Man to Man. Jackson Gregory
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drawing her after him.
And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature had again made a consummate fool of him. The same knowledge was offered him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him. No gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper like hot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak, the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair—she must have donned the ridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted an eye—might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of Steve Packard. Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass, he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
"Gee!" she panted at him with an angry scornfulness which made him wince. "You're about the freshest proposition I ever came across!"
Later, perhaps, he would admit that she was undeniably and most amazingly pretty; that the curves of her little white body were delightfully perfect; that she had made an armful that at another time would have put sheer delirium into a man's blood.
Just now he knew only that in his moment of nothing less than stupidity he had angered her and that his own anger though more unreasonable was scarcely less heated; that he had made and still made but a sorry spectacle; that he was sopping wet and cold and would be shivering in a moment like a freezing dog.
"Why did you want to yell like a Comanche Indian when you went in?" he demanded rudely, offering the only defense he could put mind or tongue to. "A man would naturally suppose that you were falling."
"You didn't suppose any such thing!" she retorted sharply. "You saw me dive; if you had the brains of a scared rabbit, you'd know that when a girl had gone to the trouble to climb into a bathing-suit and then jumped into the water she wanted a swim. And to be left alone," she added scathingly.
Packard felt the afternoon breeze through the wet garments which stuck so close to him, and shivered.
"If you think," he said, as sharply as she had spoken, "that I just jumped into that infernal ice-pond, clothes and all, for the pure joy of making your charming acquaintance in some ten feet of water, all I can say is that you are by no means lacking a full appreciation of your own attractiveness."
She opened her eyes widely at him, lying at his feet where he had deposited her. She had not offered to rise. But now she sat up, drawing her knees into the circle of her clasped arms, tilting her head back as she stared up at him.
"You've got your nerve, Mr. Man," she informed him coolly. "Any time that you think I'll stand for a fool man jumping in and spoiling my fun for me and then scolding me on top of it, you've got another good-sized think coming. And take it from me, you'll last a good deal longer in this neck of the woods if you 'tend to your own business after this and keep your paws off other folks' affairs. Get me that time?"
"I get you all right," grunted Packard. "And I find your gratitude to a man who has just risked his life for you quite touching."
"Gratitude? Bah!" she told him, leaping suddenly to her feet. "Risked your life for me, did you?" She laughed jeeringly at that. "Why, you big lummox, I could have yanked you out as easy as turn a somersault if you started to drown. And now suppose you hammer the trail while it's open."
He bestowed upon her a glance whose purpose was to wither her. It failed miserably, partly because she was patently not the sort to be withered by a look from a mere man, and partly because a violent and inopportune shiver shook him from head to foot.
Until now there had been only bright anger in the girl's eyes. Suddenly the light there changed; what had begun as a sniff at him altered without warning into a highly amused giggle.
"Golly, Mr. Man," she taunted him. "You're sure some swell picture as you stand there, hand on hip and popping your eyes out at me! Like a king in a story-book, only he'd just got a ducking and was trying to stare the other fellow down. Which is one thing you can't do with me."
Her eyes had the adorable trick of seeming to crinkle to a mirth which would have been an extremely pleasant phenomenon to witness had she been laughing with him instead of at him. As matters stood, Packard was quite prepared to dislike her heartily.
"I'd add to your kind information that the trail is open at both ends," he told her significantly. "I'm going to find a sunny spot and dry my clothes. No objection, I suppose?"
He clambered up the bank and made his way to the spot whence he had dived after her, bent on retrieving his boots and spurs. Her eyes followed him interestedly. He ignored her and set about extricating a spur rowel from the fabric of the bright blue cloak. Her voice floated up to him then, demanding:
"What in the world are you up to now? Not going to swipe my clothes, are you?"
"I'd have the right," he called back over his shoulder, "if I happened to need a makeshift dressing-gown. As it is, however, I am trying to get my spur out of the thing."
"You great big brute!" she wailed at him, and here she came running along the bank. "You just dare to tear my cloak and I'll hound you out of the country for it! I drove forty miles to get it and this is the first time I ever wore it. Stupid!" And she jerked both the garment and the spur from him.
The lining was silken, of a deep, rich, golden hue. And already it was torn, although but the tiniest bit in the world, by one of the sharp spikes. Her temper, however, ever ready it seemed, flared out again; the crinkling merriment went from her eyes, leaving no trace; the color warmed in her cheeks as she cried:
"You're just like all of the rest of your breed, big and awkward, crowding in where you don't belong, messing up the face of the earth, spoiling things right and left. I wonder if the good Lord Himself knows what he made men for, anyway!"
The offending spur, detached by her quick fingers, described a bright arc in the late sunlight, flew far out, dipped in a little leaping spurt of spray, and went down quietly in the lake.
"Go jump in and get that, if you are so keen on saving things," she mocked him. "There's only, about fifteen feet of water to dig through."
"You little devil!" he said.
For the spur with its companion had cost him twenty dollars down on the Mexican border ten days ago and he had set much store by it.
"Little devil, am I?" she retorted readily. "You'll know it if you don't keep on your side of the road. Look at that tear! Just look at it!"
She had stepped quite close to him, holding out the cloak, her eyes lifted defiantly to his. He put out a sudden hand and laid it on her wet shoulder. She opened her eyes widely again at the new look in his. But even so her regard was utterly fearless.
"Young lady," he said sternly, "so help me God, I've got the biggest notion in the world to take you across my knee and give you the spanking of your life. If I did crowd in where I don't belong, as you so sweetly put it, it was at least to do you a kindness. Another time I'd know better; I'd sooner do a favor for a wildcat."
"Take your dirty paws off of me," she cried, wrenching away from him. "And—spank me, would you?" The fire leaped higher in her eyes, the red in her cheeks gave place to an angrier white. "If you ever so much as dare touch me again——"
She broke off, panting. Packard laughed at her.
"You'd try to scratch me, I suppose," he jeered; "and then, after the fashion of your own sweet sex when you don't have the strength to put a thing across, you'd most likely cry!"
"I'd blow your ugly head off your shoulders with a shot-gun," she concluded briefly.
And despite the extravagance of the words it was borne in upon Packard's understanding that she meant just exactly what she said.
He was getting colder all the time and knew that in a moment his teeth would chatter. So a second time he turned his back on her, gathered up his horse's reins, and moved away, seeking a spot in the woods where he could get dry and sun his clothes.