The Ramblin Kid
Page 23
"What are you tryin' to do?" he said almost brutally, "play with me like you played with them other blamed idiots th' night of th' dance?"
"You're mean—" she started to say.
"Am I?" he interrupted, and spoke with sudden intenseness. "Maybe you think I am. Maybe you think a lot of things. Maybe you think God put them brown eyes in your face just so you could coax men, with a look out of them, to love you an' then laugh because th' damned fools do it!"
"You're unfair!" she replied. "I was just paying the boys back the night of the dance for—for—'framing' up on Ophelia and me the way they did!"
For a moment they looked squarely into each other's eyes. Captain Jack and the Gold Dust maverick nosed each other over the shoulders of their dismounted riders.
"Oh, well, it don't matter," the Ramblin' Kid finally said, wearily; "it don't matter, you're what you are an' I reckon you can't help it!"
Carolyn June said nothing.
"I—I—was goin' to turn th' filly back to th' range," he continued in the same emotionless voice, "but—well, you can have her—I'll trade her to you for—for—th' thing that started th' fight. You can ride th' maverick till you go back east—"
"I'm not going back east," she said in a hurt tone, "at least not for a long time. Dad is going to—to—get me a stepmother! He's going to marry some female person and he doesn't need me so I'm going to live—most of the time—with Uncle Josiah and Ophelia! Anyhow I—I—like it out west—or that is—I did like it—"
There was another little period of silence between them.
"Ramblin' Kid," Carolyn June spoke suddenly very softly, "Ramblin'
Kid—why—why do you hate me?"
"Me hate you?" he answered slowly. "I don't hate you—I hate myself!"
"Yourself?" with a questioning lift of her voice.
"Yes, myself!" he replied with a short, bitter laugh. "Why shouldn't
I—bein' an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!'"
Carolyn June flinched as he repeated the cruel words she herself had spoken, it seemed, now so long ago.
"You are right!" she said, after a pause, while a ripple of quivering, mischievous laughter leaped from her lips and she laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Oh, Ramblin' Kid, you are indeed an 'ign'rant, savage, stupid brute!' You are 'ign'rant,'" she continued while he looked at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes, "of the ways of a woman's heart; you are 'savage'—in the defense of a woman's honor; you are 'stupid'—not to see that it is the man a woman wants and not the thin social veneer; you are a 'brute'—an utter brute, Ramblin' Kid— to—to—make a girl almost tell you—tell you—that she—she—"
The sentence was not finished.
The Ramblin' Kid caught her by both shoulders. He pushed her back—arm's length—and held her while the clean moonlight poured down on her upturned face and his black eyes searched her own as though to read her very soul.
An instant she was almost frightened by the agony that was in his face.
Then she opened her mouth and laughed—such a laugh as comes only from the throat of a woman when love is having its way!
"By God!" he whispered, his voice hoarse with passion, his hot breath fanning the brown hair on her forehead; "this has gone far enough! I'll tell you what you want me to say—I'll say it! And it's the truth—I love you—love you—love you! Yes!" And he shook her toward him. "Do you hear me? I love you—love you—so much it hurts! Now laugh! Now make fun of me! I know I'm a fool. I know where I stand! I know I don't belong in your crowd—I ain't fit to mix with 'em! I ain't been raised like you was raised. You don't need to tell me that! I know it already! I know there's somethin' a man has to have besides what he gets on th' open range among th' cattle—an' th' bronchos—an' th' rattlesnakes—he's got to be ground in th' mill of schoolin'—of books; he's got to be hammered into shape under th' heels of 'civilization'; he's got to be trained to jump through and roll over an' know which fork to eat with before a girl like you—"
His hands relaxed, but before his fingers loosened their grip on her shoulders Carolyn June's own soft palms reached up and caught the man's sun-tanned cheeks between them. Her eyes burned back into its own. Once more the laugh rippled from the full pulsing throat.
"Ramblin' Kid, oh, Ramblin' Kid," she murmured, while the long lashes lifted over brown pools tenderness, "a man—my man—does not need to be or to know all of those things, any of those things, before a girl like me—"
He crushed her to him and stopped the words on her lips.
"My God—don't fool me—be sure you know!" he cried, his whole body quivering with the intensity of his feelings; "don't tell me you love me—unless you mean it! I can stand to love you—without hope—in silence—alone! But I can't—an' I swear I wont, be lifted up to Paradise just to be dropped again into the depths of hell! Don't say you love me unless you know it is all love! Half love ain't love—it's a lie! An' love ain't to play with! Don't insult God by makin' a joke of th' thing He made an' planted in th' hearts of all Creation to hold th' Universe together."
"Ramblin' Kid," she whispered softly, "God himself is looking down into my heart!"
He smothered her mouth with his own—they drank each other in, their souls mingled in a mad-sense-reeling, time-defying pressure of lips!
It was their hour, as was the next and yet the one that followed that.
When the old-rose of dawn melted the gray above the sand-hills behind them and the white moon was fading in the zenith above the Kiowa; when the cottonwoods beside the Cimarron began to shake their leaves in the morning breeze that tripped across the valley; when the low buildings of the Quarter Circle KT silhouetted against the bench beyond the meadows; when the smooth surface of the beach of quicksand under which the body of Old Blue was hidden began to look smoother yet and still more firm, the Ramblin' Kid and Carolyn June parted.
"I'm goin' away," he said; "I'm goin' away, Carolyn June, but I'm goin' for another reason now. I'm goin' away an' make myself so you'll never have a chance to be ashamed of me! I'm goin' away an' learn how to talk without cussin' 'most every other word—I'm goin' away an' get that polish I know; women love in men th' same as they love their own shoes to be shiny an' their own dresses to be soft an' dainty! When I've got that I'll come back! I ain't goin' to Mexico. I'm going to ride into that world that you come out of an' when I'm so you'll be proud to walk in that world with me—when I'm so you won't need to apologize for me in Hartville or any other place, I'm comin' back an' a preacher can O.K. th' bargain you an' me have made! Will you keep faith an' be true, Carolyn June? Will you keep faith an' be true—? Will you be waitin'?"
"I'll be waiting," she whispered, "—and keep faith and be true!"
And he rode away into the face of the red glow rising above the sand-hills. He rode away—to meet the morning sun—hidden yet behind the eastern horizon—to conquer himself, to master the ways of men, in the world that lay beyond!
Carolyn June watched him go.
Then she guided the outlaw filly down the grade, across the Cimarron and along the lane, in the gently stirring dawn, back to the still sleeping Quarter Circle KT. In her heart was a song; in her eyes a new light; in her soul a great peace—on her lips, a smile. She carried in her bosom their secret—hers and the Ramblin' Kid's—and she knew he would return, for he would not lie.
THE END
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