Chapter IV.

       Lost!

       Table of Contents

      After her precipitate leave-taking of the man whose team she had bought or borrowed, Margaret Kinney nursed the fires of her indignation in silence, banking them for future use against the time when she should meet him again in the event that should ever happen. She brought her whip-lash snapping above the backs of the horses, and there was that in the supple motion of the small strong wrist which suggested that nothing would have pleased her more than having this audacious Texan there in place of the innocent animals. For whatever of inherited savagery lay latent in her blood had been flogged to the surface by the circumstances into which she had been thrust. Never in all her placid life had she known the tug of passion any closer than from across the footlights of a theatre.

      She had had, to be sure, one stinging shame, but it had been buried in far-away Arizona, quite beyond the ken of the convention-bound people of the little Wisconsin town where she dwelt. But within the past twelve hours Fate had taken hold of her with both hands and thrust her into Life. She sensed for the first time its roughness, its nakedness, its tragedy. She had known the sensations of a hunted wild beast, the flush of shame for her kinship to this coarse ruffian by her side, and the shock of outraged maiden modesty at kisses ravished from her by force. The teacher hardly knew herself for the same young woman who but yesterday was engrossed in multiplication tables and third readers.

      A sinister laugh from the man beside her brought the girl back to the present.

      She looked at him and then looked quickly away again. There was something absolutely repulsive in the creature—in the big ears that stood out from the close-cropped head, in the fishy eyes that saw everything without ever looking directly at anything, in the crooked mouth with its irregular rows of stained teeth from which several were missing. She had often wondered about her brother, but never at the worst had she imagined anything so bad as this. The memory would be enough to give one the shudders for years.

      “Guess I ain’t next to all that happened there in the mesquite,” he sneered, with a lift of the ugly lip.

      She did not look at him. She did not speak. There seethed in her a loathing and a disgust beyond expression.

      “Guess you forgot that a fellow can sometimes hear even when he can’t see. Since I’m chaperooning you I’ll make out to be there next time you meet a good-looking lady-killer. Funny, the difference it makes, being your brother. You ain’t seen me since you was a kid, but you plumb forgot to kiss me.”

      There was a note in his voice she had not heard before, some hint of leering ribaldry in the thick laugh that for the first time stirred unease in her heart. She did not know that the desperate, wild-animal fear in him, so overpowering that everything else had been pushed to the background, had obscured certain phases of him that made her presence here such a danger as she could not yet conceive. That fear was now lifting, and the peril loomed imminent.

      He put his arm along the back of the seat and grinned at her from his loose-lipped mouth.

      “But o’ course it ain’t too late to begin now, my dearie.”

      Her fearless level eyes met squarely his shifty ones and read there something she could dread without understanding, something that was an undefined sacrilege of her sweet purity. For woman-like her instinct leaped beyond reason.

      “Take down your arm,” she ordered.

      “Oh, I don’t know, sis. I reckon your brother—”

      “You’re no brother of mine,” she broke in. “At most it is an accident of birth I disown. I’ll have no relationship with you of any sort.”

      “Is that why you’re driving with me to Mexico?” he jeered.

      “I made a mistake in trying to save you. If it were to do over again I should not lift a hand.”

      “You wouldn’t, eh?”

      There was something almost wolfish in the facial malignity that distorted him.

      “Not a finger.”

      “Perhaps you’d give me up now if you had a chance?”

      “I would if I did what was right.”

      “And you’d sure want to do what was right,” he snarled.

      “Take down your arm,” she ordered again, a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

      He thrust his evil face close to hers and showed his teeth in a blind rage that forgot everything else.

      “Listen here, you little locoed baby. I got something to tell you that’ll make your hair curl. You’re right, I ain’t your brother. I’m Nick Struve—Wolf Struve if you like that better. I lied you into believing me your brother, who ain’t ever been anything but a skim-milk quitter. He’s dead back there in the cactus somewhere, and I killed him!”

      Terror flooded her eyes. Her very breathing hung suspended. She gazed at him in a frozen fascination of horror.

      “Killed him because he gave me away seven years ago and was gittin’ ready to round on me again. Folks don’t live long that play Wolf Struve for a lamb. A wolf! That’s what I am, a born wolf, and don’t you forget it.”

      The fact itself did not need his words for emphasis. He fairly reeked the beast of prey. She had to nerve herself against faintness. She must not swoon. She dared not.

      “Think you can threaten to give me up, do you? ‘Fore I’m through with you you’ll wish you had never been born. You’ll crawl on your knees and beg me to kill you.”

      Such a devil of wickedness she had never seen in human eyes before. The ruthlessness left no room for appeal. Unless the courage to tame him lay in her she was lost utterly.

      He continued his exultant bragging, blatantly, ferociously.

      “I