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Page 59
She went over to the bunk and rested her fingers lightly on the
tight-curled hair.
"You mean you will kill him," she said slowly. "Kill him by doing
nothing, for you can save him if you will."
"Take it that way." He considered a moment, and stated his thought with
a harsh little laugh. "From time immemorial in this weary old world it
has been a not uncommon custom so to dispose of wife-stealers."
"You are unfair, Grant," she answered gently. "You forget that I was
willing and that I desired. I was a free agent. Rex never stole me. It
was you who lost me. I went with him, willing and eager, with song on my
lips. As well accuse me of stealing him. We went together."
"A good way of looking at it," Linday conceded. "I see you are as keen a
thinker as ever, Madge. That must have bothered him."
"A keen thinker can be a good lover--"
"And not so foolish," he broke in.
"Then you admit the wisdom of my course?"
He threw up his hands. "That's the devil of it, talking with clever
women. A man always forgets and traps himself. I wouldn't wonder if you
won him with a syllogism."
Her reply was the hint of a smile in her straight-looking blue eyes and
a seeming emanation of sex pride from all the physical being of her.
"No, I take that back, Madge. If you'd been a numbskull you'd have won
him, or any one else, on your looks, and form, and carriage. I ought to
know. I've been through that particular mill, and, the devil take me,
I'm not through it yet."
His speech was quick and nervous and irritable, as it always was, and,
as she knew, it was always candid. She took her cue from his last
remark.
"Do you remember Lake Geneva?"
"I ought to. I was rather absurdly happy."
She nodded, and her eyes were luminous. "There is such a thing as old
sake. Won't you, Grant, please, just remember back ... a little ... oh,
so little ... of what we were to each other ... then?"
"Now you're taking advantage," he smiled, and returned to the attack on
his thumb. He drew the thorn out, inspected it critically, then
concluded. "No, thank you. I'm not playing the Good Samaritan."
"Yet you made this hard journey for an unknown man," she urged.
His impatience was sharply manifest. "Do you fancy I'd have moved a step
had I known he was my wife's lover?"
"But you are here ... now. And there he lies. What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. Why should I? I am not at the man's service. He pilfered me."
She was about to speak, when a knock came on the door.
"Get out!" he shouted.
"If you want any assistance--"
"Get out! Get a bucket of water! Set it down outside!"
"You are going to...?" she began tremulously.
"Wash up."
She recoiled from the brutality, and her lips tightened.
"Listen, Grant," she said steadily. "I shall tell his brother. I know
the Strang breed. If you can forget old sake, so can I. If you don't do
something, he'll kill you. Why, even Tom Daw would if I asked."
"You should know me better than to threaten," he reproved gravely, then
added, with a sneer: "Besides, I don't see how killing me will help your
Rex Strang."
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