CHAPTER VII
"A PRINCESS SENT TO PACK WITH WOLVES!"
But laugh she did, softly, unaffectedly and with plainly unsimulatedamusement. She laughed as she might have done had he been a littlechild indulging in a fit of pouting, she the child's mother. Herlaughter irritated him but did not affect a muscle of his rigidaloofness. Then she moved again, drawing no nearer but making a littlehalf circle so that she stood just in front of him breaking his view ofthe river. The hard grey of his eyes met the soft greyness of hers.
"Why are the interesting men always rude?" she asked him out of a shortsilence.
He stared at her coolly a moment, of half a mind to reply to thefoolishness of her question with the answer which it deserved, meresilence.
"I don't know," he retorted bluntly.
"Yes, they are," she told him with deep gravity of tone, just as thoughhe had done the logical thing, been communicative and said, "Are they?"The gravity in her voice, however, was notably in contrast with thecrinkling merriment about the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps," she wenton, "that is one of the very reasons why they _are_ interesting."
He made no answer. His regard, sweeping her critically, went its wayback down the mountain side. Not, however, until the glorious lines ofher young figure had registered themselves in his mind.
"Perhaps," she ran on, her head a little to one side as she studied himfrankly, "you didn't realise just how interesting a type you are? Infeminine eyes, of course."
"I know about things feminine just as much as I care to know," he saidwith all of the rudeness with which she had credited him. "Namely,nothing whatever."
Without looking to see how she had taken his words he felt that heknew. She was still laughing at him, silently now, but none the lessgenuinely.
"You are not afraid of me, are you?" she queried quite innocently.
"I think not," he told her shortly. "Since your sex does not come intothe sphere of my existence, Miss Ygerne, there is no reason why Ishould be afraid of it."
"Oh!" was her rejoinder. "So you know my name, Mr. Drennen?"
"I learned it quite accidentally, young lady. Please don't think thatthe knowledge came from a premeditated prying into your affairs."
She ignored the sneer as utterly negligible and said,
"And you used to be a gentleman, once upon a time, like the prince inthe fairy tale before the witches got him. _Cherchez la femme_. Wasit a woman who literally drove you wild, Mr. Drennen?"
"No," he told her in his harshly emphatic way.
"You are very sure?"
He didn't answer.
"You are thinking that I am rather forward than maidenly?"
"I am thinking that a good warm rain will help to clear the trails."
"You wish that I would go away?"
"Since you ask it . . . yes."
"That is one reason why I am staying here," she laughed at him. "Bythe way, Mr. Newly-made Croesus, does this mountain belong to you, too?Together with the rest of the universe?"
He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, refilled the bowl, stuffing theblack Settlement tobacco down with a calloused, soil-grimed forefinger.And that was her answer. She saw a little glint of anger in his eyeseven while she could not fully understand its cause. A maid of moods,her mood to-day had been merely to pique him, to tease a little and thehint of anger told her that she had succeeded. But she was notentirely satisfied. With truly feminine wisdom she guessed thatsomething of which she was not aware lay under the emotion which hadfor a second lifted its head to the surface. She could not know thatshe awoke memories of another world which he had turned his back uponand did not care to be reminded of; she did not know that the very wayshe had caught her hair up, the way her clothes fitted her, broughtback like an unpleasant fragrance in his nostrils memories of thatother world when he had been a "gentleman."
"Your wound is healing nicely?" she offered. And, knowinginstinctively that again his answer would be silence, she went on, "Itwas very picturesque, your little fight the other night. The woman whodid the shooting, I wondered whether she really loved Kootanie Georgemost . . . or you?"
"Look here, Miss Ygerne . . ."
"Ygerne Bellaire," she said with an affected demureness which dimpledat him. "So you may say: 'Miss Bellaire.'"
"I say what I damned please!" he snapped hotly, and through the crispwords she heard the click of his teeth against his pipe stem. "If theflattery is not too much for a modest maiden to stand you may let meassure you that the one thing about you which I like is your name,Ygerne. Speaking of fairy tales, it sounds like the name of thePrincess before the witches changed her into an adventuress, and senther to pack with wolves. When it becomes necessary for me to call youanything whatever I'll call you Ygerne."
It was enough to drive her in head-erect, defiant, orderly retreat downthe mountainside. But she seemed not to have heard anything after thefirst curt sentence.
"So you do 'what you damned please'? That sounds interesting. But isit the truth?"
Her perseverance began, in spite of him, to puzzle him. What in allthe world of worlds did she want of him? Also, and again in spite ofhim, he began to wonder what sort of female being this was.
"And so my name is really the only thing commendable about me?" shewent on. "My nose isn't really pug, Mr. Drennen."
She crinkled it up for his inspection, turning sideways so that hemight study her profile, then challenging his eyes gaily with her own.
"It is said to be my worst feature," she continued gravely. "And afterall, don't you think one's nose is like one's gown in that it's trueeffect lies in the way one wears it?"
"How old are you?" he said curiously, the ice of him giving the firstevidence of thaw.
"Less than three score and ten in actual years," she told him. "Vastlymore than that in wisdom. Who's getting impertinent now?"
He hadn't said half a dozen sentences to a woman in half a dozen years.But then he hadn't seen a woman of her class and type in nearly twicethat length of time. Besides, a week of enforced idleness in hisdugout, of blank inactivity, had brought a new sort of loneliness. Abit surprised at what he was doing, a bit amused, not without a feelingof contempt for himself, he let the bars down. He leaned back a littleupon his rock, caught up a knee in his clasped hands, thus easing theache in his side, and set his eyes to meet hers searchingly.
"This is an odd place for a girl like you, Ygerne," he saidmeditatively.
"Is it? And why?"
"Because," he answered slowly, "so far as I know, only two kinds ofpeople ever come this way. Some are human hogs come to get their feetinto a trough of gold; some are here because there is such a thing asthe law outside and it has driven them here."
"But surely some come just through a sense of curiosity?"
"Curiosity is too colourless a motive to beckon or drive folks outhere."
"Why are you asking me a question like this? You have succeeded inmaking it rather plain that you feel no interest whatever in me."
"I am allowing myself, for the novelty of the thing, to talk nonsense,"he told her drily. "You seemed insistent upon it."
"So that's it? Well, I at least can answer a question. Two motivesare to thank or to blame for my being here. One," she said coolly, hereyes steady upon his, "has beckoned, as you put it; the other hasdriven. One is the desire to get my feet into the golden trough, theother to get my body out of the way of the law. Your hypothesis seems,in my case as in the others, to be correct, Mr. Drennen."
In spite of him he stared at her a little wonderingly. For himself hegauged her years at nineteen. He was rather inclined to the suspicionthat she was lying to him in both particulars. But something of thecoolness of her regard, its vague insolence, something in the way shecarried her head and shoulders, her whole sureness of poise, theintangible thing called personality in her tempered like fine steel,made his suspicion waver. She was young and good to look upon; therewas the gloriously fresh bloom of y
outh upon her; and yet, were it notfor the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay andutterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bowgallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a knifeblade.
"You are after gold . . . and the law wants you back there in theStates?" he demanded with quiet curiosity.
"I am after gold and the law has sought me back there in the States,"she repeated after him coolly.
"The law has long arms, Ygerne."
"It has no arms at all, Mr. Drennen. It has a long tail with apoisonous sting in it."
"What does it want you for?" He was making light of her now, hisquestion accompanied by a hard, cynical look which told her that shecould say as much or as little as she chose and he'd suit himself inthe extent of his credulity. "Were you the lovely cashier in an icecream store? And did you abscond with a dollar and ninety cents?"
"Don't you know of Paul Bellaire?" she flung at him angrily.
"I have never met the gentleman," he laughed at her, pleased with theflush which was in her cheeks.
"He died long before you were born," she said sharply. "If you talkedwith men you would know. He was my grandfather. We of the blood ofPaul Bellaire are not shop girls, Mr. Drennen."
"Oho," sneered Drennen. "We are in the presence of gentry, then?"
"You are in the presence of your superior by birth if not in all othermatters," she told him hotly.
"We, out here, don't believe much in the efficacy of blue blood," hesaid contemptuously.
"The toad has little conception of wings!" she gave him back, in thecoin of his own contempt. "Queer, isn't it?"
He laughed at her, more amused than he had been heretofore and moreinterested.
"You haven't told me definitely about your terrible crime."
"You have been equally noncommittal."
Drennen shrugged. "I am not greatly given to overtalkativeness," hesaid shortly. "I have no desire to usurp woman's prerogative."
"But are quite willing to let me babble on?"
"I'm going to put in time for a couple of hours. You are lessmaddening than the walls of my dugout."
She looked at him keenly, silent and thoughtful for a little. Then shesaid abruptly:
"Have you told any one yet of your discovery?"
So that was it. His eyes grew hard again with the sneer in them.
"No," he informed her with a bluntness full of finality.
"You spoke of the hogs with their feet in the trough. You are going tolet no one in with you?"
"I am not in the habit of giving away what I want for myself."
"But you can't keep it secret always. You'll have to file your claim,and you can't file on all of Canada. . . . I want to ask you somethingabout it."
"No doubt," with his old bitter smile. "For a fortune you'd repay mewith a smile, would you? You'd find easier game in the gilded youth onBroadway."
Her lips grew a little cruel as she answered him.
"You may tell me as much or as little as you like. You may lie to meand tell me that your gold is twenty miles westward of here while itmay be twice or half that distance eastward. Or you may leave thatpart out altogether. But it would be another matter to answer the onequestion I will ask." Her eyes were upon him, very alert, watchful fora sign as she asked her question: "Were the nuggets free and piled upsomewhere where some man before you had placed them?"
If she sought to read his mind against his will she had come to thewrong man. It was as though Drennen had not heard her.
"Are you married to either of the hang dogs with whom you aretravelling?" he asked.
"No," she answered indifferently.
"They're both in love with you, no doubt?"
"I fancy that neither is," she retorted equably. "Both want to marryme, that's all."
Drennen gazed thoughtfully down into the valley, pursing his lips abouthis pipe stem.
"I'll make a bargain with you," he said finally from the silence inwhich the girl had stood watching him. "You have dinner with me; we'llhave the best the Settlement knows how to serve us, and I'll let youtry to pump me."
She looked at him curiously.
"You have the name of a trouble seeker, Mr. Drennen. Do you fancy thatyou can anger Marc and Captain Sefton this way?"
"That, too, we can talk about at dinner, if you like."
For a moment she looked at him, gravely thoughtful, her brows puckeredinto a thoughtful frown. Then she put back her head with a gestureindefinably suggestive of recklessness, and laughed as she had laughedwhen she had first come upon him.
"The novel invitation is accepted," she said lightly. "I must hurrydown to dress for the grand occasion, Mr. Drennen."
Before she could flash about and turn from him David Drennen did athing he had done for no woman in many years. He rose to his feet,making her a sweeping bow as he lifted his hat with the old grace whichthe years had not taken from him. And as she went down the mountainside he dropped back to his rock, his teeth again hard, clamped uponhis pipe stem, his eyes steely and bitter and filled with cynical irony.
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