The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1918-07-04
CHAPTER XVII.
Danger.

TOOI1 III IbldiiSht1 %Nbh - iituAh b'a ao
the wings Of n bird beat from the
broken door of a cage into a forbidden
sky of happiness. She had left the
room a girl she returned Il woman.
Sleep she did not expect or wen ask
for: the night was all too short to
that had pledged her 10 her lover.
When the anXieties OF her situation
overwhelmed her, as they would again
and again, she felt herself In the arms
of this strange, %resolute man whom all
her own hated and whom she knew she
already loved beyond all power 10 put
away. In her heart, she had tried this
more than once-she knew she could
not, would not, ever do 1t, or eve
try to do it, again.
She rejoiced In his love. She trusted.
When he spoke she believed this man
whom no one around her would be-
lieve; and she, who never had believed
what other men avowed, and who de-
tested their avowals, believed De
Spain, and secretly, guiltily, glowed in
every word Of his devotion and
breathed faint In its every caress.
Night could hardly come fast enough,
after the next long day. A hundred
times during that day she reminded
herself, while the slow, majestic sun
shone simmering on the hot desert,
that she had promised to steal out into
the grounds the minute darkness fell
he would be waiting. A hundred times
In the long afternoon Nan looked into
the ~cloudless western sky and with
puny, eager hands would have pushed
the tagging orb on it's course that she
might sooner give herself into the
arms where she felt her place so sure,
her honor safe, her helplessness so pro-
tected, herself so loved.
How her cheeks burned after supper
when she asked her uncle for leave to
post a letter downtown! How breath
less with apprehension she halted as
De Spain stepped from the shadow of
the trees and drew her approximately
beneath them for the kiss that had
burned on her troubled lips all day!
How, girl.like, knowing his caresses
were all her own-knowing she could
at an instant call forth enough to
smother her-she tyrannized bis i'm
portuning, and like a lovely miser,
boarded her responsiveness under calm
eye and laconic whispers until. when
she did give back his eagerness. she
made his senses reel.
How dreamily she listened to every
word he let fall in his outpouring OF
devotion; how gravely she put up her
hand to restrain his busy intrusion,
and asked If he knew that no man In
the world, least of all her fierce and
burly cousin, had ever touched her lips
until he himself forced q kiss on them
the night before. And now!" She
hid her face against his shoulder. ooh.
Henry, how l love you! I'm so
ashamed l couldn't tell you II 1t weren't
night; I'll never look you In the face
again in the daytime"
And when he told her how little he
himself had had to do with, and how
little he knew about girls, even from
boyhood, how she feigned not to be-
lieve, and believed him still! They
were two children raised in the magic
OF an hour to the supreme height Of
life and dizzy together on Its summit.
Il don't see how you can care for
me, Henry. Oh, I mean It," she pro-
tested, holding her head resolutely up.
You know who we are, away of there
In the mountains. Everyone hates us.
l suppose they've plenty Of reason to:
we hate everybody else. And why
shouldn't we? We're at war with ev-
eryone. You know, better than l do,
what goes on In the gap. I don't want
to know; l try not to know; Uncle
Duke tries to keep things from me
that day on Music-I couldn't believe
you meant 1t at all. And yet-rm
afraid l liked to try to think you did.
When you looked at me 1 felt as II
you could see right through me-"
Condolences never came to. an end.
And diplomacy came into It's own al.
most at once In De SPANS efforts to
improve his relations with the impla-
cable Duke. The day came when Mans
uncle could be taken home. De Spain
sent to him a soft-spoken emissary,
Bob Scott, Offering to provide a light
stage. with his compliments, for the
trip. The intractable mountaineer.
with his refusal to accept the olive
branch, blew Bob out Of the room.
Nan was crushed by the result, but De
Spain was not to be dismayed.
Lefever came to him the day after
Nan had got her uncle home. "Henry."
he began without any preliminaries,
there Is one thing about your precipi.
tate ride up Music mountain that I
never got clear In my mind. After the
fight. your cartridge belt was hanging
rup In the barn at Calabasas for two
weeks. You walked In to us that morn
ing with your belt buckled on. You
told us You put It on before you came
upstairs. What3 Oh, yes, I know.
Henry. But that belt wasn't hanging
downstairs With your coat earlier in
the evening. No. Henry, It wasn't-not
when Z looked. Don't tell me such