Read Online Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982) by Zane Grey - Free Book Online

humiliation he must suffer if he betrayed himself! Hard he fought for composure and dignity to hide his secret.
    "Adam, in matters of the heart, where two gentlemen admire the lady in question, the choice is always left to her," began Guerd, with something of mockery in his rich voice. A devil gleamed from him then, and the look of him, the stature, the gallant action of him as he bowed before Margarita, fascinated Adam even in his miserable struggle to appear a man.
    "But, Guerd, you--you've known Margarita only a few moments," he expostulated, and the sound of his voice made him weak. "How can you put such a choice to--to her? It's--it's an insult."
    "Adam, that is for Margarita to decide," responded Guerd. "Women change. It is something you have not learned." Then as he turned to Margarita he seemed to blaze with magnetism. The grace of him and the beauty of him in that moment made of him a perfect physical embodiment of the emotions of which he was master. He knew his power over women. "Margarita, Adam and I are brothers. We are always falling in love with the same girl. You must choose between us. Adam would tie you down--keep you from the eyes of other men. I would leave you free as a bird."
    And he bent over to whisper in her ear, with his strong brown hand on her arm, at once gallant yet masterful.
    The scene was a nightmare to Adam. How could this be something that was happening? But he had sight! Margarita seemed a transformed creature, shy, coy, alluring; with the half-veiled dusky eyes, heavy-lidded, lighted with the same fire that had shone in them for Adam.
    "Margarita, will you come?" cried Adam, goaded to end this situation.
    "No," she replied, softly.
    "I beg of you--come!" implored Adam.
    The girl shook her black head. A haunting mockery hung around her, in her slight smile, in the light of her face. She radiated a strange glow like the warm shade of an opal. Older she seemed to Adam and surer of herself and somewhat deeper in that mystic obsession of passion he had often sensed in her. No spiritual conception of what Adam regarded as his obligation to her could ever dawn in that little brain. She loved her pretty face and beautiful body. She gloried in her power over men. And the new man she felt to be still unwon--who was stronger of instinct and harder' to hold, under whose brutal hand she would cringe and thrill and pant and fight--him she would choose. So Adam read Margarita in that moment. If he had felt love for her, which he doubted, it was dead. A great pity flooded over him. It seemed that of the three there, he was the only one who was true and who understood.
    "Margarita, have you forgotten last night?" asked Adam huskily.
    "Ah, senor--so long ago and far away!" she said.
    Adam whirled abruptly and, plunging into the thicket of mesquites, he tore a way through, unmindful of the thorns. When he reached his quarters there was blood on his hands and face, but the sting of the thorns was as nothing to the hurt in his heart. He lay down.
    "Again!" he whispered. "Guerd has come--and it's the same old story. Only worse!...But, it's better so! I--I didn't know--her!...Arallanes knew--he told me...And I--I dreamed so many--many fool things. Yes--it's better--better. I didn't love her right. It--it was something she roused. I never loved her--but if I did love her--it's gone. It's not loss that--that stabs me now. It's Guerd--Guerd! Again--and I ran off from him...'So long ago and far away,' she said! Are all women like that? I can't believe it. I never will. I remember my mother."

    Chapter VI
    That night in the dead late hours Adam suddenly awoke. The night seemed the same as all the desert nights--dark and cool under the mesquites--the same dead, unbroken silence. Adam's keen intentness could not detect a slightest sound of wind or brush or beast. Something had pierced his slumbers, and as he pondered deeply there seemed to come out of the vagueness beyond that impenetrable wall of sleep a voice, a cry,