by Max Brand
He tried to lift himself in the bed, but she pressed him back.
“Steady,” said she. “You’ve ridden Clancy. It’s all over. But tell me how under heaven you managed it?”
“It was very easy,” said Holden in a faint voice.
“Easy?” she echoed.
“Certainly,” said he, managing a smile. “You see, Clancy was waiting for a real man. That was all!”
“Man?” said Aunt Carrie. “Bah! I’d make two such men!”
But she spoke without sufficient emphasis, and all the while, without her knowledge, perhaps, she was patting the hand of Holden with her long, bony fingers.
CHAPTER 17
Mr. John Cutting had sent a telegram ahead of him. Therefore he was met at the railroad station near Larramee by none other than the great Oliphant Larramee in person. There was no servant; and the blooded pair of chestnuts which Mr. Larramee drove to the rubber-tired buggy would hardly stand at a hitching rack. Indeed, when the train came in, it took all the skill of Larramee with voice and hand and whip to keep them from jumping through their collars or smashing themselves into the nearest barbed-wire fence. So, when the engine at last stood still, panting and quivering, Larramee backed the horses toward the platform and called aloud to Cutting. The latter recognized with a start the big man under the linen duster. When he had last seen Larramee, that gentleman had been dressed in a far different fashion. Besides, it was not for the face of the father that young Cutting was keeping so close a lookout. And a shadow of surprise and of dismay crossed his brow as he observed the older man. He hurried toward him, a big carry-all valise in one hand and a smaller suitcase in the other, yet swinging both of them easily, for Cutting was not so long out of the university that his shoulders had forgotten their strength.
He swung them into the rear of the rig. Then he swung himself lightly over the wheel and into the seat beside Larramee.
“You don’t mind horses?” said Larramee, settling the near one of his span with a steady voice and checking rein.
“I like ’em. Ridden all my life.”
“Riding is one thing. Driving is another. These days of automobiles, more people have ridden a horse than ever sat behind the beauties and looked at their switching tails. But—I prefer flesh to take me over the ground. Well—here goes!”
With this, he loosed the reins an imperceptible trifle, and though he still leaned a little forward in the seat, his thick arms well extended along the narrow leather strips to maintain a stout pull on the bits, the pair leaped forward with one consent. That first lurch took young Cutting by surprise. Automobiles do not start on wings. Moreover, after he had been flattened against the seat, he had other things, immediately, to take up his attention. In six strides those fine trotters were hitting a two-forty gait, which even translated into automobile terms is twenty-five miles an hour. This through the crowded traffic of horses, automobiles, carts, and pedestrians around the station. The mighty wrists of Larramee turned them back and forth. They shaved vehicles and lives by scant fractions of inches on either side, and then they straightened out into the one long main street of Larramee. Here, though the pace had even increased, Larramee sat back in his seat as though the excitement was over. With leveled, flagging ears, with harness flopping loose and high over the quick pulsations of the driving hips, with noses stretched eagerly ahead, that pair of wild young horses tore down the main thoroughfare of Larramee, darted around a corner at a rate that made the rear wheels of the buggy skid wildly, and straighten off again onto a country road which pointed toward a distant hill and a big house surmounting it. By this time Cutting had recovered his nerve and his breath. And he was able to smile a little askance at the impassive face of the retired millionaire.
“Alexa wanted to come down for you,” said Larramee, in answer to that look. “But she wanted to drive these horses, and I wouldn’t let her. Safe, of course. Gentle as lambs when you’re used to them.”
“I quite understand,” murmured Cutting, turning a little pale at the thought. “Certainly it would be rash to risk any woman in the world behind these young—devils.”
“She likes speed,” said Larramee. “When I told her she had to take the browns, she sulked. That’s why I’m down here.”
“Very good of you, sir,” said Cutting. “That’s Alexa, of course.”
And he ventured a short laugh, pitched rather uneasily high; for he was not very well acquainted with Larramee. He wanted to ingratiate himself, but he was also very much afraid of this famous man.
“That’s Alexa,” said Larramee, without the qualifying smile. “She hasn’t broken her neck yet. Two or three years more, however—well, I never could understand where she gets it!”
This was a twisted span between two deeply gouged ruts, either of which was deep and stiff enough to have snapped off a wheel at the axle. Cutting bit his lip and said nothing.
“Her mother was always a gentle soul,” said Larramee. “And I think I bear the reputation of a quiet man, Alexa is a throwback to some rough ancestor. There have been a few wild Larramees, you know.”
Mr. Cutting listened and controlled himself by blinking hard, straight at the sun. He was remembering certain tales which his own father had told him of this same Oliphant Larramee smashing and crashing his way through the wrecks of other fortunes on Wall Street and carving out amusement and new millions for himself. Yet he seemed to consider himself a gentle spirit!
But all of this talk was calling up in his mind the radiant picture of Alexa Larramee, and the heart of Cutting swelled in him. He could not keep back the question which was big in his mind.
“There is a rumor in New York,” said he, “that Alexa is to marry a man—let me see—Holden, I think it is.”
He dared not look at Larramee, for fear the rancher would notice the pallor of his face. But there was no response for a moment.
“Rumors travel fast,” said Larramee at last.
This was scant satisfaction. And the fears of Cutting suddenly redoubled.
“It’s true, then?” he asked with a sudden sharpness.
There was so much in his voice that Larramee glanced at him and smiled a little.
“I don’t know,” said he. “Alexa has her own way, very much of the time. Just what her intentions may be, I cannot answer.”
“But,” cried the other, “the same rumor has it that this Holden is a marauder—a good deal of a rascal, in fact. Of course that can’t be true!”
“I only know,” said Larramee, smiling more broadly than ever, “that he is the most impertinent youngster I have ever met in my life! I can answer, too, that his nerve is as good as steel.”
“He’s young, then?”
“Very. Not more than twenty-one or two, I should say.”
“A brilliant young robber, a fighter—perhaps Alexa has grown romantic about him?”
“I have not the slightest idea,” answered the rancher, drawing the horses to a walk as they began the steep grade of the hill. “You must ask Alexa herself all about it. As I said before, and as you must know for yourself, she has her own mind and her own determinations. I should never dream of trying to influence her in any really important matter such as a husband!”
There was a vein of bitterness underlying this which made Mr. Cutting thoughtful, and he recalled another rumor—how many and how fast-feathered are such tales about the figure of a rich man’s house and a pretty girl—to the effect that having once gone to great trouble in picking out a husband for his daughter, Mr. Larramee had the painful embarrassment of having his choice rejected at the last moment. This, no doubt, had something to do with his attitude in the present matter.
They reached the house. It looked smaller from the level beside it than it did from the valley below where Larramee itself lay. Indeed, it was a most modest place for the home of so rich a man. It was surrounded by a haphazard garden of random trees, intermixed with irregular splotches of lawn, of hedge flowers, and of wild blossoms sown in profusion and ca
relessness. And the building behind this screen of cool greenery and color was a rambling collection of additions to what had once been a hunting lodge. From the distance it looked a good deal like a small castle. Close at hand it more resembled a country summer hotel, and not a very good one at that! It was all timber. It was not freshly painted, and in place of paint, vines had been allowed to grow where they would. In some places they cast long green trailers through the windows and into the interior of the house. Here and there the arms had found a better footing around the windows and had quite blotted out an entire light so that the room within must be both dark and hot. But in their fantasies, these vines had not been disturbed. They were allowed to do as they would. Some of them sprawled close along the ground. Others twisted along halfway ledges; others again had worked up to the very roof and there, seeming to gain new life with the hot sun just above them, had spilled forth quantities of streamers which showered across the roofing and dropped far beneath the eaves in streamers and cool festoons.
John Cutting had only a moment to observe these things, for through an archway in the garden Alexa herself came hurrying toward him. Servants took his bags; Mr. Larramee whirled away toward the stables, which were at a little distance; and here he was with a feeling that he had crossed the continent on seven-league boots. It was unbelievable that she was actually before him, more brown of face than when he had last seen her, and her eyes a richer blue, he thought.
They spent five minutes on old mutual friends. But a fish cannot swim idly with a hook in its mouth, and Cutting, in agony, had to talk of the matter which was most in his mind.
“I came across the continent,” said he bluntly, at last, “with just one object, Alexa.”
He paused a moment to gather courage, and she looked rather anxiously at him, to see whether or not it was necessary to change the subject, but since he had proposed to her, already, three times, it seemed absurd that he would rush some two thousand miles to ask her the same question over again.
“It’s about the matter of this man Holden,” said he. “I heard—”
Alexa stamped. “You heard wrong!” she cried.
“Thank heaven!” sighed Mr. Cutting. “I really thought it was impossible—a person no one had ever heard of—and trailing a reputation which was not exactly a cloud of glory—”
“Do you mean to say,” she asked, “that they are talking about him even in—”
“Even back there,” he said.
“I wish he were dead,” she answered, with a fierceness which delighted the soul of John Cutting.
“So do I,” he admitted. “However, it seems that he’s the next best thing. He really—”
“He really is a low person I have never met. Reputation? Why, John, it’s said that he’s a midnight robber!”
“We heard something to the same effect. I was afraid, for a moment that—”
“Not seriously!”
“You’re so infernally impulsive, Alexa! I’ve been in hell, frankly, for a week.”
“How much talk?”
“This much.” He drew out a newspaper clipping. It was headed with a four-column picture of the lovely face of Alexa.
“That ridiculous bathing suit again!” said Alexa, flushing. Then she added, as she read the headlines: “Oh, John, the whole world must know!”
“I suppose so.”
“What are they saying? Oh, they must be laughing—”
“Not at all. Everyone felt at once that this Holden must be an unusual man.”
“He is!”
“Yes?” Cutting inquired with alarm.
“An unusual villain. He dared to announce that he expected to become my husband. Think of it!”
“But your father, Alexa! I should think that Oliphant Larramee would have him coated with tar and feathers, and—”
“So should I, if I’d been a man. But you never can understand what Dad will do. He’s so impulsive. So wild himself. He actually hasn’t raised a hand!”
“I can’t understand—”
“Hush! Here is Dad now. And there’s mischief in his eye.”
“How can you tell?”
“By his smile. That always means trouble.”
Oliphant Larramee came slowly toward them, taking off his linen duster.
“You have a pleasant surprise coming, my dear,” said he.
“What is that?”
“A gentleman is riding toward the house to see you.”
“What gentleman, Dad?”
“Mr. Thomas Holden.”
“Dad!”
“I thought I’d prepare you, my dear.”
“Oh!” cried Alexa. “Do you mean that you’ll actually let me see him?”
“In fact,” said Oliphant Larramee, “I’ve agreed to introduce him!”
CHAPTER 18
At that instant, as Alexa and Cutting started to their feet, the sun winked far off, down the slope, upon the sleek hide of a blood-bay horse.
“John,” said she, “come with me to the house.”
“If you wish to be sheltered from this—Holden,” said the latter, his square jaw thrusting out in fine style, “I should be delighted to accommodate you, Alexa.”
“Hush!” she cried, capturing his hand and drawing him along. “You don’t understand. He’s a terrible person—thinks nothing of taming wild horses, or of killing men. God knows how many murders are to his credit.”
“This is the twentieth century, Alexa,” said John Cutting. “They hang such fellows nowadays!”
“This is the twentieth century,” she agreed with a sigh, “but it’s not New York. And in this part of the country they are very hard on all sorts of crimes except the worst of them all. Gun fights are looked on as fist fights are looked on in your part of the country.”
She said this as she got safely inside the house. Then she faced him.
“What am I going to do?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know. I wish to heaven—but Mr. Larramee—”
“I know you’re confused, John. You wonder what’s in the mind of Dad. I wonder too. But I have a terrible surmise. I don’t dare to tell you!”
“You’d better. If I can help you, Alexa—”
“It’s a crazy tangle of suspicions. I only know that Dad rushed down to the town one day to destroy this rascal, and that he came back without doing it. You know that my father has a reputation of doing what he starts out for. What made him fail here?”
“If this fellow is a gun fighter—”
“That’s not it. Dad would storm a fort, if he felt that his family’s honor dictated such a thing. That’s not it. Besides, he has only to raise his hand in the town and twenty men would be behind him to do what he asks them to do. No, it’s something else. And now he allows this man to come to the house, and insists on introducing him to me—in person! After I’ve been insulted so publicly—”
She threw out both her hands in a gesture of despair and of anguish. “Don’t you see, John?”
“I’m bewildered, Alexa. It doesn’t seem real or possible. Not with Oliphant Larramee!”
“I know. There’s only one way to explain it. You know that Dad has led a romantic, strange sort of a life. He’s done all manner of things in his time. Suppose that one of those things was—not an honest or honorable affair? Suppose this Thomas Holden, in some way, got hold of it? Suppose that that knowledge was what lay behind his public statement that he intended to marry me? And suppose—suppose that’s the club with which he’s compelling my father to go so far—”
“In the name of heaven, Alexa, do you believe all of this?”
“What other explanation is there?”
“With such a serious hold—he could even—”
“Try to force me to marry him? That’s what I’ve kept awake at night wondering about.”
“You wouldn’t do it, Alexa?”
“To save Dad’s honor? I’d go through fire for him!”
At this, John Cutting grew deathly pale. He c
ould not speak for a moment. “Go to your room,” he urged at last. “Refuse to meet him. Afterward, I’ll try to talk to him.”
“And be pistoled without remorse or conscience? I tell you, John, this Holden is a remarkable person. He is a slender little cripple—the gentlest-appearing soul in the world. His voice is as soft as a child’s voice. But in reality, he’s a devil. You know when opposites go together they make the worst poisons. It’s that way with Holden. He’s apparently one of those natural fiends who delight in murder for its own sake. I tell you frankly, John, that if you ever face him with so much as a frown, he’ll kill you out of hand!”
She added: “As for running away to my room—if my father is cornered and helpless, do you think that I’ll help to put a gun to his head?”
Even John Cutting, with all the schemes of a lover rushing through his brain, could think of nothing to say. He bowed his head, and they went on together into the living room, and they sat down in the farthest corner.
From that position, though they had chosen it accidentally, they could see Thomas Holden ride up and confront Larramee in the open driveway. They could see a great ragged wolf dog lie down under the nose of the horse and snarl silently up at the millionaire, they could see Holden take a long staff which he balanced across the pommel of the saddle, and so clamber down to the ground with infinite pain. In this way, leaning on the staff, he faced Larramee.
“Holden,” said the big man, “this affair has started as a joke. It has developed into something else. You have taken up a chance word which I dropped. If I live up to my contract, I shall be forced to insult my daughter under her own roof. I had rather cut off an arm!” He added: “Think this over, Holden!”
Holden, indeed, bowed his pale face toward the ground in quiet meditation.
“I have thought it over from first to last,” he said at length. “And it is worth while.”
“In what way, man? You come into my house. You are presented to my daughter—if I can persuade her to come down and see you. She rises and leaves the room. Then you have succeeded in offending her, in mortally insulting me, and where is your gain?”