She recoiled from him.  “It was only a joke, then?  You didn’t mean it, John?  Thank Heaven for that!”

A savagery which, though generally concealed, was never far from the surface, now broke out in him, making the muscles of his face tense and his voice metallic.  “Get to your room,” he said fiercely, “get to your room.  I’ve wasted time enough on you and your brat of a brother, and now a Western lout is to spoil what I’ve done?  I’ve a mind to wash my hands of all of you—­and sink you.  Get to your room, and stay there, while I make up my mind which of the two I shall do.”

She went, cringing like one beaten, to the door, and he followed her, trembling with rage.

“Or have you a choice?” he asked.  “Brother or lover, which shall it be?”

She turned and stretched out her hands to him, unable to speak; but the man of the sneer struck down her arms and laughed in her face.  In mute terror she fled to her room.

Chapter Seventeen

Old Scars

In his room Bill Gregg was striding up and down, throwing his hands toward the ceiling.  Now and then he paused to slap Ronicky Doone on the back.

“It’s fate, Ronicky,” he said, over and over again.  “Thinking of waking up and finding the girl that you’ve loved and lost standing waiting for you!  It’s the dead come to life.  I’m the happiest man in the world.  Ronicky, old boy, one of these days I’ll be able—­” He paused, stopped by the solemnity of Doone’s face.  “What’s wrong, Ronicky?”

“I don’t know,” said the other gloomily.  He rubbed his arms slowly, as if to bring back the circulation to numbed limbs.

“You act like you’re sick, Ronicky.”

“I’m getting bad-luck signs, Bill.  That’s the short of it.”

“How come?”

“The old scars are prickling.”

“Scars?  What scars?”

“Ain’t you noticed ’em.”

It was bedtime, so Ronicky Doone took off his coat and shirt.  The rounded body, alive with playing muscles, was striped, here and there, with white streaks—­scars left by healed wounds.

“At your age?  A kid like you with scars?” Bill Gregg had been asking, and then he saw the exposed scars and gasped.  “How come, Ronicky,” he asked huskily in his astonishment, “that you got all those and ain’t dead yet?”

“I dunno,” said the other.  “I wonder a pile about that, myself.  Fact is I’m a lucky gent, Bill Gregg.”

“They say back yonder in your country that you ain’t never been beaten, Ronicky.”

“They sure say a lot of foolish things, just to hear themselves talk, partner.  A gent gets pretty good with a gun, then they say he’s the best that ever breathed—­that he’s never been beat.  But they forget things that happened just a year back.  No, sir; I sure took my lickings when I started.”

“But, dog-gone it, Ronicky, you ain’t twenty-four now!”