by Zane Grey
“I shore am ashamed to confess it, Lady.”
“But he’s a grown-up man—and a gunman to boot. . . . Not you!”
“Yes—me.”
“Oh, no. Not you with your nice boy’s face, your sleepy eyes, your curly hair, your wonderful smile!”
“Air yu complimentin’ me, Miss Syvertsen?”
“I just can’t believe you’re Brazos Keene,” she declared, seriously, and she flashed those glittering black eyes over Brazos’ silver spurs and high boots, his dark garb against which the heavy black gun belt and gun did not show conspicuously, his vest and scarf, to his face where it fixed with as compelling a scrutiny as Brazos cared to meet.
“You forget yore West, my girl,” he drawled. “Range talk blames me for a lot thet I’m innocent of.”
“Range talk is always true, Brazos Keene.”
“Wal, I’m gonna return yore compliment, so far as lookin’ yu over is concerned,” said Brazos, with his disarming smile, and proceeded to treat her to an examination as keen as hers had been.
The spurs she wore had been used to ride with and not for ornament, though they were of finest Spanish design. Her elegant custom-made boots adorned the smallest and most shapely feet Brazos had ever seen. He felt the creeping fire under his skin. Those little boots had made the tracks in the dust under the tree out at the Hill cabin. Brazos had to keep his gaze lowered so that she might not read the sudden passion that flamed over him. But her slender legs and rounded hips, the grace of which the trousers accentuated rather than hid, were excuse enough to hold the gaze of a woman-mad cowboy such as he was said to be. The gun she packed had too businesslike a look to please Brazos. She wore a gray blouse and a red scarf and a dark leather vest with pearl buttons. It hung open. Brazos noted that it could not have been buttoned over her swelling breasts. And as he permitted his scrutiny to end on her face, he saw that to be beautiful on the moment, warm and radiant, almost sweet with the light of woman’s pleased vanity. And smiling into her eyes Brazos could not more believe that she was a hardened frontier dance-hall girl, a lure used to entice men, than she could believe he was the frontier’s wildest and bloodiest cowboy.
“Well, how do you like me?” she queried, archly. “You took long enough about it. I felt as if you were undressing me.”
“Wal, I like yu too darn powerful much,” rejoined Brazos, which outburst was a true statement.
“Why too much? It couldn’t be too much to suit me.”
“Aw, yu’re same as all the rest of them, even if yu have got on pants. . . . Gosh, I’d love to see yu in the clothes yu belong in.”
“And what are they?”
“Wal, I reckon somethin’ white, with a touch of color—red, like them spots in yore cheeks—an’ with yore arms an’ neck bare. . . . Yu’d shore slay the cowboys, Bess.”
“It’s not impossible to see me that way, Brazos,” she replied, dreamily. “But the occasion is wanting. . . . When have I been to a decent dance—with a——”
She caught herself before romance, the poor jewel of her soul, betrayed her, and she gazed thoughtfully out of the window at the passing procession. Brazos had struck the right note. No matter what she was—no matter what any woman was—there still abided deep within that something eternally, ineradicably feminine. This girl might be old in border experience, but she could not have been more than a year or two along in her twenties.
“How come I never saw yu before?” Brazos repeated his earlier query.
“I’m sure I don’t know. You’ve got a pair of eyes, cowboy,” she replied.
“Wal, fact is I been lookin’ for men.”
“What men?”
“I don’t know. Reckon the hombres who’re lookin’ for me,” rejoined Brazos, gloomily.
“Oh, I see. Have you enemies here? But of course you have. I forget who you are.”
“I made some when I hit this burg a few weeks ago. Yu probably heahed aboot thet.”
“Why don’t you fork your horse and ride back to Texas?”
“I shore been wantin’ to an’ maybe I will yet. But I was kinda riled. At thet I cain’t go, now I’ve met yu.”
“Some things I heard about you are true,” she said, brightly.
“Ahuh. Who told yu?”
“It might have been Lura Surface and the Neece twins. Women often help each other to self-preservation, you know.”
“Wal, do yu hold it against me thet I tried oot those girls?”
“No. I admire your taste.”
“Thet Surface girl was shore provokin’. But she’s a destroyin’ angel. An’ the Neeces air too soft an’ sweet. An’ besides yu cain’t tell them apart.” Even though he was playing a game, Brazos had a sense of disloyalty at this speech.
“I would have thought one of them just your kind.”
“Yu think a lot wrong aboot me, Bess. . . . For Gawd’s sake don’t tell me yu’re some lucky cattleman’s wife?”
“No, I’m not, worse luck. I’m single and fancy free. At least I was until I came into this post office.”
“We air gettin’ somewhere.”
That drawling cool assertion seemed to acquaint Bess Syvertsen with the fact that she was reacting honestly to an intrigue the intent of which had been entirely different.
“Where are we getting, Brazos?” she inquired, curtly.
“I leave it to yu, Lady,” replied Brazos, just as curtly.
“You just met me, cowboy!” she expostulated.
“Wal, what do yu want? Yu struck me deep. But don’t misunderstand me. No Texan ever insulted a girl.”
“Insult! How could you insult me?”
“I couldn’t, thet’s shore.”
“You like me, Brazos Keene?”
“Like! Why, I think yu’re just wonderful. An’ I don’t care who yu air, where yu come from, or who yu’re with.”
“You might be taking a risk. My father has no use for cowboys.”
“Is he heah?”
“Yes. Bard Syvertsen. He’s a cattle buyer. We travel all over from Kansas City to Denver. Father has a deal on with Surface and Miller.”
“Who else with yu, Lady?”
“Orcutt, a partner of Father’s. He’s not so young, but he’s sweet on me. And he won’t take to you.”
“Jealous, eh? But air yu sweet on him?”
“Sweet on Hen Orcutt?” she ejaculated, as if the idea was unutterably new and somehow belittling. “Hell no!”
Brazos stared hard at her. “Lady, yore lips air too sweet an’ red for cuss words.”
“Can’t I swear in front of you, Brazos Keene?”
“Wal, yu can, I reckon, but only once.”
“You’d turn your back on me?” she queried, in amaze.
“I shore would—an’ be most doggone sorry.”
“Are you trying to string me? Whoever heard of a cowboy who hadn’t played up to dance-hall girls?”
“Yu’re lookin’ at thet cowboy now, Lady—if by playin’ up yu mean more than havin’ a drink an’ a dance with one.”
“I meant more, Brazos Keene.”
“Then yu got me wrong, Miss Syvertsen,” returned Brazos, coldly. “Good day.”
“Wait,” she said, and detained him with a hand on his arm. “I apologize. I take your word. But don’t hold it against me that naturally I thought you to be like most men. I see you’re not. . . . Neither am I a dance-hall girl, though I can swear.”
“Wal, then—where air we?” drawled Brazos, his smile coming slowly.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I reckon talkin’ aboot yore menfolks.”
“At this particular moment I wish they were in Hades,” she said, with sudden passion that transformed her.
“Bess, does thet mean if it wasn’t for them yu’d like to try oot this new acquaintance?”
“Yes—and more.”
“Wal, it’s just too bad. Always my luck! I ride the ranges an’ I meet girls. Reckon I’m hard to please. My mother taug
ht me to respect her sex. I don’t care for town hussies or camp trulls. I cain’t stand these nice goody-goody spooney little girls, neither. Lura Surface was one to make a cowboy ride high an’ handsome. But she was a flirt. An’ heah I meet yu!”
“Brazos, I might be a flirt—or worse,” she said, as he ended eloquently.
“Shore, I’m only confessin’ how yu strike me. An’ yu’ll have to tell me if yu want to change thet.”
“Brazos! The hell of it is I—I don’t want to change it,” she said, with emotion. “It’s got me by the throat. . . . Now doesn’t that flatter your cowboy vanity?”
“I don’t savvy yu, Bess. I never could savvy a girl who was deep. All the same I feel as if yu were fightin’ somethin’ yu didn’t want me to know. Tell me or not, as yu like. But if I strike yu pretty pronto, yu know, an’ bold—it’s because I see no sense in holdin’ back things. I’ve a bad reputation an’ I’m liable to be shot any time. Life is too short for my kind not to live from day to day.”
“Well, I savvy you, Brazos Keene, and I think . . . Never mind what I think. . . . Suppose I don’t tell you another thing about myself?”
“Thet’ll make no difference. It’s what yu air to me thet’d count. Take it or leave it. No harm’s been done. An’ if there’s a regret it’ll be mine. I’ll shore be glad I met yu an’ had this little talk—an’ I’ll ride on always rememberin’ what a turrible lot I missed.”
“Meaning friendship—or more—with me . . . kisses and all that?”
“I reckon.”
“Take you or leave you?” she mused, darkly. “For a notorious gunman you certainly are a strange fellow. You put me in a hard place. . . . I won’t let you go. . . . I’d rather you didn’t think me as—as good as gold—such a wonderful girl. Yet it’s so—so—”
“Wal, Bess, if yu’re not sendin’ me aboot my business let me dream on,” interrupted Brazos. “Yu couldn’t change yore looks nor thet somethin’ like sweet fire thet I feel in yu.”
“But, romantic cowboy, you don’t understand a woman.”
“Wal, am I the only romantic cowboy yu ever met?”
“All cowboys are full of romance, sentiment, gush and silly nonsense. . . . You’re a boy—a boy, Brazos Keene, and I simply can’t get over it.”
They stood at that post-office window for two hours more. Brazos had the advantage over her, inasmuch as he knew beforehand just what she was, while all the characteristics she had conjured up about him were wrong, as well as the ugly, vicious and hard, and matured attributes supposed to mark gunmen. Brazos could not help but be aware that he did not have to put anything on to be fascinating to women. There was a glamour about even his name. If Bess Syvertsen had expected to find him like Panhandle Ruckfall she was suffering for it now. It seemed possible that Brazos’ physical person had had the same effect he had known it to have on other girls. He had been swift to find her vulnerable point. If he had taken a cowboy’s fancy for her and had chucked her under the chin it would have been diamond cut diamond. But whatever Bess Syvertsen’s life had been—and Brazos knew that it had been dishonest and bitter—she was helpless before the terrible fact of being taken for good when she was evil, for fine when she was base, for being loved when she should have been despised. She never got anywhere near telling Brazos this lamentable truth. Yet in her woman’s heart she wanted to. If he had fallen in love with her at first sight, that was really more than she had planned. As she saw it, the game was already won. And she found herself in a dilemma. As they talked on, apparently at cross-purposes, little by little this became evident to Brazos. The cruel truth was that she had plotted to lend her beauty and her person to the enticement of this cowboy for the sole purpose of luring him somewhere so that her accomplices could murder him. But now, having met him, possibly fallen in love with him, at first sight, she did not want him murdered. That was how Brazos interpreted her contradictory and ambiguous and strange remarks. The more she talked, the more she listened to Brazos and felt his slow smile warm upon her, the more she became divided against herself. He saw her predicament and augmented it by every word and glance possible. He was relentless, and yet as he had liked her at once, he grew to pity her at the last.
“It’s growing late. I’m hungry,” she said finally. “Take me some place to eat.”
“I reckon the safest place will be the Twin Sombreros restaurant,” he replied, as he followed her out upon the street. “Did yu ever walk with a gunman—when he was kinda nervous aboot the men he met?”
“No. It’ll be thrilling,” she laughed. “And perhaps make history for Las Animas.”
They walked down the street, which at that hour was pretty numerously populated. She was a superb actress and walked and talked as naturally as any ordinary girl accompanied by a masculine friend. But Brazos, out of the corner of his eye, saw the unobtrusive piercing glances she shot ahead. She was pale, too. He could not read her mind then. Nevertheless on the walk from the post office to Twin Sombreros restaurant he made certain they did not meet Bard Syvertsen and Orcutt.
They went into the restaurant, which, fortunately for Brazos, appeared half full of customers. They found seats at a corner table where he could watch the door. On the way to it, Brazos had flashed a significant glance to one of the twins, whom he took to be June. Her face had not changed markedly at sight of him, but he read her eyes. This entrance of his with Bess Syvertsen would be an ordeal for her. Brazos regretted that he could not avoid it.
On the other hand he wanted to see how the cowgirl would react to the proximity of the Neece girls. If Bess had any qualms of conscience, if she had any compunction whatsoever she certainly hid them perfectly. She was tense, in the grip of strong feeling, but it had nothing to do with memory of the boy she had betrayed to his death.
Brazos marveled at her cool command of herself and his heart became flint to her. His plot to deceive her and wring a confession from her, one way or another, seemed to grow immeasurably easier. That she had vanity, and could succumb to it, and to love, did not soften him.
To Brazos’ relief June sent the Mexican girl to wait upon them; and after that he attended only to the door and to the strange creature opposite him.
“Do you know these Neece girls?” she asked, curiously.
“Yes, I’ve met them,” replied Brazos, easily. “Reckon they didn’t cotton to me. . . . Yu see I was arrested by Bodkin for murderin’ their brother. But I was innocent an’ Kiskadden let me off.”
“Bard told me about it,” said the girl, dropping her eyes for a second. “About your holding up the posse and driving them to the jail. That was a Brazos Keene trick, he said. . . . You must be sore at Bodkin.”
“Tolerable. I’ll bore him sooner or later, when I’ve nothing else to do,” drawled Brazos, with an air of detached deadliness that had its effect on her. “It’s thet Joel Barsh I’m sore at. The young hombre who put the noose aboot my neck.”
“And how about these—these gunmen, or whoever they are—who are on your trail?”
“Bess, when men like them don’t come right oot in the open to meet yu, then yu know they’re hardly worth considern’.”
“You’re not afraid?” she asked, her dark gaze in brooding wonder and admiration upon him.
“Nope. . . . But, Bess, I never talk about thet sort of thing. Yu flatter me if yu’re worried. An’ I kinda like thet. Only don’t yu worry none.”
“Worry!” she uttered an incredulous laugh, as if suddenly realizing she was concerned about the life of a cowboy whom she had been hired to lure to his death. “It seems to me I’d take a precarious chance with my heart—to fix it upon an uncertain hombre like Brazos Keene.”
“Yu shore would, Bess. . . . Wal, heah comes our supper. Air yu hungry?”
“I forgot we came here to eat,” she said. During the meal she spoke but little and seemed pondering her growing problem. Once more out on the street she recovered something of her vivacity. When Brazos remarked that he had better be saying good ni
ght she took his arm and held it. They walked up and down the main street of Las Animas. She made no move to entice Brazos down a dark side street or into any place.
“Wal, Bess, I hate to be makin’ excuses,” drawled Brazos, “but I’m a cowboy. I’m used to forkin’ a hawse. An’ I’m near daid walkin’.”
“So am I,” she said, and squeezed his arm. “But there’s no place we can go.”
“We might try the railroad station an’ set down for a while.”
So they went there. Bess appeared less strained when they were among people, though she did not lose her watchfulness. After the train left she rose and said: “Come, I must go now. I’m so tired I can hardly wag. . . . Do you affect all girls this way, Brazos Keene?”
“What way?”
She clung to his arm during the walk to Hailey’s where she released it.
“Brazos, I thought I was glad to meet you—at first. But I’m not so sure now.”
“Aw, thet’s not kind. Is it good-by, then?”
“Where will you meet me tomorrow?”
“Heah. Anywhere—any time.”
“Anywhere?” she asked, with her unfathomable eyes piercing him. “How about out of town?”
“Wal, I reckon it’d better be heah,” returned Brazos. And when he said that it seemed a passion wrenched her.
“Tomorrow then. Here at two o’clock. Adios.”
Next day Bess Syvertsen was late. Brazos walked to and fro in front of the hotel. She came at length betraying signs of anger and she was all the more handsome for that. She vouchsafed no explanation. But Brazos did not need one. They spent the afternoon together, walking, sitting in the station, standing in the post office. Brazos made violent love to Bess and she drank it up thirstily. She begged off going to supper with him or seeing him that night. When she left him she was apparently again dominated by the attraction he had for her.
This state of affairs continued next day and on the following, with Bess betraying to Brazons’ keen eye varying augmenting emotions.
Despite Brazos’ knowledge and his ruthlessness, it was quite impossible not to be receptive to her fascination. No doubt her predicament accounted for some of this. She had not done one single thing, since their meeting at the post office, that Brazos could construe to be intent on her part to lure him to his death. That, of course, had been the original incentive; that was what her father, Bard Syvertsen, and his man Orcutt, were waiting for. No doubt when Bess faced them after another day with Brazos she had to lie and plead for more time.