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“I believe I never have any emotions,” she laughed. And then she saw the denying amusement in his eyes and remembered. She looked out into the desert, the flush in her cheeks rivaling the mystic glow. He sat, tense and silent, watching her soft, outing profile, the mass of reddish-brown hair touching the white column of her throat, wondering at the leaping exultation that filled him.

When she looked at him, presently, her cheeks were still faintly glowing, and her eyes were dancing with repressed excitement—and some reproof.

“Father says you do not like Hame Bozzam. “Why?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

“One can usually find no reason for his likes and dislikes.” He looked narrowly at her, wondering how much, or how little, the Colonel had told her. “Bozzam and I have never agreed. I think it began when he wanted to take Jane from me, the morning her parents were murdered.”

She nodded comprehensively. “You had the first claim, I think. Jane is rather well-educated—for her age,” she went on, after a pause; “which would seem to prove that her teacher did not lack advantages.”

“I wasted four years at a university,” he said, watching the desert, his face serious.

“Wasted them?”

“Do you think I have put them to good use?”

“You might have done worse.” She looked at him wonderingly, with a little reproach. “If I were a man I would not permit the faithlessness of one woman to make a wanderer of me.”

“I am glad it did.”

“I—I don’t see—”

“If I hadn’t been a wanderer I should not have seen you,” he said, slowly, and drew a deep breath when he saw the color steal into her cheeks again.

She got up presently and walked to her horse, saying, without looking at Gawne, “I think we had better be going, now.”

He was at the side of the animal as soon as she, and his right hand covered hers where it rested on the pommel of the saddle. She looked up, saw the flame in his eyes, paled, but met his gaze steadily, unafraid.

“I’ve got to say this,” he said lowly—and it seemed to the girl that he was deliberately, though with great effort, suppressing his passions. “It’s a fire that has been burning in me since we had that last long talk—about women. You’ll think I’m an impulsive fool, I suppose, but I don’t seem to care. And yet I do care. And I can’t help this. What I want I go straight after. There are no crooks or turns in my mental processes, and it doesn’t take me a century to decide a thing. When I like a man I like him, and when I hate a man I hate him, and I take pains to know that he knows it. And when I love a woman, I love her. I used to think I loved—Randolph’s concubine. I didn’t, I’ve found that out. That was my first—my puppy-love. I’ve outgrown it.” He laughed, deep in his throat—but she knew it was not a laugh, it was an outlet for his vibrant, tense passion. “You’ll think this is a sentimental avalanche. It isn’t—it’s just the swiftness and strength of a wanderer’s love. And yet it doesn’t seem to have come so swiftly. I’ve known you only a little more than a month, perhaps. It seems like a thousand years. It’s the country, I suppose; the freedom and the naturalness of everything. It laughs at custom. And I saw you before you came. It was your picture. I studied it, I love it. I thought it was only curiosity. It was curiosity that sent me to meet you at Bozzam City. But it was love that made me act the brute to you on the way home. You thought I hated you, and I thought I hated you. But I didn’t hate you, I was fooling myself. I want you—and I’m going to have you!”

“Don’t be too sure of that!” Her gaze was unwavering, though a crimson spot burned in each of her cheeks, and her breath was coming fast. His other hand was on her shoulder—the right still gripped hers where it rested on the saddle horn—but there was a look in her steady eyes that held him back as effectually as though there was a stone wall between them. Yet her voice was a little tremulous, as though this volcanic wooing had affected her deeply.

“I certainly haven’t given you any—encouragement. I—I don’t think I can return your affection. I—I think I am just a little afraid of you. Don’t you think you mistake desire for love? Oh, it is quite possible, I assure you!” she said when she saw his lips stiffen and his eyes flash a vigorous negative. “You have been a recluse for many years; you are lonely, and—and bitter, and—and you are just in the throes of an awakening. You may not know your own mind—don’t you see? And you don’t know anything about—me. I may possess those very qualities of—of character that you despise.”

“I suppose I deserve that,” he said, looking at her reproachfully.

“I think you do,” she said, her eyes shining with joy as she felt his fingers relax their grip on her hand; felt the other hand slip off her shoulder. This told her that he was not what she had half-feared him to be—which she knew now that he was not. She was sure of him now—sure of his self-control, sure of his honorableness, sure of many things. But most of all she was certain of her power over him.

“I think you deserve more—quite a lot more. You had no right to believe what you did, of all women. And even if I did like you enough, which I do not, to—to return your affection, I would still not be willing to trust myself to you. I would be afraid—afraid that you would still harbor distrust—for me. And that would be unbearable.”

“You know it is impossible that I should distrust you. That is absurd—your honesty is in your eyes.”

His hands were at his sides now, and his head was bowed; his face wearing the expression of a reproved schoolboy—which was the very condition she wanted him to be in.

And now, when she had effectually rebuked him, and was satisfied that his affection for her was sincere, she gave him—with womanlike pity—a crumb of hope upon which he might nourish his love. But she was on her horse when she spoke.

“I think I might—like you—a little—in time,” she said. “That will depend upon your attitude—and upon your faith in me. If you ever think of me as you have thought of other women—as you have thought of Marie Calvert, for instance—I shall hate you forever and ever!”

She turned from him and urged her horse across the level top of the ridge, her joyful smile quite hidden from him. In that position she heard Meteor leap, felt his shoulder brush her knee—very lightly—as he flashed abreast of her own animal. And then, before her lips could utter the startled exclamation that leaped to them, Meteor stood on his hind legs, Gawne’s right arm was around her waist; she was drawn toward him, crushed against him, and her lips, her cheeks, her hair, were kissed with a passion that made her heart thump with terror.

She was released instantly; her felt hat awry, her hair disarranged and falling in irritating folds and wisps over her face and neck. She saw Gawne, already contrite, pale and concerned, sitting on Meteor a few feet distant, and she faced him, furiously indignant and shamed.

“I hate you!” she said, her voice quavering. “I shall always hate you. I am glad that women have treated you as they have! You deserved it! I hate you—oh, how I hate you!”

“I love you, Kathleen,” he answered, his voice deep and earnest. “I shall love you forever and ever. And one day I shall have kisses from you without stealing them.”

She cut her horse across the flanks and sent it down the slope of the ridge so rapidly that Gawne’s cheeks blanched with concern. But when she essayed to race her animal along the lower level in order to escape him, he plunged Meteor down with a recklessness that equaled her own, and set out after her, grave of face and repentant.

He caught her, later, on a mountain ledge over which they had to walk their horses. Coming, she had almost refused the hazard, and now when she reached it her rage had been spent and her knees shook as she peered over the ledge at the yawning abyss below her. The inevitable revulsion of feeling had left her weak and nerveless for this ordeal.

But when Gawne gravely approached her she drew back from him, looking at him with wide, reproachful, fearing eyes.

“You shall have to help me around the ledge, of course,” she said. “And I forgive you for what you—did—back there. But unless you promise not to do it again—until I let you—I shall stay right here until I starve to death!”

She was led across safely by a chastened lover, who had decided that never again would he risk her anger. And when he left her at the door of the Colonel’s ranchhouse hours later he had made his peace with her. His chief plea was, perhaps, an unworthy one—that they should let nothing come between them that would destroy Jane’s chances for an education.

CHAPTER XII

NIGGER PAISLEY PLAYS

Jane had graciously given her consent to Kathleen’s truancy, but after the departure of her preceptress she sat for some time in the sitting room, experiencing much the same emotions that assail a marooned sailor who watches a ship, hull down on the horizon, fading from view. With her chin pressed against the glass of a sitting-room window, disregarding a flattening of the nose in the process, Jane saw Gawne and Kathleen gradually disappear down the slope of the mesa, in a northwestward direction. That was what sent her thoughts to Sunshine Gap. She thought they might be going there. But half an hour later she saw two dots climbing the shoulder of a mountain at a point far beyond the trail that led to Sunshine Gap. Then she suddenly remembered that on her annual pilgrimage to the Gap she had not been permitted to enjoy herself as in former years. She went out, saddled and bridled her pony, mounted it and rode over the mesa.

She found it rather lonesome riding through the canyon, and she negotiated the higher slopes and ledges with some trepidation. It was not until she was guiding her pony over the long trail leading down the mountain side into the Gap that she remembered that Gawne had forbidden her to visit the Gap alone, and then she halted, realizing that in her haste she had forgotten to bring her rifle. Recalling tales of mountain lions, wolves, and an occasional bear, reinforcing the veracity of those tales with a faint recollection of lurking shapes that she had seen during the years she had lived in the Gap with her parents, she almost yielded to the panic of vague unrest and fear that seized her, and for an instant she meditated retreat.

The feel of the small pistol in the holster at her waist reassured her, and she urged the pony forward again, resolving to keep the animal near her in case of attack. Ginger had speed and, besides, she did not intend to stay long. She mustn’t—for she positively must reach the Diamond Bar before Gawne returned.

The Gap was swimming peacefully in the morning sunlight when she dismounted from Ginger at the door of the cabin. Cautiously scanning the surrounding hills and levels, and scrutinizing with disturbed eyes the gray slopes of the papier-mache ridge across the river, she finally trailed the reins over Ginger’s head and entered the cabin.

Gawne, astride Meteor, had made a slow, thoughtful trip back to the Diamond Bar ranchhouse. He had followed the river trail from the Colonel’s place, and when he rode up to the corral gates a glance told him that the bunkhouse was deserted. He turned Meteor into the corral, walked to a split-log bench that stood just outside the bunkhouse door, seated himself and stared meditatively into the sunlit space that spread before him.

Gawne knew, now, that his quest for his brother’s murderer was at an end. Again a woman had entered his life, and he knew that he would never desert her to continue his search. Thoughts of the woman would whelm the memory of his obligation to Wesley’s memory. That was inevitable. More, it was human nature. It was selfishness, it was disloyalty—it was anything, everything, but what it should be; but he knew the chase was at an end. He scowled, and ran his hands through his hair.

Half an hour later, still sitting on the bench, he heard a step at a corner of the bunkhouse, and he looked up to see Uncle Lafe approaching. Aunt Emily’s mate was little, weazened, wiry, with a gray-white beard and a glittering eye. His destiny seemingly, was controlled by Aunt Emily, and his radius was the length of her apron strings; she kept him jumping to garner the odds and ends of her work, which tasks Uncle Lafe performed to the accompaniment of guttural mutterings.

“Thought you’d come in,” he said, now, to Gawne, regarding him from the corner of the bunkhouse. “Emily seen you, I reckon. That woman’s got eyes like a road-runner. Dinner’s ready. Em’ly ast me to ast you if you’d seen Jane.”

“I haven’t seen her. She is somewhere around, most likely.” Gawne got up and ran an eye over the horses in the corral. “Ginger’s gone,” he said, sharply. “Did you see her ride away?” he asked Lafe.

“I bin busy totin’ wood for Em’ly,” growled Lafe. “That woman’s always got somethin’ fer a man to do—she can’t see a man set down an’ enjoy a smoke in peace.”

“Try bossing her,” suggested Gawne. He grinned at Lafe’s malignant look, left him and peered into the stable, noting that Ginger’s saddle and bridle were missing from their accustomed pegs.

Gawne went into the house and questioned Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily could give him no information. She had been so busy seeing that “that good-for-nothin’ Lafe”, didn’t “loaf”, that she hadn’t “given a thought to Jane until more’n two hours ago”.

But if she’d gone away on Ginger she couldn’t have “took” the Bozzam City trail, for Aunt Emily could see that from a kitchen window, and she was certain that nobody had been on the trail that morning.

Jane had ridden frequently, but obeying Gawne’s commands, she had never ridden out of sight of the ranchhouse. Gawne went outside, and with his field glasses scanned the surrounding country. Then, his uneasiness increasing, he went to the corral, examined the deep dust of the yard, and followed Ginger’s trail. It led, mingling with Meteor’s to a point just opposite the ranchhouse door, where it merged with the hoof impressions of another horse—Miss Harkless’. Ginger’s trail swerved a little, crossing the mesa, but Gawne had no difficulty in following it to the slope. There it joined the others again, the three leading down into the canyon.

Jane had gone into the mountains. Where, Gawne easily guessed. On the way home from the previous trip to Sunshine Gap, the girl had seemed to regret that she had not been allowed to stay longer. She had gone to revisit the Gap. Gawne ran back to the corral, threw saddle and bridle on Meteor, sang out to Uncle Lafe that he was going for Jane and would return when he found her, gave Meteor his head and ran him down the slope of the mesa recklessly.

Nigger Paisley’s greed was aroused. Glinn’s death at Gawne’s hands had had the effect of cooling the enthusiasm of the other members of the Bozzam outfit—if there had ever been any enthusiasm in their hearts. Paisley was not enthusiastic. Nor was he communicative. But a vision of what might be done with a thousand dollars of blood money had troubled him for many days, and early this morning, keeping his movements casual, he had mounted his horse and ridden away from the Bozzam corral, making a detour and vanishing, finally, into the desert haze beyond the gray stone ridge.