She thinks she hates you. But she loves you."
"Get out of here," he ordered thickly.
I went, not forgetting to peep out at the door and to listen a moment,
then I hurried into the open, up toward the ranch.
The stars were very big and bright, so calm, so cold, that it somehow
hurt me to look at them. Not like men's lives, surely!
What had fate done to Vaughn Steele and to me? I had a moment of
bitterness, an emotion rare with me.
Most Rangers put love behind them when they entered the Service and
seldom found it after that. But love had certainly met me on the way,
and I now had confirmation of my fear that Vaughn was hard hit.
Then the wildness, the adventurer in me stirred to the wonder of it all.
It was in me to exult even in the face of fate. Steele and I, while
balancing our lives on the hair-trigger of a gun, had certainly fallen
into a tangled web of circumstances not calculated in the role of
Rangers.
I went back to the ranch with regret, remorse, sorrow knocking at my
heart, but notwithstanding that, tingling alive to the devilish
excitement of the game.
I knew not what it was that prompted me to sow the same seed in Diane
Sampson's breast that I had sown in Steele's; probably it was just a
propensity for sheer mischief, probably a certainty of the truth and a
strange foreshadowing of a coming event.
Pages:
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114