Wyoming by Zane Grey

Author:Zane Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, western
Publisher: Reading Essentials
Published: 1953-05-15T05:00:00+00:00

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On the following day Andrew felt very little the worse for his creased skull, and ten days later he dispensed with the bandage over his temple. If anyone had been particularly interested in the young man’s movements these several days, they would have discovered something unusual for a ranch. He had filled a small burlap bag with sand and had hung it up about face high from a rafter in the barn. Then he put on his buckskin riding gloves and proceeded to punch that bag. When he hit the bag it gave forth a sodden sound.

“Not so bad!” he muttered, at the end of his last workout, which was on the morning Bligh asked him to drive the car to town.

Martha was the last to come out of the house. That was one of her failings, Andrew had long ago observed. She just could not be on time. But when she appeared she looked bewitching in a trim blue dress she had made herself. Her shapely legs were bare, except for socks rolled down over flat-heeled shoes. She had apparently given up wearing hats. Andrew turned away his eyes. This young lady was getting surprisingly on his nerves.

“Please, may I drive?” she asked, leaning over the car door on Andrew’s side. He might have refused the spoken solicitation, but the man did not live who could have denied the appealing look in those amber eyes.

“Why—er—certainly,” stammered Andrew, hastily sliding over to the right side of the front seat.

Martha threw her little bag upon the seat and got in, and as she manipulated the gears with deft hands, her eyes on the dashboard, she said in a most casual way: “When I ride with a handsome young man I always like to drive.”

“Yeah, so I’ve noticed,” Andrew retorted, and looked across the range to the hills. Her remark hinted at the old enmity. But the look in her eyes when she had asked permission to drive remained with him. He pondered over the lovely expression in those amber eyes. Had it been nothing but youthful, thrilling eagerness to drive the car? Any expression in them was bewildering. They were dangerous eyes because they appeared to any poor, asinine, masculine clod to say infinitely more than she obviously meant. Their exquisite light, their strange color, their indescribable loveliness were simply facts of nature, and therefore false. He had seen them blaze with scorn and that had been something to remember. They had been true then. But how much of their play and change and charm had been intended, for instance, that evening when she flirted so outrageously with the callow youth at the hotel? The recollection of that occasion seemed crude and raw to him. As Jim would say, “it stuck in his craw.” But nature could make a woman a flirt when she was absolutely innocent and unconscious of it. Then he groaned inwardly at the realization that he was developing an excuse like this for everything that Martha Ann Dixon had done.

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