might be a first rate thing for you if I did, Miss Mackenzie. All your life you haven't done anything but trample on sissy boys. Now, I expect I'm not a sissy boy, but a fair imitation of a man, and I shouldn't wonder but you'd find me some too restless for a door-mat.” His maimed hand happened to be resting on the saddle horn as he spoke, and the story of the maiming emphasized potently the truth of his claim.
“Don't you assume a good deal, Mr. Collins, when you imply that I have any desire to master you?”
“Not a bit,” he assured her cheerfully. “Every woman wants to boss the man she's going to marry, but if she finds she can't she's glad of it, because then she knows she's got a man.”
“You are quite sure I am going to marry you?” she asked gently—too gently, he thought.
“I'm only reasonably sure,” he informed her. “You see, I can't tell for certain whether your pride or your good sense is the stronger.”
She caught a detached glimpse of the situation, and it made for laughter.
“That's right, I want you should enjoy it,” he said placidly.
“I do. It's the most absurd proposal—I suppose you call it a proposal—that ever I heard.”
“I expect you've heard a good many in your time.
“We'll not discuss that, if you please.”
“I AM more interested in this one,” he agreed.
“Isn't it about time to begin on Tucson?”
“Not to-day, ma'am. There are going to be a lot of to-morrows for you and me, and Tucson will have to wait till then.”
“Didn't I give you an answer last week?”
“You did, but I didn't take it. Now I'm ready for your sure-enough answer.”
She flashed a look at him that mocked his confidence. “I've heard about the vanity of girls, but never in my experience have I met any so colossal as this masculine vanity now on exhibit. Do you really think, Mr. Collins, that all you have to do to win a woman is to look impressive and tell her that you have decided to marry her?”
“Do I look as if I thought that?” he asked her.
“It is perfectly ridiculous—your absurd attitude of taking everything for granted. Well, it may be the Tucson custom, but where I come from it is not in vogue.”
“No, I reckon not. Back there a boy persuades girl he loves her by ruining her digestion with candy and all sorts of ice arrangements from soda-fountain. But I'm uncivilized enough to assume you're a woman of sense and not a spoiled schoolgirl.”
The velvet night was attuned to the rhythm of her love. She felt herself, in this sea of moon romance, being swept from her moorings. Star-eyed, she gazed at him while she still fought again his dominance.
“You ARE uncivilized. Would you beat me when I didn't obey?” she asked tremulously.
He laughed in slow contentment. “Perhaps; but I'd love you while I did it.”
“Oh, you would love me.” She looked across under her long lashes, not as boldly as she would have liked, and her gaze fell before his. “I haven t heard before that that was in the compact you proposed. I don't think you have remembered to mention it.”
He swung from the saddle and put a hand to her bridle rein.
“Get down,” he ordered.
“Why?”
“Because I say so. Get down.”
She looked down at him, a man out of a thousand and for her one out of a hundred million. Before she was conscious of willing it she stood beside him. He trailed the reins of the ponies, and in two strides came back to her.
“What—do you—want?”
“I want you, girl.” His arm swept round her, and he held her while he looked down into her shining eyes. “So I haven't told you that I love you. Did you need to be told?”
“We must go on,” she murmured weakly. “Frances and Lieutenant O'Connor—”
“—Have their own love-affairs to attend to.
“We'll manage ours and not intrude.”
“They might think—”
He laughed in deep delight, “—that we love each other. They're welcome to the thought. I haven't told you that I love you, eh? I tell you now. It's my last trump, and right here I table it. I'm no desert poet, but I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter what mood you're in—when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God's world has the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you're glad or mad, I want you just the same. That's the reason why I'm going to make you love me.”
“You can't do it.” Her voice was very low and not quite steady.
“Why not—I'll show you.”
“But you can't—for a good reason.”
“Put a name to it.”
“Because. Oh, you big blind man—because I love you already.” She burlesqued his drawl with a little joyous laugh: “I reckon if you're right set on it I'll have to marry you, Val Collins.”
His arm tightened about her as if he would hold her against the whole world. His ardent eyes possessed hers. She felt herself grow faint with a poignant delight. Her lips met his slowly in their first kiss.
Mavericks
Chapter III. Caught Red-Handed
Chapter IV. "I'm a Rustler and a Thief, Am I?"
Chapter V. An Aider and Abettor
Chapter VII. A Shot from Ambush
Chapter VIII. Miss-Going-on-Eighteen
Chapter X. Into the Enemy's Country