The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
Читать онлайн книгу.
the prison office, after which he was conducted to his cell. The corridors dripped as he followed under ground the guide who led the way with a flickering lantern. It was a gruesome place to contemplate as a permanent abode. But the young American knew that his stay here would be short, whether the termination of it were liberty or the gallows.
Reaching the end of a narrow, crooked corridor that sloped downward, the turnkey unlocked a ponderous iron door with a huge key, and one of the guards following at Bucky's heels, pushed him forward. He fell down two or three steps and came to a sprawling heap on the floor of the cell.
From the top of the steps came a derisive laugh as the door swung to and left him in utter darkness.
Stiffly the ranger got to his knees and was about to rise when a sound stopped him. Something was panting in deep breaths at the other side of the cell. A shiver of terror went goose-quilling down O'Connor's back. Had they locked him up with some wild beast, to be torn to pieces? Or was this the ghost of some previous occupant? In such blackness of gloom it was easy to believe, or, at least, to imagine impossible conceptions that the light of day would have scattered in an instant. He was afraid—afraid to the marrow.
And then out of the darkness came a small, trembling voice: “Are you a prisoner, too, sir?”
Bucky wanted to shout aloud his relief—and his delight. The sheer joy of his laughter told him how badly he had been frightened. That voice—were he sunk in twice as deep and dark an inferno—he would know it among a thousand. He groped his way forward toward it.
“Oh, little pardner, I'm plumb tickled to death you ain't a ghost,” he laughed.
“It is—Bucky?” The question joyfully answered itself.
“Right guess. Bucky it is.”
He had hold of her hands by this time, was trying to peer down into the happy-brown eyes he knew were scanning him. “I can't see you yet, Curly Haid, but it's sure you, I reckon. I'll have to pass my hand over your face the way a blind man does,” he laughed, and, greatly daring, he followed his own suggestion, and let his fingers wander across her crisp, thick hair, down her soft, warm cheeks, and over the saucy nose and laughing mouth he had often longed to kiss.
Presently she drew away shyly, but the lilt of happiness in her voice told him she was not offended. “I can see you, Bucky.” The last word came as usual, with that sweet, hesitating, upward inflection that made her familiarity wholly intoxicating, even while the comradeship of it left room for an interpretation either of gay mockery or something deeper. “Yes, I can see you. That's because I have been here longer and am more used to the darkness. I think I've been here about a year.” He felt her shudder. “You don't know how glad I am to see you.”
“No gladder than I am to feel you,” he answered gayly. “It's worth the price of admission to find you here, girl o'mine.”
He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him that he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling between them.
“I knew you knew I was a girl,” she murmured.
“You knew more than that,” he challenged joyfully.
But, in woman's way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at too impetuous a speed for her reluctance. “How long have you known that I wasn't a boy—not from the first, surely?”
“I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't. I was sure locoed,” he confessed. “It was when you came out dressed as a gypsy that I knew. That explained to me a heap of things I never had understood before about you.”
“It explained, I suppose, why I never had licked the stuffing out of any other kid, and why you did not get very far in making a man out of me as you promised,” she mocked.
“Yes, and it explained how you happened to say you were eighteen. By mistake you let the truth slip out. Course I wouldn't believe it.”
“I remember you didn't. I think you conveyed the impression to me diplomatically that you had doubts.”
“I said it was a lie,” he laughed. “I sure do owe you a heap of apologies for being so plumb dogmatic when you knew best. You'll have to sit down on me hard once in a while, or there won't be any living with me.”
Blushingly she did some more ignoring. “That was the first time you threatened to give me a whipping,” she recalled aloud.
“My goodness! Did I ever talk so foolish?”
“You did, and meant it.”
“But somehow I never did it. I wonder why I didn't.”
“Perhaps I was so frail you were afraid you would break me.”
“No, that wasn't it. In the back of my haid somewhere there was an instinct that said: 'Bucky, you chump, if you don't keep your hands off this kid you'll be right sorry all your life.' Not being given to many ideas, I paid a heap of respect to that one.”
“Well, it's too bad, for I probably needed that whipping, and now you'll never be able to give it to me.”
“I shan't ever want to now.”
Saucily her merry eyes shot him from under the long lashes. “I'm not so sure of that. Girls can be mighty aggravating.”
“That's the way girls are meant to be, I expect,” he laughed. “But fifteen-year-old boys have to be herded back into line. There's a difference.”
She rescued her hands from him and led the way to a bench that served for a seat. “Sit down here, sir. There are one or two things that I have to explain.” She sat down beside him at the farther end of the bench.
“This light is so dim, I can't see you away over there,” he pleaded, moving closer.
“You don't need to see me. You can hear me, can't you?”
“I reckon.”
She seemed to find a difficulty in beginning, even though the darkness helped her by making it impossible for him to see her embarrassment. Presently he chuckled softly. “No, ma'am, I can't even hear you. If you're talking, I'll have to come closer.”
“If you do, I'll get up. I want you to be really earnest.”
“I never was more earnest in my life, Curly.”
“Please, Bucky? It isn't easy to say it, and you mustn't make it harder.”
“Do you have to say it, pardner?” he asked, more seriously.
“Yes, I have to say it.” And swiftly she blurted it out. “Why do you suppose I came with you to Mexico?”
“I don't know.” He grappled with her suggestion for a moment. “I suppose—you said it was because you were afraid of Hardman.”
“Well, I wasn't. At least, I wasn't afraid that much. I knew that I would have been quite safe next time with the Mackenzies at the ranch.”
“Then why was it?”
“You can't think of any reason?” She leaned forward and looked directly into his eyes—eyes as honest and as blue as an Arizona sky.
But he stood unconvicted—nay, acquitted. The one reason she had dreaded he might offer to himself had evidently never entered his head. Whatever guesses he might have made on the subject, he was plainly guiltless of thinking she might have come with him because she was in love with him.
“No, I can't think of any other reason, if the one you gave isn't the right one.”
“Quite sure?”
“Quite sure, pardner.”
“Think! Why did you come to Chihuahua?”
“To run down Wolf Leroy's