Battle
: The Seventh ManOn the road he passed Miss Brewster--for the Alder school boasted two
teachers!--and under her kindly, rather faded smile he felt a great desire
to stop and take her into his confidence; ask her what Betty Neal had been
doing all these months. Instead, he touched Grey Molly with the spurs, and
she answered like a watch-spring uncurling beneath him. The rush of wind
against his face raised his spirits to a singing pitch, and when he
from the saddle before the school he shouted: "Oh, Betty!"
Up the sharply angling steps in a bound, and at the door: "Oh, Betty!"
His voice filled the room with a thick, dull echo, and there was Betty
behind her desk looking up at him agape; and beside her stood Blondy
Hansen, big, good looking, and equally startled. Fear made the glance of
Vic Gregg swerve--to where little Tommy Aiken scribbled an arithmetic
problem on the blackboard--afterschool work for whispering in class, or
some equally heinous crime. The tingling voices of the other children on
their way home, floated in to Tommy, and the corners of his mouth drooped.
To regain his poise, Vic tugged at his belt and felt the weight of the holster
slipping into a more convenient place, then he sauntered up the aisle,
sweeping off his sombrero. Every feeling in his body, every nerve, disappeared
in a crystalline hardness, for it seemed to him that the air was surcharged by
a secret something between Betty and young Hansen. Betty was out from behind
her desk and she ran to meet him and took his hand in both of hers. The
rush of her coming took his breath, and at her touch something melted in
her.
"Oh, Vic, are you all through?"
Gregg stiffened for the benefit of Hansen and Tommy Aiken.
"Pretty near through," he said carelessly. "Thought I'd drop down to Alder
for a day or two and get the kinks out. Hello, Blondy. Hey, Tommy!"
Tommy Aiken flashed a grin at him, but Tommy was not quite sure that the
rules permitted speaking, even under such provocation as the return of Vic
Gregg, so he maintained a desperate silence. Blondy had picked up his hat
as he returned the greeting.
"I guess I'll be going," he said, and coughed to show that he was perfectly
at ease, but it seemed to Vic that it was hard for Blondy to meet his eye
when they shook hands. "See you later, Betty."
"All right." She smiled at Vic--a flash--and then gathered dignity of both
voice and manner. "You may go now, Tommy."
She lapsed into complete unconsciousness of manner as Tommy swooped on his
desk, included hat and book in one grab, and darted towards the door
through which Hansen had just disappeared. Here he paused, tilting, and his
smile twinkled at them with understanding. "Good-night, Miss Neal. Hope you
have a good time, Vic." His heel clicked twice on the steps outside, and
then the patter of his racing feet across the field.
"The little mischief!" said Betty, delightfully flushed. "It beats
everything, Vic, how Alder takes things for granted."
He should have taken her in his arms and kissed her, now that she had
cleared the room, he very well knew, but the obvious thing was always last
to come in Gregg's repertoire.
"Why not take it for granted? It ain't going to be many days, now."
He watched her eyes sparkle, but the pleasure of seeing him drowned the
gleam almost at once.
"Are you really almost through? Oh, Vic, you've been away so long, and I--"
She checked herself. There was no overflow of sentiment in Betty.
"Maybe I was a fool for laying off work this way," he admitted, "but I sure
got terrible lonesome up there."
Her glance went over him contentedly, from the hard brown hands to the
wrinkle which labor had sunk in the exact center of his forehead. He was
all man, to Betty.
"Come on along," he said. He would kiss her by surprise as they reached the
door. "Come on along. It's sure enough spring outside. I been eating it up,
and--we can do our talking over things at the dance. Let's ride now."
"Dance?"
"Sure, down to Singer's place."
"It's going to be kind of hard to get out of going with Blondy. He asked
me."
"And you said you'd go?"
"What are you flarin' up about?"
"Look here, how long have you been traipsin' around with Blondy Hansen?"
She clenched one hand beside her in a way he knew, but it pleased him more
than it warned him, just as it pleased him to see the ears of Grey Molly go
back.
"What's wrong about Blondy Hansen?"
"What's right about him?" he countered senselessly.
Her voice went a bit shrill. "Blondy is a gentleman, I'll have you know."
"Is he?"
"Don't you sneer at me, Victor Gregg. I won't have it!"
"You won't, eh?"
He felt that he was pushing her to the danger point, but she was perfectly,
satisfyingly beautiful in her anger; he taunted her with the pleasure of an
artist painting a picture.
"I won't!" she repeated. Something else came to her lips, but she repressed
it, and he could see the pressure from within telling.
"Don't get in a huff over nothing," he urged, in real alarm. "Only, it made
me kind of mad to see Blondy standing there with that calf-look."
"What calf-look? He's a lot better to look at than you'll ever be."
A smear of red danced before the vision of Gregg.
"I don't set up for no beauty prize. Tie a pink ribbon in Blondy's hair and
take him to a baby show if you want. He's about young enough to enter."
If she could have found a ready retort her anger might have passed away in
words, but no words came, and she turned pale. It was here that Gregg made
his crucial mistake, for he thought the pallor came from fear, fear which
his sham jealousy had roused in her, perhaps. He should have maintained a
discreet silence, but instead, he poured in the gall of complacency upon a
raw wound.
"Blondy's all right," he stated beneficently, "but you just forget about
him tonight. You're going to that dance, and you're going with me. If
there's any explanations to be made, you leave 'em to me. I'll handle
Blondy."
"You handle Blondy!" she whispered. Her voice came back; it rang: "You
couldn't if he had one hand tied behind him." She measured him for another
blow. "I'm going to that dance and I'm going with Mr. Hansen."
She knew that he would have died for her, and he knew that she would have
died for him; accordingly they abandoned themselves to sullen fury.
"You're out of date, Vic," she ran on. "Men can't drag women around
nowadays, and you can't drag me. Not--one--inch." She put a vicious little
interval between each of the last three words.
"I'll be calling for you at seven o'clock."
"I won't be there."
"Then I'll call on Blondy."
"You don't dare to. Don't you try to bluff me. I'm not that kind."
"Betty, d'you mean that? D'you think that I'm yaller?"
"I don't care what you are."
"I ask you calm and impersonal, just think that over before you say it."
"I've already thought it over."
"Then, by God," said Gregg, trembling, "I'll never take one step out of my
way to see you again."
He turned, so blind with fury that he shouldered the door on his way out
and so, into the saddle, with Grey Molly standing like a figure of rock, as
if she sensed his mood. He swung her about on her hind legs with a wrench
on the curb and a lift of his spurs, but when she leaped into a gallop he
brought her back to the walk with a cruel jerk; she began to sidle across
the field with her chin drawn almost back to her breast, prancing. That
movement of the horse brought him half way around towards the door and he
was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty Neal was standing
there, begging him with her eyes. But the great, sullen pain conquered; he
straightened out the mare for the gate.
Betty was indeed at the door, leaning against it in a sudden weakness, and
even in her pain she felt pride in the grace and skill of Vic's
horsemanship. The hearts of both of them were breaking, with this rather
typical difference: that Gregg felt her to be entirely at fault, and that
she as fully accepted every scruple of the blame. He had come down tired
out and nervous from work he had done for her sake, she remembered, and if
he would only glance back once--he must know that she was praying for it--
she would cry out and run down to him; but he went on, on, through the
gate.
A flash of her passion returned to her. "I shall go with Blondy--if it
kills me." And she flung herself into the nearest seat and wept.
So when he reached the road and looked back at last, the doorway yawned
black, empty, and he set his teeth with a groan and spurred down the road
for Alder. He drew rein at Captain Lorrimer's and entered with curt nods in
exchange for the greetings.
"Red-eye," he ordered, and seized bottle and glass as Lorrimer spun them
deftly towards him.
Captain Lorrimer picked up the bottle and gazed at it mournfully when Vic
had poured his drink.
"Son," he murmured, "you've sure raised an awful thirst."
More
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