CHAPTER VIII
THE white-rimmed eyes of the porter rolled admiringly toward McCoy as the cattleman disappeared into the sleeper. “Some kick, b’lieve me!” he murmured to the world at large.
Rowan stopped at the section where Norma Tait sat. “I’m going forward to the day coach,” he explained. “If there’s anything I can do for you, Norma, now or at any time, I want you to call on me.”
The woman looked at him, a man from his soles up, coffee-brown, lean, steady as a ground-sunk rock. She knew his standing in the countryside. His fellows liked him, trusted him, followed him, for by the grace of Heaven he had been born a leader of men. McCoy was no plaster saint. The wild and sometimes lawless way of his kind he had trodden, but always there burned in him the dynamic spark of self-respect that lifted him above meanness, held him to loyalty and decency. It came to her with a surge of emotion that here a woman’s love could find safe anchorage. What a fool she had been to throw him aside in the pride of her youth!
“Why should I ask favours of you? What have I ever done but bring trouble and unhappiness to you?” she cried in a low voice.
“Never mind that. If there’s anything I can do for you I’m here to do it.”
She gulped down a sob. “No, you’ve done enough for me—too much. Joe will hear that you drove me to town. He’ll make trouble for you. I know him.” A faint flush of anger dyed her thin cheeks. “No, I’ll go my road and you’ll go yours. I’m an old woman already in my feelings. I’m burned out, seems like. But you’re young. Forget there was ever such a girl as Norma Davis.”
He hesitated, uncertain what to say, and while he groped she spoke again:
“There’s a girl waiting for you somewhere, Rowan. Go and find her—and marry her.”
Beneath the tan he flushed, but his eyes did not waver. “I’m going to her now, Norma.”
“Now?” Her surprised glance swept the dark, new suit and the modish straw hat.
“She’s waiting for me at Cheyenne. We’re to be married to-morrow.”
After just an instant came the woman’s little, whispered cry: “Be good to her, Rowan.”
He nodded, then shook hands with her.
“And you be good to yourself, Norma. Better luck ahead.”
She gave a little wry smile. “Good-bye!”
McCoy passed forward to the day coach. From the train butcher he bought a magazine and settled himself for a long ride. He intended to spend the night where he was, even if a vacant berth should develop later in the sleeper. Tait would mole out quite enough evidence against him without any additional data supplied by indiscretion.
At Red Gulch a big, tanned Westerner entered the car and stopped beside the cattleman.
“ ’Lo, Mac,” he nodded genially.
“ ’Lo, Sheriff! Ain’t you off your range?”
The big man was booted and spurred. As he sat down something metallic on his hip struck the woodwork of the seat arm.
“Been looking for a horse thief I heard was at Red Gulch. False alarm,” he explained.
“We can’t any of us strike a warm trail every time.”
“That’s right.” The cool, hard eyes of Sheriff Matson rested quietly in those of the cattleman. “Wonder if I’m on one now. I’ve been asked to arrest a man eloping with another man’s wife, Mac.”
“I reckon Tait phoned you from Wagon Wheel.”
“You done guessed it.”
“He’s gone crazy with the heat. False alarm, sure.”
“Says his wife is aboard this train. Is she?”
“Yes.”
“Says you took him by surprise and knocked him cold on the depot as the train was leaving.”
“He’s made a record and told the truth twice running.”
“Where’s she going? Mrs. Tait, I mean.”
“To Laramie. Her sister lives there.”
“Running away from Tait?”
“Looks like it.”
Again the sheriff’s hard gaze searched McCoy. “Came down from Bovier’s camp with you in your car, I understand.”
“Yes. I gave her a lift down.” Rowan’s voice was as even as that of the officer.
“Suppose you give me a bill of particulars, Mac.”
The cattleman told a carefully edited story. When he had finished, Matson made one comment: “Tait says she hadn’t a dollar. Wonder where she got the money for a ticket.”
“I wonder.”
The eyes of the two men met in the direct, level fashion of the country.
“Going anywhere in particular in those glad rags, Mac?”
The sheriff’s question was dropped lightly, but McCoy did not miss its significance. He knew that for the sake of Norma’s reputation he must remove all doubt from the mind of the officer.
“Why, yes, Aleck. I’m going to Cheyenne,” he assented.
“A cattle deal?”
“Not exactly—object-matrimony, Sheriff.”
Matson shot a direct, stabbing look at him. “You’ve told me too much or too little.”
“The young lady is named Trovillion. She spent two months at the Dude Ranch this summer.”
The sheriff rose. “Nuff said, Mac. I wasn’t elected to do Tait’s dirty work for him. I get off at this crossing. So long, old scout—and good luck to you on that object-matrimony game.”
Left to himself, Rowan did not at once return to his magazine. His mind drifted to the girl he was on his way to marry. It was likely these days, whenever he was not busy, to go back to her, magnetized by the lure of her dark-eyed beauty. The softness and fragility of his sweetheart moved him to awe. That her fancy had selected him out of so many admirers was to him still an amazing miracle. He did not know that the mystery back of his silence had captured her imagination just as the poignancy of her piquant charm had laid a spell on his.
CHAPTER IX
THEY were married. And in swift procession the months followed the weeks.
At the Circle Diamond, Ruth queened it with a naïve childishness from which her youth had not yet escaped. Eagerly she played at housekeeping for a fortnight under the amused eyes of Mrs. Stovall, who had been employed by McCoy to do the cooking, her term as postmistress having expired. The next game that drew her was the remodelling of the house. Carpenters and decorators from Wagon Wheel came up, filled the place with litter and confusion, and under the urge of the young mistress transformed the interior of the unsightly dwelling into a delightful home. An absorbing period of needlework followed. New and pretty dresses took shape and were exhibited to Rowan, who did not have to feign admiration. For if she had been Paris gowned the slender grace of the girl could not have been enhanced in his eyes. She had a native instinct for style, a feeling for the harmonies and values of dress. Whatever she wore became an expression of her personality.
Ruth’s husband confessed to himself with a sinking heart that she did not really belong on a frontier ranch. The girl wife brought to her new home all the fastidiousness that had charmed him. Her sewing room was cheerful with Indian paint brushes and columbines, her little bedroom a study in delicate blues. He was glad of that. He did not want the dust of the commonplace to dull her vividness.
It pleased him that she accepted lightly all responsibility except that of having a good time. She had shipped her own piano to Wyoming, and she played a good deal. Sometimes she read a little, more often rode or hunted. Occasionally Rowan joined her on these excursions, but usually she went alone. For business more and more absorbed his time. The war between the sheep and cattle interests was becoming acute. Ranchmen, watching the range jealously, saw themselves being pushed closer to bankruptcy by Tait and his associates. Already there had been sheep raids. Cattle had been found dead at the water holes. Bullets had sung back and forth.
But though Rowan could spend little time with the girl he had married, a deep tenderness permeated his thought of her. It was still a miracle to him that she had come to the Circle Diamond as his wife.
When he rode the range he carried with him mental etchings of her little graces—the swiftness of the ready smile, the turn of the small, beautifully poised head, the virginal shyness that always captivated him. He missed sheer joy because he was profoundly unsure of holding her. Ruth, he felt, was in love with life, and he was merely a detail of the Great Adventure. Some day she might grow weary, take wings, and fly. Meanwhile a certain diffidence born of reticence sealed his lips. He found it impossible to express the emotion he knew so poignantly. It was of the hill code that a man must not show his naked soul.
On an August morning Ruth, dawdling over breakfast alone, glimpsed through the dining-room window a rider galloping toward the ranch. Since Rowan had been in the saddle and away long before she was awake, the young woman answered the hail from without by going to the door.
The horseman had dismounted, flung the bridle rein to the ground, and was coming up the porch steps when Ruth appeared. He lifted the broad hat from his curly head and bowed.
“Rowan at home?” he asked.
“No, he isn’t.”
Swift anger blazed in the eyes of the girl. She had seen this slender, black-haired stranger twice before, once in the orchard of the Dude Ranch, again astride a volcanic bronco in the arena at Bad Ax.
Some wise instinct warned him not to smile. He spoke gravely. “Sorry. I’ve got news for him. It’s important. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say when he would be back?”
“No.” Ruth cut short the conversation curtly. “I’ll send one of the boys to talk with you.”
She turned and walked into the house, leaving him on the porch. Out of the tail of her eye she caught sight of her husband riding into the yard with his foreman. From the dining-room window she presently watched McCoy canter away in the company of Silcott.
Ruth was annoyed, even though she recognized that her vexation at Rowan was not quite fair. It was true that he had lately fallen into a habit of disappearing for a day at a time without explanation of his absence. He was worried about something, and he had not made a confidante of her. This was bad enough, but what she resented most was the fact that he was on the best of terms with the handsome young scamp who had kissed her so blithely in the orchard. Of course she had no right to blame her husband for this, since she had never told him of the episode. Yet she did. For her mind moved by impulse and not by logic.
She wandered into the kitchen and whipped together a salad for luncheon. She knitted two rows on a sweater at which she was working, and flung it aside to plunge into one of Chopin’s waltzes at the piano. But Ruth was not in the mood for music. Restlessly she turned to a magazine, fingered the pages aimlessly, read at a story for a paragraph or two, then with a sudden decision tossed the periodical on the table and walked out of the house to the garage. Yet a minute, and she was spinning down the road toward Bovier’s Camp.
It was such a day in late summer as comes only to the Rockies. From a blue sky, flecked with a few mackerel clouds, poured a bath of sunshine. Her lungs drank in an air like wine, pure and strong. The sunny slopes of the high peaks pushed up into the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. The scent of the pines was in her nostrils. Once, when she stopped to look at a doubtful tire, the murmurous voices of the desert whispered in her ears. In spite of herself Ruth’s heart answered the call of the distant, shining mountain to rejoice and be glad.
The car topped the rim of the saucer-shaped valley and swept down toward the little village. What Ruth saw quickened her blood. Beyond the post office a great huddle of sheep was being driven forward. At the head of them rode a man with a rifle in one hand lying across the horn of the saddle. On the porch of the store sat Larry Silcott and her husband watching the man steadily. Neither of them carried any arms exposed to view.
The young wife drove the car down the basin and stopped near the store, leaving the engine still running. None of the men even glanced her way. Their eyes were focused on each other with a tenseness that made her want to scream. She waited, breathless, uncertain what to expect. The pulse in her throat beat fast with excitement. That a collision of some sort impended she did not need to be told.
The man with the rifle spoke thickly in a heavy, raucous voice: “I’ve been looking for you, Rowan McCoy. First off, I’ll tell you something. I’m here with my sheep like I promised, on the way to Circle Diamond. I’m going right past the door of the ranch to Thunder Mountain. If any man tries to stop me, I’ll fix his clock. Get that?”
Rowan’s eyes were like chilled steel, his body absolutely motionless. “Better turn back while you can, Tait,” he advised quietly.
“I’ll see you in hell first. I’m going through. But there’s another thing I’ve got to settle with you, Rowan McCoy. That’s about my wife. Stand up and fight, you white-livered coyote!” A sudden passionate venom leaped into the voice of the sheepman. He cursed his enemy savagely and flung at him a string of vile names.
Ruth, terror-stricken, believed the man was working himself up to do murder. She wanted to cry out, to rush forward and beg him to stop. But her throat was parched and her limbs weighted with heavy chains.
“Your wife left you because you are a bully and a drunkard. I had nothing to do with her going,” retorted McCoy.
“You’re a liar—a rotten liar! You got her to run away with you. You took her in your car to Wagon Wheel. You gave her money to buy a ticket. You were seen on the train with her. I swore I’d kill you on sight, and I’m going to do it. Get out of the way, Silcott!”
The energy flowed back into Ruth’s limbs. She threw in the clutch and drove forward furiously. There was the sound of a shot, then of another. Next moment she was pushing home the brake and shutting off the gas. The car slammed to a halt, its wheels hard against the porch. She had driven directly between the sheepman and his intended victim.
Out of the haze that for a moment enveloped Ruth’s senses boomed a savage, excited voice:
“Turn me loose, Mac! Lemme go! I’ll finish the damned sheepman while I’m on the job.”
The scene opened before her eyes like a moving-picture film. On the porch her husband was struggling with a man for the possession of a gun, while young Silcott was sagging against a corner pillar, one hand clutched to his bleeding shoulder. Thirty yards away Tait lay on the ground, face down, beside his horse. From the corral, from the store, from the adjoining doctor’s office men poured upon the scene.
The place was suddenly alive with gesticulating people.
Rowan tore the rifle from the man with whom he was wrestling. “Don’t be a fool, Falkner. You’ve done enough already. I shouldn’t wonder if Tait had got his.”
“He had it coming to him, if ever a man had. If I’d been two seconds later you’d have been a goner, Mac. I just beat him to it. Good riddance if he croaks, I say.”
McCoy caught sight of Ruth. He moved toward her, his eyes alive with surprise and dismay.
“You—here!”
“He didn’t hit you!” She strangled a sob.
“No. Falkner fired from the store window. It must have shaken his aim. He hit Larry.”
Rowan turned swiftly to his friend, who grinned feebly up at him.
“ ’S all right, Mac. I’ll ride in a heap of round-ups yet. He punctured my shoulder.”
“Good! Let’s have a look at it.”
A fat little man with a doctor’s case puffed up to the porch as McCoy was cutting away the shirt of the wounded man from the shoulder.
“Here! Here! Wha’s the matter? Lemme see. Get water—bandages,” he exploded in staccato snorts like the engine of a motor cycle.
Ruth flew into the house to obey orders. When she returned with a basin of water and towels the doctor had gone.
“Doc is over looking at Tait,” explained her husband. “Says Larry has only a flesh wound. We’ll take him home with us in the car. You don’t mind?”
“Of course we’ll look after him till he’s well,” Ruth agreed.
“I wouldn’t think of troubling you, Mrs. McCoy,” objected Silcott. “All I need is——”
“Rest and good food and proper care. You’ll get it at the Circle Diamond,” the girl interrupted decisively. “We needn’t discuss that. You’re going with us.”
She had her way, as she usually had. After Doctor Irwin had dressed the shoulder the young ranchman got into the back seat of the car beside Ruth. McCoy asked a question point-blank of the fussy little physician:
“What about Tait? Will he live?”
“Ought to. If no complications. Just missed lower intestines—near thing. Lot of damn fools—all of you!” he snorted.
“Sure thing,” grinned Silcott. “Come and see me to-night, Doc.”
“H’mp!”
“I’ll be looking for you, Doctor Irwin,” Ruth called back from the moving car.
The doctor growled out what might be taken for a promise if one were an optimist.
From the rim of the valley McCoy looked down and spoke grimly: “I notice that Tait’s herders have changed their minds. They’re driving the sheep back along the road they came.”
“Before we’re through with them they’ll learn where to head in,” boasted Larry querulously, for his wound was aching a good deal. “Next time they cross the dead line there’ll be a grave dug for someone.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Larry,” objected Rowan gently. “We’d better cut out threats. They lead to trouble. We don’t want to put ourselves in the wrong unnecessarily. Take Falkner now. I was just in time to keep him from finishing Tait.”
“Oh, Falkner! He’s crazy to be a killer. But at that I don’t blame him this time,” commented the younger man.
Silcott went to bed in the guest chamber between clean sheets, and sank back with a sigh of content into the pillow. The atmosphere of home indefinably filled the room. The cool tints of the wall paper, the pictures, the feminine touches visible here and there, all were contributing factors, but the light-footed girl, so quiet and yet so very much alive in every vivid gesture, every quick glance, was the centre of the picture.
He knew that she had something on her mind, that she was troubled and distrait. He thought he could guess the reason, and felt it incumbent upon him to set himself right with her. When, toward evening, she brought him a dainty tray of food he could keep away from the subject no longer.
“I was a sweep,” he confessed humbly.
For an instant she did not know what he meant. Then: “Yes,” she agreed.
“I’m sorry. You’ve made me ashamed. Won’t you forgive me?” he pleaded.
Ruth had plenty of capacity for generosity. This good-looking boy was ill and helpless. He appealed strongly to the mother instinct that is alive in all good women. He was the central figure, too, of an adventure which had excited her and intrigued her interest. Moreover, she was cherishing a new and more important resentment, one which made her annoyance at him of small moment.
“Do you mean it? Are you really sorry?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so. I know I ought to be. Anyhow, I’m sorry you’re angry at me,” he answered with a little flare of boyish audacity.
She bit her lip, then laughed in spite of herself. She held out her hand a little hesitantly, but he knew he was forgiven.
Young Silcott’s fever mounted toward evening, but when Doctor Irwin arrived he gave him a sleeping powder and before midnight the wounded man fell asleep. Ruth tiptoed about the room while she arranged on a little table beside the bed his medicines and drinks in case he awakened later. After lowering the light she stole away silently to her own bedroom.
Rowan knocked a few minutes later. He heard her move across the floor in her soft slippers. She wore a dainty crepe-de-Chine robe that lent accent to the fresh softness of her young flesh. She had just been brushing her hair, and the long, heavy, blue-black braids were thrown forward over her shoulders.
All day McCoy had been swept by waves of tenderness for this girl wife of his who had risked her life to save him by driving into the line of fire so pluckily. He had longed to open his heart to her, and he had not dared. Now there was a new note about her that puzzled him, one he had never seen before. The eyes that flashed into his were fierce with defiance. Her slim figure was very erect and straight.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
He was taken aback. Never before had her manner been less than friendly to him. While she was in this mood he could not voice his surcharge of feeling for her.
“You are tired,” he suggested.
A sudden gusty passion flared in her face. “Did you come to tell me that?”
“No. To thank you.”
“What for?”
“For risking your life for me this morning. It was splendid.”
She dismissed his thanks with a contemptuous little snap of finger and thumb.
“If that’s all you have to say——”
“That’s all, except good-night, dear.”
Definitely she refused his wistfulness, definitely withdrew into herself and met his appeal icily.
“Good-night.” Her voice rejected flatly the love he offered.
Always he had been chary of embraces with her. To him she was so fine and exquisite that her kisses were a privilege not to be claimed of right. Now he merely hid his hurt with a patient smile.
“I hope you’ll sleep well.”
Her eyes flamed with scorn. She closed the door. He heard the key turn in the lock. Rowan knew that she was locking him out of her heart as well as out of the room.
CHAPTER X
ACROSS the breakfast table next morning Rowan faced a hostile young stranger. The gay comrade who was so dear to him, the eager, impulsive girl all fire and flame and dewy softness, had vanished to give place to a cold and flinty critic. Abruptly and without notice she had withdrawn her friendship. Why? Was it that she had grown tired of him and what he had to offer? Or had he done something to displease her?
Manlike, he tried gifts.
“I’ve decided to have that conservatory built for you off the living room as soon as I can get the glass. Better draw up your plans right away.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want it.”
Her voice was like icy water.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently, and presently he finished his breakfast and left the room.
Ruth bit her lip and looked out of the window. Tears began to film her eyes. She went to her room, locked the door, and flung herself down on the bed in a passion of weeping.
Ever since the first days of her acquaintance with Rowan she had known the story of how Norma Davis had jilted him. Mrs. Flanders, of the Dude Ranch, was a gossip by nature and had told Ruth the history of the affair with gusto. The girl had been merely interested. She had had too many transient affairs herself to object to any dead and buried ones of Rowan. But yesterday afternoon she had ridden over to the summer resort and asked Mrs. Flanders some insistent questions. The mistress of the Dude Ranch was a reluctant witness, but a damning one. It was true that Mrs. Tait had run away with McCoy in his car and that they had taken the train together. There were witnesses to prove that he had paid for the sleeper berth she used and that it was in his name. For once Joe Tait had told the truth.
The thing which hit Ruth like a sudden slap in the face from a friend was that this escapade had taken place while McCoy had been on his way to marry her. It was not an episode of the past, but a poisonous canker that ate into the joy of her life. If he could do a thing so vile there was no truth in him.
All the golden hours they had spent together were tainted by his infidelity. Never in all her life had she met a man who had seemed so genuine, so wholly true. She had offered him her friendship and love, had given her young life into his keeping. His reverence for her had touched her deeply. Now she knew there was nothing but hypocrisy to it.
She must leave him, of course. She must crawl away like a wounded wild creature of the forest and suffer her hurts alone. The sooner she left the better.
On the very heel of this resolution came Mrs. Stovall with bad news about their patient.
“His fever’s mighty high. Looks like someone will have to nurse that boy regular for quite a while,” she said.
“I’ll look after him—anyhow till the doctor comes,” Ruth volunteered in swift compunction because she had not been in to see him that morning.
“H’mp! Been crying her eyes out. What’sshegot to worry about—with the best man in the Fryingpan country crazy about her?” wondered the housekeeper. “Trouble with her is that Rowan’s too good to her. She needs to bump up against real grief before she’ll know how well off she is.”
Once installed in the sick room, Ruth did not find it easy to get away. For three days Silcott needed pretty constant attention. After the delirium had passed he lay and watched her, too weak to wait upon himself.
“You’ll not leave me,” he whispered to her once, and there was something so helpless and boyish about his dependence upon her that Ruth felt a queer little lump in her throat. Just now at least there could be no doubt of the genuineness ofhisneed of her.
“Not till you’re better,” she promised.
And if there were tears in her eyes they were less for him than for herself. She was thinking of another man who had told her how greatly he needed her and how her coming had filled his life with sunshine, of another man whose whole relation to her had been a lie.
It was like Larry to take her emotion and her kindness as evidence of her special interest in him, just as it had been characteristic of him a few days before to jump to the conclusion that her worry was on his account. He was a debonair young fellow, picturesque and good-looking. Nor did Ruth resent it that he claimed it as a privilege of his invalidism to pass into immediate friendship with her. His open admiration of her was balm to the sick heart of the girl.
In the days that followed Rowan caught only glimpses of his wife. She was never up now in time for his early breakfast. All day he was away, and she contrived to be busy with her patient while Mrs. Stovall served his supper.
Whenever they did meet Ruth incased herself instantly in a still white armour of reserve. She treated him to no more of her winsome vagaries, never now mocked him with her dear impudence. He noticed that she never called him by name and that her manner was one of formal politeness. In his presence her joy was struck dead.
A less sensitive man might have come to grips with her and fought the thing out. Once or twice Rowan tried in a halting fashion to discover the cause of the change in her, but she made it plain to him that she would not discuss the matter. At the bottom of his heart he had no doubt as to the reason. She had found out that his ways were not hers. He held no resentment. It was natural that her eager youth should weary of the humdrum life he offered.
Sometimes, as he passed Silcott’s room, Rowan heard the gay laughter of the young people. Later, when Larry was strong enough, McCoy met them driving, on their way to a picnic for two. If the sight of their merriment was a knife in his heart, Rowan gave no sign of it. His friendly smile did not fail.
“Better come along, Mac. You’ll live only once, and then you’ll be dead a long time,” suggested Larry.
McCoy shook his head. “Can’t—business.”
He noticed that Ruth had not seconded the invitation of her companion.
Though he never intruded, it was impossible for Rowan to live in the same house without running into them occasionally. Sometimes she would be accompanying Larry on the piano while he sang “Mandalay.” Or they would be quarrelling over a verse in a volume of recent poems. Rowan was not of a jealous disposition, but their good-fellowship stabbed him. He neither sang nor read poems. What was worse, he was not on good enough terms with Ruth for her to quarrel with him. The most he could get from her was frigid politeness.
Ruth was in the grip of one of the swift friendships to which she was subject. She liked Larry a lot. They had many common interests. But she plunged into her little affair with him only because misery made her reckless. Quite well she knew that Larry’s coaxing smile, his dancing eyes, his boyish winsomeness, cloaked a purpose of making love to her as much as he dared. She felt no resentment on that account. Indeed she was grateful to him for distracting her from her woe. To her husband she owed nothing. If she could hurt him by playing his own game so much the better. For conventions she never cared. As for Larry, when the time came, she told herself, she would know how to protect her heart. She was willing to flirt desperately with him, but she had no intention of really caring for him.
Because she was such a child of impulse, so candid and so frank, Rowan worried lest her indiscretions should be noticed. He did not like to interfere, but he considered dropping a hint to Larry that he was needed at the Open A N C.
It was not necessary. Over the telephone one morning came the news that Miss Morgan, who was still stopping at the Dude Ranch, had suffered a relapse and was not expected to live. Ruth fled at once to join her and Larry discovered a few hours later that he was well enough to go home.
As Ruth nursed her aunt through the silent hours of the night her mind was busy with her own shattered romance. She confessed to herself that she had not really been having a good time with Larry. She had turned to him as an escape and to punish her husband. But all the while her heart had been full of bitterness and desolation. It was unthinkable that Rowan could have treated her so. Her young, clean pride had been dreadfully humiliated. It seemed to her that her heart was frozen, that she never again could pulse with warm life. The thing that had fallen upon her was a degradation. In her thoughts she held herself soiled irretrievably.
Miss Morgan died the third day after the arrival of her niece. In accord with a desire she had once expressed, she was buried in a grove back of the pasture at the ranch.
Ruth accepted the invitation of Mrs. Flanders to stay a few days at the Dude Ranch as her guest. The days lengthened into weeks, and still she did not return to the Circle Diamond. Larry made occasions to come to the hotel to see Ruth. Sometimes Rowan came, but not often. The gulf between him and his young wife had widened until he despaired of bridging it. He felt that the kindest thing he could do was to stay away. The whole passionate urge of his heart swept him toward her, but his iron will schooled his impulses to obedience.
But as Rowan rode the range he carried with him the memory of a white face, fragile as a flower, out of which dark eyes looked at him defiantly. His heart ached for her. In his own breast he carried a block of ice that never melted, but he would gladly have taken her grief, too, if that had been possible.
CHAPTER XI
RUTH and Mrs. Flanders sat on the porch at Elkhorn Lodge and watched a rider descend a hill trail toward the ranch. It was late in the season. Except a hunting party, only a few stray boarders remained, and these would soon take flight for the cities. But in spite of the almanac the day had been hot. Even after sunset it was pleasant outdoors.
The rider announced his coming with song. For a fortnight he had been on the round-up, working sixteen hours a day, and now that it was nearly over he was entitled to sing. The words drifted down to the women on the porch:
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,
Best damned cowboy that ever was born.”
“It’s Larry Silcott,” announced Mrs. Flanders, brightening. She was a born gossip. When the owner of the Open A N C was with her there was a pair of them present.
“Yes,” assented Ruth. She had known for some moments that the approaching rider was Larry.
He offered for their entertainment another selection.
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
“Sift along, boys, don’t ride so slow.
Haven’t got much time but a long round to go.
Quirt him on the shoulders and rake him down the hip,
I’ll cut you toppy mounts, boys, now pair off and rip.”
After a few moments of silence the wind brought more song to the women on the porch:
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,Then beat ’em on the tail;Whip ’em up and down the sideAnd hit the shortest trail.”
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,Then beat ’em on the tail;Whip ’em up and down the sideAnd hit the shortest trail.”
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,Then beat ’em on the tail;Whip ’em up and down the sideAnd hit the shortest trail.”
“Bunch the herd at the old meet,
Then beat ’em on the tail;
Whip ’em up and down the side
And hit the shortest trail.”
The young man appeared to catch sight of the women and waved his pinched-in felt hat at them, finishing his range ditty with a cowboy cheer for a rider to the last stanza:
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya youpy ya,
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.”
He cantered up to the ranch, flung himself from the saddle without touching the stirrups, grounded the reins, and came forward to the porch with jingling spurs. Ruth did not deny that he was a most engaging youth. The outdoor bloom on his cheeks, the sparkle in his eyes, the nonchalant pose that had just a touch of boyish swagger, all carried their appeal even with women old enough to be his mother.
“Is the round-up finished?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“They’ve got to comb Eagle Creek yet and the Flat Tops.” He fell into the drawl of the old cowman. “But I’m plumb fed up with the dust of the drag driver. Me, I’m through. Enough’s plenty. The boys can finish without Larry Silcott.”
“Oh, I’m going homeBullwhacking for to spurn,I ain’t got a nickel,And I don’t give a dern.”
“Oh, I’m going homeBullwhacking for to spurn,I ain’t got a nickel,And I don’t give a dern.”
“Oh, I’m going homeBullwhacking for to spurn,I ain’t got a nickel,And I don’t give a dern.”
“Oh, I’m going home
Bullwhacking for to spurn,
I ain’t got a nickel,
And I don’t give a dern.”
“You seem to have quite an attack of doggerel to-night,” suggested Ruth.
“Doggerel nothing. Every one of ’em is a range classic. I got them from old Sam Yerby, who brought them up from Texas. I’ve been giving you the genuwine, blown-in-the-bottle ballads of the man who wears leathers,” defended Larry.
“Who is boss of the round-up this year?” asked Mrs. Flanders.
“Rowan is, and believe me he worked us to a fare-you-well. He’s some driver, Mac is; one of your sixty-horsepower dynamos on two legs. He is good for twenty-four hours a day himself, and he figures the rest of us are made of leather and steel, too. I’m a wreck.”
“What’s that I hear about Falkner and Tait having some more trouble?”
“Trouble is right, Mrs. Flanders. They met over by the creek at Three Willows. One thing led to another, and they both got down from their horses and mixed it. Tait had one of his herders with him, and he took a hand in the fracas. The two of them gave Falkner an awful beating. He was just able to crawl to his horse.”
“Tait ought to be driven out of the country,” pronounced Mrs. Flanders indignantly. “He’s always making trouble.”
“Joe is certainly a bad actor, but it would be some job to drive him away. He hasn’t got sense enough to realize what is going to happen to him. If Falkner ever gets him at the wrong end of a gun——” He left his sentence unfinished. The imagination could supply the rest.
“They say Tait has driven his sheep across the dead line again.” Mrs. Flanders put her statement as if it were a question.
Larry, recalling a warning he had been given, became suddenly discreet. “Do they?”
“Will the Hill Creek cattlemen stand for it?”
There was a sullen, mulish look on his face that suggested he knew more than he intended to tell. “Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”
Business called the Mistress of Elkhorn Lodge into the house.
Ruth, with a slant of dark eyes toward her guest, asked him a question: “Do you call this two weeks?”
“I call it a month, reckoning by my feelings.”
She scoffed. “It’s a pity about your feelings. I told you not to come again for two weeks.”
“I thought as I happened to be passing——”
“On your way to nowhere.”
“—that I’d drop in and say ‘Buenas tardes.’ ”
“Good of you, I’m sure.”
He settled himself comfortably on the porch against a pillar. “I want to ask your advice. I’m just a plain cow-puncher and you’re a wise young lady from a city. So you can tell me all about it. I’m getting old and lonesome, and my mind has been running on a girl a heap.”
Her glance took in the slim, wiry youth at her feet. She smiled. “You’d better ask Mrs. Flanders. I’m too young to advise you.”
“No. You’re just the right age. I’ll tell you about her. There never was anybody prettier—not in Wyoming. She’s fresh and sweet, like those wild roses we picked in Bear Creek Cañon. Her eyes are kind o’ rippled by a laugh ’way down deep in them, then sometimes they are dark and still and—sort of tender. She has the kindest heart in the world—and the cruelest. I wouldn’t want a better partner, though she’s as wild as an unbroken bronc sometimes. You never can tell when she’s going to bolt.”
There was a faint flush of pink in her cheeks, but her eyes danced. “You don’t make her sound like a reallynicegirl.”
“Oh, she’s nice enough, when she isn’t a little divvle. The trouble is she isn’t foot-loose.”
“Of course she is tremendously in love with you.”
“She likes me a heap better than she pretends.”
“I’m sure she would adore you if she knew how modest you are,” Ruth answered with amiable malice.
Silcott’s gaze absorbed her dainty sweetness. He spoke with an emphasis of the cattleman’s drawl.
“I’d like right well to take her up on my hawss and ride away with her like that Lochinvar fellow did in the poetry book y’u lent me onct—the one that busted up the wedding of the laggard guy and went a-fannin’ off with his gyurl behind him, whilst the no’count bridegroom and her paw hollered ‘Help!’ ”
“Lochinvar. Oh, he’s out of date.”
“Maybe so. But it’s a great thing to know when to butt in.” He watched her covertly as he spoke.
“And when not to,” added Ruth, with the insolent little tilt of her chin that made men want to demonstrate. “Come on. Let’s go over to the mesa and look at the desert in the moonlight.”
Beneath the stars this land of splintered peaks and ragged escarpments always took on a glory denied to it by day. The obscuration of detail, the vagueness of outline, lent magic to the hills. Below, the valley swam in a sheen of gleaming silver.
Ruth drew a deep breath of sensuous delight and lifted her face to the star-strewn sky. Her companion watched her, his eyes shining. She was standing lance straight, everything forgotten but the beauty of the night. In the air was a faint, murmurous stir of desert denizens.
“The world’s going to bed,” she whispered. “It always says its prayers first—wonderful prayers full of the fragrance of roses and the sough of wind just touching the pines, and the far, far song of birds. You have to listen—oh, so still!—before you can hear them. The world is sad because the lovely day is dead and because life is so short and so filled with loss, and it’s just a wee bit afraid of the darkness. So God lights up millions of candles in His sky as a sign that He’s up there and all’s well with the universe.”
Larry had another Ruth to add to his list of portraits of her. It was amazing how many women were wrapped up in her slim young body, not to mention the Ruth that was a naughty child and the one that was all eager boy. He had known her in the course of a morning grave and gay, whimsical and coquettish, sulky and passionate. She was given to generous impulses and unjust resentments. At times her soul danced on the hilltops of life, and again she beat with her fists indignantly at the bars that prisoned her. Of late he had more than once surprised her with the traces of tears on her face.
He knew that all was not well between her and Rowan, but he did not know what was amiss. Only Mrs. Flanders guessed that, and for once she kept her own counsel.
Larry slipped his big brown hand over her little one.
“But you’re not happy just the same,” he told her.
He was one of those men whose attitude toward a young and attractive woman is always that of the lover potential or actual. He was never quite satisfied until the talk became personal and intimate, until he had established an individual relationship with any woman who interested him.
Ruth nodded agreement.
She let her hand lie in his. Since her break with Rowan she was often the victim of moods when she craved a sympathy such as Larry offered, one that took her trouble for granted without discussing it. There were other times when her spirit flared into rebellion, when she was eager to punish her husband’s faithlessness by letting Silcott make veiled love to her with only a pretense of disapproval.
“Why don’t you chuck it all overboard and make a new start?” he asked her abruptly.
She looked at him, a little startled. He had never before made so direct a reference to her situation.
“I don’t care to talk about that.”
“But you’ll have to talk about it some time. You can’t go on like this for ever, and—you know I love you, that I’d do anything in the world for you.”
“I know you talk a lot of foolishness, Larry,” she retorted sharply. “I may be a goose, but I’m not silly enough to take you seriously all the time. Let’s go back to the house.”
“I don’t see why you can’t take me seriously,” he said sulkily.
“Because you’re only a boy. You think you want the moon, but you don’t; at least the only reason you want it is because it’s in somebody else’s yard.”
“It doesn’t need to stay there always, does it?”
“That isn’t a matter for you and me to discuss,” she flashed at him with spirit. “Whenever I need your advice I’ll ask for it, my friend.”
She led the way to the house, her slender limbs moving rhythmically with light grace. Larry walked beside her sullenly. What was the matter with her to-night? Last week she had almost let him kiss her. If she had held him back, still it had been with the promise in her manner that next time he might be more successful. But now she had pushed him back into the position of a friend rather than a lover.
Larry had no intention of being her friend. It was not in his horoscope to be merely a friend to any charming woman. Moreover, he was as much in love with Ruth as he could be with anybody except himself.
Just before they reached the porch she asked him a question: “When will they be through with the round-up?”
“In two or three days. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
Her eyes evaded his. His annoyance flashed suddenly into words.
“If it’s Rowan you want, why don’t you go back to him like a good little girl and say you’re sorry? I expect he would forgive you.”
Anger, sudden and imperious, leaped into her eyes. “I wish you’d learn, Larry Silcott, to mind your own business.”
She turned and fled into the house.