Brick Fenwick stood with his back to the door, no motion in his neat lithe body, so insolently sure of himself that it sent a shiver through her. She must get him away from here before the other man arrived. But how? To the rebuffs she had given him during the past week, he paid not the least attention. Her anger he found amusing. Her contempt did not reach him.
'The restaurant is closed,' she told him. 'What do you want here?'
'You know what I want,' he said in a low purring voice. 'I want you.'
He moved forward with catlike grace to the raised cashier's desk behind which she sat.
Her blue eyes blazed. A pulse of anger beat in her throat. 'Can't you understand English,' she said. 'I've told you a dozen times that I think you evil — that I despise you — want nothing to do with you.'
He ignored what she had said. 'I like you angry,' he re plied, with cool impudence. 'A woman with no ginger wouldn't interest me, any more than a horse without spirit. I want one I have to curb.'
Her glance swept to the door. At any moment it might open to admit the other man. 'It makes no difference to me what you want. Please leave this room. At once.'
He shook his head, laughing at her. 'You women must always be actresses. A man must make allowances and not believe everything one says. I regret to refuse, but I think I'll stay.' He bowed, with a tag of bronco Spanish,' Tengo mucho dolor.'
'If you have something to say to me, I'll see you some other time.'
'Now,' he corrected. 'Sheriff Elbert is on my tail. I can't drop in any minute.'
'It would make me happy to know I would never see you again,' she said, eyes full on him.
'But I don't believe that. A woman's no means yes.'
Her hand moved in a little gesture of futility. 'Your vanity is so colossal you can't understand a woman finding you repellent.'
'What has yore friend Hal Stevens got that I haven't?' he inquired gently, his sharp eyes searching for information.
'Mr. Stevens doesn't come into this. But since you ask — he has integrity, decency, a respect for the rights of others.'
'Words,' he summed up contemptuously. 'Just words. Men all want the same things — women and money. Those who fight hard enough get what they want. The others don't. I come out on top. What I want I mean to take.'
'Whether it is right or not.'
'You're foolin' with words again, girl. It's right for me if I want it.'
'That makes no sense,' she retorted impatiently. 'There are other people living in the world besides you. What makes you think you can override their wishes? You wanted to kill Hal Stevens the other day, but you couldn't do it.'
She had broken through his brutal arrogance to the hot temper underneath. 'He is a dead man already, though he doesn't know it yet,' he told her harshly.
Fear came into her eyes. 'Have you killed him?' she cried.
'Give me time. If you are thinking of that man, get him out of yore head. There's no use thinking about dead men.'
'Maybe he'll kill you, as he did your friend Hanford.'
'No. He has been measured for his coffin.'
His bleak malignity appalled her. 'Do you think you are God, with the power and right to decide when a man shall die?' she flung out. 'Go away from me. Leave me alone. I don't want to have anything to do with you.'
'But you are going to.'
A faint rippling of the muscles stirred in him. He stepped on the stand and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. The fingers bit into her flesh, firmly, but not deep enough to give intolerable pain.
'You are hurting me,' the girl said evenly, not wincing. 'But if you want to, of course, that's all right. You are Brick Fenwick.'
His fingers dug in deeper. She wanted to scream, but clamped her teeth. There was a sadistic desire in him, she guessed, to break her spirit. The pressure relaxed.
'Little kittens must learn not to show their claws,' he drawled, almost in a murmur. 'They must do what they are told and play pretty.'
'I'm not a kitten,' Helen said. 'I'm a woman — in a free land. You can hurt me till I can't stand it any longer. It will only make me hate you.'
He snatched her out of the chair and swung her round. He held her there motionless, the red-hot devil of desire blazing into her eyes. She did not try to struggle uselessly. Her strong young body went rigid, as if she had been in a trance. When he kissed her lips and eyes and throat, she neither resisted nor yielded, but was no more responsive than a dress model in a store window. Presently he flung her savagely against the desk.
'By God, I'll get the ice out of yore blood before I'm through!' he cried. 'I'll teach you who is yore master.'
The look in her eyes made him furious. No words he could use, no force, could quell that measured scorn with which she faced him. He might whip her as he did a fractious horse. It would still be there.
The door opened and Tom Wall walked into the restaurant. His first quick glance told him that he had interrupted a scene between them. Brick's face mirrored anger and frustration. There was disdain in her eyes, but there was fear too.
A gun seemed to jump to the fingers of the desperado. His body crouched. His mouth had become a tight, thin, cruel line. When he spoke his lips scarcely moved.
'So this is the guy, not Stevens,' he said.
'No,' Helen cried. 'Don't be a fool.' Her heart beat like a bird against a cage. A weakness ran through her.
Brick sidestepped, to be out of Helen's reach and to have her within the orbit of his vision. You never knew what fool thing a woman would do. Yet his eyes never left the man at the door.
Tom Wall thought fast. He felt it had to be fast to save his life. His voice sounded cool and indifferent. 'We've got you, Brick,' he said. 'I'm with Elbert's posse. They are outside in the street. Better drop that gun and give up.'
He knew Fenwick would not surrender. That was not what he hoped for from his bluff, but to make the killer think it was too dangerous to fire now.
'So it's that way, is it?' Brick answered, his words almost a snarl.
'It's that way,' Wall replied easily. 'When I call for him, he'll come busting in.'
'And before he gets here, you'll be dead.'
Helen felt a faint lift of hope. If Fenwick believed that the sheriff was outside in the street — and he did not seem to doubt it — both of these men were handcuffed. Wall could not raise a shout and the hunted man could not shoot. She was still frightened for Tom, but the despair of that first moment had gone. The situation might work itself out without tragedy.
'Let's not have trouble, please,' she said anxiously.
Tom Wall's hands were hanging at his sides. 'Looks like I can't start it,' he said, grinning. 'Not with Brick's gun on me.'
'We're going out the back door, you an' me,' Fenwick said.
Wall shook his head. He had no intention of walking out to be shot in the alley.
'We'll finish this here,' he said.
Brick moved forward slowly, his shallow, intent eyes fixed on the other man. 'Damn you, do as I say,' he ordered. 'Get yore hands up.'
The face of Wall set mulishly. His arms still hung down. 'If I go West you'll be right on my heels,' he said.
Helen ran between the men. She faced Fenwick. Except for the scarlet streak of lipstick, her face was colorless.
'Get outa the way,' Brick snapped.
'No. You can't do it. I won't have you both killed here.'
From the street outside a voice called. 'Where are you, Tom?'
The steel-trap mouth of Fenwick loosened. His eyes slid to the door and returned to Wall. Slowly he began to back away.
'Don't move,' he said in a low voice. 'Don't answer, or I'll blast you.'
He went back, step by step, as far as the screen door, then wheeled and dashed through it on a run. They heard him tear open the back door and the slap of his running feet.