Crossroads Read Online Free

Her eyes swung around to him slowly, slowly as if a careful force regulated the movement. He found himself staring into pitchy black depths, wide, unconcerned, meaningless. He felt as if the eyes were looking through him and pasthim at some object in the infinite distance. For a man squints to see an object near at hand but stares with open eye at something far away. Judging by her eyes, he might have been a speck of white on the far horizon, an indefinite particle, whether cloud or sail. It whipped all the fighting instinct into his brain.
    “My name,” he said doggedly, “is Dix Van Dyck.”
    Her voice, in answer, was neither frivolous nor impertinent, but rather that of one who is wearied by the necessity of speech. “My name don’t concern you, stranger. If you want to know it, ask one of the men. He’ll tell you, along with a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t be sitting here.”
    “Lady,” answered Dix Van Dyck, “I’ve heard all those reasons. To put it straight, that’s why I’m here.”
    The first spark of interest burned up in the dark eyes, and something like the ghost of a smile softened her mouth at the corners, as if in faint recognition of a kindred spirit.
    “I’ve heard about good luck that follows you and bad luck that follows everyone around you.”
    “You don’t believe it?” she asked, growing somewhat cold again.
    “I believe it,” said Dix Van Dyck calmly, “as if I read it in the Bible, but it ain’t any real reason why you should sit here alone.”
    “Listen,” said the girl, and she leaned gravely toward him, “I got an idea that I know what you are, and I like your kind. But you’re on the wrong trail…a cold trail, partner. No matter what they told you, they didn’t tell you enough, or you’d have been stopped. There’s bad luck around me. That ain’t all. There’s hell!”
    Her eyes widened, and she cast a glance over her shoulder—as if fate listened there, an impalpable presence, grinning invisibly at the warning she spoke to Dix Van Dyck. She had been beautiful even when she satthere impassively, but, now that a color was flushing the olive-tinted skin and life had come into her eyes, she was the most lovely woman Dix Van Dyck had ever seen. She thrilled him like a strain of music. She uplifted him like a passage of noble poetry. She lured him like the purple distances of the desert.
    “Lady,” he said, “speakin’ in general, the only thing I want is action, and being near you promises a pile of it. If I bother you, I’ll be on my way. If I don’t, I’d sure like to hang around a while.”
    She considered this cavalier utterance with a frown and a thoughtful, sidewise glance that suddenly lifted to his face. “If I told you to go, would you?” she asked.
    Dix Van Dyck flushed. “If you say the word, there ain’t nothing I’d do quicker.”
    “Honest?”
    The blood died away from his face and left it splotched with gray, tans, and purples. “Talkin’ man to man,” he said evenly, “it’d be some hard job to break away just now, but I’ll go, if I have to.”
    “Then go,” said the girl sharply.
    The friendliness died from her eyes, and they became in an instant as black as they had been at the first. He pushed back his chair, setting his teeth in anger. But, even as he caught the edge of the table and put weight on it to rise, he knew that he could not go. It was like a desertion before the battle was fought. It was like cowardice under fire. He settled back in the chair, breathing hard, and glared at her.
    “You’re saying that to try me out?” he said.
    “I never meant anything more in my life,” said the girl.
    “Yet,” he persisted, “you was pretty friendly only a minute ago.”
    “Was I?” she queried with calm-eyed insolence. “Well, I’m tired of you now.”
    He felt a great desire to take that round, slender throat between thumbs and forefingers; he could almost tell how it would crunch under the pressure. Then he