The Essential Max Brand - 29 Westerns in One Edition. Max Brand
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as fast as a taxicab would whirl her along.
It was not until she had climbed to Caroline Smith’s room and opened the door that her determination faltered. For there she saw the girl lying on her bed weeping. And it seemed to the poor, bewildered brain of Ruth Tolliver, as if the form of Ronicky Doone, passionate and eager as before, stood at her side and begged her again to send Caroline Smith across the street to a lifelong happiness, and she could do it. Though Mark had ordered the girl to be confined to her room until further commands were given on the subject, no one in the house would think of questioning Ruth Tolliver, if she took the girl downstairs to the street and told her to go on her way.
She closed the door softly and, going to the bed, touched the shoulder of Caroline. The poor girl sat up slowly and turned a stained and swollen face to Ruth. If there was much to be pitied there was something to be laughed at, also. Ruth could not forbear smiling. But Caroline was clutching at her hands.
“He’s changed his mind?” she asked eagerly. “He’s sent you to tell me that he’s changed his mind, Ruth? Oh, you’ve persuaded him to it—like an angel—I know you have!”
Ruth Tolliver freed herself from the reaching hands, moistened the end of a towel in the bathroom and began to remove the traces of tears from the face of Caroline Smith. That face was no longer flushed, but growing pale with excitement and hope.
“It’s true?” she kept asking. “It is true, Ruth?”
“Do you love him as much as that?”
“More than I can tell you—so much more!”
“Try to tell me then, dear.”
Talking of her love affair began to brighten the other girl, and now she managed a wan smile. “His letters were very bad. But, between the lines, I could read so much real manhood, such simple honesty, such a heart, such a will to trust! Ruth, are you laughing at me?”
“No, no, far from that! It’s a thrilling thing to hear, my dear.”
For she was remembering that in another man there might be found these same qualities. Not so much simplicity, perhaps, but to make up for it, a great fire of will and driving energy.
“But I didn’t actually know that I was in love. Even when I made the trip West and wrote to him to meet the train on my return—even then I was only guessing. When he didn’t appear at the station I went cold and made up my mind that I would never think of him again.”
“But when you saw him in the street, here?”
“John Mark had prepared me and hardened me against that meeting, and I was afraid even to think for myself. But, when Ronicky Doone—bless him! —talked to me in your room, I knew what Bill Gregg must be, since he had a friend who would venture as much for him as Ronicky Doone did. It all came over me in a flash. I did love him—I did, indeed!”
“Yes, yes,” whispered Ruth Tolliver, nodding and smiling faintly. “I remember how he stood there and talked to you. He was like a man on fire. No wonder that a spark caught in you, Caroline. He—he’s a—very fine-looking fellow, don’t you think, Caroline?”
“Bill Gregg? Yes, indeed.”
“I mean Ronicky.”
“Of course! Very handsome!”
There was something in the voice of Caroline that made Ruth look down sharply to her face, but the girl was clever enough to mask her excitement and delight.
“Afterward, when you think over what he has said, it isn’t a great deal, but at the moment he seems to know a great deal—about what’s going on inside one, don’t you think, Caroline?”
These continual appeals for advice, appeals from the infallible Ruth Tolliver, set the heart of Caroline beating. There was most certainly something in the wind.
“I think he does,” agreed Caroline, masking her eyes. “He has a way, when he looks at you, of making you feel that he isn’t thinking of anything else in the world but you.”
“Does he have that same effect on every one?” asked Ruth. She added, after a moment of thought, “Yes, I suppose it’s just a habit of his. I wish I knew.”
“Why?” queried Caroline, unable to refrain from the stinging little question.
“Oh, for no good reason—just that he’s an odd character. In my work, you know, one has to study character. Ronicky Doone is a different sort of man, don’t you think?”
“Very different, dear.”
Then a great inspiration came to Caroline. Ruth was a key which, she knew, could unlock nearly any door in the house of John Mark.
“Do you know what we are going to do?” she asked gravely, rising.
“Well?”
“We’re going to open that door together, and we’re going down the stairs —together.”
“Together? But we—Don’t you know John Mark has given orders —”
“That I’m not to leave the room. What difference does that make? They won’t dare stop us if you are with me, leading the way.”
“Caroline, are you mad? When I come back—”
“You’re not coming back.”
“Not coming back!”
“No, you’re going on with me!”
She took Ruth by the arms and turned her until the light struck into her eyes. Ruth Tolliver, aghast at this sudden strength in one who had always been a meek follower, obeyed without resistance.
“But where?” she demanded.
“Where I’m going.”
“What?”
“To Ronicky Doone, my dear. Don’t you see?”
The insistence bewildered Ruth Tolliver. She felt herself driven irresistibly forward, with or without her own will.
“Caroline,” she protested, trying feebly to free herself from the commanding hands and eyes of her companion, “are you quite mad? Go to him? Why should I? How can I?”
“Not as I’m going to Bill Gregg, with my heart in my hands, but to ask Ronicky Doone—bless him!—to take you away somewhere, so that you can begin a new life. Isn’t that simple?”
“Ask charity of a stranger?”
“You know he isn’t a stranger, and you know it isn’t charity. He’ll be happy. He’s the kind that’s happy when he’s being of use to others?”
“Yes,” answered Ruth Tolliver, “of course he is.”
“And you’d trust him?”
“To the end of the world. But to leave—”
“Ruth, you’ve kept cobwebs before your eyes so long that you don’t see what’s happening around you. John Mark hypnotizes you. He makes you think that the whole world is bad, that we are simply making capital out of our crimes. As a matter of fact, the cold truth is that he has made me a thief, Ruth, and he has made you something almost as bad—a gambler!”
The follower had become the leader, and she was urging Ruth Tolliver slowly to the door. Ruth was protesting—she could not throw herself on the kindness of Ronicky Doone—it could not be done. It would be literally throwing herself at his head. But here the door opened, and she allowed herself to be led out into the hall. They had not made more than half a dozen steps down its dim length when the guard hurried toward them.
“Talk to him,” whispered Caroline Smith. “He’s come to stop me, and you’re the only person who can make him let me pass on!”
The guard hurriedly came up to them. “Sorry,” he said. “Got an idea you’re going downstairs, Miss Smith.”