第26章

That a mug! Good Lord! what a looking mug!" Then, after a moment's silence, "Wonder if that fool feemale will be up here to-day."He crossed over into his bedroom and peeped around the edge of the lowered curtain.The window looked out upon the skeleton-like tower of the artesian well and the cook-house and dairy-house close beside it.As he watched, he saw Hilma come out from the cook-house and hurry across toward the kitchen.Evidently, she was going to see about his dinner.But as she passed by the artesian well, she met young Delaney, one of Annixter's hands, coming up the trail by the irrigating ditch, leading his horse toward the stables, a great coil of barbed wire in his gloved hands and a pair of nippers thrust into his belt.No doubt, he had been mending the break in the line fence by the Long Trestle.

Annixter saw him take off his wide-brimmed hat as he met Hilma, and the two stood there for some moments talking together.

Annixter even heard Hilma laughing very gayly at something Delaney was saying.She patted his horse's neck affectionately, and Delaney, drawing the nippers from his belt, made as if to pinch her arm with them.She caught at his wrist and pushed him away, laughing again.To Annixter's mind the pair seemed astonishingly intimate.Brusquely his anger flamed up.

Ah, that was it, was it?Delaney and Hilma had an understanding between themselves.They carried on their affair right out there in the open, under his very eyes.It was absolutely disgusting.

Had they no sense of decency, those two?Well, this ended it.

He would stop that sort of thing short off; none of that on HISranch if he knew it.No, sir.He would pack that girl off before he was a day older.He wouldn't have that kind about the place.Not much! She'd have to get out.He would talk to old man Tree about it this afternoon.Whatever happened, HE insisted upon morality.

"And my dinner!" he suddenly exclaimed."I've got to wait and go hungry--and maybe get sick again--while they carry on their disgusting love-making."He turned about on the instant, and striding over to the electric bell, rang it again with all his might.

"When that feemale gets up here," he declared, "I'll just find out why I've got to wait like this.I'll take her down, to the Queen's taste.I'm lenient enough, Lord knows, but I don't propose to be imposed upon ALL the time."A few moments later, while Annixter was pretending to read the county newspaper by the window in the dining-room, Hilma came in to set the table.At the time Annixter had his feet cocked on the window ledge and was smoking a cigar, but as soon as she entered the room he--without premeditation--brought his feet down to the floor and crushed out the lighted tip of his cigar under the window ledge.Over the top of the paper he glanced at her covertly from time to time.

Though Hilma was only nineteen years old, she was a large girl with all the development of a much older woman.There was a certain generous amplitude to the full, round curves of her hips and shoulders that suggested the precocious maturity of a healthy, vigorous animal life passed under the hot southern sun of a half-tropical country.She was, one knew at a glance, warm-blooded, full-blooded, with an even, comfortable balance of temperament.Her neck was thick, and sloped to her shoulders, with full, beautiful curves, and under her chin and under her ears the flesh was as white and smooth as floss satin, shading exquisitely to a faint delicate brown on her nape at the roots of her hair.Her throat rounded to meet her chin and cheek, with a soft swell of the skin, tinted pale amber in the shadows, but blending by barely perceptible gradations to the sweet, warm flush of her cheek.This colour on her temples was just touched with a certain blueness where the flesh was thin over the fine veining underneath.Her eyes were light brown, and so wide open that on the slightest provocation the full disc of the pupil was disclosed; the lids--just a fraction of a shade darker than the hue of her face--were edged with lashes that were almost black.

While these lashes were not long, they were thick and rimmed her eyes with a fine, thin line.Her mouth was rather large, the lips shut tight, and nothing could have been more graceful, more charming than the outline of these full lips of hers, and her round white chin, modulating downward with a certain delicious roundness to her neck, her throat and the sweet feminine amplitude of her breast.The slightest movement of her head and shoulders sent a gentle undulation through all this beauty of soft outlines and smooth surfaces, the delicate amber shadows deepening or fading or losing themselves imperceptibly in the pretty rose-colour of her cheeks, or the dark, warm-tinted shadow of her thick brown hair.

Her hair seemed almost to have a life of its own, almost Medusa-like, thick, glossy and moist, lying in heavy, sweet-smelling masses over her forehead, over her small ears with their pink lobes, and far down upon her nape.Deep in between the coils and braids it was of a bitumen brownness, but in the sunlight it vibrated with a sheen like tarnished gold.

Like most large girls, her movements were not hurried, and this indefinite deliberateness of gesture, this slow grace, this certain ease of attitude, was a charm that was all her own.

But Hilma's greatest charm of all was her simplicity--a simplicity that was not only in the calm regularity of her face, with its statuesque evenness of contour, its broad surface of cheek and forehead and the masses of her straight smooth hair, but was apparent as well in the long line of her carriage, from her foot to her waist and the single deep swell from her waist to her shoulder.Almost unconsciously she dressed in harmony with this note of simplicity, and on this occasion wore a skirt of plain dark blue calico and a white shirt waist crisp from the laundry.