“Huh. Mebbyso you boss all same this ranch?” Peppajee retorted sourly. “Mebbyso Peacefu’ tellum, him no likum.”
Peaceful, thus drawn into the discussion, cleared his throat again.
“Wel-l-l—we don’t cuss much before the women,” he admitted apologetically “We kinda consider that men’s talk. I reckon Vadnie’ll overlook it this time.” He looked across at her beseechingly. “You no feelum bad, Peppajee.”
“Huh. Me no makum squaw-talk.” Peppajee laid down his knife, lifted a corner of his blanket, and drew it slowly across his stern mouth. He muttered a slighting sentence in Indian.
In the same tongue Grant answered him sharply, and after that was silence broken only by the subdued table sounds. Evadna’s eyes filled slowly until she finally pushed back her chair and hurried out into the yard and away from the dogged silence of that blanketed figure at her elbow.
She was scarcely settled, in the hammock, ready for a comforting half hour of tears, when someone came from the house, stood for a minute while he rolled a cigarette, and then came straight toward her.
She sat up, and waited defensively. More baiting, without a doubt—and she was not in the mood to remember any promises about being a nice, gentle little thing. The figure came close, stooped, and took her by the arm. In the half—light she knew him then. It was Grant.
“Come over by the pond,” he said, in what was almost a command. “I want to talk to you a little.”
“Does it occur to you that I might not want to talk t to you?” Still, she let him help her to her feet.
“Surely. You needn’t open your lips if you don’t want to. Just lend me your ears, and be silent that ye may hear.’ The boys will be boiling out on the porch, as usual, in a minute; so hurry.”
“I hope it’s something very important,” Evadna hinted ungraciously. “Nothing else would excuse this high-handed proceeding.”
When they had reached the great rock where the pond had its outlet, and where was a rude seat hidden away in a clump of young willows just across the bridge, he answered her.
“I don’t know that it’s of any importance at all,” he said calmly. “I got to feeling rather ashamed of myself, is all, and it seemed to me the only decent thing was to tell you so. I’m not making any bid for your favor—I don’t know that I want it. I don’t care much about girls, one way or the other. But, for all I’ve got the name of being several things—a savage among the rest—I don’t like to feel such a brute as to make war on a girl that seems to be getting it handed to her right along.”
He tardily lighted his cigarette and sat smoking beside her, the tiny glow lighting his face briefly now and then.
“When I was joshing you there before supper,” he went on, speaking low that he might not be overheard—and ridiculed—from the house, “I didn’t know the whole outfit was making a practice of doing the same thing. I hadn’t heard about the dead tarantula on your pillow, or the rattler coiled up on the porch, or any of those innocent little jokes. But if the rest are making it their business to devil the life out of you, why—common humanity forces me to apologize and tell you I’m out of it from now on.”
“Oh! Thank you very much.” Evadna’s tone might be considered ironical. “I suppose I ought to say that your statement lessens my dislike of you—”
“Not at all.” Grant interrupted her. “Go right ahead and hate me, if you feel that way. It won’t matter to me—girls never did concern me much, one way or the other. I never was susceptible to beauty, and that seems to be a woman’s trump card, always—”
“Well, upon my word!”
“Sounds queer, does it? But it’s the truth, and so what’s the use of lying, just to be polite? I won’t torment you any more; and if the boys rig up too strong a josh, I’m liable to give you a hint beforehand. I’m willing to do that—my sympathies are always with the under dog, anyway, and they’re five to one. But that needn’t mean that I’m—that I—” He groped for words that would not make his meaning too bald; not even Grant could quite bring himself to warn a girl against believing him a victim of her fascinations.
“You needn’t stutter. I’m not really stupid. You don’t like me any better than I like you. I can see that. We’re to be as decent as possible to each other—you from ‘common humanity,’ and I because I promised Aunt Phoebe.”
“We-e-l!—that’s about it, I guess.” Grant eyed her sidelong.” Only I wouldn’t go so far as to say I actually dislike you. I never did dislike a girl, that I remember. I never thought enough about them, one way or the other.” He seemed rather fond of that statement, he repeated it so often.” The life I live doesn’t call for girls. Put that’s neither here nor there. What I wanted to say was, that I won’t bother you any more. I wouldn’t have said a word to you tonight, if you hadn’t walked right up to me and started to dig into me. Of course, I had to fight back—the man who won’t isn’t a normal human being.”
“Oh, I know.” Evadna’s tone was resentful. “From Adam down to you, it has always been ‘The woman, she tempted me.’ You’re perfectly horrid, even if you have apologized. ‘The woman, she tempted me,’ and—”
“I beg your pardon; the woman didn’t,” he corrected blandly. “The woman insisted on scrapping. That’s different.”
“Oh, it’s different! I see. I have almost forgotten something I ought to say, Mr. Imsen. I must thank you for—well, for defending me to that Indian.”
“I didn’t. Nobody was attacking you, so I couldn’t very well defend you, could I? I had to take a fall out of old Peppajee, just on principle. I don’t get along very well with my noble red cousins. I wasn’t doing it on your account, in particular.”
“Oh, I see.” She rose rather suddenly from the bench. “It wasn’t even common humanity, then—”
“Not even common humanity,” he echoed affirmatively. “Just a chance I couldn’t afford to pass up, of digging into Peppajee.”
“That’s different.” She laughed shortly and left him, running swiftly through the warm dusk to the murmur of voices at the house.
Grant sat where she left him, and smoked two cigarettes meditatively before he thought of returning to the house. When he finally did get upon his feet, he stretched his arms high above his head, and stared for a moment up at the treetops swaying languidly just under the stars.
“Girls must play the very deuce with a man if he ever lets them get on his mind,” he mused. “I see right now where a fellow about my size and complexion had better watch out.” But he smiled afterward, as if he did not consider the matter very serious, after all.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL PLAYS GHOST
At midnight, the Peaceful Hart ranch lay broodily quiet under its rock-rimmed bluff. Down in the stable the saddle-horses were but formless blots upon the rumpled bedding in their stalls—except Huckleberry, the friendly little pinto with the white eyelashes and the blue eyes, and the great, liver-colored patches upon his sides, and the appetite which demanded food at unseasonable hours, who was now munching and nosing industriously in the depths of his manger, and making a good deal of noise about it.
Outside, one of the milch cows drew a long, sighing breath of content with life, lifted a cud in mysterious, bovine manner, and chewed dreamily. Somewhere up the bluff a bobcat squalled among the rocks, and the moon, in its dissipated season of late rising, lifted itself indolently up to where it could peer down upon the silent ranch.
In