Gordon Makimmon gazed with newly-awakened interest at Lettice; for the first time he thought of her as other than a school-girl; for the first time he discovered in her the potent, magnetic, disturbing quality of sex. Buckley Simmons had clumsily forced it into consciousness. A fleeting, unformulated regret enveloped him in the shadow of its melancholy, an intangible, formless sorrow at the swift passage of youth, the inevitable lapse of time. A mounting anger at Buckley possessed him ... she had been in his, Gordon Makimmon’s, care. The anger touched his pride, his self-esteem, and grew cold, deliberate: he watched with a contracted jaw for Simmons’ appearance.
“Why,” he exclaimed, in a lowered voice, “that lown tore your pretty shirtwaist!”
“He had no reason at all,” she protested; “it was just horrid.” A little shiver ran over her. “He ... he held me and kissed ... hateful.”
“I’ll teach him to keep his kissing where it’s liked,” Gordon proclaimed. His instinctively theatrical manner diminished not a jot the menace of the threat.
“Oh! please, please don’t fight.” She turned a deeply concerned countenance upon him. “That would hurt me very much more—”
“It won’t be a fight,” he reassured her, “only a little hint, something for Buck to think about. No one will know.” He could not resist adding, “Most people go a good length before fighting with me.”
“I have heard that you are awfully—” she hesitated, then, “brave.”
“It was ’ugly’ you heard,” he quickly supplied the pause. “But that’s not true; I don’t fight like some men, just for a good time. Why, in the towns over the West Virginia line they fight all night; they’ll fight—kill each other—for two bits, or a drink of liquor.... There’s Buckley now, coming in above.”
Buckley Simmons entered the road from a narrow trail a number of yards ahead of the stage. He tramped heavily, holding a hickory switch in one hand, cutting savagely at the underbrush. The stage leisurely caught up to him until the horses’ heads were opposite his thickset form. Gordon, from the other side of the team, swung himself into his seat. He grasped the whip, and, leaning out, swept the heavy leather thong in a vicious circle. It whistled above the horses, causing them to plunge, and the lash, stopped suddenly, drew across Buckley Simmons’ face. For an instant his startled countenance was white, and then it was wet, gleaming and scarlet. He pressed his hands to his mouth, and stumbled confused into the ditch.
Gordon stopped the stage. Merlier gave vent to a sibilant exclamation, and Lattice Hollidew covered her eyes. The stranger sprang to the road, and hurried to the injured man’s side. Gordon got down slowly. “Where did it get him?” he inquired, with a shallow show of concern. He regarded with indifferent eyes the gaping cut across Simmons’ jaw, while the stranger was converting a large linen handkerchief into a ready bandage.