CHAPTER III
PALS
He was a red-headed, stringy boy between eighteen and nineteen years old.His hands were laced back of the head, but he waggled a foot by way ofgreeting.
"'Lo, June," he called.
"What you doin'?" she demanded.
"Oh, jes' watchin' the grass grow."
She sat down beside him, drawing up her feet beneath the skirt andgathering the knees between laced fingers. Moodily, she looked down atthe water swirling round the rocks.
Bob Dillon said nothing. He had a capacity for silence that was notuncompanionable. They could sit by the hour, these two, quite content,without exchanging a dozen sentences. The odd thing about it was thatthey were not old friends. Three weeks ago they had met for the firsttime. He was flunkeying for a telephone outfit building a line to BearCat.
"A man stayed up to the house last night," she said at last.
He leaned his head on a hand, turning toward her. The light blue eyes inthe freckled face rested on those of the girl.
Presently she added, with a flare of surging anger, "I hate him."
"Why?"
The blood burned beneath the tan of the brown cheeks. "'Cause."
"Shucks! That don't do any good. It don't buy you anything."
She swung upon him abruptly. "Don't you hate the men at the camp whenthey knock you around?"
"What'd be the use? I duck outa the way next time."
Two savage little demons glared at him out of her dark eyes. "Ain't yougot any sand in yore craw, Bob Dillon? Do you aim to let folks run on youall yore life? I'd fight 'em if 't was the last thing I ever did."
"Different here. I'd get my block knocked off about twice a week. Youdon't see me in any scraps where I ain't got a look-in. I'd rather let'em boot me a few," he said philosophically.
She frowned at him, in a kind of puzzled wonderment. "You're right queer.If I was a man--"
The sentence died out. She was not a man. The limitations of sexencompassed her. In Jake Houck's arms she had been no more than aninfant. He would crush her resistance--no matter whether it was physicalor mental--and fling out at her the cruel jeering laughter of one whocould win without even exerting his strength. She would never marryhim--never, never in the world. But--
A chill dread drenched her heart.
Young Dillon was sensitive to impressions. His eyes, fixed on the girl'sface, read something of her fears.
"This man--who is he?" he asked.
"Jake Houck. I never saw him till last night. My father knew himwhen--when he was young."
"What's the matter with this Houck? Why don't you like him?"
"If you'd see him--how he looks at me." She flashed to anger. "As if Iwas something he owned and meant to tame."
"Oh, well, you know the old sayin', a cat may look at a king. He can'tharm you."
"Can't he? How do you know he can't?" she challenged.
"How can he, come to that?"
"I don't say he can." Looked at in cold blood, through the eyes ofanother, the near-panic that had seized her a few hours earlier appearedridiculous. "But I don't have to like him, do I? He acted--hateful--ifyou want to know."
"How d'you mean--hateful?"
A wave of color swept through her cheeks to the brown throat. How couldshe tell him that there was something in the man's look that had disrobedher, something in his ribald laugh that had made her feel unclean? Orthat the fellow had brushed aside the pride and dignity that fenced herand ravished kisses from her lips while he mocked? She could not have puther feeling into words if she had tried, and she had no intention oftrying.
"Mean," she said. "A low-down, mean bully."
The freckled boy watched her with a curious interest. She made no moresex appeal to him than he did to her, and that was none at all. The firstthing that had moved him in the child was the friendlessness back of herspitfire offense. She knew no women, no other girls. The conditions oflife kept her aloof from the ones she met casually once or twice a year.She suspected their laughter, their whispers about the wild girl onPiceance Creek. The pride with which she ignored them was stimulated byher sense of inferiority. June had read books. She felt the clothes shemade were hideous, the conditions of her existence squalid; and back ofthese externals was the shame she knew because they must hide themselvesfrom the world on account of the secret.
Bob did not know all that, but he guessed some of it. He had not gonevery far in experience himself, but he suspected that this wild creatureof the hills was likely to have a turbulent and perhaps tragic time ofit. She was very much a child of impulse. Thirstily she had drunk in allhe could tell her of the world beyond the hills that hemmed them in. Hehad known her frank, grateful, dreamy, shy, defiant, and once, for noapparent reason, a flaming little fury who had rushed to eager repentancewhen she discovered no offense was meant. He had seen her face bubblingwith mirth at the antics of a chipmunk, had looked into the dark eyeswhen they were like hill fires blazing through mist because of the sunsetlight in the crotch of the range.
"I reckon Mr. Tolliver won't let this Houck bully _you_ none," the boysaid.
"I ain't scared of him," she answered.
But June knew there would be small comfort for her in the thought of herfather's protection. She divined intuitively that he would be a liabilityrather than an asset in any conflict that might arise between her andJake Houck.
"If there was anything I could do--but o' course there ain't."
"No," she agreed. "Oh, well, I'm not worryin'. I'll show him when hecomes back. I'm as big as he is behind a gun."
Bob looked at her, startled. He saw she was whistling to keep up hercourage. "Are you sure enough afraid of him?"
Her eyes met his. She nodded. "He said he was coming back to marryme--good as said I could like it or lump it, he didn't care which."
"Sho! Tha's jus' talk. No girl has to marry a man if she don't want to.You don't need any gun-play. He can't make his brags good if you won'thave him. It's a free country."
"If he told you to do something--this Jake Houck--you wouldn't think itwas so free," the girl retorted without any life in her voice.
He jumped up, laughing. "Well, I don't expect he's liable to tell me todo anything. He ain't ever met up with me. I gotta go peel the spuds forsupper. Don't you worry, June. He's bluffin'."
"I reckon," she said, and nodded a careless good-bye.