Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine. Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr. McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and “yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'” Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk—if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin—until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon—young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink—the only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.
“I can write a lot quicker than Lin,” said Billy, upon arriving. “He was fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to the cabin for my clothes.”
“You don't say!” said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him again.
When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors. But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. “Honey Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,” he remarked. “He says you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times.”
“Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,” said Jessamine, buoyantly. “And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it clears, and then we'll go for our ride.”
“Yes,” said Billy. “When does a man get too old to marry?”
“I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.”
“Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he must be thirty.”
“Old!” exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her table.
“But Lin ain't been married very much,” pursued Billy. “Mother's the only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?”
“It's better to,” said Jessamine.
“Ah, I don't think so,” said Billy, with disparagement. “You ought to see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,” said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. “Why won't you if he don't mind?”
She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph called her to the front room, and Billy's young mind shifted to inquiries about the cipher alphabet. And she gained at least an hour teaching him to read various words by the sound. At dinner, too, he was refreshingly silent. But such silences are unsafe, and the weather was still bad. Four o'clock found them much where they had been at eight.
“Please tell me why you won't leave Lin marry you.” He was at the window, kicking the wall.
“That's nine times since dinner,” she replied, with tireless good humor. “Now if you ask me twelve—”
“You'll tell?” said the boy, swiftly.
She broke into a laugh. “No. I'll go riding and you'll stay at home. When I was little and would ask things beyond me, they only gave me three times.”
“I've got two more, anyway. Ha-ha!”
“Better save 'em up, though.”
“What did they do to you? Ah, I don't want to go a-riding. It's nasty all over.” He stared out at the day against which Separ's doors had been tight closed since morning. Eight hours of furious wind had raised the dust like a sea. “I wish the old train would come,” observed Billy, continuing to kick the wall. “I wish I was going somewheres.” Smoky, level, and hot, the south wind leapt into Separ across five hundred unbroken miles. The plain was blanketed in a tawny eclipse. Each minute the near buildings became invisible in a turbulent herd of clouds. Above this travelling blur of the soil the top of the water-tank alone rose bulging into the clear sun. The sand spirals would lick like flames along the bulk of the lofty tub, and soar skyward. It was not shipping season. The freight-cars stood idle in a long line. No cattle huddled in the corrals. No strangers moved in town. No cow-ponies dozed in front of the saloon. Their riders were distant in ranch and camp. Human noise was extinct in Separ. Beneath the thunder of the sultry blasts the place lay dead in its flapping shroud of dust. “Why won't you tell me?” droned Billy. For some time he had been returning, like a mosquito brushed away.
“That's ten times,” said Jessamine, promptly.
“Oh, goodness! Pretty soon I'll not be glad I came. I'm about twiced as less glad now.”
“Well,” said Jessamine, “there's a man coming to-day to mend the government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I ask him?”
Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not make a direct rejoinder. “I guess I'll go outside now,” said he, with a threat in his tone.
She continued mending his stockings. Finished ones lay rolled at one side of her chair, and upon the other were more waiting her attention.
“And I'm going to turn back hand-springs on top of all the freight-cars,” he stated, more loudly.
She indulged again in merriment, laughing sweetly at him, and without restraint.
“And I'm sick of what you all keep a-saying to me!” he shouted. “Just as if I was a baby.”
“Why, Billy, who ever said you were a baby?”
“All of you do. Honey, and Lin, and you, now, and everybody. What makes you say 'that's nine times, Billy; oh, Billy, that's ten times,' if you don't mean I'm a baby? And you laugh me off, just like they do, and just like I was a regular baby. You won't tell me—”
“Billy, listen. Did nobody ever ask you something you did not want to tell them?”
“That's not a bit the same, because—because—because I treat 'em square and because it's not their business. But every time I ask anybody 'most anything, they say I'm not old enough to understand; and I'll be ten soon. And it is my business when it's about the kind of a mother I'm agoing to have. Suppose I quit acting square, an' told 'em, when they bothered me, they weren't young enough to understand! Wish I had. Guess I will, too, and watch 'em step around.” For a moment his mind dwelt upon this, and he whistled a revengeful strain.
“Goodness, Billy!” said Jessamine, at the sight of the next stocking. “The whole heel is scorched off.”
He eyed the ruin with indifference. “Ah, that was last month when I and Lin shot the bear in the swamp willows. He made me dry off my legs. Chuck it away.”
“And spoil the pair? No, indeed!”
“Mother always chucked 'em, an' father'd buy new ones till I skipped from home. Lin kind o' mends 'em.”
“Does he?” said Jessamine, softly. And she looked at the photograph.
“Yes. What made you write him for to let me come and bring my stockin's and things?”
“Don't you see, Billy, there is so little work at this station that I'd be looking out of the window all day just the pitiful way you do?”
“Oh!” Billy pondered. “And so I said to Lin,” he continued, “why didn't he send down his own clothes, too, an' let you fix 'em all. And Honey Wiggin laughed right in his coffee-cup so it all sploshed out. And the cook he asked me if mother used to mend Lin's clothes. But I guess she chucked 'em like she always did father's and mine. I was with father, you know, when mother was married to Lin that time.” He paused again, while his thoughts and fears struggled. “But Lin says I needn't ever go back,” he went on, reasoning and confiding to her. “Lin don't like mother any more, I guess.” His pondering grew still deeper, and he looked at Jessamine for some while. Then his face wakened with a new theory. “Don't Lin like you any more?” he inquired.
“Oh,” cried Jessamine, crimsoning, “yes! Why, he sent you to me!”
“Well, he got hot in camp when I said that about sending his clothes to you. He quit supper pretty soon, and went away off a walking. And that's another time they said I was too young. But Lin don't come to see you any more.”
“Why, I hope he loves me,” murmured Jessamine. “Always.”
“Well, I hope so too,” said Billy, earnestly. “For I like you. When I seen him show you our cabin on Box Elder, and the room he had fixed for you, I was glad you were coming to be my mother. Mother used to be awful. I wouldn't 'a' minded her licking me if she'd done other things. Ah, pshaw! I wasn't going to stand that.” Billy now came close to Jessamine. “I do wish you would come and live with me and Lin,” said he. “Lin's awful nice.”
“Don't I know it?” said Jessamine, tenderly.
“Cause I heard you say you were going to marry him,” went on Billy. “And I seen him kiss you and you let him that time we went away when you found out about mother. And you're not mad, and he's not, and nothing happens at all, all the same! Won't you tell me, please?”
Jessamine's eyes were glistening, and she took him in her lap. She was not going to tell him that he was too young this time. But whatever things she had shaped to say to the boy were never said.
Through the noise of the gale came the steadier sound of the train, and the girl rose quickly to preside over her ticket-office and duties behind the railing in the front room of the station. The boy ran to the window to watch the great event of Separ's day. The locomotive loomed out from the yellow clots of drift, paused at the water-tank, and then with steam and humming came slowly on by the platform. Slowly its long dust-choked train emerged trundling behind it, and ponderously halted. There was no one to go. No one came to buy a ticket of Jessamine. The conductor looked in on business, but she had no telegraphic orders for him. The express agent jumped off and looked in for pleasure. He received his daily smile and nod of friendly discouragement. Then the light bundle of mail was flung inside the door. Separ had no mail to go out. As she was picking up the letters young Billy passed her like a shadow, and fled out. Two passengers had descended from the train, a man and a large woman. His clothes were loose and careless upon him. He held valises, and stood uncertainly looking about him in the storm. Her firm, heavy body was closely dressed. In her hat was a large, handsome feather. Along between the several cars brakemen leaned out, watched her, and grinned to each other. But her big, hard-shining blue eyes were fixed curiously upon the station where Jessamine was.
“It's all night we may be here, is it?” she said to the man, harshly.
“How am I to help that?” he retorted.
“I'll help it. If this hotel's the sty it used to be, I'll walk to Tommy's. I've not saw him since I left Bear Creek.”
She stalked into the hotel, while the man went slowly to the station. He entered, and found Jessamine behind her railing, sorting the slim mail.
“Good-evening,” he said. “Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here.”
“For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the pole-wagon at Drybone.”
This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
“Governor Barker has not been around here?” he said.
“Not yet, sir. We understand he is expected through on a hunting-trip.”
“I suppose there is room for two and a trunk on that wagon?”
“I reckon so, sir.” Jessamine glanced at the man, and he took himself out. Most men took themselves out if Jessamine so willed; and it was mostly achieved thus, in amity.
On the platform the man found his wife again.
“Then I needn't to walk to Tommy's,” she said. “And we'll eat as we travel. But you'll wait till I'm through with her.” She made a gesture toward the station.
“Why—why—what do you want with her. Don't you know who she is?”
“It was me told you who she was, James Lusk. You'll wait till I've been and asked her after Lin McLean's health, and till I've saw how the likes of her talks to the likes of me.”
He made a feeble protest that this would do no one any good.
“Sew yourself up, James Lusk. If it has been your idea I come with yus clear from Laramie to watch yus plant telegraph-poles in the sage-brush, why you're off. I ain't heard much 'o Lin since the day he learned it was you and not him that was my husband. And I've come back in this country to have a look at my old friends—and” (she laughed loudly and nodded at the station) “my old friends' new friends!”
Thus ordered, the husband wandered away to find his wagon and the horse.
Jessamine, in the office, had finished her station duties and returned to her needle. She sat contemplating the scorched sock of Billy's, and heard a heavy step at the threshold. She turned, and there was the large woman with the feather quietly surveying her. The words which the stranger spoke then were usual enough for a beginning. But there was something of threat in the strong animal countenance, something of laughter ready to break out. Much beauty of its kind had evidently been in the face, and now, as substitute for what was gone, was the brag look of assertion that it was still all there. Many stranded travellers knocked at Jessamine's door, and now, as always, she offered the hospitalities of her neat abode, the only room in Separ fit for a woman. As she spoke, and the guest surveyed and listened, the door blew shut with a crash.
Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his father.
“How you have grown!” the man was saying; and he smiled. “Come, shake hands. I did not think to see you here.”
“Dare you to touch me!” Billy screamed. “No, I'll never come with you. Lin says I needn't to.”
The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the wheel. “Lord, Lord!” he muttered.
His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.
Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it, and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ. Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream, sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of him—a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently he lifted the pistol and looked at its name—the word “Neighbor” engraved upon it.
“I wonder,” said he, aloud, “if she keeps the rust off mine?” Then he lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word “Neighbor.”
The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but no one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the eye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now, upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled upon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to everything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead noise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung low. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into his face and went away.
“Good-evening,” said he, clearing his throat. “We heard you was in cow-camp.”
The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs out as he sat.
“You look natural,” said the woman, familiarly.
“Seem to be fixed nice here,” continued the man. “Hadn't heard of it. Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.”
“Your wheel wants greasing,” said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
“Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.”
“Stay to supper,” said McLean, always seated on his chair.
“Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.” He twitched the reins.
McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. “Better stay to supper,” he suggested, very distinctly.
“It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before he—”
The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. “Better stay to supper,” drawled McLean.
The man looked up at his wife.
“So yus need me!” she broke out. “Ain't got heart enough in yer played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.”
The husband stepped to the ground. “I didn't suppose you'd want—”
“Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.”
Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her blue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
“No, yus ain't changed,” she said. “Same in your looks and same in your actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?”
“I just wanted chickens for supper,” said he.
Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. “I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares. As for—” She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name “Neighbor.” “As for you,” she continued to Mr. Lusk, “don't you be standing dumb same as the horse.”
“Better take him to the stable, Lusk,” said McLean.
He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he was, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down in the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he made ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the setting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host looked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal was served, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back to him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced something. He saw that she had been examining “Neighbor,” and his face hardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated quietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down to their meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from one or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch and mentioned the hour.
“Yu've not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the table.
“I'm going,” asserted Lusk. “Governor Barker may start out. I've got my interests to look after.”
“Why, sure,” said Lin. “I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just me.”
Lusk rose and looked at his wife. “It'll be ten now before we get to Drybone,” said he. And he went down to the stable.
The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. “I know you seen me,” she said, without looking at him.
“Saw you when?”
“I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.” She sat twisting and pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing that he wished to reply.
“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I'll tell you I know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.”
She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could have seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on his arms.
“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another sudden laugh. “I knowed about her—all. Things get heard of in this world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!” Her voice grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly resumed: “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me a queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait—wait, Lin! Yu' never hit me yet.”
“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Nor now. I'm not Lusk.”
“Yu' looked so—so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days. Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say, 'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!”
“Yes,” breathed McLean.
“She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office, but—”
“I know,” the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
“It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss Jessamine Buckner?'”
At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a flash.
“And she spoke pleasant to me—pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never speaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says she. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.
“Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
“I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep' a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen your six-shooter right by it—and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
“'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced. I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
“'I know,” she says, thoughtful-like.
“And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
“'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never suspicion the place—but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is the kind that breaks—if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait, Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's walled up for a while.”
“She could have told you it was a lie,” said the cow-puncher.
“She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.' 'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second Best.'
“Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
“And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and little “Neighbor,” which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin' me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell her about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to me till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they? You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin—your Lin, not mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right now—he has been gay—gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of his! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't touch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for you hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is different when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they ain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make yus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their nature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll be homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and found another girl.'
“Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin' what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin' at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw him I would tell him to find a home.'”
“Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing her?” asked the cow-puncher.
Mrs. Lusk laughed. “Oh, you innocent!” said she.
“She said if I came she would leave Separ,” muttered McLean, brooding.
Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
“I have kept my promise,” Lin continued.
“Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away. Maybe she's gone.”
“What's that?” said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. “I could be there by to-morrow night,” he murmured. Then his face softened. “She would never do such a thing!” he said, to himself.
He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy beauty relighted the features.
“You are the same, same Lin everyways,” she said. “A woman is too many for you still, Lin!” she whispered.
At her summons he looked up from his revery.
“Lin, I would not have treated you so.”
The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
“You!” he said. “At least I've had plenty of education in you.”
“Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
“I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon. Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?”
“I can't hardly say,” said the cow-puncher. “Only noticing him so turruble anxious to quit me—well, a man acts without thinking.”
“You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were good times.”
“Which times?”
“You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.”
“I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?”
“Yus never loved me!” she exclaimed.
“Shucks!”
“Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you did. Only say it was once that way.” And as he sat, she came and put her arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking after him and smiling.
McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable, where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes. Then he continued on his way. “Lusk!” he called, presently, and in a few steps more, “Lusk!” Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the husband he began, with quiet evenness, “Your wife wants to know—” But he stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The door was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the road went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars were faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks as they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the trees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by sounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses fed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it again. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone there. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of the corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the roof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the vine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle of the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But he ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the corral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles—men's saddles—from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with the horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she had sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look in at the door.
“Lusk has gone,” said he. “I don't know what he expected you would do, or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.”
She looked at him with her dumb stare. “Gone?” she said.
“Get up and ride,” said McLean. “You are going to Drybone.”
“Drybone?” she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin. Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small bundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse beside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his cabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and be at home.
She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed. “It's about his size,” she murmured.
Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle—this they had often done together in former years—and so they took their way down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
“I will ask you one thing,” said Lin, after ten miles.
The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
“Did I understand that she—Miss Buckner, I mean—mentioned she might be going away from Separ?”
“How do I know what you understood?”
“I thought you said—”
“Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.” Her laugh rang out, loud and forlorn—one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have sounded far across the sage-brush. “You men are rich,” she said.
They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
“Put your carbine down,” said McLean to Lusk. “It's not robbers. It's your wife I'm bringing you.” He spoke very quietly.
The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher “Get in, then,” he said to his wife.
“Town's not far now,” said Lin. “Maybe you would prefer riding the balance of the way?”
“I'd—” But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three continued slowly climbing the hill together.
From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the road slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the whole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road. The many sounds—feet, voices, and music—grew clearer, unravelling from their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be known.
“There's a dance to-night,” said the wife to the husband. “Hurry.”
He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
“I'm telling you to hurry,” she repeated. “My new dress is in that wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than you.”
She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean, following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher was still less to his mind.
“It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,” mused Lin, as he rode slowly along. “He don't care for himself any more.”