I had been thinking now was a right good time.”
“It can't be too soon for me,” she flashed back, sweeping him with proud, indignant eyes.
“But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait.”
“No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all.”
He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.
“Aren't you going to speak?” she flamed.
“I've decided to wait.”
“Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you.”
“Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you—”
“No, sir, I won't—not if you were the last man on earth,” she interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. “I never was so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so—so outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated certainty you can't get away from.”
He had her fairly. “Then you DID read the letter.”
“Yes, sir, I read it—and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never seen its like.”
“Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think,” he drawled.
Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her bronco the spur.
When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the alley.
“It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of business.” Miss Mackenzie's covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.
“All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too—the best in the territory,” he continued patriotically. “She ain't so great as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn till dine.”
He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.
“Some folks don't like it—call it adobe-town, and say it's full of greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good enough for me.”
She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount, he said:
“I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in Tucson one of these days. Good-by.”
She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even when it was against herself.
“I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out,” she told herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.
Next moment she was in the arms of her father.
Chapter 20.
Back to God's Country
To minimize the risk, Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the piled-up sand till they had forced an exit. O'Halloran met them here with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central Mexican Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances, and kept his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching train was visible.
It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of Megales. The last car was a private one, and in it the three found Henderson, Bucky O'Connor, and his little friend, the latter still garbed as a boy.
Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired, nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception. It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But after she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She wanted to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which she had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman. She wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.
When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a deep sigh of relief.
“It's good to get away from here back to the States. I'm tired of plots and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman,” she said to Bucky.
The young man smiled. “I reckon I must quit trying to make you a gentleman. Fact is, I don't want you to be one any more.”
She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up the car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.
“It was rather hopeless, wasn't it?” she smiled. “We'll do pretty well if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I've a lot to learn, you know.”
“Well, you got lots of time to learn it,” he replied cheerfully. “And I've got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven't got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put you next to the etiquette wrinkles where you are shy.”
A shadow fell on the piquant, eager face beside him. “Do you think she will love me?”
“I don't think. I know. She can't help it.”
“Because she is my mother? Oh, I hope that is true.”
“No, not only because she is your mother.”
She decided to ask for no more reasons. Henderson, pleased at the wide stretch of plain as only one who had missed the open air for many years could be, was on the observation platform in the rear of the car, one glance at his empty seat showed her. There was no safety for her shyness in the presence of that proverbial three which makes a crowd, and she began to feel her heart again in panic as once before. She took at once the opening she had given.
“I do need a mother so much, after growing up like Topsy all these years. And mine is the dearest woman in the world. I fell in love with her before, and I did not know who she was when I was at he ranch.”
“I'll agree to the second dearest in the world, but I reckon you shoot too high when you say the plumb dearest.”
“She is. We'll quarrel if you don't agree,” trying desperately to divert him from the topic she knew he meant to pursue. For in the past two days he had been so busy helping O'Halloran that he had not even had a glimpse of her. As a consequence of which each felt half-dubious of the other's love, and Frances felt wholly shy about expressing her own or even listening to his.
“Well, we're due for a quarrel, I reckon. But we'll postpone it till we got more time to give it.” He drew a watch from his pocket and glanced at it “In less than fifteen minutes Mike and our two friends who are making their getaway will come in that door Henderson just went out of. That means we won't get a chance to be alone together, for about two days. I've got something to say to you, Curly Haid, that won't keep that long