CHAPTER XXII
A MAN'S SUPPORT
Buck looked up as two crows flew low over his head and passed on theirway, croaking out their alarm and dissatisfaction. Mechanically hiseyes followed their movements. For he was well versed in the sights,and sounds, and habits of his world.
Presently he turned again to the trail, and the expression of his eyeshad changed to one of speculation. Caesar was traveling eagerly. He hadnot yet forgotten that farther on along that trail lay the old barnwhich had been his home from his earliest recollections.
Buck had had no intention of making this visit to the farm when heleft Beasley's saloon. He had not had the remotest intention ofcarrying out the man's broadly-given hint. A hint from Beasley wasalways unwelcome to him, and generally roused an obstinate desire totake an opposite course. Nor was it until he reached the ford of thecreek that the significance of the man's tone penetrated his dislikeof him. Quite abruptly he made up his mind to keep straight on.Curiosity, added to a slight feeling of uneasiness, urged him, and,leaving the ford behind him, he kept on down the trail.
His decision once taken, he felt easier as he rode on. Besides, headmitted to himself now, he was rather thankful to the saloon-keeperfor providing him with something in the nature of an excuse for such avisit. He was different from those others, who, in perfect confidenceand ignorance, required not the least encouragement to persecute Joanwith their attentions. He found it more than difficult to realize thathis visits were anything but irksome to the new owner of the farm nowthat she had settled down with the adequate support of her "hired"man.
Joan's graciousness to him was the one great delight of his everywaking hour. But he dreaded the moment when her manner might becomethe mere tolerance she displayed toward Ike and Pete, and any of theothers who chose to make her farm a halting-place. So his visits hadbecome rarer; far rarer than made for his own peace of mind, for Joanwas always in his thoughts.
Tramping the long trail of the mountains her smiling eyes were alwayssomewhere ahead of him, encouraging him, and shedding a radiance ofhope and delight upon the dullest moments of his routine. Never forone moment was the delightful picture of her presence absent from histhoughts. And to him there was nothing in the whole wide world sofair, and sweet, and worthy of the worship he so willingly cast at herfeet.
His life had always been full in his wilderness of Nature's splendor.In his moments of leisure he had been more than happily content in thepleasant friendship of the man who had sheltered him from childhood.But now--now as he looked back over all those years, the associationsseemed dull and empty--empty of all that made life worth living. Notonly had he come to realize the woman's place in a man's life. It wasthe old story of the fruit of knowledge. Woman had always been asealed book to him. Now, at last, the cover had been turned and thepages lay before him for the reading. He yearned for Joan with allthe strength and passionate ardor of his strong young heart. Nor, evenin his yearning, had he full understanding of the real depths of hisfeelings.
How could he study or analyze them? His love had no thought of theworld in it. It had no thought of anything that could bring it down tothe level of concrete sensation. He could not have told one feelingthat was his. With Joan at his side he moved in a mental paradisewhich no language could depict. With Joan at his side he lived withevery nerve pulsating, attuned to a perfect consciousness of joy. WithJoan at his side there was nothing but light and radiance which filledevery sense with a happiness than which he could conceive no greater.Alone, this great wide world about him was verily a wilderness.
The man's feelings quickly mastered his momentary uneasiness as hishorse bore him on toward his goal. The forest path over which he wastraveling had lost its hue of gloom which the shadowed pine woods everconvey. There was light everywhere, that light which comes straightfrom the heart and is capable of lending radiance even to thegrave-side itself.
The trail lay straight ahead of him for some distance. Then it swervedin a big sweep away to the left. He knew this bend. The farm laysomething less than half a mile beyond it. As they neared it Caesarpricked his ears and whinnied. Buck leant forward and patted his neckout of the very joy of anticipation. It almost seemed to him as if thecreature knew who was waiting at the end of the journey and wasrejoicing with him. For once he had misunderstood the mood of hishorse.
He realized this in a moment. The eager creature began to move with aless swinging stride, and his gait quickly became something in thenature of a "prop." They were round the bend, and the horse whinniedagain. This time it raised its head and snorted nervously. Andinstantly Buck was alive to the creature's anxiety. He understood thequick glancing from side to side, and the halting of that changingstep which is always a sign of fear.
Ahead the trail completed the letter S it had begun. They were nearingthe final curve to the right. Buck searched the distance for the causeof Caesar's apprehension. And all unconsciously his mind went back tothe winging of the crows overhead and the sound of their harsh voices.He spurred the creature sharply, and steadied him down.
They reached the final bend and passed round it, and in a moment Buckhad an answer to the questions in his mind. It was a terriblespectacle that greeted his eyes as he reined his horse in and broughthim to an abrupt halt. He had reached the battle-ground where deathhad claimed its toll of human passion. There, swiftly, almostsilently, two men had fought out their rivalry for a woman's favor--afavor given to neither.
It needed little enough imagination to read the facts. All theingredients of the swift-moving drama were there before his eyes--thecombatants stretched out in the sand of the trail, with staring eyesand dropping jaws, gazing up at the brilliant vault of the heavens,whither, may be, their savage spirits had fled; the woman crouchingdown at the roadside with face buried upon outstretched arms, herslight body heaving with hysterical sobs; the horses, horses he knewwell enough by sight, lost to the tragedy amidst the more succulentroots of the parching grass beneath the shadow of overhanging trees.
One glance at the combatants told Buck all he wanted to know. Theywere dead. He had been too long upon the western trail to doubt thesigns he beheld. His duty and inclination were with the living. In amoment he was out of the saddle and at Joan's side, raising her fromher position of grief and misery in arms as gentle as they werestrong.
He had no real understanding of the necessities of the moment. All heknew, all he desired, was to afford the girl that help and protectionhe felt she needed. His first thought was to keep her from a furthersight of what had occurred. So he held her in his arms, limp andyielding, for one uncertain moment. Then, for the second time in hislife, he bore her off toward her home.
But now his feelings were of a totally different nature. There wasneither ecstasy nor dreaming. He was anxious and beset. As he bore heralong he spoke to her, encouraging her with gentle words of sympathyand hope. But her fainting condition left him no reward, and herhalf-closed eyes, filled with unshed tears, remained dull andunresponsive.
* * * * *
No sound broke the stillness in the parlor at the farm. Buck wasleaning against the small centre-table gravely watching the bowed headof the silently-weeping girl, who was seated upon the rough settlewhich lined the wall. Her slight figure was supported by the pillowswhich had been set in place by the ministering hands of Mrs. Ransford.
Buck's reception by the farm-wife had been very different on thisoccasion. She had met him with his burden some distance down thetrail, whither she had followed her young mistress, whose fleetnesshad left her far behind. Her tongue had started to clack at once, butBuck was in no mood to put up with unnecessary chatter. A peremptoryorder had had the astonishing effect of silencing her, and a furthercommand had set her bustling to help her mistress.
Once immediate needs had been attended to, the man told his storybriefly, and added his interpretation of the scene he had justwitnessed. He further dispatched the old woman to summon the hired manfrom his ploughing, and, for once,
found ready obedience where hemight well have expected nothing but objection.
Thus it was the man and girl were alone in the parlor. Buck waswaiting for Joan's storm of tears to pass.
The moment came at last, and quite abruptly. Joan stirred; she flungher head up and dashed the weak tears from her eyes, strugglingbravely for composure. But the moment she spoke her words belied theresolution, and showed her still in the toils of an overwhelmingdespair.
"What can I do?" she cried piteously. "What am I to do? I can seenothing--nothing but disaster in every direction. It is all a part ofmy life; a part of me. I cannot escape it. I have tried to, but--Icannot. Oh, I feel so helpless--so helpless!"
Buck's eyes shone with love and pity. He was stirred to the depths ofhis manhood by her appeal. Here again was that shadow she had spokenof before, that he had become familiar with. He tried to tell himselfthat she was simply unnerved, but he knew her trouble was more thanthat. All his love drove him to a longing for a means of comfortingher.
"Forget the things you seen," he said in a low tone. And he felt thathis words were bald--even stupid.
The girl's troubled eyes were looking up into his in a desperate hope.It was almost as if this man were her only support, and she weremaking one final appeal before abandoning altogether her saving hold.
"Forget them? Oh, Buck, Buck, you don't know what you are saying. Youdon't understand--you can't, or you would not speak like that. Yousee," she went on, forgetting in her trouble that this man did notknow her story, "Ike was here. Here! He made--love to me. He--hekissed me. He brutally kissed me when I had no power to resist him.And now--now this has happened."
But the man before her had suddenly changed while she was speaking.The softness had left his eyes. They had suddenly become hot, andbloodshot, and hard. His breath came quickly, heavily, his thinnostrils dilating with the furious emotion that swept through hisbody. Ike had kissed her. He had forgotten all her sufferings in hisown sudden, jealous fury.
Joan waited. The change in the man had passed unobserved by her. Then,as no answer was forthcoming, she went on--
"Wherever I go it is the same. Death and disaster. Oh, it is awful!Sometimes I think I shall go mad. Is there no corner of the earthwhere I can hide myself from the shadow of this haunting curse?"
"Ike kissed you?"
Buck's voice grated harshly. Somehow her appeal had passed him by.All his better thoughts and feelings were overshadowed for the moment.A fierce madness was sweeping through his veins, his heart, his brain,a madness of feeling such as he had never before experienced.
The girl answered him, still without recognizing the change.
"Yes," she said in a dull, hopeless way. "And the inevitable happened.It followed swiftly, surely, as it always seems to follow. He isdead."
"He got it--as he should get it. He got no more than he'd have got ifI'd been around."
Buck's mood could no longer escape her. She looked into the hard,young face, startled. She saw the fury in his eyes, the clenched jaws,with their muscles outstanding with the force of the fury stirringhim.
The sight agitated her, but somehow it did not frighten. She halfunderstood. At least she thought she did. She read his resentment asthat of a man who sees in the outrage a breaking of all the laws ofchivalry. She missed the real note underlying it.
"What does his act matter?" she said almost indifferently, her mind onwhat she regarded as the real tragedy. "He was drunk. He was notresponsible. No, no. It is not that which matters. It was the other.He left me--to go to his death. Had Pete not been waiting for him itwould have been just the same. Disaster! Death! Oh! can you not see?It is the disaster which always follows me."
Her protest was not without its effect. So insistent was she on theresulting tragedy that Buck found himself endeavoring to follow herthought in spite of his own feelings. She was associating thistragedy with herself--as part of her life, her fate.
But it was some moments before the man was sufficiently master ofhimself--before he could detach his thought altogether from the humanfeelings stirring him. The words sang on his ear-drums. "He--he kissedme." They were flaming through his brain. They blurred every otherthought, and, for a time, left him incapable of lending her thatsupport he would so willingly give her. Finally, however, his betternature had its way. He choked down his jealous fury, and strove tofind means of comforting her.
"It's all wrong," he cried, with a sudden force which claimed thegirl's attention, and, for the time at least, held her troubledthought suspended. "How can this be your doing? Why for should it be acurse on you because two fellers shoot each other up? They hated eachother because of you. Wal--that's natural. It's dead human. It's beendone before, an' I'm sure guessin' it'll be done again. It's not you.It's--it's nature--human nature. Say, Miss Joan, you ain't got thelessons of these hills right yet. Folks out here are diffrent to cityfolks. That is, their ways of doin' the same things are diff'rent. Wefeel the same--that's because we're made the same--but we actdiff'rent. If I'd bin around, I'd have shot Ike--with a whole heap ofpleasure. An' if I had, wher's the cuss on you? Kissin' a gal likethat can't be done around here."
"But Pete was not here. He didn't know."
Joan was quick to grasp the weakness of his argument.
"It don't matter a cent," cried Buck, his teeth clipping his words."He needed his med'cine--an' got it."
Joan sighed hopelessly.
"You don't understand, and--and I can't tell it you all. Sometimes Ifeel I could kill myself. How can I help realizing the truth? It isforced on me. I am a leper, a--a pariah."
The girl leant back on her cushions, and her whole despairing attitudebecame an appeal to his manhood. The last vestige of Buck's jealousypassed from him. He longed to tell her all there was in his heart. Helonged to take her in his arms and comfort her, and protect her fromevery shadow the whole wide world held for her. He longed to tell herof the love that was his, and how no power on earth could change it.But he did none of these things.
"The things you're callin' yourself don't sound wholesome," he saidsimply. "I can't see they fit in anyway. Guess they ain't natural."
Joan caught at the word.
"Natural!" she cried. "Is any of it natural?" She laughedhysterically.
Buck nodded.
"It's all natural," he said. "You've hit it. You don't need my word.Jest you ask the Padre. He'll give it you all. He'll tell you jest hownotions can make a cuss of any life, an' how to get shut of sechnotions. He's taught me, an' he'll teach you. I can't jest pass hiswords on. They don't git the same meaning when I say 'em. I ain't wiseto that sort of thing. But ther's things I am wise to, and they're thethings he's taught me. You're feeling mean, mean an' miser'ble, thatmakes me ter'ble mean to see. Say, Miss Joan, I ain't much handin'advice. I ain't got brain enough to hand that sort of thing around,but I'd sure ask you to say right here ther' ain't no cuss on yourlife, an' never was. You jest guess there's a cuss around chasin'glory at your expense. Wal, git right up, an' grit your teeth an'fight good. Don't sit around feeling mean. If you'd do that, I tellyou that cuss'll hit the trail so quick you won't git time to see it,an' you'll bust yourself laffin' to think you ever tho't it was aroundyour layout. An' before I done talkin' I'll ast you to remember thatwhen menfolks git around insultin' a helpless gal, cuss or no cuss,he's goin' to git his med'cine good--an' from me."
Buck's effort had its reward. The smile that had gradually found itsway into his own eyes caught something of a reflection in those of thegirl. He had dragged her from the depths of her despair by the forceof the frank courage that was his. He had lifted her by the sheerstrength and human honesty which lay at the foundation of his whole,simple nature. Joan sighed, and it was an acknowledgment of hissuccess.
"Thank you, Buck," she said gently. "You are always so good to me. Youhave been so ever since I came. And goodness knows you have littleenough reason for it, seeing it is I who have turned you out of thishome of yours----"
"We got your money," interrupt
ed Buck, almost brusquely. "This farmwas the Padre's. You never turned me out. An' say, the Padre don'tlive a big ways from here. Maybe you'd like him to tell you aboutcusses an' things." His eyes twinkled. "He's sure great on cusses."
But Joan did not respond to the lightness of his manner, and Buckrealized that her trouble was still strong upon her.
He waited anxiously, watching for the signs of her acceptance of hisinvitation. But they were not forthcoming. The deep violet of her eyesseemed to grow deeper with a weight of thought, and gradually theman's hopes sank. He had wanted her to see his friend, he had wantedhis friend to see her. But more than all he had wanted to welcome herto his own home. Nor was the reason of his desire clear even tohimself.
At last she rose from her seat and crossed over to the window, just asthe sound of voices heralded the return of Mrs. Ransford and the hiredman. It was at that moment she turned to him, speaking over hershoulder.
"They've got back," she said. "What are you going to do?"
"Send those--others--on into camp."
"Yes." Joan shivered.
Then she came back to him, and stood with one hand resting on thetable.
"I--I think I should like to see the Padre. Will you take me to himone day?"
The Golden Woman: A Story of the Montana Hills Page 22
