She did not see Lite anywhere about the ranch,and so she did not put her hopes and her plans and her good fortune into speech.She did see her Aunt Ella,who straightway informed her that people were talking about the way she rode here and there with those painted-up people,and let the men put their arms around her and make love to her.Her Aunt Ella made it perfectly plain to Jean that she,for one,did not consider it respectable.Her Aunt Ella said that Carl was going to do something about it,if things weren't changed pretty quick.
Jean did not appear to regard her aunt's disapproval as of any importance whatever,but the words stung.
She had herself worried a little over the love-making scenes which she knew she would now be called upon to play.Jean,you will have observed,was not given to sentimental adventurings;and she disliked the idea of letting Lee Milligan make love to her the way he had made love to Muriel Gay through picture after picture.She would do it,she supposed,if she had to;she wanted the salary.But she would hate it intolerably.She made reply with sarcasm which she knew would particularly irritate her Aunt Ella,and left the house feeling that she never wanted to enter it again as long as she lived.
The sight of her uncle standing beside Pard in an attitude of disgusted appraisement of the new Navajo blanket and the silver-trimmed bridle and tapideros which Burns had persuaded her to add to her riding outfit,--for photographic effect,--brought a hot flush of resentment.She went up quietly enough,however.
Indeed,she went up so quietly that he started when she appeared almost beside him and picked up Pard's reins,and took the stirrup to mount and ride away.
She did not speak to him at all;she had not spoken to him since that night when the little brown bird had died!Though perhaps that was because she had managed to keep out of his way.
"I see you've been staking yourself to a new bridle,"Carl began in a tone quite as sour as his look."You must have bought out all the tin decorations they had in stock,didn't you?"Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at him."If I did,it's my own affair,"she retorted."I paid for the tin decorations with my own money.""Oh,you did!Well,you might have been in better business than paying for that kind of thing.You might,"he sneered up at her,"have been paying for your keep these last three years,if you've got more money of your own than you know what to do with."Jean could not ride off under the sting of that gratuitous insult.She held Pard quiet and looked down at him with hate in her eyes."I expect,"she said in a queer,quiet wrath,"to prove before long that my own money has been paying for my `keep'these last three years;for that and for other things that did not benefit me in the least.""I'd like to know what you mean by that!"Carl caught Pard by the bridle-rein and looked up at her in a white fury that startled even Jean,accustomed as she was to his sudden rages that contrasted with his sullen attitude toward the world.
"What do you think I would mean?Let go my bridle.I don't want to quarrel with you.""What did you mean by proving--what do you expect to prove?"His hand was heavy on the rein,so that Pard began to fret under the restraint."You've got to quit running around all over the country with them show folks,and stay at home and behave yourself.
You've got to quit hanging out at the Lazy A.I've stood as much as I'm going to stand of your performances.
You get down off that horse and go into the house and behave yourself;that's what you'll do!If you haven't got any shame or decency--"Jean scarcely knew what she did,just then.She must have dug Pard with her spurs,because the first thing that she realized was the lunge he gave.Carl's hold slipped from the rein,as he was jerked sidewise.
He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt,and he called her a name she had never heard spoken before in her life.A rod or so away she pulled up and turned to face him,but the words she would have spoken stuck in her throat.She had never seen Carl Douglas look like that;she had seen him when he was furious,she had seen him when he sulked,but she had never seen him look like that.
He called her to come back.He made threats of what he would do if she refused to obey him.He shook his fist at her.He behaved like a man temporarily robbed of his reason;his eyes,as he came up glaring at her,were the eyes of a madman.
Jean felt a tremor of dread while she looked at him and listened to him.He was almost within reach of her again when she wheeled and went off up the trail at a run.She looked back often,half fearing that he would get a horse and follow her,but he stood just where she had left him,and he seemed to be still uttering threats and groundless accusations as long as she was in sight.
