by Zane Grey
Then they walked hand in hand. Brazos’ heart seemed full to bursting. There was no need of talk. The pines black-barred the silver glades. The girl stopped to confront Brazos, though she did not let go of his hand.
“Where have you been all these hours?” she asked. The moonlight enhanced her liveliness, blanched her oval face, darkened her unfathomable eyes. Brazos divined that she had given him the opportunity he had longed for.
“I’ve been helpin’ make yore party a success. Didn’t think it was in me! Dancin’ with old maids, doin’ the elegant with the wives and mothers, makin’ a waiter oot of myself. But it was fun, an’ did me good.”
“Brazos, that was sweet of you,” she returned, warmly.
“Wal, don’t yu want to reward me?” he drawled, softly.
“Yes.” As she spoke that forceful word Brazos caught a hint of something as strange as lovely about her. In the magic of the moonlight all her charm and mystery appeared magnified.
“Would a—a kiss be too much?” he asked, hesitatingly.
“Too little!”
Brazos kissed her and trembled on the brink of the unknown. She stood there, slender and white in the silvered radiance, eyes intent on him, lips upturned.
“Girl, don’t look at me like thet . . . you said yes.”
“I also said ‘too little’!”
Brazos’ restraint broke at that, and he took her in his arms, but did not avail himself of the repetition of that challenging surrender. Still she held back from closer contact with him, somewhat stiffly.
“Tell me yu’ll marry me?” he demanded, suddenly strong and vibrant with released emotion.
“Ah-h!” she gasped, and as if the strength had left her limbs she sank upon his breast. Brazos held her closer and closer, bending his head over hers, to put his cheek upon her fragrant hair.
“Did thet surprise yu, darlin’?”
She stirred her head in soft motion Brazos took to be affirmation.
“But it shouldn’t have?”
“Who could be sure of—Brazos Keene?” she whispered.
“Wal, yu should be. . . . I love yu turrible, lass. . . . Say yu love me.”
“I adore—you!”
“Say when yu’ll marry me?”
“Oh, what will Dad and sister say?”
“They’ll be glad. But never mind them. Honey, I cain’t wait much longer. Yu blessed twins air drivin’ me crazy. . . . Say when, precious?”
“When do you—want me?” she whispered, very low.
“Aw! . . . Why, I hate to rush yu, darlin’. But there’s a reason, yu know. I’m a marked man in Las Animas. I oughta go away ‘till those hombres forget they wanted to kill me.”
“Brazos!” She roused to passionate life in his arms.
“I told yu, darlin’,” he expostulated.
“Oh, my Brazos! I—I will marry you.”
“When? The sooner the better.”
“We’ll elope!” she cried, thrillingly.
“Wal, thet’d be easiest an’ safest for me. Yore Dad wouldn’t hold it against me.”
“We’ll do it!” Suddenly she appeared transformed into a little whirlwind, throwing her arms around his neck, rumpling his hair with furious little hands, at last to draw his head down to kiss him with lips of sweet fire. “Oh, Brazos! I’ve been dying for you,” she burst out with inarticulate cry. “You won me—even though I thought you a devil with girls. . . . a trifler! . . . All the time—all the time I thought it was June you loved!”
CHAPTER
13
FOR an appalling instant, Brazos, in his realization of catastrophe, stiffened so violently that he almost crushed the girl in his arms.
“Don’t kill—me,” Janis managed to utter, faintly.
“Aw—I’m sorry. I—I just went off my haid,” replied Brazos, in a smothered voice, as he released his clasp.
But Janis did not let go her clinging hold of him nor take her head from his breast, “Oh-h! . . . Brazos, a girl in love—even as terribly as—I am—has to breathe.”
“Wal, didn’t know yu loved me—turrible.”
“I do—I do! . . . I was aching with love—burning with jealousy—dying with fear . . . But at times I knew you loved me.”
“My Gawd, how I know it!” exclaimed Brazos, huskily, horror-stricken with a sense of his guilt and the exultant madness that enveloped him.
He bent his head over her and again enfolded her slender form, while he gazed unseeingly out into the silver-black shadows of the woods. The white pitiless moon looked down upon him like an accusing eye. The night breeze moaned pitifully in the tips of the pines. Only a soft strain of music in the distance gave that strange solitude reality.
“Darling, this is perfect,” said Janis, stirring, and trying to look up at him. “It pays me for my anguish. It sustains me—until the next time. But we mustn’t stay longer.”
“No,” agreed Brazos, and stood like a stone.
She pressed back from his breast to look up. “Oh, Brazos! You’re so white and stern! Was it to choose between June and me? . . . My poor darling, you could have had me for the asking!”
Brazos wrenched his gaze from the shadows to look down upon her, fully conscious now that he was as weak as guilty, that he loved her the same as June, that she had a devastating power he had never felt in the shy sister. And suddenly she manifested it again, flaring up like a flame, to cling with round arms as strong as steel, to tear her fingers through his hair, to lock them behind his head and draw him down to those lips of fire that he would have faced doom to meet. Brazos surrendered to a moment of transport. Whatever came of this mad folly, he would have that to dream of. Janis was intensely alive. He could feel the bursting swell of her breast, the throb of her heart, the burn of her blood through the skin of her bare arms. He could hear her broken utterances of endearment, low, deep, with a strange rich hoarseness. And he spent all the passion of his lonely unsatisfied heart—the endless hours of longing by day and night in the saddle—the bitter fatality that a fulfillment of love was not for him—in his response to her kisses.
Then it seemed somehow that this ecstasy waved away and she was smoothing his hair.
“I was always crazy to muss your hair like that,” she was murmuring, her eyes like dark stars.
“Jan—I’ve kinda—mussed yu—too,” he replied, hoarsely.
“If you haven’t! . . . Oh, dear, this dress wasn’t made for grizzly bears. . . . Come, I’m as bold as a lioness. But I’d just as lief not meet Henry. This was his dance. I saw you on the porch. I sent him after something. . . . But it was our dance, Brazos. Now we will pay the piper, come what may!”
All down the lane she held his hand, while he strode fast to keep up with her tripping steps. Even the blazing bonfire did not deter her. Twice she turned to look at him with wonderful eyes, the secret of which was for him alone. The music grew louder. Brazos saw as in a dream the moving figures, pale, unreal, like disembodied spirits. Then he heard Janis’ sweet mocking little laugh: “Henry! how did you ever miss me?”
“I did. But this cowboy didn’t,” growled Henry, at which Brazos awoke to life and reality.
“Wal, Sisk, what one man misses, another hits,” drawled Brazos, caustic in his sudden awakening.
“Never mind, Henry. We will dance this. . . . Adios, Brazos, until——”
And Brazos stood watching in a light that had lost its dim unreality—watching the girl as she glided away with Henry, her lovely face turned, piquant and moon-blanched, lit by great dark alluring eyes. The crowd swallowed them up. And Brazos plodded away, his head bowed, like a man lost on an endless shingle of shore, in the weird pale night, aimless and hopeless.
Corrals, fences, gates, gardens, orchards, ditches and woods and rocks were as if they were not. Brazos’ new gray suit, of which he had been so proud, became a tattered muddy garment. He came out into the road and heedless of direction he walked on. Miles west on the hill he saw the cabin where he had slept that fatal
night Allen Neece was murdered. He had no thought for himself now. He would have been an easy prey for novices at the game of killing. But he turned at the hilltop and plodded back.
The moon slanted low and its dimming light showed the road winding pale between black borders of trees and brush. Coyotes began their hue and cry. In open places Brazos saw faint streaks of gray over the eastern range. Dawn was not far away. Brazos walked on slower and slower. His feet became leaden. This was not his accustomed mode of locomotion. Sunrise found him skulking through the woods and fields, up the corral lane, to the little cabin he shared with Bilyen.
Brazos heard the music end; he saw the thinned crowd of dancers file in couples out of the barn; he saw June and Janis, dragging homeward on the arms of their escorts. And bitterly he recognized them to be Janis with Henry Sisk and June with Jack Sain. Sick with anguish, numb with cold, staggering with exhaustion Brazos turned from that sight into the cabin, to divest himself of his ruined clothes and crawl into his blankets.
Bilyen snored like a man seldom used to keeping late hours. But that did not keep Brazos awake. He did not hear it. He was trying to free his brain from unbearable thoughts. What was it that had happened?
June and Janis Neece! They were twin sisters, nineteen years old. It had been the ambition of a proud and loving father to send them east to give them an education. They had come back unspoiled, still Western, beautiful as the dreams of cowboys beside lonely prairie campfires. They were amber-eyed, and no cowboy could look into those eyes and tell the twins apart, or ever have any peace of mind again. They were perfectly, absolutely, damnably alike. Their shapely forms, their pearly skin, their brown hair, their voices, looks, smiles, mannerisms, all were enhanced irresistibly by this marvelous likeness. They had an infernal habit, or coquetry, or some instinct of self-preservation, to dress precisely the same.
But to the cowboy who had been blessed or cursed by fate to be loved by both of them, this similarity so unsupportable to him did not extend to character. They seemed as far apart as the poles. One was the south and the other the north. June was cool, sweet, shy, reserved, deep as the sea, adoring and unselfish, strangely and passionately devoted to her sister. Janis was fire hidden under a cold provocative exterior, selfish in her need of conquest, vain where her twin was modest, conscious of her alluring charm, a little devil in her chary practice with it, maddeningly irresistible and royal in her final abandonment to love.
Brazos knew them both now—knew them to his doom. He worshipped them both. He could not have made a choice. June called to all the courage, nobility—to the unplumbed depths of his power to help, to serve, to protect, to the cowboy’s dream of range and ranch, home and happiness, to tranquillity and peace after his hard life on the trails. And he would not have had that otherwise. Janis enveloped him in a flame, as he had seen prairie fire race through the windy grass. She had brought out in him a side he had not known he possessed, a tremendously strong primitive self, impossible to resist, a dark demanding master, up from the savage, engendering a yearning and a need stronger than habit, more compelling than any force he had ever experienced.
At last Brazos saw the situation in all its stark naked reality, and he voiced it to himself, as was his habit. “Wal, Brazos Keene, heah’s where yu get off the woman trail for good. Yu love this June Neece. She’s yore ideal—the girl of the long trail’s dreams. An’ yu’re engaged to many her. . . . Yu love her sister, too, this bewilderin’ Janis—an’ yu wouldn’t stop lovin’ her if yu could. An’ yu told her you’d elope with her. . . . Yu love them both. . . . Yu wouldn’t have it different. . . . Yu cain’t tell them apart. . . . Wal, it’s aboot time to go oot an’ get yoreself shot!”
A voice pierced dimly into Brazos’ sleep, stirring old associations so intimately related with dead slurabers and early calls.
“My guard? Awl-l right. . . . A cowboy’s life is ha-ard.”
“Wake up, Brazos. If I don’t miss my guess, yours this evenin’ will be harder than hell.”
“Huh?”
“It’s four o’clock an’ you’ve wanted,” said the curt voice.
Brazos rolled over and opened his eyes to see Jack Sain standing beside his bunk, a quite different person from the usual cheerful cowboy.
“Who wants me?”
“June an’ Jan. They sent me. They’re waitin’ for you where the trail turns off the lane into the woods.”
“Ahuh. . . . An’ yu have a hunch my life is gonna be harder’n hell pronto,” drawled Brazos, sliding his long legs out of bed.
I’ll bet you get the spur-rakin’ of your ridin’ days.”
“Boy, yu shore look like life was kinda hard for yu this mawnin’. . . . I mean this evenin’ after the dance.”
“I’d just as lief be dead,” returned Sain, hopelessly. Then Brazos took a second look at him, and felt remorse gnaw at his own heart.
“What’s yore trouble, cowboy?” asked Brazos, kindly.
“You know. It’s the same as yours.”
“Ump-um. Don’t yu get thet idee. Mine is double yores. . . . All the same I can help yu.”
“Thanks, Brazos . . . I just can’t help likin’ you—though you’ve ruined my life.”
“Turrible extravagant talk, Jack. . . . Yu mean June hasn’t been so—so nice to yu since I rode along?”
“Brazos, she al-almost loved me before you came,” replied Sain, miserably. “Since then she’s been—Oh, hell! nice an’ kind, yes, but different. It just hurts, Brazos. I’m not sore at you. I think you’re the grandest fellow I ever knew. An’ even if you wasn’t I’d have to feel square toward you because of what you’ve done for June—an’ all the Neeces. It’s only——”
“Only what, Jack?”
“I’m afraid to tell you, Brazos, but—but they all say it. An’ you’re bound to hear it.”
“Go ahaid. My gun is way back under my pillow, so I cain’t bore yu.”
“Brazos, they say you’re playin’ hell with the twins,” replied Sain, huskily—”that you’re payin’ them up for their fun—their lettin’ us all take one for the other.”
“Wal, who says, thet?”
“All the outfit. Even Neece. He told me it served the girls ‘good and damn right.’ . . . But, Brazos, I know that’s Jan’s fault. June worships her. She’d give her very soul for Jan.”
“Jack, I kinda had thet hunch myself,” replied Brazos, pulling on his boots. His mind seemed to scintillate with the sparks of an inspiration Sain had given him. He stood up, reached for his gun belt and buckled it on. Then he stepped to the little mirror, and had a look at his face. “My Gawd! what a mug! . . . Did yu ever see a pictoor of thet gazabo Lucifer? . . . Wal, I shore look like him this mawnin’.”
“It’s evenin’, Brazos. Everybody has been up since noon. Bilyen rode to town, worried about somethin’—an’ the girls are waitin’ for you.”
“Let ‘em wait,” said Brazos, and he turned piercing eyes upon his friend. “Jack, yu’re a good boy. I like yu heaps. An’ I’m damn sorry I upset yore courtin’. But thet was only an incident in yore romance. Let me give yu a hunch, boy. Don’t be sick an’ jealous an’ black. Be yore real self to June. Thet girl is gonna rebound into yore arms like a rubber ball off a dobe wall.”
“Oh, Brazos. Don’t lie—don’t rave just to cheer me up.”
“Keep this under yore sombrero, cowboy. I did give the girls a dose of their own medicine. I shore played a low-down trick on them. Why, Jack, it was apple pie for me to tell them—one from the other. An’ I let on I couldn’t. . . . Wal, heah’s what no one else but yu will ever know—except Neece, an’ I give yu leave to tell him. . . . I got burned turrible bad in thet little game of makin’ love.”
“June an’ Jan—both!” gasped Jack, suddenly enlightened.
“Boy, yu hit it plumb on the haid.”
“Oh, Lord! . . . But, Brazos, damn it, I’m not glad. I couldn’t stand your—that you didn’t really care!”
“Gosh, Jack, yu’re a
heartless hombre,” drawled Brazos. “Wal, I’ll trot along to my little rendezvoo.”
But Brazos knew in his heart, with grim anguish, that no man ever presented such a false exterior. His mind was set on one thing—to look and act and talk the character the cowboys at Twin Sombreros had given him. To make June and Janis hate him! He caught sight of them before they saw him, and then his thoughts raced, and his feelings kept pace. They were waiting in a grove of pines off the lane.
He flipped his cigarette away and leisurely took off his sombrero.
“Mawnin’, girls—aw, I mean good evenin’,” he drawled, as true to his frank careless winning way as ever in his life. “I shore am glad to see yu so—so fresh an’ pretty after thet all-night dance.”
But his conscience smote him as with a terrific mace. Incredible as it seemed, he recognized instantly which girl was June and which was Janis.
“Brazos, Jan—we have something serious to ask you,” said June, sad searching eyes on his. She was pale, composed, surprisingly strong. Brazos divined he was to learn the depth of her. Janis was white as snow and her eyes were great black baleful orbs of fire. She had no reserve. She was ready to burst into flame.
“Brazos,” she whispered, hoarsely. “I—I told June.”
“Ahuh. I reckon yu girls been comparin’ notes . . . what’d yu tell her, Jan?”
“About last—night . . . that you begged me—to elope with you . . . and I promised.”
“Wal, June, what’d yu say to thet?”
“Brazos! Oh, it’s true—then. . . . I told Jan that I was in love with you—and engaged to marry you.”
“What happened then?”
“We had a terrible quarrel.”
“Brazos Keene, is she telling the truth?” flashed Janis, furiously.
“Shore she is,” drawled Brazos. “I’m enjoyin’ the honor of bein’ engaged to June an’ plannin’ to elope with yu.”
“Oh, you devil! . . . You lying flirt of a conceited cowboy! . . . You ought to—be horsewhipped. Making game of us—making a fool—of me! . . . For I was in—in earnest—horribly in love with you. . . . Oh, I ha-hate you! . . . the shame of it! . . . You’ve broken—my heart!”