The Seventh Man | Page 7

which his sham jealousy had roused in her, perhaps. He should have maintained a discreet silence, but instead, he poured in the gall of complacency upon a raw wound.
"Blondy's all right," he stated beneficently, "but you just forget about him tonight. You're going to that dance, and you're going with me. If there's any explanations to be made, you leave 'em to me. I'll handle Blondy."
"You handle Blondy!" she whispered. Her voice came back; it rang: "You couldn't if he had one hand tied behind him." She measured him for another blow. "I'm going to that dance and I'm going with Mr. Hansen."
She knew that he would have died for her, and he knew that she would have died for him; accordingly they abandoned themselves to sullen fury.
"You're out of date, Vic," she ran on. "Men can't drag women around nowadays, and you can't drag me. Not--one--inch." She put a vicious little interval between each of the last three words.
"I'll be calling for you at seven o'clock."
"I won't be there."
"Then I'll call on Blondy."
"You don't dare to. Don't you try to bluff me. I'm not that kind."
"Betty, d'you mean that? D'you think that I'm yaller?"
"I don't care what you are."
"I ask you calm and impersonal, just think that over before you say it."
"I've already thought it over."
"Then, by God," said Gregg, trembling, "I'll never take one step out of my way to see you again."
He turned, so blind with fury that he shouldered the door on his way out and so, into the saddle, with Grey Molly standing like a figure of rock, as if she sensed his mood. He swung her about on her hind legs with a wrench on the curb and a lift of his spurs, but when she leaped into a gallop he brought her back to the walk with a cruel jerk; she began to sidle across the field with her chin drawn almost back to her breast, prancing. That movement of the horse brought him half way around towards the door and he was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty Neal was standing there, begging him with her eyes. But the great, sullen pain conquered; he straightened out the mare for the gate.
Betty was indeed at the door, leaning against it in a sudden weakness, and even in her pain she felt pride in the grace and skill of Vic's horsemanship. The hearts of both of them were breaking, with this rather typical difference: that Gregg felt her to be entirely at fault, and that she as fully accepted every scruple of the blame. He had come down tired out and nervous from work he had done for her sake, she remembered, and if he would only glance back once--he must know that she was praying for it-- she would cry out and run down to him; but he went on, on, through the gate.
A flash of her passion returned to her. "I shall go with Blondy--if it kills me." And she flung herself into the nearest seat and wept.
So when he reached the road and looked back at last, the doorway yawned black, empty, and he set his teeth with a groan and spurred down the road for Alder. He drew rein at Captain Lorrimer's and entered with curt nods in exchange for the greetings.
"Red-eye," he ordered, and seized bottle and glass as Lorrimer spun them deftly towards him.
Captain Lorrimer picked up the bottle and gazed at it mournfully when Vic had poured his drink.
"Son," he murmured, "you've sure raised an awful thirst."
Chapter IV.
King Hol
There is a very general and very erroneous impression that alcohol builds the mood of a man; as a matter of fact it merely makes his temper of the moment fast--the man who takes his first drink with a smile ends in uproarious laughter, and he who frowns will often end in fighting. Vic Gregg did not frown as he drank, but the corners of his lips turned up a trifle in a smile of fixed and acid pleasantry and his glance went from face to face in the barroom, steadily, with a trifling pause at each pair of eyes. Beginning with himself, he hated mankind in general; the burn of the cheap whisky within served to set the color of that hatred in a fixed dye. He did not lift his chaser, but his hand closed around it hard. If some one had given him an excuse for a fist-fight or an outburst of cursing it would have washed his mind as clean as a new slate, and five minutes later he might have been with Betty Neal, riotously happy. Instead, everyone overflowed with good nature, gossip, questions about his work, and the danger in him crystallized. He registered cold reasons for his disgust.
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