The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗
- Author: Zane Grey
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Beasley forcing her off her property, if Dale were there.
Beasley would only force disaster upon himself. Then Helen
experienced a quick shock. Would Dale answer to this
situation as Carmichael had answered? It afforded her relief
to assure herself to the contrary. The cowboy was one of a
blood-letting breed; the hunter was a man of thought,
gentleness, humanity. This situation was one of the kind
that had made him despise the littleness of men. Helen
assured herself that he was different from her uncle and
from the cowboy, in all the relations of life which she had
observed while with him. But a doubt lingered in her mind.
She remembered his calm reference to Snake Anson, and that
caused a recurrence of the little shiver Carmichael had
given her. When the doubt augmented to a possibility that
she might not be able to control Dale, then she tried not to
think of it any more. It confused and perplexed her that
into her mind should flash a thought that, though it would
be dreadful for Carmichael to kill Beasley, for Dale to do
it would be a calamity — a terrible thing. Helen did not
analyze that strange thought. She was as afraid of it as she
was of the stir in her blood when she visualized Dale.
Her meditation was interrupted by Bo, who entered the room,
rebellious-eyed and very lofty. Her manner changed, which
apparently owed its cause to the fact that Helen was alone.
“Is that — cowboy gone?” she asked.
“Yes. He left quite some time ago,” replied Helen.
“I wondered if he made your eyes shine — your color burn
so. Nell, you’re just beautiful.”
“Is my face burning?” asked Helen, with a little laugh. “So
it is. Well, Bo, you’ve no cause for jealousy. Las Vegas
can’t be blamed for my blushes.”
“Jealous! Me? Of that wild-eyed, soft-voiced, two-faced
cowpuncher? I guess not, Nell Rayner. What ‘d he say about
me?”
“Bo, he said a lot,” replied Helen, reflectively. “I’ll tell
you presently. First I want to ask you — has Carmichael
ever told you how he’s helped me?”
“No! When I see him — which hasn’t been often lately — he
— I — Well, we fight. Nell, has he helped you?”
Helen smiled in faint amusement. She was going to be
sincere, but she meant to keep her word to the cowboy. The
fact was that reflection had acquainted her with her
indebtedness to Carmichael.
“Bo, you’ve been so wild to ride half-broken mustangs — and
carry on with cowboys — and read — and sew — and keep
your secrets that you’ve had no time for your sister or her
troubles.”
“Nell!” burst out Bo, in amaze and pain. She flew to Helen
and seized her hands. “What ‘re you saying?”
“It’s all true,” replied Helen, thrilling and softening.
This sweet sister, once aroused, would be hard to resist.
Helen imagined she should hold to her tone of reproach and
severity.
“Sure it’s true,” cried Bo, fiercely. “But what’s my fooling
got to do with the — the rest you said? Nell, are you
keeping things from me?”
“My dear, I never get any encouragement to tell you my
troubles.”
“But I’ve — I’ve nursed uncle — sat up with him — just
the same as you,” said Bo, with quivering lips.
“Yes, you’ve been good to him.”
“We’ve no other troubles, have we, Nell?”
“You haven’t, but I have,” responded Helen, reproachfully.
“Why — why didn’t you tell me?” cried Bo, passionately.
“What are they? Tell me now. You must think me a — a
selfish, hateful cat.”
“Bo, I’ve had much to worry me — and the worst is yet to
come,” replied Helen. Then she told Bo how complicated and
bewildering was the management of a big ranch — when the
owner was ill, testy, defective in memory, and hard as steel
— when he had hoards of gold and notes, but could not or
would not remember his obligations — when the neighbor
ranchers had just claims — when cowboys and sheep-herders
were discontented, and wrangled among themselves — when
great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep had to be fed in
winter — when supplies had to be continually freighted
across a muddy desert and lastly, when an enemy rancher was
slowly winning away the best hands with the end in view of
deliberately taking over the property when the owner died.
Then Helen told how she had only that day realized the
extent of Carmichael’s advice and help and labor — how,
indeed, he had been a brother to her — how —
But at this juncture Bo buried her face in Helen’s breast
and began to cry wildly.
“I — I — don’t want — to hear — any more,” she sobbed.
“Well, you’ve got to hear it,” replied Helen, inexorably “I
want you to know how he’s stood by me.”
“But I hate him.”
“Bo, I suspect that’s not true.”
“I do — I do.”
“Well, you act and talk very strangely then.”
“Nell Rayner — are — you — you sticking up for that —
that devil?”
“I am, yes, so far as it concerns my conscience,” rejoined
Helen, earnestly. “I never appreciated him as he deserved —
not until now. He’s a man, Bo, every inch of him. I’ve seen
him grow up to that in three months. I’d never have gotten
along without him. I think he’s fine, manly, big. I —”
“I’ll bet — he’s made love — to you, too,” replied Bo,
woefully.
“Talk sense,” said Helen, sharply. “He has been a brother to
me. But, Bo Rayner, if he HAD made love to me I — I might
have appreciated it more than you.”
Bo raised her face, flushed in part and also pale, with
tear-wet cheeks and the telltale blaze in the blue eyes.
“I’ve been wild about that fellow. But I hate him, too,” she
said, with flashing spirit. “And I want to go on hating him.
So don’t tell me any more.”
Whereupon Helen briefly and graphically related how
Carmichael had offered to kill Beasley, as the only way to
save her property, and how, when she refused, that he
threatened he would do it anyhow.
Bo fell over with a gasp and clung to Helen.
“Oh — Nell! Oh, now I love him more than — ever,” she
cried, in mingled rage and despair.
Helen clasped her closely and tried to comfort her as in the
old days, not so very far back, when troubles were not so
serious as now.
“Of course you love him,” she concluded. “I guessed that
long ago. And I’m glad. But you’ve been wilful — foolish.
You wouldn’t surrender to it. You wanted your fling with the
other boys. You’re — Oh, Bo, I fear you have been a sad
little flirt.”
“I — I wasn’t very bad till — till he got bossy. Why,
Nell, he acted — right off — just as if he OWNED me. But
he didn’t… . And to show him — I — I really did flirt
with that Turner fellow. Then he — he insulted me… .
Oh, I hate him!”
“Nonsense, Bo. You can’t hate any one while you love him,”
protested Helen.
“Much you know about that,” flashed Bo. “You just can! Look
here. Did you ever see a cowboy rope and throw and tie up a
mean horse?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Do you have any idea how strong a cowboy is — how his
hands and arms are like iron?”
“Yes, I’m sure I know that, too.”
“And how savage he is?”
“Yes.”
“And how he goes at anything he wants to do?”
“I must admit cowboys are abrupt,” responded Helen, with a
smile.
“Well, Miss Rayner, did you ever — when you were standing
quiet like a lady — did you ever have a cowboy dive at you
with a terrible lunge — grab you and hold you so you
couldn’t move or breathe or scream — hug you till all your
bones cracked — and kiss you so fierce and so hard that you
wanted to kill him and die?”
Helen had gradually drawn back from this blazing-eyed,
eloquent sister, and when the end of that remarkable
question came it was impossible to reply.
“There! I see you never had that done to you,” resumed Bo,
with satisfaction. “So don’t ever talk to me.”
“I’ve heard his side of the story,” said Helen,
constrainedly.
With a start Bo sat up straighter, as if better to defend
herself.
“Oh! So you have? And I suppose you’ll take his part — even
about that — that bearish trick.”
“No. I think that rude and bold. But, Bo, I don’t believe he
meant to be either rude or bold. From what he confessed to
me I gather that he believed he’d lose you outright or win
you outright by that violence. It seems girls can’t play at
love out here in this wild West. He said there would be
blood shed over you. I begin to realize what he meant. He’s
not sorry for what he did. Think how strange that is. For he
has the instincts of a gentleman. He’s kind, gentle,
chivalrous. Evidently he had tried every way to win your
favor except any familiar advance. He did that as a last
resort. In my opinion his motives were to force you to
accept or refuse him, and in case you refused him he’d
always have those forbidden stolen kisses to assuage his
self-respect — when he thought of Turner or any one else
daring to be familiar with you. Bo, I see through
Carmichael, even if I don’t make him clear to you. You’ve
got to be honest with yourself. Did that act of his win or
lose you? In other words, do you love him or not?”
Bo hid her face.
“Oh, Nell! it made me see how I loved him — and that made
me so — so sick I hated him… . But now — the hate is
all gone.”
When spring came at last and the willows drooped green and
fresh over the brook and the range rang with bray of burro
and whistle of stallion, old Al Auchincloss had been a month
in his grave.
To Helen it seemed longer. The month had been crowded with
work, events, and growing, more hopeful duties, so that it
contained a world of living. The uncle had not been
forgotten, but the innumerable restrictions to development
and progress were no longer manifest. Beasley had not
presented himself or any claim upon Helen; and she,
gathering confidence day by day, began to believe all that
purport of trouble had been exaggerated.
In this time she had come to love her work and all that
pertained to it. The estate was large. She had no accurate
knowledge of how many acres she owned, but it was more than
two thousand. The fine, old, rambling ranch-house, set like
a fort on the last of the foot-hills, corrals and fields and
barns and meadows, and the rolling green range beyond, and
innumerable sheep, horses, cattle — all these belonged to
Helen, to her ever-wondering realization and ever-growing
joy. Still, she was afraid to let herself go and be
perfectly happy. Always there was the fear that had been too
deep and strong to forget so soon.
This bright, fresh morning,
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