The Light of Western Stars | Page 7

can finish this properly--what's your name?"
Still obeying mechanically, she told him.
He stared for a while, as if the name had awakened associations in a mind somewhat befogged. He leaned back unsteadily. Madeline heard the expulsion of his breath, a kind of hard puff, not unusual in drunken men.
"What name?" he demanded.
"Madeline Hammond. I am Alfred Hammond's sister."
He put his hand up and brushed at an imaginary something before his eyes. Then he loomed over her, and that hand, now shaking a little, reached out for her veil. Before he could touch it, however, she swept it back, revealing her face.
"You're--not--Majesty Hammond?"
How strange--stranger than anything that had ever happened to her before--was it to hear that name on the lips of this cowboy! It was a name by which she was familiarly known, though only those nearest and dearest to her had the privilege of using it. And now it revived her dulled faculties, and by an effort she regained control of herself.
"You are Majesty Hammond," he replied; and this time he affirmed wonderingly rather than questioned.
Madeline rose and faced him.
"Yes, I am."
He slammed his gun back into its holster.
"Well, I reckon we won't go on with it, then."
"With what, sir? And why did you force me to say Si to this priest?"
"I reckon that was a way I took to show him you'd be willing to get married."
"Oh! . . . You--you! . . ." Words failed her.
This appeared to galvanize the cowboy into action. He grasped the padre and led him toward the door, cursing and threatening, no doubt enjoining secrecy. Then he pushed him across the threshold and stood there breathing hard and wrestling with himself.
"Here--wait--wait a minute, Miss--Miss Hammond," he said, huskily. "You could fall into worse company than mine--though I reckon you sure think not. I'm pretty drunk, but I'm--all right otherwise. Just wait--a minute."
She stood quivering and blazing with wrath, and watched this savage fight his drunkenness. He acted like a man who had been suddenly shocked into a rational state of mind, and he was now battling with himself to hold on to it. Madeline saw the dark, damp hair lift from his brows as he held it up to the cool wind. Above him she saw the white stars in the deep-blue sky, and they seemed as unreal to her as any other thing in this strange night. They were cold, brilliant, aloof, distant; and looking at them, she felt her wrath lessen and die and leave her calm.
The cowboy turned and began to talk.
"You see--I was pretty drunk," he labored. "There was a fiesta-- and a wedding. I do fool things when I'm drunk. I made a fool bet I'd marry the first girl who came to town. . . . If you hadn't worn that veil--the fellows were joshing me--and Ed Linton was getting married--and everybody always wants to gamble. . . . I must have been pretty drunk."
After the one look at her when she had first put aside her veil he had not raised his eyes to her face. The cool audacity had vanished in what was either excessive emotion or the maudlin condition peculiar to some men when drunk. He could not stand still; perspiration collected in beads upon his forehead; he kept wiping his face with his scarf, and he breathed like a man after violent exertions.
"You see--I was pretty--" he began.
"Explanations are not necessary," she interrupted. "I am very tired--distressed. The hour is late. Have you the slightest idea what it means to be a gentleman?"
His bronzed face burned to a flaming crimson.
"Is my brother here--in town to-night?" Madeline went on.
"No. He's at his ranch."
"But I wired him."
"Like as not the message is over in his box at the P.O. He'll be in town to-morrow. He's shipping cattle for Stillwell."
"Meanwhile I must go to a hotel. Will you please--"
If he heard her last words he showed no evidence of it. A noise outside had attracted his attention. Madeline listened. Low voices of men, the softer liquid tones of a woman, drifted in through the open door. They spoke in Spanish, and the voices grew louder. Evidently the speakers were approaching the station. Footsteps crunching on gravel attested to this, and quicker steps, coming with deep tones of men in anger, told of a quarrel. Then the woman's voice, hurried and broken, rising higher, was eloquent of vain appeal.
The cowboy's demeanor startled Madeline into anticipation of something dreadful. She was not deceived. From outside came the sound of a scuffle--a muffled shot, a groan, the thud of a falling body, a woman's low cry, and footsteps padding away in rapid retreat.
Madeline Hammond leaned weakly back in her seat, cold and sick, and for a moment her ears throbbed to the tramp of the dancers across the way