"Aurora----"

"No," she had taken up his golf bag and was walking away.

"Won't you answer me?" he pleaded.

"Get your ball out of this quarry," she said, relentlessly, "and I'll think about it."

It took Steve Ventnor thirteen strokes to play out of that quarry, which, for a fellow with a record of seventy-two at Apawomeck, was "going it." The first stroke he missed clean; the second he sliced into a clay-bank; his third struck the rocks and bounded back against the wall behind him, finding lodgment at last in some bushes where he took three more. To make matters worse, Aurora was laughing at him, hysterically, unrestrainedly, and Patricia and the Sphynx, who had appeared on the path above, were joining in the merriment.

"Oh, I'll lift," he growled at last.

"You can't," laughed Aurora. "It's against the rules." And Patricia appealed to, confirmed the statement.

Three more swings he took, each of them in impossible lies, the last of which smashed his niblick. After that there followed a period of strange calmness--of desperation, while he worked his ball into a good lie on the far side of the quarry from which, with a fine mashie shot he lifted it over the cliffs and into the open beyond.

Steve Ventnor toiled wearily up the hill at the heels of his caddy, struggling for his lost composure. He caught up with Aurora at a point half-way up where he took the golf bag from her shoulder and faced her again.

"Won't you answer me, Aurora?" he pleaded, breathlessly.

"No, I won't," she said, calmly. "You swore--horribly--in the bushes."

"I didn't."

"I heard you," firmly. "I'll never marry a man who swears," and she hurried on. When Ventnor joined the others, he found Patricia sitting on a rock making up the score, which at the present moment stood: Ventnor--20; McLemore--9.

"How do you like it, Steve?" asked Patricia, still figuring.

"Oh, it's great!" said Steve, ironically, holding up his shattered niblick. "I like granite, it's so spongy."

"I'm afraid you've got a bad temper, Steve."

But Ventnor had taken out his pipe, lit it and was now doggedly moving toward his ball.

The luck favored him on his next volley, for playing two mid-irons down the hill, he reached the level meadow below safely, while McLemore sliced his second into a row of hot frames, where an indignant horticulturist and two dogs contributed an interesting mental hazard.

But the Sphynx handed the farmer a dollar in exchange for lacerated feelings and gla.s.s, and the match went on. Over the brook McLemore lay thirteen, having "dubbed" his shot into the stream, but playing steadily after that reached the top of the long hill before them, safely in four more; while Ventnor lost his ball in the bushes and was now playing twenty-five.

CHAPTER XXI

From there on, the luck varied and at the Stockbridge farm the score stood McLemore, 21; Ventnor, 30. It seemed a difficult lead to overcome, for the Sphynx was playing straight with a mid-iron, while Steve, whose only hope lay in getting distance, had twice pulled into rough gra.s.s, which cost him lost b.a.l.l.s and extra strokes. The wonder was how he played at all, for Aurora had refused to marry him three times in the last twenty minutes. The result was inevitable, and so like the man in the adage, after playing thirty-eight strokes, he "went up in the air,"

missing shot after shot and relinquishing all claim to consideration, playing on only because fate seemed to demand it of him.

At the Van Westervelt's fence both men got off "good ones," landing well in the middle of the pasture and had gone forward into the field, their caddies close behind them, when from the shelter of a clump of trees along the stream to their left, there emerged a shadow. Aurora saw it first.

"It's a bull," she said.

"No, it's only a cow," ventured the Sphynx, whose tauric gla.s.ses were not adjusted to distances--or to bulls.

"I'm sure it's a bull," repeated Aurora.

Steve glanced at the beast over his shoulder, and then took a bra.s.sey from his bag.

"He won't bother us," he muttered. But the animal was approaching majestically, pausing now and then to paw up the dirt with his front hoofs and throwing a cloud of dust over his back.

"It's your parasol, Patty," said Aurora.

"Or Jimmy's vest," put in Patricia.

"You'd better run for it, you and Aurora," said Ventnor. "You can easily make the fence."

"And you?"

"I'm going to play this shot. It's the prettiest lie I've had all day."

"Come, Aurora," said Patricia, taking up her bag. "There's no time to lose. He's really coming this way," and gathering up her golf bag and skirts, she ran. The Sphynx, meanwhile, still holding his mid-iron in his hand, was undecided. His ball was twenty yards further on, and his eyes shifted uneasily from the bull to an old apple-tree within a reaching distance. The women by this time had reached a convenient stile and were perched upon it shouting.

"Run, Steve!" they cried. "He's coming!"

Ventnor, who was addressing his ball, glanced up for a moment and then swung. It was the prettiest shot that he had made all day, for the ball started with a low trajectory and soared and soared, clearing the fence on the far side of the field, a carry of two hundred yards, and landed in the next meadow. Then he turned, club in hand, and looked at the bull which now stood twenty paces away, eying them viciously. It was too late to make a sprint for the fence, and like McLemore, Steve wistfully eyed the apple-tree. But he brandished his bra.s.sey manfully and prepared to jump aside if the bull lowered his head and rushed him. It was at this moment that Jimmy McLemore, white as a sheet, made up his mind to run.

Jimmy's red vest decided the matter, and scorning Ventnor, with a bellow which lent wings to Jimmy's feet, the brute lowered its thick head and charged, pa.s.sing like a tornado under the limb to which McLemore had fled for safety. Steve Ventnor forgot to be frightened and stood leaning on his club roaring with laughter, for the Sphynx's dignity had always been a fearful and wonderful thing to him. He heard the voices of the women behind him, pleading with him to run, but in his heart Steve Ventnor made a mighty resolution that run he would not. He had no dignity like Jimmy's to lose, but the spectacle Jimmy made decided him.

It took some strength of mind to moderate his pace as he picked up Patricia's red parasol and walked toward the fence. The bull however, refused to be distracted, and stood pawing the ground beneath the apple-tree, bellowing up at the soles of the Sphynx's boots and making havoc of the beautiful Campbell mid-iron, which was the only thing of Jimmy's that he could touch.

The women on the stile were laughing, Patricia frankly, uncontrollably, Aurora nervously, looking at Steve as he came up with a queer little anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows.

"I haven't any patience with you," she said. "You might have been gored to death."

Ventnor was still laughing. "I never saw Jimmy run before," he said.

"We'll have to get him out of that somehow. I think I'll have a try at it with Patricia's parasol."

But Patricia quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his hand. Her little drama had worked out far more beautifully than she had ever hoped it would, and she didn't propose to have it ruined now.

"Nothing of the sort," she cried. "You may do whatever you like with your own skin, but that is a perfectly good French parasol, and it's mine." And she put it behind her back.

Meanwhile the Sphynx was pelting the brute below him with apples and shouting anathema, both of which rolled from the animal's impervious back, as he circled angrily around the tree, up which he showed every disposition to climb. From tragic-comedy the scene had degenerated into broadest farce.

"It's like Sothern playing a part of Georgie Cohan's," commented Patricia, sweetly. "Is he apt to be there all day?"

"It looks so," said Aurora, struggling between anxiety and laughter. "We really ought to do something."

But Patricia had settled herself comfortably on the top rail of the fence. Things were going very much to her liking.

"What?" she asked.

"Tell somebody. There's a wagon coming this way now."

"But how about the Cross-Country Cup?" looking at her watch. "There's only an hour and a half to finish in."