by Max Brand
“I didn’t. I felt my blood turn to water and I wanted to run.”
“But you stuck it out — I saw! Did he say anything?”
“He said: ‘Dying men do not lie. And I have been twice warned. Woman, why are you here?’”
“And you?” gasped Connor. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. My head spun. I looked up the terrace. I wanted to see you, but you weren’t in sight. I felt terribly alone and absolutely helpless. If I’d had a gun, I would have reached for it.”
“Thank God you didn’t!”
“But you don’t know what his face was like! I expected him to tear me off the horse and smash me with his hands. All at once I wanted to tell him everything — beg him not to hurt me.” Connor groaned.
“I knew it! I knew that was in your head!”
“But I didn’t.”
“Good girl.”
“He said: ‘Why are you here? What harm have you come to work in the Garden?’”
“And you alone with him!” gasped Connor.
“That was what did it. I was so helpless that it made me bold. Can you imagine smiling at a time like that?”
“Were you able to?”
“I don’t know how. It took every ounce of strength in me. But I made myself smile — straight into his face. Then I put out my hands to him all at once.
“‘How could I harm you?’ I asked him.
“And then you should have seen his face change and the anger break up like a cloud. I knew I was safe, then, but I was still dizzy — just as if I’d looked over a cliff — you know?”
“And yet you rode up the hill after that laughing down to him! Ruth, you’re the gamest sport and the best pal in the world. The finest little act I ever saw on the stage or off. It was Big Time stuff. My hat’s off, but — where’d you get the nerve?”
“I was frightened almost to death. Too much frightened for it to show. When I saw you, my strength came back.”
“But what do you think of him?”
“He’s — simply a savage. What do I think of an Indian?”
“No more than that?”
“Ben, can you pet a tiger after you’ve seen his claws?”
He looked at her with anxiety.
“You’re not going to break down later on — feeling as if he’s dynamite about to explode all the time?”
“I’m going to play the game through,” she said with a sort of fierce happiness. “I’ve felt like a sneak thief about this. But now it’s different. He’s more of a wolf than a man. Ben, I saw murder in his face, I swear! And if it isn’t wrong to tame wild beasts it isn’t wrong to tame him. I’m going to play the game, lead him as far as I can until we get the horses — and then it’ll be easy enough to make up by being good the rest of my life.”
“Ruth — girl — you’ve covered the whole ground. And when you have the coin—” He broke off with laughter that was filled with drunken excitement. “But what did you think of my game?”
She did not hear him, and standing with her hands clasped lightly behind her she looked beyond the roof of the house and over the tops of the western mountains, with the sun-haze about them.
“I feel as if I were on the top of the world,” she said at last. “And I wouldn’t have one thing changed. We’re playing for big stakes, but we’re taking a chance that makes the game worth while. What we win we’ll earn — because he’s a devil. Isn’t it what you’d call a fair bet?”
“The squarest in the world,” said Connor stoutly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THEY HAD NO means of knowing when David would return and the ominous shadow of Joseph, lingering near the patio, determined Connor on a walk out of any possible earshot. They went down to the lake with the singing of the men on the other side of the hill growing dim as they descended. The cool of the day was beginning, and they walked close to the edge of the water with the brown treetrunks on one side and the green images floating beyond. Peace lay over Eden valley and the bright river that ran through it, but Ben Connor had no mind to dwell on unessentials.
He had found in the girl an ally of unexpected strength. He expected only a difficult tool filled with scruples, drawing back, imperiling his plans with her hesitation. Instead, she was on fire with the plan. He thought well to fan that fire and keep it steadily blazing.
“It’s better for David; better for him than it is for us. Look at the poor fool! He’s in prison here and doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s happy, but he’s simply kidding himself. In six months I’ll have him chatting with millionaires.”
“Let a barber do a day’s work on him first.”
“No. It’s just the long-haired nuts like that who get by with the high-steppers. He has a lingo about flowers and trees that’ll knock their eye out. I know the gang. Always on edge for something different — music that sounds like a riot in a junk shop and poetry that reads like a drunken printing-press. Well, David ought to be different enough to suit ’em. I’ll boost him, though: ‘The Man that Brought Out the Eden Grays!’ He’ll be headline stuff!”
He laughed so heartily that he did not notice the quick glance of criticism which the girl cast at him.
“I’m not taking anything from him, really,” went on Connor. “I’m simply sneaking around behind him so’s I can pour his pockets full of the coin. That’s all there is to it. Outside of the looks, tell me if there’s anything crooked you can see?”
“I don’t think there is,” she murmured. “I almost hope that there isn’t!”
She was so dubious about it that Connor was alarmed. He was fond of Ruth Manning, but she was just “different” enough to baffle him. Usually he divided mankind into three or four categories for the sake of fast thinking. There were the “boobs,” the “regular guys,” the “high steppers,” and the “nuts.” Sometimes he came perilously close to including Ruth in the last class — with David Eden. And if he did not do so, it was mainly because she had given such an exhibition of cool courage only a few moments before. He had finished his peroration, now, with a feeling of actual virtue, but the shadow on her face made him change his tactics and his talk.
He confined himself, thereafter, strictly to the future. First he outlined his plans for raising the cash for the big “killing.” He told of the men to whom he could go for backing. There were “hard guys” who would take a chance. “Wise ones” who would back his judgment. “Fall guys” who would follow him blindly. For ten percent he would get all the cash he could place. Then it remained to try out the grays in secret, and in public let them go through the paces ridden under wraps and heavily weighted. He described the means of placing the big money before the great race.
And as he talked his figures mounted from tens to hundreds to thousands, until he was speaking in millions. In all of this profit she and David and Connor would share dollar for dollar. At the first corner of the shore they turned she had arrived at a snug apartment in New York. She would have a housekeeper-companion. There would be a cosy living room and a paneled dining room. In the entrance hall of the apartment house, imitation of encrusted marble, no doubt.
But as they came opposite a little wooded island in the lake she had added a maid to the housekeeper. Also, there was now a guest room. Some one from Lukin would be in that room; some one from Lukin would go through the place with her, marveling at her good fortune.
And clothes! They made all the difference. Dressed as she would be dressed, when she came into a room that queer, cold gleam of envy would be in the eyes of the women and the men would sit straighter!
Yet when they reached the place where the shore line turned north and west her imagination, spurred by Connor’s talk, was stumbling along dizzy heights. Her apartment occupied a whole floor. Her butler was a miracle of dignity and her chef a genius in the kitchen. On the great table the silver and glass were things of frosted light. Her chauffeur drove a monster automobile with a great purring engine that whipped her about the city with the color blown into her chee
ks. In her box at the opera she was allowing the deep, soft luxury of the fur collar to slide down from her throat, while along the boxes, in the galleries, there was a ripple of light as the thousand glasses turned upon her. Then she found that Connor was smiling at her. She flushed, but snapped her fingers.
“This thing is going through,” she declared.
“You won’t weaken?”
“I’m as cold as steel. Let’s go back. He’ll probably be in the house by this time.”
Time had slipped past her unnoticed, and the lake was violet and gold with the sunset as they turned away; under the trees along the terraces the brilliant wild flowers were dimmed by a blue shadow.
“But I never saw wild flowers like those,” she said to Connor.
“Nobody else ever did. But old Matthew, whoever he was, grew ’em and kept crossing ’em until he got those big fellows with all the colors of the rainbow.”
“Hurry! We’re late!”
“No, David’s probably on top of that hill, now; always goes up there to watch the sun rise and the sun set. Can you beat that?”
He chuckled, but a shade had darkened the face of the girl for a moment. Then she lifted her head resolutely.
“I’m not going to try to understand him. The minute you understand a thing you stop being afraid of it; and as soon as I stop being afraid of David Eden I might begin to like him — which is what I don’t want.”
“What’s that?” cried Connor, breaking in on her last words. When Ruth began to think aloud he always stopped listening; it was a maxim of his to never listen when a woman became serious.
“It’s that strange giant.”
“Joseph!” exclaimed Connor heavily. “Whipping did him no good. He’ll need killing one of these days.”
But she had already reverted to another thing.
“Do you think he worships the sun?”
“I don’t think. Try to figure out a fellow like that and you get to be just as much of a nut as he is. Go on toward the house and I’ll follow you in a minute. I want to talk to big Joe.”
He turned aside into the trees briskly, and the moment he was out of sight of the girl he called softly: “Joseph!”
He repeated the call after a trifling wait before he saw the big man coming unconcernedly through the trees toward him. Joseph came close before he stopped — very close, as a man will do when he wishes to make another aware of his size, and from this point of vantage, he looked over Connor from head to foot with a glance of lingering and insolent criticism. The gambler was somewhat amused and a little alarmed by that attitude.
“Now, Joseph,” he said, “tell me frankly why you’re dodging me about the valley. Waiting for a chance to throw stones?”
His smile remained without a reflection on the stolid face of the servant.
“Benjamin,” answered the deep, solemn voice, “I know all!”
It made Connor peer into those broad features as into a dim light. Then a moment of reflection assured him that Joseph could not have learned the secret.
“Haneemar, whom you know,” continued Joseph, “has told me about you.”
“And where,” asked Connor, completely at sea, “did you learn of Haneemar?”
“From Abraham. And I know that this is the head of Haneemar.”
He brought out in his palm the little watch-charm of carved ivory.
“Of course,” nodded Connor, feeling his way. “And what is it that you know from Haneemar?”
“That you are evil, Benjamin, and that you have come here for evil. You entered by a trick; and you will stay here for evil purposes until the end.”
“You follow around to pick up a little dope, eh?” chuckled Connor. “You trail me to find out what I intend to do? Why don’t you go to David and warn him?”
“Have I forgotten the whip?” asked Joseph, his nostrils trembling with anger. “But the good Haneemar now gives me power and in the end he will betray you into my hands. That is why I follow you. Wherever you go I follow; I am even able to know what you think! But hearken to me, Benjamin. Take back the head of Haneemar and the bad luck that lives in it. Take it back, and I shall no longer follow you. I shall forget the whip. I shall be ready to do you a service.”
He extended the little piece of ivory eagerly, but Connor drew back. His superstitions were under the surface of his mind, but, still, they were there, and the fear which Joseph showed was contagious.
“Why don’t you throw it away if you’re afraid of it, Joseph?”
“You know as I know,” returned Joseph, glowering, “that it cannot be thrown away. It must be given and freely accepted, as I — oh fool — accepted it from you.”
There was such a profound conviction in this that Connor was affected in spite of himself. That little trinket had been the entering wedge through which he had worked his way into the Garden and started on the road to fortune. He would rather have cut off his hand, now, than take it back.
“Find some one else to take it,” he suggested cheerily. “I don’t want the thing.”
“Then all that Abraham told me is true!” muttered Joseph, closing his hand over the trinket. “But I shall follow you, Benjamin. When you think you are alone you shall find me by turning your head. Every day by sunrise and every day by the dark I beg Haneemar to put his curse on you. I have done you no wrong, and you have had me shamed.”
“And now you’re going to have me bewitched, eh?” asked Connor.
“You shall see.”
The gambler drew back another pace and through the shadows he saw the beginning of a smile of animal-cunning on the face of Joseph.
“The devil take you and Haneemar together,” he growled. “Remember this, Joseph. I’ve had you whipped once. The next time I’ll have you flayed alive.”
Instead of answering, Joseph merely grinned more openly, and the gambler, to forget the ape-face, wheeled and hurried out from the trees. The touch of nightmare dread did not leave him until he rejoined Ruth on the higher terrace.
They found the patio glowing with light, the table near the fountain, and three chairs around it. David came out of the shadow of the arcade to meet them, and he was as uneasy as a boy who had a surprise for grown-ups. He had not even time for a greeting.
“You have not seen your room?” he said to Ruth. “I have made it ready for you. Come!”
He led the way half a pace in front, glancing back at them as though to reprove their slowness, until he reached a door at which he turned and faced her, laughing with excitement. She could hardly believe that this man with his childish gayety was the same whose fury had terrified the servants that same afternoon.
“Close your eyes — close them fast. You will not look until I say?”
She obeyed, setting her teeth to keep from smiling.
“Now come forward — step high for the doorway. So! You are in. Now wait — now open your eyes and look!”
She obeyed again and saw first David standing back with an anxious smile and the gesture of one who reveals, but is not quite sure of its effect. Then she heard a soft, startled exclamation from Connor behind her. Last of all she saw the room.
It was as if the walls had been broken down and a garden let inside — it gave an effect of open air, sunlight and wind. Purple flowers like warm shadows banked the farther corners, and out of them rose a great vine draping the window. It had been torn bodily from the earth, and now the roots were packed with damp moss, yellow-green. It bore in clusters and single flowers and abundant bloom, each blossom as large as the mallow, and a dark gold so rich that Ruth well-nigh listened for the murmur of bees working this mine of pollen. From above, the great flowers hung down against the dull red of the sunset sky; and from below the distant treetops on the terrace pointed up with glimmers of the lake between. There was only the reflected light of the evening, now, but the cuplike blossoms were filled to the brim with a glow of their own.
She looked away.
A dapple deerskin covered the bed like the shadow
under a tree in mid-day, and the yellow of the flowers was repeated dimly on the floor by a great, tawny hide of a mountain-lion. She took up some of the purple flowers, and letting the velvet petals trail over her finger tips, she turned to David with a smile. But what Connor saw, and saw with a thrill of alarm, was that her eyes were filling with tears.
“See!” said David gloomily. “I have done this to make you happy, and now you are sad!”
“Because it is so beautiful.”
“Yes,” said David slowly. “I think I understand.”
But Connor took one of the flowers from her hand. She cried out, but too late to keep him from ripping the blossom to pieces, and now he held up a single petal, long, graceful, red-purple at the broader end and deep yellow at the narrow.
“Think of that a million times bigger,” said Connor, “and made out of velvet. That’d be a design for a cloak, eh? Cost about a thousand bucks to imitate this petal, but it’d be worth it to see you in it, eh?”
She looked to David with a smile of apology for Connor, but her hand accepted the petal, and her second smile was for Connor himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN THEY WENT out into the patio again, David had lost a large part of his buoyancy of spirits, as though in some subtle manner Connor had overcast the triumph of the room; he left them with word that the evening meal would soon be ready and hurried off calling orders to Zacharias.
“Why did you do it?” she asked Connor as soon as they were alone.
“Because it made me mad to see a stargazer like that turning your head.”
“But didn’t you think the room was beautiful?”
“Sure. Like a riot in a florist’s shop. But don’t let this David take you off guard with his rooms full of flowers and full of silence.”
“Silence?”
“Haven’t I told you about his Room of Silence? That’s one of his queer dodges. That room; you see? When anything bothers him he goes over and sits down in there, because — do you know what he thinks sits with him?”
“Well?”