Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/124

 He tried to say: "To hell with Hawkins. That's what he's for." But the words stuck in his throat.

"I suppose that's so," he said, and smiled painfully. He had failed; he had known he would fail. Damn being a gentleman anyhow. It had never got him anywhere. That roughneck out in the West had it all over him; knew what he wanted and went after it. The thousand and one repressions of his code Tom McNair had never heard of. Damn McNair, too.

He tucked Kay in her car and then sadly got his own little bus and drove back to town. Not recklessly, but with due caution; even the memory of that early reckless drive to the ranch, that dare-devil sardonic figure at the wheel, could not force his law-abiding instinct to violate the speed limit.

It was the next day that Kay took her courage in her hands and went to Henry.

"Are you going to defend Tom McNair, father?"

He eyed her, his chin sunk on his breast, his mouth pursed.

"If the fellow had stayed and taken his medicine, I might have considered it. Now"

"I don't see what that has to do with it. It was our beef."

"That's no excuse for shooting a man. He got himself into this scrape; let him get himself out."

He ran his hands over some papers on his desk—he was entrenched behind it, an old trick of his—and she knew he had said the last word. But Henry after his usual fashion with his family had blundered; Bessie could have told him that. It was Bessie who, when Katherine had wanted a crest and motto for her note paper, had flippantly suggested, "Get, beget and forget," as the Dowling motto for their womenkind.

To the truths and half-truths from which Kay had built up a superman in Tom were now added a yearning pity and a hot-eyed championship. She saw him making his escape with every man's hand against him. She saw him riding hell-for-leather along dangerous trails, skirting precipices, sitting on his tired horse, a dramatic and wonderful figure