第73章

When I shut my fist there's not one of them can open it.No, not with a CHISEL." He turned to Hilma again."Well, when a man's hated as much as that, it stands to reason, don't it, Miss Hilma, that the few friends he has got he wants to keep?I'm not such an entire swine to the people that know me best--that jackass, Presley, for instance.I'd put my hand in the fire to do him a real service.Sometimes I get kind of lonesome; wonder if you would understand?It's my fault, but there's not a horse about the place that don't lay his ears back when I get on him; there's not a dog don't put his tail between his legs as soon as I come near him.The cayuse isn't foaled yet here on Quien Sabe that can throw me, nor the dog whelped that would dare show his teeth at me.I kick that Irish setter every time I see him--but wonder what I'd do, though, if he didn't slink so much, if he wagged his tail and was glad to see me? So it all comes to this: I'd like to have you--well, sort of feel that I was a good friend of yours and like me because of it."The flame in the lamp on the wall in front of Hilma stretched upward tall and thin and began to smoke.She went over to where the lamp hung and, standing on tip-toe, lowered the wick.As she reached her hand up, Annixter noted how the sombre, lurid red of the lamp made a warm reflection on her smooth, round arm.

"Do you understand?" he queried.

"Yes, why, yes," she answered, turning around."It's very good of you to want to be a friend of mine.I didn't think so, though, when you tried to kiss me.But maybe it's all right since you've explained things.You see I'm different from you.

I like everybody to like me and I like to like everybody.It makes one so much happier.You wouldn't believe it, but you ought to try it, sir, just to see.It's so good to be good to people and to have people good to you.And everybody has always been so good to me.Mamma and papa, of course, and Billy, the stableman, and Montalegre, the Portugee foreman, and the Chinese cook, even, and Mr.Delaney--only he went away--and Mrs.Vacca and her little----""Delaney, hey?" demanded Annixter abruptly."You and he were pretty good friends, were you?""Oh, yes," she answered."He was just as GOOD to me.Every day in the summer time he used to ride over to the Seed ranch back of the Mission and bring me a great armful of flowers, the prettiest things, and I used to pretend to pay him for them with dollars made of cheese that I cut out of the cheese with a biscuit cutter.It was such fun.We were the best of friends.""There's another lamp smoking," growled Annixter."Turn it down, will you?--and see that somebody sweeps this floor here.It's all littered up with pine needles.I've got a lot to do.Good-bye."

"Good-bye, sir."

Annixter returned to the ranch house, his teeth clenched, enraged, his face flushed.

"Ah," he muttered, "Delaney, hey?Throwing it up to me that Ifired him." His teeth gripped together more fiercely than ever.

"The best of friends, hey?By God, I'll have that girl yet.

I'll show that cow-puncher.Ain't I her employer, her boss?

I'll show her--and Delaney, too.It would be easy enough--and then Delaney can have her--if he wants her--after me."An evil light flashing from under his scowl, spread over his face.The male instincts of possession, unreasoned, treacherous, oblique, came twisting to the surface.All the lower nature of the man, ignorant of women, racked at one and the same time with enmity and desire, roused itself like a hideous and abominable beast.And at the same moment, Hilma returned to her house, humming to herself as she walked, her white dress glowing with a shimmer of faint saffron light in the last ray of the after-glow.

A little after half-past seven, the first carry-all, bearing the druggist of Bonneville and his women-folk, arrived in front of the new barn.Immediately afterward an express wagon loaded down with a swarming family of Spanish-Mexicans, gorgeous in red and yellow colours, followed.Billy, the stableman, and his assistant took charge of the teams, unchecking the horses and hitching them to a fence back of the barn.Then Caraher, the saloon-keeper, in "derby" hat, "Prince Albert" coat, pointed yellow shoes and inevitable red necktie, drove into the yard on his buckboard, the delayed box of lemons under the seat.It looked as if the whole array of invited guests was to arrive in one unbroken procession, but for a long half-hour nobody else appeared.Annixter and Caraher withdrew to the harness room and promptly involved themselves in a wrangle as to the make-up of the famous punch.From time to time their voices could be heard uplifted in clamorous argument.

"Two quarts and a half and a cupful of chartreuse.""Rot, rot, I know better.Champagne straight and a dash of brandy."The druggist's wife and sister retired to the feed room, where a bureau with a swinging mirror had been placed for the convenience of the women.The druggist stood awkwardly outside the door of the feed room, his coat collar turned up against the draughts that drifted through the barn, his face troubled, debating anxiously as to the propriety of putting on his gloves.The Spanish-Mexican family, a father, mother and five children and sister-in-law, sat rigid on the edges of the hired chairs, silent, constrained, their eyes lowered, their elbows in at their sides, glancing furtively from under their eyebrows at the decorations or watching with intense absorption young Vacca, son of one of the division superintendents, who wore a checked coat and white thread gloves and who paced up and down the length of the barn, frowning, very important, whittling a wax candle over the floor to make it slippery for dancing.