The Ramrodders. Holman Day
Mr. Duke," she called. "Is Harlan down from the woods yet?"
The old man turned to march off after a scornful glance at her. He kicked away another dog. Then he whirled and stepped back toward her. It was anger and not courtesy that impelled him.
"He isn't here, and he won't be here. And how many times more have I got to tell you not to be impertinent to me?"
"How, Mr. Duke?"
"By that infernal nickname," he stormed. "Young woman, I've told you to stay on your side of the river, and you—"
"Really you ought to be called 'Duke' if you order folks off the earth that way," she cried, saucily. "But I did not come to see you, Mr. Duke. I came to see Harlan. Has he got home yet?"
She swung sideways on her horse and nursed her slender ankle across her knee. It was plain that she had expected this reception, and knew how to meet it. She gazed at him serenely from big, gray eyes. She smiled and held her head a little to one side, her nose tiptilted a bit, giving her an aggravatingly teasing expression.
"I tell you he's not here, and he won't be here."
"Oh yes, he will. For"—she smiled more broadly, and there was malice in her eyes—"I sent word to him to come, and he's coming."
"You sent word to him, you red-headed Irish cat? What do you mean?"
The lord of Fort Canibas strode close to her, passion on his face. Presson could see that this was no suddenly evoked quarrel between the two. It was hostility reawakened.
"I mean that I'm looking out for the interests of Harlan when those at home are plotting against him. I hear the news. I listen to news for him, when he's away in the big woods. And I'm not going to let you send him off down to any old prison of a legislature, where he'll be spoiled for his friends up here. And he doesn't want to go. And he'll be here, Mr. Duke, to see that you don't trade him off into your politics."
She delivered her little speech resolutely, and gave him back his blistering gaze without winking.
"Oh, my God, if you were—were only Ivus Niles, or Beelzebub himself sitting there on that horse," Thornton gasped. "You—you—" he turned away from her maddening smile and stamped about on the turf. The hounds still played around him, persistent in their attentions. He kicked at them.
"It suits me to be just Clare Kavanagh, Mr. Duke—and I'm not afraid of you!"
"Kyle—ho there, Kyle!" The big boss came out of the "ram pasture," wiping food fragments from his beard. "Get a rifle and shoot these dogs. Clean 'em out! Take two men and ride this Irish imp across the river where she belongs."
Kyle balked. His face showed it.
Presson had never seen his old friend in such a fury. He menaced the girl with his fists as though about to forget that she was a woman. But she did not retreat. The picture was that of the kitten and the mastiff. Her sparkling eyes followed him. The scarlet of an anger as ready as his own leaped to the soft curves of her cheeks.
"You've got my orders, Kyle. I stand behind them."
Without taking her eyes off Thornton, the girl reached behind her and jerked a revolver from its holster.
"You shoot my dogs, Kyle, and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to a milder form of femininity, it was impudence. Yet her beauty made its appeal to him. The old man lunged toward her, but the politician seized his arm.
"Thelismer," he protested, "you are going too far. I don't know the girl, or what the main trouble is, but you're acting like a ten-year-old."
Thelismer Thornton knew it, and the knowledge added to his helpless rage. He pulled himself out of Presson's grasp.
He began to revile the girl in language that made Presson set his little eyes open and purse his round mouth.
"Damn it, you don't understand," roared the Duke, whirling on his friend. Presson had faced him at last with protest that stung. "I know it's no kind of talk to use to any one. I'm no ruffian. I'm ashamed to have to use it. But the other kind don't work—not with her. Land-pirate Kavanagh is welcome to the ten thousand acres of timber-land that he stole from me; but when his red-head daughter proposes to steal my grandson, and laugh at me to my face while she's doing it, she'll take what I have to give her if she wants to stay and listen. Look at her, Presson! Look at her! Is that the kind of a girl for any young chap? A rattlebrained imp with a horse between her knees from daylight to dark, riding the country wild, insulting old age, and laughing at me and putting the devil into the head of my grandson! Kyle, get your men and run her across the river into her Canuck country! She isn't even an American citizen, Luke. Do you hear me, Kyle?"
Presson saw that the girl was not looking at her enemy then. From the back of her horse she could see farther up the road than they. She had spied a horseman coming. She recognized him. She uttered a shrill call that he understood, for he forced his horse into a gallop, and came into the yard before Thornton had gathered himself to continue his tirade. The Duke had seen his grandson almost as soon as she, and the passion went out of his face. He looked suddenly old and tired and troubled.
There was appeal in the gaze he turned on his grandson. He stepped forward.
"Don't let her make any more trouble between us, Harlan, not till you understand how she—"
But the girl forestalled him. She had fought her battle alone until he came. She slid off her horse and ran across the yard, sobbing like a child. And now Presson saw how young she was. On her horse, defiant almost to the point of impudence, she had a manner that belied her years. But when she fled to her champion, she was revealed as only a little girl with a child's impulsiveness in speech and action. The young man slipped his foot from a stirrup and held his hand to her. She sprang to him, standing in the stirrup.
"He called me wicked names, Harlan! I was only trying to help you. I wanted you to come, for I thought you ought to know! You've come. I knew you'd come. You won't let him send you away. You'll not let him call me those names ever again!"
He gently swung her down, alighted and faced his grandfather. He had the stalwart frame of Thelismer Thornton, and with it the poise of youth, clean-limbed, bronzed, and erect. He flashed a pair of indignant brown eyes at the old man. The Duke recognized the Thornton challenge to battle in the sparkle of those eyes.
"Let's talk this over by ourselves, Harlan," he advised. "Send the girl along about her business. She has messed things between us badly enough as it is."
"Have you been talking to this poor little girl as she tells me you have talked?" demanded young Thornton, narrowing his eyes.
"That isn't the tone to use to me, boy," warned the Duke. There had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning. But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl pricked him. She was still in the hook of Harlan's arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him. "Not that tone from grandson to grandfather."
"It's man to man just now, sir. You know how I feel toward this little friend of mine. If you have abused our friendship here at our home, you'll apologize, grandfather or no grandfather—and that's the first disrespectful word I ever gave you, sir. But this is a case where I have the right to speak."
The Duke stiffened and his face was gray.
"I talked to her the way Land-pirate Kavanagh's daughter ought to be talked to when she comes here mocking me. Now, Harlan, if you want this in the open instead of in private, where it ought to be, I'll give it to you straight from the shoulder. You're not going to marry that girl. She shan't steal you and spoil you. I've told you so before. I give it to you now before witnesses."
The girl ran toward him. She was furious. It was evident