It was evening before Hardman returned from the mission upon which he had been sent in place of the obstinate Neil. He reported at once to Leroy, who came smilingly to the place where she was sitting on the porch to tell her his news.
“Webb Mackenzie's going to raise that thirty thousand, all right. He's promised to raise it inside of three days,” he told her triumphantly.
“And shall I have to stay here three whole days?”
He looked with half-shut, smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness, compact of a strange charm that was both well-bred and gypsyish. There was a scarce-veiled passion in his gaze that troubled her. More than once that day she had caught it.
“Three days ain't so long. I could stand three months of you and wish for more,” he told her.
Lightly she turned the subject, but not without a chill of fear. Three days was a long time. Much might happen if this wolf slipped the leash of his civilization.
It was next day that an incident occurred which was to affect the course of events more than she could guess at the time. A bunch of wild hill steers had been driven down by Hardman, Reilly, and Neil in the afternoon and were inclosed in the corral with the cows from the Rocking Chair Ranch. Just before sunset Leroy, who had been away all day, returned and sauntered over from the stable to join Alice. It struck the girl from his flushed appearance that he had been drinking. In his eye she found a wild devil of lawlessness that set her heart pounding. If Neil and he clashed now there would be murder done. Of that she felt sure.
That she set herself to humor the Wolf's whims was no more for her own safety than for that of the man who had been her friend. She curbed her fears, clamped down her startled maiden modesty, parried his advances with light words and gay smiles. Once Neil passed, and his eyes asked a question. She shook her head, unnoticed by Leroy. She would fight her own battle as long as she could. It was to divert him that she proposed they go down to the corral and look at the wild cattle the men had driven down. She told him she had heard a great deal about them, but had never seen any. If he would go with her she would like to look at them.
The outlaw was instantly at her service, and they sauntered across. In her hand the girl carried a closed umbrella she had been using to keep off the sun.
They stood at the gate of the corral looking at the long-legged, shaggy creatures, as wild and as active almost as hill deer. On horseback one could pass to and fro among them without danger, but in a closed corral a man on foot would have taken a chance. Nobody knew this better than Leroy. But the liquor was still in his head, and even when sober he was reckless beyond other men.
“They need water,” he said, and with that opened the gate and started for the windmill.
He sauntered carelessly across, with never a glance at the dangerous animals among which he was venturing. A great bull pawed the ground lowered its head, and made a rush at the unconscious man. Alice called to him to look out, then whipped open the gate and ran after him. Leroy turned, and, in a flash, saw that which for an instant filled him with a deadly paralysis. Between him and the bull, directly in the path of its rush, stood this slender girl, defenseless.
Even as his revolver flashed out from the scabbard the outlaw knew he was too late to save her, for she stood in such a position that he could not hit a vital spot. Suddenly her umbrella opened in the face of the animal. Frightened, it set its feet wide and slithered to a halt so close to her that its chorus pierced the silk of the umbrella. With one hand Leroy swept the girl behind him; with the other he pumped three bullets into the forehead of the bull. Without a groan it keeled over, dead before it reached the ground.
Alice leaned against the iron support of the windmill. She was so white that the man expected her to sink down. One glance showed him other cattle pawing the ground angrily.
“Come!” he ordered, and, putting an arm round her waist, he ran with her to the gate. Yet a moment, and they were through in safety.
She leaned against him helpless for an instant before she had strength to disengage herself. “Thank you. I'm all right now.”
“I thought you were going to faint,” he explained.
She nodded. “I nearly did.”
His face was colorless. “You saved my life.”
“Then we're quits, for you saved mine,” she answered, with a shaken attempt at a smile.
He shook his head. “That's not the same at all. I had to do that, and there was no risk to it. But you chose to save me, to risk your life for mine.”
She saw that he was greatly moved, and that his emotion had swept away the effects of the liquid as a fresh breeze does a fog.
“I didn't know I was risking my life. I saw you didn't see.”
“I didn't think there was a woman alive had the pluck to do it—and for me, your enemy. That what you count me, isn't it—an enemy?”
“I don't know. I can't quite think of you as friend, can I?”
“And yet I would have protected you from any danger at any cost.”
“Except the danger of yourself,” she said, in low voice, meeting him eye to eye.
He accepted her correction with a groan, an wheeled away, leaning his arms on the corral fence and looking away to that saddle between the peak which still glowed with sunset light.
“I haven't met a woman of your kind before in ten years,” he said presently. “I've lived on you looks, your motions, the inflections of your voice. I suppose I've been starved for that sort of thing and didn't know it till you came. It's been like a glimpse of heaven to me.” He laughed bitterly: and went on: “Of course, I had to take to drinking and let you see the devil I am. When I'm sober you would be as safe with me as with York. But the excitement of meeting you—I have to ride my emotions to death so as to drain them to the uttermost. Drink stimulates the imagination, and I drank.”
“I'm sorry.”
Her voice said more than the words. He looked at her curiously. “You're only a girl. What do you know about men of my sort? You have been wrappered and sheltered all your life. And yet you understand me better than any of the people I meet. All my life I have fought with myself. I might have been a gentleman and I'm only a wolf. My appetites and passions, stronger than myself dragged me down. It was Kismet, the destiny ordained for me from my birth.”
“Isn't there always hope for a man who knows his weaknesses and fights against them?” she asked timidly.
“No, there is not,” came the harsh answer. “Besides, I don't fight. I yield to mine. Enough of that. It is you we have to consider, not me. You have saved my life, and I have got to pay the debt.”
“I didn't think who you were,” her honesty compelled her to say.
“That doesn't matter. You did it. I'm going to take you back to your father and straight as I can.”
Her eyes lit. “Without a ransom?”
“Yes.”
“You pay your debts like a gentleman, sir.”
“I'm not coyote all through.”
She could only ignore the hunger that stared out of his eyes for her. “What about your friends? Will they let me go?”
“They'll do as I say. What kicking they do will be done mostly in private, and when they're away from me.”
“I don't want to make trouble