Jed and VB made the ride after supper, over frozen paths, for autumn had aged and the tang of winter was in the air. Miles away they could see the glow of the bonfire that had been built before the little stone schoolhouse; and VB was not sorry that Jed wanted to ride the last stages of the trip at a faster pace.
Clear River had turned out, to the last man and woman—and to the last child, too! The schoolhouse was no longer a seat of learning; it was a festal bower. The desks had been taken up and placed along the four walls, seats outward, tops forming a ledge against the calcimined stones, making a splendid place for those youngest children who had turned out! Yes, a dozen babies slumbered there in the confusion, wrapped in many thicknesses of blankets.
Three lamps with polished reflectors were placed on window ledges, and the yellow glare filled the room with just sufficient brilliance to soften lines in faces and wrinkles in gowns that clung to bodies in unexpected places. The fourth window ledge was reserved for the music—a phonograph with a morning-glory horn, a green morning-glory horn that would have baffled a botanist. The stove blushed as if for its plainness in the center of the room, and about it, with a great scraping of feet and profound efforts to be always gentlemanly and at ease, circled the men, guiding their partners.
VB stood in the doorway and watched. He coughed slightly from the dust that rose and mantled everything with a dulling blanket—everything, I said, but the eyes must be excepted. They flashed with as warm a brilliance as they ever do where there is music and dancing and laughter.
The music stopped. Women scurried to their seats; some lifted the edges of blankets and peered with concerned eyes at the little sleepers lying there, then whirled about and opened their arms to some new gallant; for so brief was the interval between dances.
"Well, are you never going to see me?"
VB started at the sound of Gail's voice so close to him. He bowed and smiled at her.
"I was interested," he said in excuse. "Getting my bearings."
She did not reply, but the expectancy in her face forced his invitation, and they joined the swirl about the stove.
"I can't dance in these riding boots," he confided with an embarrassed laugh. "Never thought about it until now."
"Oh, yes, you can! You dance much better than most men. Don't stop, please!"
He knew that no woman who danced with Gail's lightness could find pleasure in the stumbling, stilted accompaniment of his handicapped feet; and the conviction sent a fresh thrill through him. He was glad she wanted him to keep on! She had played upon the man down in him and touched upon vanity, one of those weak spots in us. She wanted him near. His arm, spite of his caution, tightened a trifle and he suddenly knew that herhairwas as fragrant as it should be—a heavy, rich odor that went well with its other wealth! For an instant he was a bit giddy, but as the music came to a stop he recovered himself and walked silently beside Gail to a seat.
After that he danced with the wife of a cattleman, and answered absently her stammered advances at communication while he watched the floating figure of Gail Thorpe as it followed the bungling lead of her father's foreman.
The end of the intermission found him with her again. As they whirled away his movements became a little quicker, his tongue a little looser. It had been a long time since he had felt so gay.
He learned of the other women, Gail telling him about them as they danced, and through the thrill that her warm breath aroused he found himself delighting in the individuality of her expression, the stamping of a characteristic in his mind by a queer little word or twisted phrase. He discovered, too, that she possessed a penetrating insight into the latent realities of life. The red-handed, blunt, strong women about him, who could ride with their husbands and brothers, who could face hardships, who knew grim elementals, became new beings under the interpretation of this sunny-haired girl; took on a charm tinged with pathos that brought up within VB a sympathy that those struggles in himself had all but buried. And the knowledge that Gail appreciated those raw realities made him look down at her lingeringly, a trifle wonderingly.
She was of that other life—the life of refinements—in so many ways, yet she had escaped its host of artificialities. She had lifted herself above the people among whom she was reared; but her touch, her sympathies, her warm humanness remained unalloyed! She was real.
And then, when he was immersed in this appreciation of her, she turned the talk suddenly to him. He was but slightly responsive. He put her off, evaded, but he laughed; his cold reluctance to let her know him had ceased to be so stern, and her determination to get behind his silence rose.
As they stood in the doorway in a midst of repartee she burst on him:
"Mr. VB, why do you go about with that awful name? It's almost as bad as being branded."
He sobered so quickly that it frightened her.
"Maybe I am branded," he said slowly, and her agile understanding caught the significance of his tone. "Perhaps I'm branded and can't use another. Who knows?"
He smiled at her, but from sobered eyes. Confused by his evident seriousness, she made one more attempt, and laughed: "Well, if you won't tell me who you are, won't you please tell me what you are?"
The door swung open then, and on the heels of her question came voices from without. One voice rose high above the rest, and they heard: "Aw, come on; le's have jus' one more little drag at th' bottle!"
VB looked at Gail a bit wildly.
Those words meant that out there whisky was waiting for him, and at its mention that searing thing sprang alive in his throat!
"What am I?" he repeated dully, trying to rally himself. "What am I?" Unknowingly his fingers gripped her arm. "Who knows? I don't!"
And he flung out of the place, wanting but one thing—to be with the Captain, to feel the stallion's nose in his arms, to stand close to the body which housed a spirit that knew no defeat.
As he strode past the bonfire a man's face leered at him from the far side. The man was Rhues.
The incident at the schoolhouse was not overlooked. Gail Thorpe was not the only one who heard and saw and understood; others connected the mention of drink with VB's sudden departure. The comment went around in whispers at the dance, to augment and amplify those other stories which had arisen back in the Anchor bunk house and which had been told by Rhues of the meeting in Ranger.
"Young VB is afraid to take a drink," declared a youth to a group about the fire where they discussed the incident.
He laughed lightly and Dick Worth looked sharply at the boy.
"Mebby he is," he commented, reprimand in his tone, "an' mebby it'd be a good thing for some o' you kids if you was afraid. Don't laugh at him! We know he's pretty much man—'cause he's done real things since comin' in here a rank greenhorn. Don't laugh! You ought to help, instead o' that."
And the young fellow, taking the rebuke, admitted: "I guess you're right. Maybe the booze has put a crimp in him."
So VB gave the community one more cause for watching him. Quick to perceive, ever taking into consideration his achievements which spoke of will and courage, Clear River gave him silent sympathy, and promptly put the matter out of open discussion. It was no business of theirs so long as VB kept it to himself. Yet they watched, knowing a fight was being waged and guessing at the outcome, the older and wiser ones hoping while they guessed.
When Bob Thorpe announced to his daughter that he was going to Jed Avery's ranch and would like to have her drive him over through the first feathery dusting of snow, a strain of unpleasant thinking which had endured for three days was broken for the girl. In fact, her relief was so evident that the cattleman stared hard at his daughter.
"You're mighty enthusiastic about that place, seems to me," he remarked.
"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked. "There's where they keep the finest horse in this country!"
"Is that all?" he asked, a bit grimly.
She looked at him and laughed. Then, coming close, she patted one of the weathered cheeks.
"He's awfully nice, daddy—and so mysterious!"
The giggle she forced somehow reassured him. He did not know it was forced.
They arrived at Jed's ranch as Kelly, the horse buyer, was preparing to depart after long weeks in the country. His bunch was in the lower pasture and two saddle horses waited at the gate.
Thorpe and his daughter found Jed, VB, and Kelly in the cabin. The horse buyer was just putting bills back into his money belt, and Jed still fingered the roll that he had taken for his horses.
"Aren't you afraid to pack all that around, Kelly?" Thorpe asked.
"No—nobody holds people up any more," he laughed. "There's only an even six hundred there, anyhow—and a fifty-dollar bill issued by the Confederate States of America, which I carry for luck. My father was a raider with Morgan," he explained, "and I was fifteen years old before I knew 'damn Yank' was two words!"
VB was preparing to go with the buyer, to ride the first two days at least to help him handle the bunch. They expected to make it well out of Ranger the second day, and after that Kelly would pick up another helper.
Gail followed VB when he went outside.
"I'm going away, too," she said.
"So?"
"Yes; mother and I will leave for California day after to-morrow, for the winter."
"That will be fine!"
"Will I be missed?"
He shrank from this personal talk. He remembered painfully their last meeting. He was acutely conscious of how it had ended, and knew that the incident of his abrupt departure must have set her wondering.
"Yes," he answered, meeting her answer truthfully, "I shall miss you. I like you."
Such a thing from him was indeed a jolt, and Gail stooped to pick up a wisp of hay to cover her confusion.
"But I'm sorry," he said, "I must be going."
She looked up in surprise. The horse buyer still talked and the discussion bade fair to go on for a long time.
"You're not starting?" she asked.
"Oh, no. Not for half an hour, anyhow. But you see, the Captain found a pup-hole yesterday and wrenched his leg a little. Not much, but I don't want him to work when anything's wrong. So I'm leaving him behind and I must look after him. Will you excuse me? Good-by!"
She was so slow in extending her hand that he was forced to reach down for it. It was limp within his, and she merely mumbled a response to his hasty farewell.
Gail watched him swing off toward the corral, saw him enter through the gate and put his face against the stallion's neck. She strolled toward the car, feet heavy.
"He wouldn't even ask me to go—go with him. He cares more about—that horse—than—"
She clenched her fists and whispered: "I hate you! I hate you!" Then mounting to the seat and tucking the robe about her ankles, she blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and in a voice strained high said: "No, I don't, either."
VB and Kelly took their bunch down the gulch at a spanking trot. Most of the stock was fairly gentle and they had little difficulty. They planned to stop at a deserted cabin a few miles north of Ranger where a passable remnant of fenced pasture still remained. They reached the place at dark and made a hasty meal, after which VB rolled in, but his companion roped a fresh horse and made on to Ranger for a few hours' diversion.
It was nearly dawn when Kelly returned with a droll account of the night's poker, and although VB was for going on early, wanting to be rid of the task, the other insisted on sleeping.
"I don't want to get too far, anyhow," he said. "Those waddies like to rimmed me last night. Got all I had except what's in old Betsy, the belt. I'm goin' back to-night and get their scalp!"
It was noon before they reached Ranger and swung to the east.
"Oh, I'll be back to-night and get you fellows!" Kelly called to a man who waved to him from the saloon.
VB held his gaze in the opposite direction. He knew that even the sight of the place might raise the devil in him again.
A man emerged from one of the three isolated shacks down on the river bank. It was Rhues. The two rode slowly, for the buyer was in no mood for fast travel, and for a long time Rhues stood there following them with his eyes.
At dusk the horsemen turned the bunch into a corral and prepared to spend the night with beds spread in the ruin of a cabin near the inclosure. Before the bed-horses had been relieved of their burdens a cowboy rode along who was known to Kelly, and arrangements were made for him to take VB's place on the morrow.
"Well, then, all you want me to do is to stay here to-night to see that things don't go wrong. Is that it?" VB asked.
"Yep— Oh, I don't know," with a yawn. "I guess I won't sit in that game to-night. I'll get some sleep. Mebby if I did go back I'd only have to dig up part of my bank here." He patted his waist. "You can go on home if you want to."
VB was glad to be released, for he could easily reach the ranch that night. He left Kelly talking with the cowboy, making their plans for the next day, and struck across the country for Jed's ranch.
Left alone, the horse buyer munched a cold meal. Then, shivering, he crept into his thick bed and slept. An hour passed—two—three.
A horse dropped slowly off a point near the corral. A moment later two more followed. One rider dismounted and walked away after a low, hoarse whisper; another pushed his horse into the highway and stood still, listening; the third held the pony that had been left riderless.
A figure, worming its way close to the ground, crawled up on the sleeping horse buyer. It moved silently, a yard at a time; then stopped, raised its head as though to listen; on again, ominously, so much a part of the earth it covered that it might have been just the ridge raised by a giant mole burrowing along under the surface. It approached to within three yards of the sleeping man; to within six feet; three; two.
Then it rose to its knees slowly, cautiously, silently, and put out a hand gently, lightly feeling the outlines of the blankets. A shoot of orange scorched the darkness—and another, so close together that the flame was almost continuous. The blankets heaved, trembled, settled.
The man on his knees hovered a long moment, revolver ready, listening intently. Not a sound—even the horses seemed to be straining their ears for another break in the night.
The man reached out a hand and drew the blankets away from the figure beneath, thrusting his face close. The starlight filtered in and he drew a long, quivering breath—not in hate or horror, but in surprise. He got to his feet and listened again. Then he moved into the open, over the way he had come. After a dozen quick, stealthy paces he stopped and turned back. He unbuttoned the jumper about the figure under the blankets, unbuttoned the shirt, felt quickly about the waist, fumbled a moment, and jerked out a long, limp object. Again he strode catlike into the open, and as he went he tucked the money belt into his shirt-front.
VB rode straight to the ranch. He made a quick ride and arrived before ten.
"Mighty glad Kelly got that man," he told Jed. "I'm like a fish out of water away from the Captain."
At dusk the next day a horseman rode up the gulch to Jed's outfit. The old man stood in the doorway, watching him approach.
"Hello, Dick!" he called, recognizing the deputy from Sand Creek.
"How's things, Jed?"
"Better'n fine."
Worth left his horse and entered the cabin.
"VB around?" he asked.
"Uh-huh; out in th' corral foolin' with th' Captain."
Dick dropped to a chair and pushed his hat back. He looked on the other a moment, then asked: "What time did VB get home last night?"
Jed showed evident surprise, but answered: "Between half-past nine an' ten."
"Notice his horse?"
"Saw him this mornin'. Why?"
"Was it a hard ride th' boy made?"
"No—sure not. I rode th' pony down to th' lower pasture myself this afternoon."
Worth drew a deep breath and smiled as though relieved.
"Bein' 'n officer is mighty onpleasant sometimes," he confessed. "I knew it wasn't no use to ask them questions, but I had to do it—'cause I'm a deputy." With mouth set, Jed waited for the explanation he knew must come.
"Kelly was killed while he slept last night."
Horror was the first natural impulse for a man to experience on the knowledge of such a tragedy, but horror did not come to Jed Avery then or for many minutes. He put out a hand slowly and felt for the table as though dizzy.
Then, in a half tone, "You don't mean you suspected VB? Dick—Dick!"
The sheriff's face became troubled.
"Jed, didn't I tell you I knew it wasn't no use to ask them questions?" he said reassuringly. "I'd 'a' gambled my outfit on th' boy, 'cause I know what he is. When you tell me he got here by ten an' it wasn't a hard ride, I know they's no use even thinkin' about it. But th' fact is—
"You see, Jed, everybody in th' country has got to know what's up with VB. They know he's fightin' back th' booze! That gang o' skunks down at Ranger—Rhues an' his outfit—started out to rub it into VB, but everybody knew they was tellin' lies. An' everybody's thought lots of him fer th' fight he's made."
He got to his feet and walked slowly about the room.
"But th' truth is, Jed—an' you know it—when a man's been hittin' th' booze, an' we ain't sure he's beat it out, we're always lookin' fer him to slip. Nobody down at Ranger has thought one word about VB in this, only that mebby he could tell who'd been round there.
"But, bein' 'n officer, I had th' sneakin', dirty idee I ought to ask them questions about VB. That's all there is to it, Jed. That's all! I'm deputy; VB's been a boozer.
"But I tell you, Jed Avery, it sure's a relief to know it's all right."
The warmth of sincerity was in his tone and his assurances had been of the best, but Jed slumped limply into a chair and rested his head on his hands.
"It's a rotten world, Dick—a rotten, rotten world!" he said. "I know you're all right; I know you mean what you say; but ain't it a shame that when a man's down our first thought is to kick him? Always expect him to fall again once he gets up! Ain't it rotten?"
And his love for Young VB, stirred anew by this sense of the injustice of things, welled into his throat, driving back more words.
Dick Worth was a man of golden integrity; Jed knew well that no suspicion would be cast on VB. But the knowledge that serious-minded, clear-thinking men like the deputy would always remember, in a time like this, that those who had once run wild might fall into the old ways at any hour, stung him like a lash.
VB opened the door.
"Hello, Dick!" he greeted cheerily. "Want me?"
Worth laughed and Jed started.
"No; I come up to get a little help from you if I can, though."
"Help?"
"Kelly was shot dead in his bed last night."
For a moment VB stared at him.
"Who?"
"That's what we don't know. That's what I came up here for—to see if you could help us."
And Jed, face averted, drew a foot quickly across the boards of the floor.
"One of Hank Redden's boys was with him—th' one who took your place—until dark. Little after eight old Hank heard two shots, but didn't think nothin' of it. Kelly was shot twice. That must 'a' been th' time."
VB put down his hat, his eyes bright with excitement.
"He'd planned to go back to Ranger," he said. "But, after being up most of the night before, he was too tired. He told them at Ranger he'd be back. And if I'd been there they'd have got me," he ended.
"Unless they was lookin' for Kelly especial," said Dick. "They took his money belt."
"Mebby," muttered Jed,—"mebby they made a mistake."
Time went on, and the country dropped back from the singing pitch of excitement to which the killing of the horse buyer raised it. Men agreed that some one of that country had fired the shots into that blanket, but it is not a safe thing to suspect too openly. Dick Worth worked continually, but his efforts were without result. A reward of two hundred and fifty dollars for the slayer, dead or alive, disclosed nothing.
After the evidence had been sifted, and each man had asked his quota of questions and passed judgment on the veracity of the myriad stories, Dick said to himself: "We'll settle down now and see who leaves the country."
Jed and VB went about the winter's work in a leisurely way. For days after the visit of Worth the old man was quieter than usual. The realization of how the world looked on this young fellow he had come to love had been driven in upon him. There could be no mistaking it; and as he reasoned the situation out, he recognized the attitude of men as the only logical thing to expect.
With his quietness came a new tenderness, a deeper devotion. The two sat, one night, listening to the drawing of the stove and the whip of the wind as it sucked down the gulch. The candle burned steadily in its bottle. Jed watched it a long time, and, still gazing at the steady flame, he said, as though unconscious that thoughts found vocal expression: "Th' candle's burnin' bright, VB."
The other looked slowly around at it and smiled.
"Yes, Jed; it surely burns bright."
At the instant an unusually vicious gust of wind rattled the windows and a vagrant draft caught the flame of the taper, bending it low, dulling its orange.
"But yet sometimes," the younger man went on, "something comes along—something that makes it flicker—that takes some of the assurance from it."
Jed had started in his chair as the flame bowed before the draft.
"But it— You ain't been flickerin' lately, have you?" he asked, with a look in the old eyes that was beseeching.
Young VB rose and commenced to walk about thumbs hooked in his belt.
"I don't know, Jed," he said. "That's the whole of it: I don't know. Sometimes I'm glad I don't; but other times I wish—wishthat whatever is coming would come. I seem to be gaining; I can think of drink now without going crazy. Now and then it gets hold of me; but moving around and getting busy stifles it. Still, I know it's there. That's what counts. I know I've had the habit, been down and out, and there's no telling which way it's going to turn. If I could ever be sure of myself; if I could ever come right up against it, where I needed a drink, where I wanted it—then, if I could refuse, I'd be sure."
He quickened his stride.
"Seems to me you're worryin' needless," Jed argued. "Don't you see, VB, this is th' worst night we've had; th' worst wind. An' yet it ain't blowed th' candle out! It bends low an' gets smoky, to be sure. But it always keeps on shinin'!"
"But when it bends low and gets smoky its resistance is lower," VB said. "It wouldn't take much at such a time to blow it out and let the darkness come in. You never can tell, Jed; you never can tell."
Ten minutes later he added: "Especially when you're afraid of yourself and daren't hunt out a test."
Another time they talked of the man that he had been before he came to Colt. They were riding the hills, the Captain snuggling close to the pinto pony Jed rode. The sun poured its light down on the white land. Far away, over on the divide, they could see huge spirals of snow picked up by the wind and carried along countless miles, finally to be blasted into veils of silver dust that melted away into distance. An eagle flapped majestically to a perch on a scrub cedar across the gulch; a dozen deer left off their browsing, watched the approach of the riders a moment, and then bounded easily away. The sharp air set their blood running high, and it was good to live.
"Ain't this a good place, VB?" Jed asked, turning his eyes away from a snow-capped crag that thrust into the heavens fifty miles to the east.
VB slapped the Captain's neck gladly. "I never saw a finer, Jed!" he cried. "If those people back in New York could only get thefeelof this country! You bet if they once did, it would empty that dinky little island."
"You never want to go back?" the older man ventured.
VB did not answer for a long time. When he did he said: "Some day I shall go back, Jed, but not to stay. I will not go back, either, until I've come to be as good and as strong a man as the Captain is a good and strong horse. That's something to set up as a goal, isn't it? But I mean every word. When I left the city I was—nothing. When I go back I want to be everything that a man should be—as this old fellow is everything that a horse should be."
He leaned forward and pulled the Captain's ears fondly, while the stallion champed the bit and lifted his forefeet high in play. VB straightened then, and looked dreamily ahead.
"I hope that time will come before a man there gets to the end of things. He was hard with me, my father, Jed—mighty hard. But I know he was right. Perhaps I'm not doing all I could for his comfort, perhaps I'm making a bad gamble, but when I go back I want to be as I believe every man can be—at some time in his life."
He turned his eyes on the little, huddled figure that rode at his side.
"Then, when I've seen New York once more, with all its artificiality and dishonest motives and its unrealities—from the painted faces of its women to its very reasons for living and doing—I'll come back here, Jed; back to the Captain and to the hills.
"I've seen the other! Oh, I've seen it, not from the ground up, but from the ground down! I've gone to the very subcellars of rottenness—and there's nothing to attract. But here there's a bigness, a freedom, an incentive to be real that you won't find in places where men huddle together and lie and cheat and scheme!"
They returned to the ranch in late afternoon and found that a passing cowboy had left mail for them—papers and circulars—and a picture postal card. VB had picked up the bundle of mail first, and for a long time he gazed at the gaudy colorings of that card. Palm trees, faultlessly kept lawns, a huge, rambling building set back from the road that formed a foreground, and a glimpse of a superblue Pacific in the distance. He held it in his fingers and took in every detail. Then, with a queer little feeling about his middle, he turned it over. A small hand—he remembered just how firm the fingers were that held the pen—had written:
Mr. VBRanger, Colorado
And across the correspondence section of the card was inscribed this:
Give my very best regards to the Captain and to Mr. Avery. Home early in April.
He read the message again and again, looking curiously at the way she had formed the letters. Then he muttered:
"Why didn't she send it to Jed—or to the Captain?"
When Jed came into the cabin VB asked him, as though it were a matter of great concern:
"Where's that calendar we had around here?"
That night the young fellow lay awake long hours. The thirst had come again. Not so ravishing as it used to be, not inspiring all the old terror, but still it was there, and as it tugged at his throat and teased from every fiber of his being, he thought of Gail Thorpe—and tossed uneasily.
"Why?" he asked himself. "Why is it that the thirst calls so loudly when I think of that girl?"
He could not answer, and suddenly the query seemed so portentous that he sat up in bed, prying the darkness with his eyes, as though to find a solution of the enigma there. And his wandering mind, circling and doubling and shooting out in crazy directions, settled back on the Captain, and with it the hurt of his jumping nerves became dulled.
He closed his eyes, picturing the great stallion as he had first seen him, standing there on a little rim-rock protecting his band of mares, watching with regal scorn the approach of his adversary.
"And his spirit didn't break," VB muttered. "It's all there, just as sound as it ever was—but it's standing for different things. It's no longer defiance—it's love."
When March was well on its way Jed and VB drove to Ranger for more supplies. The Captain had been turned into the lower pasture, and followed them as far as he could. When stopped by the fence he stood looking after them inquiringly, and when they topped a little swell in the road, ready to drop out of sight, a long-drawn neighing came from him.
"Poor Captain!" muttered VB. "It's like going away from a home—to leave him."
"You're foolish!" snorted Jed. Later he said sharply: "No, you ain't, either!"
When they reached Ranger three cowboys were shooting at a tin can out on the flat, and before entering the store they stopped to watch. A man came out of the saloon and walked swiftly toward the buildings along the road. As he approached both recognized Rhues.
"Better come in," said Jed, moving toward the door.
"Wait!"
With apparent carelessness VB lounged against a post that supported the wooden awning. Rhues slowed his pace a trifle as he saw who the men were, and VB could see his mouth draw into an expression of nasty hate as he passed close and entered the blacksmith shop. No further sign of recognition had passed between them.
When the trading was finished and they walked back toward the corral Jed remarked uneasily: "I don't feel right—havin' you around Rhues, VB. He's bound to try to get you some time. I know his breed. He'll never forget th' beatin' you give him, an' th' first time he sees an openin' he'll try for you. Men like him lives just to settle one big grudge—nothin' else counts."
VB raised a hand to his side and gripped the forty-five that was slung in a shoulder holster under his shirt.
"I know it, Jed. I hate to pack this gun—makes me feel like a yellow dog or a Broadway cow-puncher—I don't know which. But I know he means business. I don't want to let him think I'd step an inch out of his way, though; that's why I didn't go into the store."
He lowered his voice and went on: "Jed, I wouldn't say a word that would send the worst man in the world into trouble with the law unless I was absolutely certain. I've never mentioned it even to you—but I think when Kelly was killed the man who did that shooting believed he was getting me."
Jed spat lingeringly.
"VB, I've thought so, too," he said.
They reached the ranch the next afternoon, greeted by a shrilling from the Captain that endured from the time they came in sight until VB was beside him.
"Captain," the boy whispered, rubbing the velvety nose, "making them respect you is worth having a gunman on my trail—it is."
They were a long way from camp, and night impended.
"We won't go back," Jed decided. "We'll go on over to th' S Bar S an' put up for th' night."
VB said nothing, but of a sudden his heart commenced to hammer away so lustily that the pulse in the back of his neck felt like blows from metal.
It was beyond the middle of April, and he knew that Gail must have returned from the coast; for days he had been wondering when he would see her again, had been itching to ask questions of every chance passer who might know of her return. Yet that unaccountable diffidence had kept him from mentioning it even to Jed. Now, though, that he was to go for himself, that he was to see her—
He gripped the Captain fiercely with his knees. He told himself, in an attempt to be sane, that this discomfiture was merely because he had been out of the sight of women so long.
They rode into the Thorpe ranch after dark. Lights shone from the windows, and Jed, knowing the place, declared that they were eating.
"Hello, Bob!" he cried when Thorpe himself threw the door open. "Keep a couple of stoppers to-night?"
"Well, Jed, you're a rough-looking old rascal; but I s'pose we'll have to take you in. Who else—that young animal-tamer, VB?"
"Right!" laughed Jed.
VB, peering into the lighted room, saw a figure jump up from the table and hurry toward the door.
As it came between him and the light it seemed to be crowned with a halo, a radiant, shimmering, golden aura.
Then her voice called in welcome: "Hello, Mr. Avery!" Before Jed could make answer she had gone on, as though ignoring him. "Hello, Mr. VB! Aren't you coming in to shake hands?"
VB wanted to laugh, like a boy with a new gun; his spirits bubbled up into his throat and twisted into laughter any words that might have formed, but he managed to answer:
"I'll feed the Captain—then I'll be in."
Without a word she turned back.
Long ago—years ago, it seemed—he had drawn away from her to go to the Captain; then it was the love of the horse that took him. Now, however, it was nothing but confusion that drove him away. Not that he held the Captain less dear, but he wanted to put off that meeting with Gail, to delay until he could overcome that silly disorganization of his powers of self-control.
Out in the corral he flung his arms about the black's head and laughed happily into the soft neck.
"VB, you're a fool—a silly fool!" he whispered.
But if it was so, if being a fool made him that happy, he never wanted to regain mental balance.
It was a big evening for VB, perhaps the biggest of his life. Bob Thorpe and his family ate with the men. Democracy unalloyed was in his soul. He mingled with them not through condescension, but through desire, and his family maintained the same bearing. Not a cow-puncher in the country but who respected Mrs. Thorpe and Gail and would welcome an opportunity to fight for them.
The men had finished their meal before VB and Jed entered. Mrs. Thorpe made excuses and went out, leaving the four alone. While Jed talked to her father, Gail, elbows on the table, chatted with VB, and Young VB could only stare at his plate and snatch a glance at her occasionally and wonder why it was that she so disturbed him.
Later Bob took Jed into his office, and when Gail and VB were left alone the constraint between them became even more painful. Try as he would, the man could not bring his scattered wits together for coherent speech. Just being beside that girl after her long absence was intoxicating, benumbing his mind, stifling in him all thought and action, creating a thralldom which was at once agony and peace. An intuitive sensing of this helplessness had made him delay seeing her that evening; now that he was before her he never wanted to leave; he wanted only to sit and listen to her voice and watch the alert expressiveness of her face—a mute, humble worshiper.
And this attitude of his forced a reaction on the girl. At first she talked vivaciously, starting each new subject with an enthusiasm that seemed bound to draw him out, but when he remained dumb and helpless in spite of her best efforts to keep the conversation going, her flow of words lagged. Long, wordless intervals followed, and a flush came into the girl's cheeks, and she too found herself woefully self-conscious. She sought for the refuge of diversion.
"Since you won't talk to me, Mr. VB," she said with an embarrassed laugh, "you are going to force me to play for you."
"It isn't that I won't—Ican't," he stammered. "And please play."
He sat back in his chair, relieved, and watched the fine sway of her body as she made the big full-toned instrument give up its soul. Music, that—not the tunes that most girls of his acquaintance had played for him; a St. Saens arrangement, a MacDowell sketch, a bit of Nevin, running from one theme into another, easily, naturally, grace everywhere, from the phrasing to the movements of her firm little shoulders. And VB found his self-possession returning, found that he was thinking evenly, sanely, under the quieting influence of this music.
Then Gail paused, sitting silent before the keyboard, as though to herald a coming climax. She leaned closer over the instrument and struck into the somber strains of a composition of such grim power and beauty that it seemed to create for itself an oddly receptive attitude in the man, sensitizing his emotional nature to a point where its finest shades were brought out in detail. It went on and on through its various phases to the end, and on the heavy final chord the girl's hands dropped into her lap. For a moment she sat still bent toward the keyboard before turning to him. When she did face about her flush was gone. She was again mistress of the situation and said:
"Well, are you ever going to tell me about yourself?"
VB's brows were drawn, and his eyes closed, but before he opened them to look at her a peculiar smile came over his face.
"That man Chopin, and his five-flat prelude—" he said, and stirred with a helpless little gesture of one hand as though no words could convey the appreciation he felt.
"I wonder if you like that as well as I do?" she asked.
He sat forward in his chair and looked hard at her. The constraint was wholly gone; he was seriously intent, thinking clearing, steadily now.
"I used to hear it many times," he said slowly, "and each time I've heard it, it has meant more to me. There's something about it, deep down, covered up by all those big tones, that I never could understand—until now. I guess," he faltered, "I guess I've never realized how much a man has to suffer before he can do a big thing like that. Something about this,"—with a gesture of his one hand,—"this house and these hills, and what I've been through out here, and the way you play, helps me to understand what an accomplishment like that must have cost."
She looked at him out of the blue eyes that had become so grave, and said:
"I guess we all have to suffer to do big things; but did you ever think how much we have to suffer to appreciate big things?"
And she went on talking in this strain with a low, even voice, talking for hours, it seemed, while VB listened and wondered at her breadth of view, her sympathy and understanding.
She was no longer a little, sunny-haired girl, a bit of pretty down floating along through life. Before, he had looked on her as such; true, he had known her as sympathetic, balanced, with a keen appreciation of values. But her look, her tone, her insight into somber, grim truths came out with emphasis in the atmosphere created by that music, and to Young VB, Gail Thorpe had become a woman.
A silence came, and they sat through it with that ease which comes only to those who are in harmony. No constraint now, no flushed faces, no awkward meeting of eyes. The new understanding which had come made even silence eloquent and satisfying.
Then the talk commenced, slowly at first, gradually quickening. It was of many things—of her winter, of her days in the East, of her friends. And through it Gail took the lead, talking as few women had ever talked to him before; talking of personalities, yet deviating from them to deduce a principle here, apply a maxim there, and always showing her humanness by building the points about individuals and the circumstances which surround them.
"Don't you ever get lonely here?" he asked abruptly, thinking that she must have moments of discontent in these mountains and with these people.
"No. Why should I?"
"Well, you've been used to things of a different sort. It seems to be a little rough for a girl—like you."
"And why shouldn't a nicer community be too fine for a girl like me?" she countered. "I'm of this country, you know. It's mine."
"I hadn't thought of that. You're different from these people, and yet," he went on, "you're not like most women outside, either. You've seemed to combine the best of the two extremes. You—"
He looked up to see her gazing at him with a light of triumph in her face. VB never knew, but it was that hour for which she had waited months, ever since the time when she declared to her father, with a welling admiration for the spirit he must have, that he who broke the Captain was aman.
Here he was before her, talking personalities, analyzing her! Four months before he would not even linger to say good-by! Surely the spell of her womanhood was on him.
"Oh!" she cried, bringing her hands together. "So you've been thinking about me—what sort of a girl I am, have you?"
Her eyes were aflame with the light of conquest.
Then she said soberly: "Well, it's nice to have people taking you seriously, anyhow."
"That's all any of us want," he answered her; "to be taken seriously, and to be worthy of commanding such an attitude from the people about us. Sometimes we don't realize it until we've thrown away our best chances and then—well, maybe it's too late."
On the words he felt a sudden misgiving, a sudden waning of faith. And, bringing confusion to his ears, was the low voice of this girl-woman saying: "I understand, VB, I understand. And it's never too late to mend!"
Her hand lay in her lap, and almost unconsciously he reached out for it. It came to meet his, frankly, quickly, and his frame was racked by a great, dry sob which came from the depths of his soul.
"Oh, do you understand, Gail?" he whispered doubtfully. "Can you—without knowing?"
He had her hands in both his and strained forward, his face close to hers. The small, firm fingers clutched his hardened ones almost desperately and the blue eyes, so wide now, looking at him so earnestly, were filmed with tears.
"I think I've understood all along," she said, keeping her voice even at the cost of great effort. "I don't know it all—the detail, I mean. I don't need to. I know you've been fighting, VB, nobly, bravely. I know—"
He rose to his feet and drew her up with him, pulling her close to him, closer and closer. One arm slipped down over her shoulders, uncertainly, almost timidly. His face bent toward hers, slowly, tenderly, and she lifted her lips to meet it. It was the great moment of his life. Words were out of place; they would have been puerile, disturbing sounds, a mockery instead of an agency to convey an idea of the strength of his emotions. He could feel her breath on his cheek, and for an instant he hung above her, delaying the kiss, trembling with the tremendous passion within him.
And then he backed away from her—awkwardly, threatening to fall, a limp hand raised toward the girl as though to warn her off.
"Oh, Gail, forgive me!" he moaned. "Not yet! Great God, Gail, I'm not worthy!"
His hoarse voice mounted and he stood backed against the far wall, fists clenched and stiff arms upraised. She took a faltering step toward him.
"Don't!" she begged. "You are—you—"
But he was gone into the night, banging the door behind him, while the girl leaned against her piano and let the tears come.
He was not worthy! He loved; she knew he loved; she had come to meet that great binding, enveloping emotion willingly, frank with the joy of it, as became her fine nature. Then he had run from her, and for her own sake! All the ordeals he had been through in those last months were as brief, passing showers compared with the tempest that raged in him as he rode through the night; and it continued through the hours of light and of darkness for many days. Young VB was a man who feared his own love, and beyond that there can be no greater horror.
He sought solace in the Captain, in driving himself toward the high mark he had set out to attain, but the ideal exemplified in the noble animal seemed more unattainable than ever and he wondered at times if the victory he sought were not humanly impossible. The knowledge that only by conquering himself could he keep his love for Gail Thorpe unsullied never left him, and beside it a companion haunter stalked through and through his consciousness—the fact that they had declared themselves to each other. He was carrying not alone the responsibility of reclaiming his own life; he must also answer for the happiness of a woman!
In those days came intervals when he wondered if this thing were really love. Might it not be something else—a passing hysteria, a reaction from the inner battle? But he knew it was a love stronger than his will, stronger than his great tempter, stronger than the prompting to think of the future when he saw the Thorpe automobile coming up the road that spring day on the first trip the girl had made to the ranch that year. And under the immense truth of the realization he became bodily weak.
Doubt of his strength, too, became more real, more insistent than it had ever been; its hateful power mingled with the thirst, and his heart was rent. What if that love should prove stronger than this discretion which he had retained at such fearful cost, and drag him to her with the stigma he still bore and wreck her!
Gail saw the constraint in him the instant she left the car, and though their handclasp was firm and long and understanding, it sobered her smile.
She tried to start him talking on many things as they sat alone in the log house, but it was useless. He did not respond. So, turning to the subject that had always roused him, that she knew to be so close to his heart, she asked for the Captain.
"In the corral," said VB, almost listlessly. "We'll go out."
So they went together and looked through the gate at the great animal. The Captain stepped close and stretched his nose for Gail to rub, pushing gently against her hand in response.
"Oh, you noble thing!" she whispered to him. "When you die, is all that strength of yours to be wasted? Can't it be given to some one else?"
She looked full on VB, then down at the ground, and said: "You've never told me how you broke the Captain. No one in the country knows. They know that he almost killed you; that you fought him a whole week. But no one knows how. Won't—won't you tell me? I want to know, because it was a real achievement—andyours."
He met her gaze when it turned upward, and for many heartbeats they stood so, looking at each other. Then VB's eyes wavered and he moved a step, leaning on the bars and staring moodily at the stallion.
"It hurts to think about it," he said. "I don't like to remember. That is why I have never told any one. It hurt him and it hurt me."
She waited through the silence that followed for him to go on.
"I've worked and rubbed it and curried it, and nursed the hair to grow over the place. It looks just like a cinch mark now—like the mark of service. No one would ever notice. But it isn't a mark of labor.Imarked the Captain—I had to do it—had to make him understand me. It laid his side open, and all the nursing, all the care I could give wouldn't make up for it. It's there. The Captain knows it; so do I."
She followed his gaze to the little rough spot far down on the sleek side.
"All wild things have to be broken," she said. "None of them ever become tame of their own volition. And in the breaking a mark is invariably left. The memory hurts, but the mark means nothing of itself, once it is healed. Don't you realize that?
"We all bear marks. The marks of our environment, the marks of our friends, the marks of those we—we love. Some of them hurt for a time, but in the end it is all good. Don't you believe that? We see those who are very dear to us suffer, and it marks us; sometimes just loving leaves its mark. But—those are the greatest things in the world. They're sacred.
"The marks on a woman who goes through fire for a man, say; the marks of a—a mother. They hurt, but in the end they make the bond tighter, more holy."
She waited. Then asked again: "Don't you believe that?"
After a long pause VB answered in a peculiarly bitter voice: "I wish I knew what I believe—if I do believe!"