“This girl? This Jack of ours?”
“He hasn't seen it! Why, if I hadn't seen years ago that she had tied her hands and turned her heart over to you, I'd have been begging her for a smile, a shadow of a hope.”
“If I didn't know you, Dick, I'd say that you were partly drunk and partly a fool.”
“Here's a hundred—a cold hundred that I'm right. I'll make it a thousand, if you dare.”
“Dare what?”
“Ask her to marry you.” “Marry—me?”
“Damn it all—well, then—whatever you like. But I say that if you go back into that room and sit still and merely look at her, she'll be in your arms within five minutes.”
“I hate to take charity, but a bet is a bet. That hundred is in my pocket already. It's a go!”
They shook hands.
“But what will be your proof, Dick, whether I win or lose?”
“Your face, blockhead, when you come out of the room.”
Upon this Pierre pondered a moment, and then turned toward the door. He set his hand on the knob, faltered, and finally set his teeth and entered the room.
CHAPTER 18
She lay as he had left her, except that her face was now pillowed in her arms, and the long sobs kept her body quivering. Curiosity swept over Pierre, looking down at her, but chiefly a puzzled grief such as a man feels when a friend is in trouble. He came closer and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Jack!”
She turned far enough to strike his hand away and instantly resumed her former position, though the sobs were softer. This childish anger irritated him. He was about to storm out of the room when the thought of the hundred dollars stopped him. The bet had been made, and it seemed unsportsmanlike to leave without some effort.
The effort which he finally made was that suggested by Wilbur. He folded his arms and stood silent, waiting, and ready to judge the time as nearly as he could until the five minutes should have elapsed. He was so busy computing the minutes that it was with a start that he noticed some time later that the weeping had ceased. She lay quiet. Her hand was dabbing furtively at her face for a purpose which Pierre could not surmise.
At last a broken voice murmured: “Pierre!”
He would not speak, but something in the voice made his anger go. After a little it came, and louder this time: “Pierre?”
He did not stir.
She whirled and sat on the edge of the bunk, crying: “Pierre!” with a note of fright.
Still he persisted in that silence, his arms folded, the keen blue eyes considering her as if from a great distance.
She explained: “I was afraid—Pierre! Why don't you speak? Tell me, are you angry?”
And she sprang up and made a pace toward him. She had never seemed so little manlike, so wholly womanly. And the hand which stretched toward him, palm up, was a symbol of everything new and strange that he found in her.
He had seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his knowledge; and now, because he could not speak to her, according to his plan, he studied her thoroughly for the first time.
Slender and marvelously made was that hand. The whole woman was in it, made for beauty, not for use. It was all he could do to keep from exclaiming.
She made a quick step toward him, eager, uncertain: “Pierre, I thought you had left me—that you were gone, and angry.”
Something caught on fire in Pierre, but still he would say nothing. He was beginning to feel a cruel pleasure in his victory, but it was not without a deep sense of danger.
She had laid aside her six-gun, but she had not abandoned it. She had laid aside her anger, but she could resume it again as swiftly as she could take up her revolver.
She cried with a little burst of rage: “Pierre, you are making a game of me!”
But seeing that he did not change she altered swiftly and caught his hand in both of hers. She spoke the name which she always used when she was greatly moved.
“Ah, Pierre le Rouge, what have I done?”
His silence tempted her on like the smile of the sphinx.
And suddenly she was inside his arms, though how she separated them he could not tell, and crying: “Pierre, I am unhappy. Help me, Pierre!”
It was true, then, and Wilbur had won his bet. But how could it have happened? He took the arms that encircled his neck and brought them slowly down, and watched her curiously. Something was expected of him, but what it was he could not tell, for women were as strange to him as the wild sea is strange to the Arab.
He hunted his mind, and then: “One of the boys has angered you, Jack?”
