she faltered, with a blush that was not all shame. “Don’t spoil any—any nice speech with the names of those men. . . . Does it fit me? The shoes do—and the stockings are all right, if they’ll stay up.”
She turned round anxiously for his benefit. Lynn, gazing at the trim form, and remembering that he had seen her only in a blanket, and his pajamas and then outrageously clad in his work clothes, wondered if that was why she burst upon his sight such a perfect beauty of a girl.
“Anne, I went to a great college for three years,” he said, “one noted for being the stamping ground of the swellest girls in California. Even in Hollywood they don’t show any more stunning girls, though they have plenty of them. But you’ve got any girl I ever saw there skinned to a frazzle, if you know what I mean.”
“Supper is ready,” she replied, with heightened color, “if you’ll help me find things to serve it on.”
Lynn’s resourcefulness was put to a full test. Tin cans and chips of clean wood were requisitioned. They sat down on the two box seats with one plate, one cup, one knife and fork and spoon between them. The tragic shadow that had hovered over Anne seemed to lift for the hour. She was young, and she responded to the situation almost with gaiety. Lynn felt her unconscious leaning toward a something stronger than a deep gratefulness for his help and protection. He was the one who sustained embarrassment. Many had been the bright eyes to look at him across luxurious tables at the Roosevelt, the Biltmore, the Coconut Grove and places too numerous to recall, but he had never met eyes that could compare with these gray-green ones of Anne Vandergrift’s, that shone like stars upon him here in this dingy bare shack. The situation seemed incredible, yet while Anne forgot her peril and revealed herself as a simple and unsophisticated girl, glad to be dependent upon him for shelter and protection, Lynn found it stingingly real and sweet.
After the meal they turned out the light and stole through the woodshed to the back, where they walked into the cool, windy hall of the desert. Lynn said it would be safe for her to walk there after dark, but she must not go outdoors during daylight nor risk being seen at a window. Anne seemed to grow quiet out under the stars. He saw her tear off a bit of sage and press it to her lips and nostrils. The basin floor was hard-packed gravel covered with tufts of sage and clumps of greasewood far apart. Lynn led around back of the mills, across the railroad tracks to the bank of the river.
“This is the Colorado, Anne. Some river, believe me!” said Lynn. “Listen now.”
Up from the gloomy gleam of water came a gurgle and murmur that was musical as all running water is, but from the bend beyond, the current roared low, and from the black gap below even the silence seemed sullen, waiting, forbidding. It was so broad there, too, that Lynn could not see the opposite bank. In the starlight it flowed on ponderously, majestically, supreme in its power.
“It makes me afraid,” whispered Anne.
“Me too, now. At first I didn’t get that. Funny how this river grows on one. I’ve seen the Columbia up in Oregon, which is much larger. But it did not affect me. This Colorado is red in color, one third sand, and it runs with strange currents, whirlpools, holes and bulges that cannot be gauged or explained. It’s not like any other river. I studied engineering at college, and this job fascinates me. I can’t grasp it. I think Carewe, the chief engineer, must have a colossal egotism, a monumental gall besides his genius, to imagine he can stop the Rio Colorado.”
“I’m cold,” said Anne, shivering. “I don’t know whether or not it’s the breeze, or the river, or something. Let’s walk.”
They turned to face the flare of lights against which the dark spiderlike skeleton structures stood out and the clouds of dust rolled up like smoke. Presently they were near enough to hear the din of a vast mechanical system handling tons of sand and gravel every minute. They half circled the mill and camp back to Lynn’s cabin.
“Just as well not to turn on the lights,” he said. But he replenished the fire in the stove and drew up the one chair for Anne, who stretched cold hands to the heat. After a little while he could see her dimly. And it seemed to him that he was dreaming.
“Anne, I’m not very practical,” he said in low voice. “It only just occured to me that you’ll need things a girl needs. And I must buy cooking utensils and tableware.”
“I thought of it—and how I am ever to pay you back.”
“Never mind that. . . . I’ve an idea. Tomorrow night I’ll drive you in to Boulder. You can buy what you need at one store while I’ll go to another. Sue, the clerk I know, goes off at six o’clock. So we run very little risk.”
“Lynn, I—I can’t tell you how I feel—what—” she faltered. “But if you only could know my worry and disgust for weeks in L.A.—and then—the tortures I suffered when that woman took my clothes—and last my fright . . . This cabin seems like heaven. Every little bit I wake up and wonder if it’s true.”
“Well, I’ve a faint idea what you’ve been through,” Lynn rejoined sympathetically. “We can put this stunt over for a little, if we’re careful. Then, would you let me send you back to L.A. or Frisco, or some Arizona town where Bellew and Sneed couldn’t find you?”
“If you wish, of course, I’ll have to go. But . . .”
“But what?” queried Lynn, as she hesitated.
“I’ll never meet anyone again so—so kind as you,” she said.
“Oh, nonsense,” blurted out Lynn. “Sure you will. At that, I never heard before I was so kind. I was a flop with the girls on the campus. . . . Anne, it’s not that you—I want to get rid of you. Honestly, this situation is intriguing, to say the least. You’re a peach. Circumstances have thrown you with me. Well, what kind of a fellow would I be to take advantage of it?”
“I understand you—but I’m afraid I’m pretty ignorant. . . . My mother died when I was little. My father never told me anything. He kept me in—never let me meet anyone. And when I came out to work for Mr. Smith the men and boys I met at business school and his office annoyed me. I might have liked them if I’d have known how to take them. But I didn’t. I always wanted to be a boy. But I’m a girl—homeless, friendless, helpless. That’s why I hate the thought of your sending me away. Still I couldn’t ask you to take care of me indefinitely.”
“I might be as rotten to her as any other man,” he replied somberly, as if speaking to himself.
In the dim fire-lit obscurity of the cabin Lynn saw her big eyes, like haunting holes in a blanket, fix upon him intently.
“I don’t believe—that,” she whispered.
“You don’t?” he rejoined thickly.
“No. I shall not.”
“But you have no idea of what kind of a fellow I am.”
“Oh, yes I have. You’re just—just splendid.”
“Anne, my doubt of myself is only bitterness. Someday I’ll tell you my little tale of failure. I used to grovel in morbid brooding. Hard work has almost cured that. Honest to God, I’d like to be good and splendid. I’d like to be worthy of a helpless girl like you trusting herself alone with me in this camp shack out on the desert. But I don’t trust myself. . . . Suppose I should come home drunk some Saturday night?”
“I’d be sorry—but not afraid.”
