“This is good-night,” he said to Danforth as he raised his glass. “I’ve got to see Parsons tonight.”
Yet it was not Parsons who was uppermost in his mind when he left the Castle, mounted on his horse; the face of Marion Harlan was in the mental picture he drew as he rode toward the Huggins house, and there ran in his brain a reckless thought—which had been uttered to Parsons at the instant before his fingers had closed around the latter’s throat a few days before:
“I was born a thousand years too late, Parsons! I am a robber baron brought down to date—modernized. I believe that in me flows the blood of a pirate, a savage, or an ancient king. I have all the instincts of a tribal chief whose principles are to rule or ruin! I’ll have no law out here but my own desires!”
And tonight Carrington’s desires were for the girl who had accompanied him to Dawes; the girl who had stirred his passions as no woman had ever stirred them, and who—now that he had seized the town’s government—was to be as much his vassal as Parsons, Danforth—or any of them. He grinned as he rode toward the Huggins house—a grin that grew to a laugh as he rode up the drive toward the house; low, vibrant, hideous with its threat of unrestrained passion.
The night had been too beautiful for Marion Harlan to remain indoors, and so, after darkness had swathed the big valley back of the house, she had slipped out, noting that her uncle had gone again to the chair on the front porch. She had walked with Parsons along the butte above the valley, but she wanted to be alone now, to view the beauties without danger of interruption. Above all, she wanted to think.
For the news that Parsons had communicated to her had affected her strangely; she felt that her uncle’s revelations of Carrington’s character amounted to a vindication of her own secret opinion of the man.
He had been a volcanic wooer, and she had distrusted him all along. She had never permitted that distrust to appear on the surface, however, out of respect for her uncle—for she had always thought he and Carrington were firm friends. She saw now, though, that she had always suspected Carrington of being just what her uncle’s revelation had proved him to be—a ruthless, selfish, domineering brute of a man, who would have no mercy upon any person who got in his way.
Reflecting upon his actions during the days she had known him in Westwood—and upon his glances when sometimes she had caught him looking at her, and at other times when his gaze—bold, and flaming with naked passion—had been fixed upon her, she shuddered, comparing him with Quinton Taylor, quiet, polite, and considerate.
Loyally, she hated Carrington now for the things he had done to Parsons. She mentally vowed that the next time she saw Carrington she would tell him exactly what she thought of him, regardless of the effect her frank opinion might have on her uncle’s fortunes.
But still she had not come to the edge of the butte for the purpose of devoting her entire thoughts to Carrington; there was another face that obtruded insistently in the mental pictures she drew—Quinton Taylor’s. And she found a grass knoll at the edge of the butte, twisted around so that she could look over the edge of the butte and into the big basin that slumbered somberly in the mysterious darkness, staring intently until she discovered a pin-point of light gleaming out of it. That light, she knew, came from one of the windows of the Arrow ranchhouse, and she watched it long, wondering what Taylor would be doing about now.