."
She left him with that advice, given so gravely and honestly that it amounted to more than a warning. He felt that there was something more for him to say to make his position clear, but could not marshal his words. Vesta entered the house without looking back to where he stood, hat in hand, the moonlight in his fair hair.
CHAPTER XXI
A TEST OF LOYALTY
Lambert rode to his rendezvous with Grace Kerr on the appointed day, believing that she would keep it, although her promise had been inconclusive. She had only "expected" she would be there, but he more than expected she would come.
He was in a pleasant mood that morning, sentimentally softened to such extent that he believed he might even call accounts off with Sim Hargus and the rest of them if Grace could arrange a peace. Vesta was a little rough on her, he believed. Grace was showing a spirit that seemed to prove she wanted only gentle guiding to abandon the practices of violence to which she had been bred.
Certainly, compared to Vesta, she seemed of coa.r.s.er ware, even though she was as handsome as heart could desire. This he admitted without prejudice, not being yet wholly blind. But there was no bond of romance between Vesta and him. There was no place for romance between a man and his boss. Romance bound him to Grace Kerr; sentiment enchained him. It was a sweet enslavement, and one to be prolonged in his desire.
Grace was not in sight when he reached their meeting-place. He let down the wire and rode to meet her, troubled as before by that feeling of disloyalty to the Philbrook interests which caused him to stop more than once and debate whether he should turn back and wait inside the fence.
The desire to hasten the meeting with Grace was stronger than this question of his loyalty. He went on, over the hill from which she used to spy on his pa.s.sing, into the valley where he had interfered between the two girls on the day that he found Grace hidden away in this unexpected place. There he met her coming down the farther slope.
Grace was quite a different figure that day from any she had presented before, wearing a perky little highland bonnet with an eagle feather in it, and a skirt and blouse of the same plaid. His eyes announced his approval as they met, leaning to shake hands from the saddle.
Immediately he brought himself to task for his late admission that she was inferior in the eyes to Vesta. That misapprais.e.m.e.nt was due to the disadvantage under which he had seen Grace heretofore. This morning she was as dainty as a fresh-blown pink, and as delicately sweet. He swung from the saddle and stood off admiring her with so much speaking from his eyes that she grew rosy in their fire.
"Will you get down, Grace? I"ve never had a chance to see how tall you are--I couldn"t tell that day on the train."
The eagle feather came even with his ear when she stood beside him, slender and strong, health in her eyes, her womanhood ripening in her lips. Not as tall as Vesta, not as full of figure, he began in mental measurement, burning with self-reproof when he caught himself at it. Why should he always be drawing comparisons between her and Vesta, to her disadvantage in all things? It was unwarranted, it was absurd!
They sat on the hillside, their horses nipping each other in introductory preliminaries, then settling down to immediate friendship.
They were far beyond sight of the fence. Lambert hoped, with an uneasy return of that feeling of disloyalty and guilt, that Vesta would not come riding up that way and find the open strands of wire.
This thought pa.s.sed away and troubled him no more as they sat talking of the strange way of their "meeting on the run," as she said.
"There isn"t a horse in a thousand that could have caught up with me that day."
"Not one in thousands," he amended, with due grat.i.tude to Whetstone.
"I expected you"d be riding him today, Duke."
"He backed into a fire," said he uneasily, "and burned off most of his tail. He"s no sight for a lady in his present shape."
She laughed, looking at him shrewdly, as if she believed it to be a joke to cover something that he didn"t want her to know.
"But you promised to give him to me, Duke, when he rested up a little."
"I will," he declared earnestly, getting hold of her hand where it lay in the gra.s.s between them. "I"ll give you anything I"ve got, Grace, from the breath in my body to the blood in my heart!"
She bent her head, her face rosy with her mounting blood.
"Would you, Duke?" said she, so softly that it was not much more than the flutter of the wings of words.
He leaned a little nearer, his heart climbing, as if it meant to smother him and cut him short in that crowning moment of his dream.
"I"d have gone to the end of the world to find you, Grace," he said, his voice shaking as if he had a chill, his hands cold, his face hot, a tingling in his body, a sound in his ears like bells. "I want to tell you how----"
"Wait, Duke--I want to hear it all--but wait a minute. There"s something I want to ask you to do for me. Will you do me a favor, Duke, a simple favor, but one that means the world and all to me?"
"Try me," said he, with boundless confidence.
"It"s more than giving me your horse, Duke; a whole lot more than that, but it"ll not hurt you--you can do it, if you will."
"I know you wouldn"t ask me to do anything that would reflect on my honesty or honor," he said, beginning to do a little thinking as his nervous chill pa.s.sed.
"A man doesn"t--when a man _cares_--" She stopped, looking away, a little constriction in her throat.
"What is it, Grace?" pressing her hand encouragingly, master of the situation now, as he believed.
"Duke"--she turned to him suddenly, her eyes wide and luminous, her heart going so he could see the tremor of its vibrations in the lace at her throat--"I want you to lend me tomorrow morning, for one day, just one day, Duke--five hundred head of Vesta Philbrook"s cattle."
"That"s a funny thing to ask, Grace," said he uneasily.
"I want you to meet me over there where I cut the fence before sunup in the morning, and have everybody out of the way, so we can cut them out and drive them over here. You can manage it, if you want to, Duke. You will, if you--if you _care_."
"If they were my cattle, Grace, I wouldn"t hesitate a second."
"You"ll do it, anyhow, won"t you, Duke, for me?"
"What in the world do you want them for, just for one day?"
"I can"t explain that to you now, Duke, but I pledge you my honor, I pledge you everything, that they"ll be returned to you before night, not a head missing, nothing wrong."
"Does your father know--does he----"
"It"s for myself that I"m asking this of you, Duke; n.o.body else. It means--it means--_everything_ to me."
"If they were my cattle, Grace, if they were my cattle," said he aimlessly, amazed by the request, groping for the answer that lay behind it. What could a girl want to borrow five hundred head of cattle for?
What in the world would she get out of holding them in her possession one day and then turning them back into the pasture? There was something back of it; she was the innocent emissary of a crafty hand that had a trick to play.
"We could run them over here, just you and I, and n.o.body would know anything about it," she tempted, the color back in her cheeks, her eyes bright as in the pleasure of a request already granted.
"I don"t like to refuse you even that, Grace."
"You"ll do it, you"ll do it, Duke?" Her hand was on his arm in beguiling caress, her eyes were pleading into his.