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86            ABBOTT'S MONTHLY

Leroy took Shirley into his arms. She apparently did not notice, for when he turned her from the window there was still that far-away look in her eyes. She spoke in a bated whisper.

"Lee, do you think it's safe, here?"

"Sure! Certainly, darling. How frightened my little Shirley is. Come, Shirley, give Lee a nice big kiss. Come, and calm yourself." But she heeded not nor heard him, her eyes returned to the window where she seemed to be shaping thought against the background of swishing rain. 

Summers thought of his prank of the morning and allowed that for Shirley's perversity. He drew her tightly against him with one arm and lifter her face to his by a sportive clasp on the chin. She did not resist nor did she respond. She laid there with tightly closed eyes, rigid and unresponsive. At length she shuddered. Summers marveled at her peculiar behavior but was himself too aggressively ardent to be quelled by coolness on her part. It only inflamed him to a higher pitch. 

"Shirley, I'm not going to let you go. I can't. I can't live without you!"

"Leroy, please. Please do not speak like that! Don't!"

"That's the way I feel, Shirley, dear!"

"I know it, Leroy, and that's the devil of it!" She stamped her tiny foot angrily.

"The devil of what?" Summers asked tensely. 

"Of our situation!" Shirley replied huskily.

"Shirley," Summers sighed with relief and pressed her to his breast, "you adorable little coward!"

Then ensued a distinct and protracted pause, through which the hubbub of the storm became oppressive. Shirley spoke first, in a voice strangely not her own. 

"Lee, do you really love me?" Leroy's eyes admonished her but she went on undaunted. "You know people say you are such a rascal, Lee! Can I believe you?"

"You can, Shirley. I do love you with all my heart." He clipped his lips and said no more. 

But there was need for no more!

Shirley knew by the look in the man's eyes and the quality of his voice that Leroy Summers meant every word he uttered. Fickle as people branded Lee, Shirley Essington knew that she loved and was loved by him. 

"Do you," Leroy started, a bantering smile played over his lips, "perchance love me just a little bit, Shirley, dear?"

Shirley wanted, at that moment, to yell, "I love you! I love you, Lee Summers!" but she couldn't make a sound. She felt a sudden vagueness at the pit of her stomach, her head was lost in a whirl. She reeled and would have fallen had not Lee been so vigilant. 

THE look of terror in Shirley's eyes completely baffled Summers. He had heard someone enter. He had turned and seen two men rush in out of the storm. He recognized Sam, and would have branded the red-faced stranger in the hard-worn oil-skins, as a petty rum-runner, if Sam's slight but evident obsequiousness had not indicated him as a visiting fisherman. But what was there in that? Perhaps the girl's nerves were wrought by the storm. They did, however, make an abrupt entrance, but so did anyone coming out of a storm. Lee met the scurrying Mammy Lou in the center of the room. She glanced at the girl's face and apprehension thickened on her dusky brow.

"Come, lay her down," she ordered as she led the way to the bedroom.

The fiery-faced fisherman heaved his burden to the floor with a surly grunt. Then he moved about tentatively, as if feeling the state of his muscles. But never did he suffer his eyes to stray from Leroy and the limp Shirley. He seemed in every way unduly interested.

"What's the matter with her?" he demanded in a stentorian drawl.

"Who wants to know?" Lee retorted. He hated interfering busybodies and he disliked that man instinctively.

"I do!" the man thundered in the air of an outraged bully.

"Well who in the hell are you?"Summers asked in a cool level voice, and took great pride in his control, for he would love to have been at the man's throat. 

"Who am I?" he reiterated with hauteur and sallied over to Lee. Summers heard the determined tread approach from behind him and sharply wondered if the beast would fell him from the rear. Nevertheless he exercised great care an moved with cool deliberation, as he rested

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for JANUARY, 1931       87

Shirley's limp body in Mammy Lou's waiting arms.

Lee turned around abruptly and almost bumped against the blustering fisherman, just a few hands-breadth from his half-truculent, half-clownish face. The unusually red-skin evinced signs of tenderness in spite of the hard lines of the face. His hair and nails bore signs of recent grooming, perhaps that morning. 

"You want to know who I am?"

"Yes." Leroy quipped from between clenched teeth. Lee's fighting blood was thumping audibly in his ears.

"You know that young woman?"

Lee checked a mad desire to lunge upon the man. He did not even speak.

"You know her, all right." The fisherman gloated. There was venomous mockery in his voice. "Well, I'm her man! Get me?" He leaned nearer as if to see his ribald words sink in.

Indeed Lee did get him! Got him flush on the chin, with all the might of a good right arm, only, though to regret his rashness the next instant. There was the stench of liquor about the man. Obviously he was drunk. Perhaps he had never seen Shirley before. Lee, for the moment felt that he could have dealt with the man less severely.

Lee's compunction, however, did not stop the stricken man. He toppled backward over the table, rolled across the room and only came to a stop when he sprawled half against the side wall. But he was not done for. He climbed back to his feet, and tottered toward Lee in affected grogginess. He too looked about him sharply beneath the artifice of a limp neck. Suddenly he snapped out of it, and darting to the side wall pulled down gun and shells. Sam and Lee rushed at him, but he was quicker. They rushed upon the muzzle of a loaded gun. 

"Not to [[too]] fast my young men. I turn a few tricks myself." He laughed in grim satisfaction, and reaching over, tweaked Lee's chin provokingly. "She's a fine gal, eh, moustache?"

Lee grabbed the barrel of the gun, but the greasy steel slipped out of his hand at the man's backward jerk.

"Pretty lively fellow, eh, moustache. I'd pump you full of bird feed if I didn't sorter like you. But you can't keep my gal. That's that, and that's final! I'm going to take her and now, before I have to kill you to do it."

Lee made an excruciating grimace of resolute determination, but as Sam passed him, on his way to bear the girl off, as he was directed, his look quelled the foolhardy impulses that were racking Lee's fevered brain. Old Sam seemed to say, "Be calm. Have faith in me." He had bowed obsequiously at the man's word but there was the wily confidence of the fox in the beady eyes that looked into Lee's. A moment later Sam re-entered with the girl wrapped in an oilskin. 

"In my boat!" the brute commanded.

Sam scurried out into the storm. The man with the gun, in the arrogant way of a victor, came over to Lee. "Listen, moustache," he said in dead level tones, "the best thing for you to do is to lay out of this affair. I've had my eyes on her for years and I usually get what I want!" Slowly he backed to the door. He seemed about to say more, when the sputter and throb of a starting engine reached them.

"That damned fool!" he swore and disappeared into the storm.

Leroy secured another gun and followed, but after an arduous search found neither man nor boats about the mooring. The air was so thick with rain beaten into a fine spray by the wind, that he was unable to see his own length ahead of him. He traveled about the platform groping the rude planks as he went. Bewildered, nervous and sopping wet, Lee stumbled back into the house.

Mammy Lou tried her best to console him. She fitted him up in dry clothes and bid him comfort himself before the fire she had kindled. However it was not before he had paced himself tired that he accepted the solace of the fireside. 

"Mammy Lou, do you think them safe?"

"Mistah Lee, don't you know what a ole fox is dat dare husban' ub mine?"

"What will he do?"

"I don't know, Mistah Lee. He jest wisput to tell you not ta worry. And if I know Sam, you don't need ta worry."

Lee seemed for some time to be struggling with himself before he again resigned himself to calmness.

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