The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  Their talk was intimate and natural. It had the note of comradeship, took for granted sympathy and understanding.

  He showed her the picture of his mother. By the fire glow she studied it intently. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  "She's so lovely and so sweet--and she had to go away and leave her little baby when she was so young. I don't wonder you worship her. I would, too."

  Roy did not try to thank her in words. He choked up in his throat and nodded.

  "You can see how fine and dainty she was," the girl went on. "I'd rather be like that than anything else in the world--and, of course, I never can be."

  "I don't know what you mean," he protested warmly. "You're as fine as they grow."

  She smiled, a little wistfully. "Nice of you to say so, but I know better. I'm not a lady. I'm just a harum-scarum, tempery girl that grew up in the hills. If I didn't know it, that wouldn't matter. But I do know it, and so like a little idiot I pity myself because I'm not like nice girls."

  "Thank Heaven, you're not!" he cried. "I've never met a girl fit to hold a candle to you. Why, you're the freest, bravest, sweetest thing that ever lived."

  The hot blood burned slowly into her cheek under its dusky coloring. His words were music to her, and yet they did not satisfy.

  "You're wrapping it up nicely, but we both know that I'm a vixen when I get angry," she said quietly. "We used to have an old Indian woman work for us. When I was just a wee bit of a thing she called me Little Cactus Tongue."

  "That's nothing. The boys were probably always teasing you and you defended yourself. In a way the life you have led has made you hard. But it is just a surface hardness nature has provided as a protection to you."

  "Since it is there, I don't see that it helps much to decide why it is a part of me," she returned with a wan little smile.

  "But it does," he insisted. "It matters a lot. The point is that it isn't you at all. Some day you'll slough it the way a butterfly does its shell."

  "When?" she wanted to know incredulously.

  He did not look at her while he blurted out his answer. "When you are happily married to a man you love who loves you."

  "Oh! I'm afraid that will be never." She tried to say it lightly, but her face glowed from the heat of an inward fire.

  "There's a deep truth in the story of the princess who slept the years away until the prince came along and touched her lips with his. Don't you think lots of people are hampered by their environment? All they need is escape." He suggested this with a shy diffidence.

  "Oh, we all make that excuse for ourselves," she answered with a touch of impatient scorn. "I'm all the time doing it. I say if things were different I would be a nice, sweet-tempered, gentle girl and not fly out like that Katherine in Shakespeare's play. But I know all the time it isn't true. We have to conquer ourselves. There is no city of refuge from our own temperaments."

  He felt sure there was a way out from her fretted life for this deep-breasted, supple daughter of the hills if she could only find it. She had breathed an atmosphere that made for suspicion and harshness. All her years she had been forced to fight to save herself from shame. But Roy, as he looked at her, imaged another picture of Beulah Rutherford. Little children clung to her knees and called her "Mother." She bent over them tenderly, her face irradiated with love. A man whose features would not come clear strode toward her and the eyes she lifted to his were pools of light.

  Beaudry drew a deep breath and looked away from her into the fire. "I wish time would solve my problem as surely as it will yours," he said.

  She looked at him eagerly, lips parted, but she would not in words invite his confession.

  The young man shaded his eyes with his hand as if to screen them from the fire, but she noticed that the back of his hand hid them from her, too. He found a difficulty in beginning. When at last he spoke, his voice was rough with feeling.

  "Of course, you'll despise me--you of all people. How could you help it?"

  Her body leaned toward him ever so slightly. Love lit her face like a soft light.

  "Shall I? How do you know?"

  "It cuts so deep--goes to the bottom of things. If a fellow is wild or even bad, he may redeem himself. But you can't make a man out of a yellow cur. The stuff isn't there." The words came out jerkily as if with some physical difficulty.

  "If you mean about coming up to the park, I know about that," she said gently. "Mr. Dingwell told father. I think it was splendid of you."

  "No, that isn't it. I knew I was right in coming and that some day you would understand." He dropped the hand from his face and looked straight at her. "Dave didn't tell your father that I had to be flogged into going, did he? He didn't tell him that I tried to dodge out of it with excuses."

  "Of course, you weren't anxious to throw up your own affairs and run into danger for a man you had never met. Why should you be wild for the chance. But you went."

  "Oh, I went. I had to go. Ryan put it up to me so that there was no escape," was his dogged, almost defiant, answer.

  "I know better," the girl corrected quickly. "You put it up to yourself. You're that way."

  "Am I?" He flashed a questioning look at her. "Then, since you know that, perhaps you know, too, what--what I'm trying to tell you."

  "Perhaps I do," she whispered softly to the fire.

  There was panic in his eyes. "--That . . . that I--"

  "--That you are sensitive and have a good deal of imagination," the girl concluded gently.

  "No, I'll not feed my vanity with pleasant lies to-night." He gave a little gesture of self-scorn as he rose to throw some dry sticks on the fire. "What I mean and what you mean is that--that I'm an arrant coward." Roy gulped the last words out as if they burned his throat.

  "I don't mean that at all," she flamed. "How can you say such a thing about yourself when everybody knows that you're the bravest man in Washington County?"

  "No--no. I'm a born trembler." From where he stood beyond the fire he looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes. "You say yourself you've noticed it. Probably everybody that knows me has."

  "I didn't say that." Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily. "What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger recklessly. You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries you. Isn't that the way of it?"

  He nodded, ashamed.

  "But when the time comes, nobody could be braver than you," she went on. "You've been tried out a dozen times in the last three months. You have always made good."

  "Made good! If you only knew!" he answered bitterly.

  "Knew what? I saw you down at Hart's when Dan Meldrum ordered you to kneel and beg. But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill you."

  He flushed beneath the tan. "I was too paralyzed to move. That's the simple truth."

  "Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver Dollar?" she flashed at him.

  "It was the drink in me. I wasn't used to it and it went to my head."

  "Had you been drinking that time at the depot?" she asked with a touch of friendly irony.

  "That wasn't courage. If it would have saved me, I would have run like a rabbit. But there was no chance. The only hope I had was to throw a fear into him. But all the time I was sick with terror."

  She rose and walked round the camp-fire to him. Her eyes were shining with a warm light of admiration. Both hands went out to him impulsively.

  "My friend, that is the only kind of courage really worth having. That kind you earn. It is yours because it is born of the spirit. You have fought for it against the weakness of the flesh and the timidity of your own soul. Some men are born without sense or imagination. They don't know enough to be afraid. But the man who tramples down a great fear wins his courage by earning it." She laughed a little, to make light of her own enthusiasm. "Oh, I know I'm preaching like a little prig. But it's the truth, just the same."

  At the touch of her fingers his pulses throbbed. But once more
he tried to make her understand.

  "No, I've had luck all the way through. Do you remember that night at the cabin--before we went up the cañon?"

  "Yes."

  "Some one shot at me as I ran into the cabin. I was so frightened that I piled all the furniture against the door and hid in the cellar. It was always that way with me. I used to jump if anybody rode up unexpectedly at the ranch. Every little thing set my nerves fluttering."

  "But it isn't so now."

  "No, not so much."

  "That's what I'm telling you," she triumphed. "You came out here from a soft life in town. But you've grown tough because you set your teeth to go through no matter what the cost. I wish I could show you how much I . . . admire you. Dad feels that way, too. So does Ned."

  "But I don't deserve it. That's what humiliates me."

  "Don't you?" She poured out her passionate protest. "Do you think I don't know what happened back there at the prospect hole? Do you think I don't know that you put Dan Meldrum down in the pit--and him with a gun in his hand? Was it a coward that did that?"

  "So you knew that all the time," he cried.

  "I heard him calling you--and I went close. Yes, I knew it. But you would never have told me because it might seem like bragging."

  "It was easy enough. I wasn't thinking of myself, but of you. He saw I meant business and he wilted."

  "You were thinking about me--and you forgot to be afraid," the girl exulted.

  "Yes, that was it." A wave of happiness broke over his heart as the sunlight does across a valley at dawn. "I'm always thinking of you. Day and night you fill my thoughts, hillgirl. When I'm riding the range--whatever I do--you're with me all the time."

  "Yes."

  Her lips were slightly parted, eyes eager and hungry. The heart of the girl drank in his words as the thirsty roots of a rosebush do water. She took a long deep breath and began to tremble.

  "I think of you as the daughter of the sun and the wind. Some day you will be the mother of heroes, the wife of a man--"

  "Yes," she prompted again, and the face lifted to his was flushed with innocent passion.

  The shy invitation of her dark-lashed eyes was not to be denied. He flung away discretion and snatched her into his arms. An inarticulate little sound welled up from her throat, and with a gesture wholly savage and feminine her firm arms crept about his neck and fastened there.

  Chapter XXVI

  The Sins of the Fathers

  They spoke at first only in that lovers' Esperanto which is made up of fond kisses and low murmurs and soft caresses. From these Beulah was the first to emerge.

  "Would you marry a girl off the range?" she whispered. "Would you dare take her home to your people?"

  "I haven't any people. There are none of them left but me."

  "To your friends, then?"

  "My friends will be proud as punch. They'll wonder how I ever hypnotized you into caring for me."

  "But I'm only a hillgirl," she protested. "Are you sure you won't be ashamed of me, dear?"

  "Certain sure. I'm a very sensible chap at bottom, and I know when I have the best there is."

  "Ah, you think that now because--"

  "Because of my golden luck in winning the most wonderful girl I ever met." In the fling of the fire glow he made a discovery and kissed it. "I didn't know before that you had dimples."

  "There are lots of things you don't know about me. Some of them you won't like. But if you love me, perhaps you'll forgive them, and then--because I love you--maybe I'll grow out of them. I feel to-night as if anything were possible. The most wonderful thing that ever happened to me has come into my life."

  "My heart is saying that, too, sweetheart."

  "I love to hear you say that I'm--nice," she confided. "Because, you know, lots of people don't think so. The best people in Battle Butte won't have anything to do with me. I'm one of the Rutherford gang."

  The light was full on his face, so that she saw the dawning horror in his eyes.

  "What is it? What are you thinking?" she cried.

  He gave a little groan and his hands fell slackly from her. "I'd forgotten." The words came in a whisper, as if he spoke to himself rather than to her.

  "Forgotten what?" she echoed; and like a flash added: "That I'm a Rutherford. Is that what you mean?"

  "That you are the daughter of Hal Rutherford and that I'm the son of John Beaudry."

  "You mean that you would be ashamed to marry a Rutherford," she said, her face white in the fire glow.

  "No." He brushed her challenge aside and went straight to what was in his mind. "I'm thinking of what happened seventeen years ago," he answered miserably.

  "What did happen that could come between you and me to-night?"

  "Have you forgotten, too?" He turned to the fire with a deep breath that was half a sob.

  "What is it? Tell me," she demanded.

  "Your father killed mine at Battle Butte."

  A shiver ran through her lithe, straight body. "No . . . No! Say it isn't true, Roy."

  "It's true. I was there . . . Didn't they ever tell you about it?"

  "I've heard about the fight when Sheriff Beaudry was killed. Jess Tighe had his spine injured in it. But I never knew that dad . . . You're sure of it?" she flung at him.

  "Yes. He led the attackers. I suppose he thought of it as a feud. My father had killed one of his people in a gun fight."

  She, too, looked into the fire. It was a long time before she spoke, and then in a small, lifeless voice. "I suppose you . . . hate me."

  "Hate you!" His voice shook with agitation. "That would make everything easy. But--there is no other woman in the world for me but you."

  Almost savagely she turned toward him. "Do you mean that?"

  "I never mean anything so much."

  "Then what does it matter about our fathers? We have our own lives to live. If we've found happiness we've a right to it. What happened seventeen years ago can't touch us--not unless we let it."

  White-lipped, drear-eyed, Roy faced her hopelessly. "I never thought of it before, but it is true what the Bible says about the sins of the fathers. How can I shake hands in friendship with the man who killed mine? Would it be loyal or decent to go into his family and make him my father by marrying his daughter?"

  Beulah stood close to him, her eyes burning into his. She was ready to fight for her love to a finish. "Do you think I'm going to give you up now . . . now . . . just when we've found out how much we care . . . because of any reason under heaven outside ourselves? By God, no! That's a solemn oath, Roy Beaudry. I'll not let you go."

  He did not argue with her. Instead, he began to tell her of his father and his mother. As well as he could remember it he related to her the story of that last ride he had taken with John Beaudry. The girl found herself visioning the pathetic tenderness of the father singing the "li'l'-ole-hawss" song under the stars of their night camp. There flashed to her a picture of him making his stand in the stable against the flood of enemies pouring toward him.

  When Roy had finished, she spoke softly. "I'm glad you told me. I know now the kind of man your father was. He loved you more than his own life. He was brave and generous and kind. Do you think he would have nursed a grudge for seventeen years? Do you think he would have asked you to give up your happiness to carry on a feud that ought never to have been?"

  "No, but--"

  "You are going to marry me, not Hal Rutherford. He is a good man now, however wild he may have been once. But you needn't believe that just because I say so. Wait and see. Be to him just as much or as little as you like. He'll understand, and so shall I. My people are proud. They won't ask more of you than you care to give. All they'll ask is that you love me--and that's all I ask, dear."

  "All you ask now, but later you will be unhappy because there is a gulf between your father and me. You will try to hide it, but I'll know."

  "I'll have to take my chance of that," she told him. "I don't suppose that life even with th
e man you love is all happiness. But it is what I want. It's what I'm not going to let your scruples rob me of."

  She spoke with a low-voiced, passionate intensity. The hillgirl was fighting to hold her lover as a creature of the woods does to protect its young. So long as she was sure that he loved her, nothing on earth should come between them. For the moment she was absorbed by the primitive idea that he belonged to her and she to him. All the vital young strength in her rose to repel separation.

  Roy, yearning to take into his arms this dusky, brown-cheeked sweetheart of his, became aware that he did not want her to let his arguments persuade her. The fierce, tender egoism of her love filled him with exultant pride.