“I can’t kill him now, Nig, he’s goin’ to marry her! Oh Nig, Nig, what am I goin’ to do now?” And then she looked up scornfully, her eyes flashing. “She won’t let Rex be a friend of hers, because he’s killed two men that God had ought to have killed a long while ago! But she’ll marry Masten—who ain’t fit to be Rex’s dog. She won’t, Nig! Why—?”
She got up and started for the door. But nearing it, she sank upon the threshold, crying and moaning, while Nig, perplexed at this conduct on the part of his mistress, stood off a little and barked loudly at her.
CHAPTER XX
THE BUBBLE—DREAMS
Loping his pony through the golden haze of the afternoon, Randerson came over the plains toward the Flying W ranchhouse, tingling with anticipation. The still small voice to which he had listened in the days before Ruth’s coming had not lied to him; Fate, or whatever power ruled the destinies of lovers, had made her for him. Man’s interference might delay the time of possession, his thoughts were of Masten for a brief instant, and his lips straightened, but in the end there could be no other outcome.
But though he was as certain of her as he was that the sun would continue to rule the days, he kept his confidence from betraying his thoughts, and when at last he rode slowly down along the corral fence, past the bunkhouse and the other buildings, to the edge of the porch, sitting quietly in the saddle and looking down at Ruth, who was sitting in a rocker, sewing, his face was grave and his manner that of unconscious reverence.
Ruth had been on the porch for more than an hour. And as on the day when he had come riding in in obedience to her orders to teach her the mysteries of the six-shooter, she watched him today—with anticipation, but with anticipation of a different sort, in which was mingled a little regret, but burdened largely with an eagerness to show him, unmistakably, that he was not the sort of man that she could look upon seriously. And so when she saw him ride up to the porch and bring his pony to a halt, she laid her sewing in her lap, folded her hands over it, and watched him with outward calmness, though with a vague sorrow gripping her. For in spite of what he had done, she still felt the man’s strong personality, his virility—the compelling lure of him. She experienced a quick, involuntary tightening of the muscles when she heard his voice—for it intensified the regret in her—low, drawling, gentle:
“I have come in to report to you, ma’am.”