Jasper rubbed his hands with increased delight. "Not a notion and she
murders the King's English. But she is Luck's savage and--in spite of
your eyebrows, Betty--she is beautiful. I can school her. It will take
money, no end of patience, but I can do it. It's one of the things I
can do. But, of course, there's the initial difficulty of persuading
her to try it."
"That oughtn't to be any difficulty at all. Of course she'll jump at
the chance."
"I'm not so sure. She was ready to throw me out of the kitchen
to-night. She is really a virago. Do you know what one of the men said
about her?" Jasper laughed and imitated the gentle Western drawl.
"Jane's plumb movin' to me. She's about halfway between 'You go to
hell' and 'You take me in your arms to rest.'"
Betty smiled. Her smile was vastly more mature than her appearance. It
was clever and cynical and cold. The Oriental, looking down at her,
lost his merriment.
"Do you feel better, dear?" he asked timidly. "Do you think you will
be able to go back next week?"
She stood up as he came nearer and walked over to the little table
that played the part of dressing-table under a wavy mirror. "Oh, yes.
I am quite well. I don't think the doctors have much sense. I'm sure I
hadn't anything like a nervous breakdown. I was just tired out."
Jasper drew back the hand whose touch she had eluded, and nervously,
his long supple fingers a little unsteady, lighted a cigarette. At
that moment he did not look like a spider, but like a lover who has
been hurt. Betty could see in the mirror a distorted image of his
dejected gracefulness, but, entirely unmoved, she put up her thin,
brown hands and began to take the pins out of her hair.
"I like your Jane experiment," she said. "Let me know how you get on
with it and whether I can help. I shall have to turn in now. I'm dead
beat. Yarnall took me halfway up the mountain and back. Good-night."
Jasper looked at her, then pressed his lips into a straight line and
went to the door which led from her bedroom to his. He said "Good-night"
in a low tone, glanced at her over his shoulder, and went out.
Betty waited an instant, then slowly unlaced her heavy, knee-high
boots, took them off, and began to walk to and fro on stocking feet,
hands clasped behind her back. With her curly hair all about her face
and shoulders, she looked like a wild, extravagantly naughty
school-girl, a girl in a wicked temper, a rebel against authority. In
fact, she was rejoicing that this horrible enforced visit to the West
was all but over. One week more! She was almost at an end of her
endurance. How she hated the beautiful white night outside, those
mountain peaks, the sound of that rapid river, the stillness of
sagebrush, the voice of the big pines! And she hated the log room, its
simplicity now all littered with incongruous luxuries; ivory toilet
articles on the board table; lacy, beribboned underwear thrown over the
rustic chair; silver-framed photographs; an exquisite, gold-mounted
crystal vase full of wild flowers on the pine shelf; satin bedroom
slippers on the clay hearth; a gorgeous, fur-trimmed dressing-gown over
the foot of her narrow, iron cot; all the ridiculous necessities that
Betty's maid had put into her trunk. Yes, Betty hated it all because it
was what she had always thirsted for. What a malevolent trick of fate
that Jasper should have brought her to Wyoming, that the doctor had
insisted upon at least a month of just this life. "Take her West," he
had said, and Betty, lying limp and white in her bed, her small head
sunk into the pillow, had jerked from head to foot. "Take her West. I
know a ranch in Wyoming--Yarnall's. She'll get outdoor exercise, tonic
air, sound sleep, release from all these pestiferous details, like a
cloud of flies, that sting women's nerves to death. Don't pay any
attention to whether she likes it or not. Let her behave like a naughty
child, let her kick and scream and cry. Pick her up, Morena, and carry
her off. Do you hear? Don't let her make you change your plans." The
doctor had seen his patient's convulsive jerk. "Pack her up. Make your
reservations and go straight to 'Buck' Yarnall's ranch, Lazy-Y,--that's
his brand, I believe,--Middle Fork, Wyoming. I'll send him a wire. He
knows me. She needs all outdoors to run about in. She needs joggin'
around all day through the sagebrush on a cow-pony in that sun; she
needs the smell of a camp-fire--Gad! wish I could get back to it
myself."