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."You must have bought out all the tin decorations they had in stock, didn't you?"Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at him."If I did, it's my own affair," she retorted."I paid for the tin decorations with my own money.""Oh, you did! Well, you might have been in better business than paying for that kind of thing.You might," he sneered up at her, "have been paying for your keep these last three years, if you've got more money of your own than you know what to do with."Jean could not ride off under the sting of that gratuitous insult.She held Pard quiet and looked down at him with hate in her eyes."I expect," she said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long that my own money has been paying for my 'keep' these last three years; for that and for other things that did not benefit me in the least.""I'd like to know what you mean by that!" Carl caught Pard by the bridle-rein and looked up at her in a white fury that startled even Jean, accustomed as she was to his sudden rages that contrasted with his sullen attitude toward the world."What do you think I would mean? Let go my bridle.I don't want to quarrel with you.""What did you mean by proving—what do you expect to prove?" His hand was heavy on the rein, so that Pard began to fret under the restraint."You've got to quit running around all over the country with them show folks, and stay at home and behave yourself.You've got to quit hanging out at the Lazy A.I've stood as much as I'm going to stand of your performances.You get down off that horse and go into the house and behave yourself; that's what you'll do! If you haven't got any shame or decency—"Jean scarcely knew what she did, just then.She must have dug Pard with her spurs, because the first thing that she realized was the lunge he gave.Carl's hold slipped from the rein, as he was jerked sidewise.He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt, and he called her a name she had never heard spoken before in her life.A rod or so away she pulled up and turned to face him, but the words she would have spoken stuck in her throat.She had never seen Carl Douglas look like that; she had seen him when he was furious, she had seen him when he sulked, but she had never seen him look like that.He called her to come back.He made threats of what he would do if she refused to obey him.He shook his fist at her.He behaved like a man temporarily robbed of his reason; his eyes, as he came up glaring at her, were the eyes of a madman.Jean felt a tremor of dread while she looked at him and listened to him.He was almost within reach of her again when she wheeled and went off up the trail at a run.She looked back often, half fearing that he would get a horse and follow her, but he stood just where she had left him, and he seemed to be still uttering threats and groundless accusations as long as she was in sight.CHAPTER XVIFOR ONCE AT LEAST LITE HAD HIS WAYHalf a mile she galloped, and met Lite coming home.She glanced over her shoulder before she pulled Pard down to a walk, and Lite's greeting, as he turned and rode alongside her, was a question.He wanted to know what was the matter with her.He listened with his old manner of repression while she told him, and he made no comment whatever until she had finished."You must have made him pretty sore," he said dispassionately."I don't think myself that you ought to stay over to the ranch alone.Why don't you do as he says?""And go back to the Bar Nothing?" Jean shivered a little."Nothing could make me go back there! Lite, you don't understand.He acted like a crazy man; and I hadn't said anything to stir him up like that.He was—Lite, he scared me! I couldn't stay on the ranch with him.I couldn't be in the same room with him.""You can't go on staying at the Lazy A," Lite told her flatly."There's no other place where I'd stay.""You could," Lite pointed out, "stay in town and go back and forth with the rest of the bunch.It would be a lot better, any way you look at it.""It would be a lot worse.There's my book; I wouldn't have any chance to write on that.And there's the expense.I'm saving every nickel I possibly can, Lite, and you know what for.And there's the bunch—I see enough of them during working hours.I'd go crazy if I had to live with them.Lite, they've put me in playing leads! I'm to get a hundred dollars a week! Just think of that! And Burns says that I'll have to go back to Los Angeles with them when they go this fall, because the contract I signed lasts for a year."She sighed."I rode over to tell you about it.It seemed to be good news, when I left home
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