Steve Yeager | Page 8

some time when Ruth isn't round."
"Ruth!" Steve glanced at the young girl who moved about the room
with such rhythmic grace helping the Chinese waiter serve her mother's
guests. "What has she got to do with Harrison?"
"Engaged to him--that's all. See that sparkler on her finger? Wouldn't it
give you a jolt that a nice little girl like her would take up with a stiff
like Harrison?"
"What's her mother thinking about?" asked the cowpuncher under cover
of the conversation that was humming briskly all around the tables.
Daisy lifted her shoulders in a careless little shrug. "Oh, her mother!
What's she got to do with it? Harrison has hypnotized the kid, I guess.
He throws a big chest, and at that he ain't bad-looking. He's one man
too, if he is a rotten bad lot."
The young woman breezed on to another subject in the light,
inconsequent fashion she had, and presently deserted Yeager to meet
the badinage of an extra sitting at an adjoining table.
After dinner Steve went to his new quarters to get a cigar he had left on
the table. It was one Farrar had given him. He was cherishing it because
his financial assets had become reduced to twenty cents and he did not
happen to know when pay-day was.

Yeager climbed the barn stairs humming a range song:--
"Black Jack Davy came a-riding along, Singing a song so gayly, He
laughed and sang till the merry woods rang And he charmed the heart
of a lady, And he charmed--"
Abruptly he pulled up in his stride and in his song. Ruth Seymour was
in the room putting new sheets and pillow-cases on the bed.
"I haven't had time before. I didn't think you would be through dinner
so soon," she explained in a voice soft and low.
"That's all right. I only dropped up to get a cigar I left on the table.
Don't let me disturb you."
Her troubled eyes rested on the strong, lean face that went so well with
the strong, lean body. One eye was swollen and almost shut. Red
bruises glistened on the forehead and the cheeks. A bit of plaster
stretched diagonally above the right cheekbone where the prizefighter's
knuckles had cut a deep gash. Little ridges covered his countenance as
if it had been a contour map of a mountainous country. But through all
the havoc that had been wrought flashed his white teeth in a cheerful
smile.
The girl's lip trembled. "I'm sorry you--were hurt."
He flashed a quick look at her. "Sho! Forget it, Miss Seymour. I wasn't
hurt any--none to speak of. It don't do a big husky like me any harm to
be handed a licking."
"You--hit him first, didn't you?"
"Yes, ma'am,--knocked him out cold before he knew where he was at.
He was entitled to a come-back. I'm noways hos-tile to him because
he's a better man than I am."
She stood with the pillow in her hands, shy as a fawn, but with a certain
resolution, too, the trouble of her soul still reflected on the sweet face.

"Why do men--do such things?" she asked with a catch of her breath.
He scratched his curly head in apologetic perplexity. "Search me. I
reckon the cave man is lurking around in most of us. We hadn't ought
to. That's a fact."
"It was all a mistake, Miss Ellington says. You thought he was hurting
Miss Winters. Why didn't you tell him you were sorry? Then it would
have been all right."
The cowpuncher did not bat an eye at this innocent suggestion.
"That's right. Why didn't I think of that? Then of course he would have
laid off o' me."
"He--Mr. Harrison--is quick-tempered. I suppose all brave men are. But
he's generous, too. If you had explained--"
"I reckon you're right. He sure is generous, even in the whalings he
gives. But don't worry about me. I'm all right, and much obliged for
your kindness in asking."
Steve found his cigar and retired. He carried with him in memory a
picture of a troubled young creature with soft, tender eyes gleaming
starlike from beneath waves of dark hair.
Yeager met Harrison swaggering up the gravel walk toward the house.
A malevolent gleam lit in the cold black eyes of the bully.
"How you feeling, young fella?"
"A hundred and eighty years old," answered the cowpuncher promptly
with a grin. "Every time I open my mouth my face cracks. You
ce'tainly did give me a proper trimming. I don't know sic-'em about this
scientific fight game."
Harrison scowled. "There's more at the same address any time you need
it."

"Not if I see you coming in time to make a getaway," retorted Steve
with a laugh.
As the range-rider passed lightly down