by Zane Grey
“Oh, he’s badly hurt,” moaned Georgiana.
“Wal, he’ll live to—to—” Here Wess broke off his speech.
“Tell me, for pity’s sake, what happened?” implored Georgiana.
“Cal was jest bulldoggin’ a mean steer,” replied Wess as he began to bathe Cal’s face.
“Don’t lie to me, Wess Thurman,” cried Georgiana.
“An’ he was ridin’ a buckin’ bronc,” went on Wess, imperturbably.
“Oh, how can you jest when he lies there so—so awfully battered?”
“An’ he fell off Promontory an’ rolled aboot a mile,” added Wess.
Georgiana forced composure enough to refrain from further useless questioning. Besides, Cal began to show signs of returning to consciousness. His breast heaved. He stirred. He moved his hands. And then Georgiana saw they were bruised, swollen, skinned raw in places.
“Wal, yore comin’ to, Cal,” drawled Wess.
“You fetched—me home?” whispered Cal, weakly.
“I shore did, an’ it was a hell of a job.”
“Georgie?” asked Cal, huskily.
“She’s heah, an’ actin’ fust rate, considerin’,” replied Wess, and it was certain he grinned and winked at Georgiana.
“Cal—I’m right by—you,” faltered Georgiana. She wanted to take his hands, but feared she might touch the raw flesh and hurt him. “Can’t you see me?”
“Yes, now I can. But not very clear,” he said. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other nearly so.
Wess handed the bloody towel to Georgiana and said: “Reckon thet’s aboot as clean as I can git him. Now, Georgie, I’ll lift him, an’ you pull off thet dirty shirt. Tear it off—it’s all rags, anyhow. . . . There!” That done, Wess proceeded to remove Cal’s boots, and then his jeans, which, if not so ragged as the shirt, were certainly as dirty. “Wal, you can sleep in yore underclothes, you ole son-of-a-gun. Now I’ll cover you over with this heah blanket—an’ shore thet’s aboot all I can think of.”
“Wess, my hands hurt worst of all,” said Cal.
Georgiana brought soft linen from her wardrobe, and with Wess’s help she began to bandage the injured members.
“Georgie,” said Cal, “I couldn’t whip him.”
“No?” murmured Georgiana.
“He was too big an’ strong for me.”
“Say,” drawled Wess, complainingly, “you air shore makin’ me out a liar. I had Georgie believin’ you fell off Promontory.”
“Yes, you had not,” retorted Georgiana.
“Wess, if I’d licked him I’d never told her,” said Cal.
For Georgiana there seemed to be a world of significance in this statement. Her first fears allayed, she began to find composure.
“I wish to Gawd you had licked him!” returned Wess, with a sudden dark fierceness that struck terror to Georgiana’s heart. That was the Thurman of it. If Cal had beaten this enemy, all of the Thurmans might have been willing to let it go at that. But now matters were worse.
Cal turned his disfigured face to the wall and lay quiet. Wess insisted on spending the night there. He helped Georgiana with the supper, and afterward, but it was not until he was carrying wood for the living-room fire that she had a moment alone with him.
“Now tell me what’s happened,” she demanded, tensely.
Wess deposited the wood on the hearth, and leisurely raked the red coals into a pile, and laid some sticks across it.
“Reckon you ought to go to bed,” he drawled.
“Wess, you’re a Thurman and I like you,” replied Georgiana, deliberately. “I think you’d be a great friend in the hour of need—like now. But don’t try your lazy, easy Tonto spoofing on me. It won’t go with me.”
“Tonto spoofin’!” ejaculated Wess. “Wal, I’ll be darned!”
“It was Bid Hatfield,” declared Georgiana, with heat.
“I should smile it was,” returned Wess, his manner and tone altering.
“It was on my account,” asserted Georgiana.
Wess nodded gloomy assent to this.
“Tell me,” burst out Georgiana, impatiently.
“Wal, Georgie, I don’t know a heap aboot it,” replied Wess, “I was ridin’ the Cold pasture when I seen two hosses an’ one rider comin’ down the Mescal Ridge trail. We met, an’ I seen the rider was Tom Hall, one of the Bar XX outfit. He was packin’ Cal over the saddle of the other hoss. He says: ‘By golly! Wess, it’s lucky to run into you. Cal busted in on Bid over at the ranch, an’ they had a hell of a fight. I didn’t see it, but the boys told me. They wrecked the bunkhouse, where Cal got to Bid, an’ then they tore up the ground all over. The boys said Cal more’n held his own with Bid on a stand-up square fight. But Bid rushed Cal an’ took to rough-an’-tumble. He damn near beat Cal to death. Our boss, Saunders, happened to ride in just then, an’ he stopped Bid. Shore he was sore. Cal was knocked clean out. Couldn’t get up!—Wal, someone had to pack him home, an’ I was the only fellar willin’ to do it. An’ I wasn’t a-rarin’ to run into Enoch or Cal’s dad. Not me! An’ heah I am. Cal’s bad hurt, an’ I’m glad to turn him over to you!’”
Wess had talked deliberately, evidently to make sure to recall everything, and the recital had stirred the slumbering depths of him.
“Wal,” he continued, “I thanked Tom for bein’ so decent, an’ I took charge of Cal. When we got as far as Tonto Creek, I lifted him off his hoss an’ brung him to. He thought he could ride home. But he couldn’t. He fell off his hoss an’ lost his senses again. I put him back on the saddle an’ rustled for home. We didn’t meet no one before we got heah.”
“I think it splendid of you to—to be so good and fetch him here where no one can see him. . . . Wess, is he badly hurt?”
“Pretty bad used up, I reckon,” replied Wess, wagging his head. “Of course he ain’t in any danger. I don’t like the way he spit blood. But mebbe thet’s from cut lips or he might hev a tooth knocked out.”
“Will he need a doctor?”
“Wal, we can decide thet tomorrow. I cain’t see any reason fer it now. An’ it’s a cinch Cal wouldn’t like no doctor to see him. Mother will come over heah, if she’s needed, an’ she’s as good as any doctor.”
“Wess, now tell me why Cal went after Bid Hatfield?” asked Georgiana.
“Aw, he jest wanted to fight, I reckon,” rejoined Wess, evasively, and he bent to blow the slow coals into a blaze.
“Don’t try to fool me, and don’t lie,” said Georgiana.
Wess went right on blowing the fire, then arranging more billets of wood in a neat pile. Georgiana had a moment to gather force and to make up her mind. These Thurmans could not be driven. But they were not proof against either tenderness or tears. She took hold of Wess, and made him get up, and held to his big rough hands, and looked up at him with an appeal that did not need to be simulated.
“Wess, you must tell me,” she begged. “I’m one of your family now. I’m a Thurman. I’ve disgraced Cal and made trouble for you all. I must rectify it. I will! . . . But I need to know the truth.”
“Georgie, we Thurmans hev always been able to take care of our women an’ their names,” he replied. “Cal bit off too much in tacklin’ Bid Hatfield with his bare fists. But I reckon thar’s other ways to—”
“That’s what I fear,” interrupted Georgiana. “Cal must not meet Hatfield again.”
“But, Georgie, you don’t know us. Cal has to go after Bid now more’n ever.”
“Cal is not going, for—for I will keep him from it,” declared Georgiana, with emotion.
“Child—you cain’t do thet,” said Wess.
“I can and I will,” added Georgiana, passionately.
“Wal, I hope to Gawd you ain’t oot of yore haid,” rejoined Wess, doubtfully yet hopefully. “Times hev changed since Cal an’ me was kids. But we Thurmans ain’t changed. . . . Cal will hev to drive Hatfield oot of the Tonto or—kill him.”
“Oh, my God!—Wess, what are y
ou saying?” cried Georgiana, now convinced of the thing she had feared.
“I shore hate to tell you, Georgie, but it’s true.”
“Why?—Why?” whispered Georgiana, clinging to Wess.
“Because Cal has finally heard what we all knew. He was the last one to heah.”
“What?”
“Bid Hatfield’s talk aboot you.”
“Wess, is—is it bad?” she asked, suddenly letting go of Wess, and starting back.
“Reckon it couldn’t be no wuss,” replied Wess, much troubled. “Now, heah, Georgie. . . . Don’t you look mad like thet. You made me tell you. . . . An’ for Gawd’s sake don’t believe any of us Thurmans take stock in what Hatfield says. Reckon Cal feels as we all do. He shore acted like he does.—Wal, we’ve all talked this over among ourselves, an’ we figgered this way. You was new to the Tonto, an’ a high-stepper at thet, as the boys say. You liked Bid an’ made no bones aboot it: Same way you liked Tim Matthews, an’ Arizona, an’ of course Cal. You didn’t know which one you wanted an’ you wasn’t in any hurry.—Wal, you married Cal, an’ thet settled thet. It shore squared everythin’. An’ if Bid Hatfield hadn’t been a low-down skunk you’d never heerd again of yore foolin’.”
“Fooling!” echoed Georgiana, poignantly. “I begin to see now. Oh, if I had only known! . . . Wess, I thank you for your faith in me. It is justified. Yet—”
Suddenly the door swung wide and Cal staggered in. He had put on his jeans and thrown a coat round his shoulders. How he could see to walk was not evident, yet he was able to do it.
“Wess, what’re you an’ Georgie talkin’ about—all this time?” he demanded, hoarsely. “I heard you.”
“Aw, Cal, I was just tellin’ Georgie aboot it. She made me,” replied Wess.
Georgiana recoiled from Cal as he approached close, but it was from pity and grief at sight of his bleeding and deformed face.
“Cal, I had to know,” she said, hurriedly.
“What?”
“Why you fought Hatfield.”
“Wess could have left that for me to tell,” declared Cal, hotly, and his white bandaged hands tried to clench.
“Wal, mebbe. But Georgie has a way of her own, Cal, as I reckon you know. I ain’t bustin’ into yore affairs an’ I’m sorry if I hev offended you.”
Cal clumsily found the back of the big homemade rocking chair, and leaned on it for support. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping, and a bloody froth showed on his swollen lips. Sight of him sickened Georgiana, and so filled her with horror at the proofs of her vanity and selfishness that she was stricken to the heart. She had to watch him. It must be part of her punishment. Something tremendous had begun vaguely to dawn upon her consciousness. He owed his present frightful condition, and the torture of mind he manifestly labored under, to his defense of her good name. For her—who had given him nothing?
“Cal. Don’t be angry with Wess,” she implored. “I had to know the truth.”
“Ahuh! What’d Wess tell you?” queried Cal.
“All he knew. . . . How everybody had heard Hatfield’s defamation of my character before you heard it.”
“Aw! . . . Everybody heard before me!” breathed Cal, as if to himself. He writhed under the shame. “That’s news to me.”
“Look heah, Cal,” interposed Wess, “you gotta make the best of this.”
Georgiana seemed drawn to go up to Cal. Her instinct was to take hold of him, in pity, distress, impulse, somehow to express herself, but though she went close, it was not to touch him.
“Hatfield’s a liar!” she said, in passionate scorn.
“Georgie, that’s the whole trouble,” responded Cal, a reply which would have been dignified but for his voice and appearance. “He’s lied about you from the first. He bragged about spoonin’ with you. I knew then what a liar—”
“But, Cal—that wasn’t a lie,” interrupted Georgiana, impetuously. “I did spoon with him—played choosies, as I told him we called it back East. We held hands and kissed. It happened three times. . . . But that was all I did, absolutely. And it meant so little to me I forgot it until now.”
Georgiana could not tell from Cal’s battered face what he felt at her disclosure, but the slow droop of his head, until it finally rested on the back of the chair, seemed proof of utter humiliation. She stared at him in consternation and mounting pain. A shock went through her. Never until that moment had she any divination of the staggering consequences which might follow careless flirting with boys. She felt her integrity, even her honor, assailed by Cal’s abasement.
“Cal, don’t you be a fool!” she cried, in sudden piercing voice. This time her hands went to his bowed shoulders, and she shook him gently. “I understand a little better. But you don’t understand. . . . I’ve let lots of boys kiss me. And you here in the Tonto—you first, then Hatfield, and Tim Matthews—and Arizona, yes, even ugly Arizona—and last, Hatfield again.—But I meant nothing. What’s a kiss? At least where I was brought up it’s no more a crime to kiss than to eat chocolates. Anyway, I did it. I let you all kiss me. I’m sorry. But I’m not ashamed. I may have been a silly vain little flirt—I must have been wrong, but I wasn’t bad. . . . You must see, Cal—you must not lose your respect for me.”
Cal lifted his bleeding, bruised face, and it touched one of Georgiana’s hands, burning her with its heat.
“Georgie, that hurts like hell, but I’m glad you had the nerve to tell me,” he said, huskily.
“You—you believe me?” she asked, tremulously.
“Yes. An’ I reckon I understand you better. It’s a pity you didn’t tell me—before—”
“Before what?” she interrupted as his husky voice faltered. “You mean before our marriage? Would that have kept you from marrying me?”
“Nothin’ could have kept me from marryin’ you—not even if all Bid Hatfield’s claims were true.”
“Cal!” she cried, shrinking.
“I regret nothin’.—As I said, what a pity you didn’t tell me before it was too late.”
This time she did not ask him what he meant. She knew. And suddenly she was mute. She had brought worse than disgrace upon Cal Thurman. How bitterly she repented! But it was not less too late for her also.
“Cal,” spoke up Wess, as he turned from the window, where he had discreetly retired, “thet’ll be aboot all from both of you. I was heah an’ I got ears. Now I’m a-goin’ to put you back to bed.”
Whereupon he led the sagging Cal toward the door. Opening it, he half turned his face to the girl. “Good night, Georgie. I’ll look after Cal. . . . An’ you’re welcome to know thet I think a heap more of you than ever.”
Georgiana was left alone, a victim to the most acute distress of mind and complexity of emotion that she had ever known. For long she sat on the deerskin rug before the fire, peering into the red glow, but seeing nothing.
At length out of the stress of that time she voiced one coherent thought.
“I’ve got to keep Cal from killing Bid Hatfield, at any cost.”
She had been the undoing of a splendid, manly boy. At realization of what Cal Thurman was, a strange commotion stormed Georgiana’s heart. But she did not ponder on that then. She was concerned with a new point of view—how the eyes of the Tonto had seen her.
Stranger from the East, dependent upon her sister’s love, she had come, with her painted cheeks, her lipstick, her flimsy frocks, and her bare knees, her slang and her intolerance of restraint. She saw it all now—her pitiful little vanity of person, her absorption of the modem freedom, with its feminine rant about equality with men, her deliberate flirting habits from what she considered a pursuit of fun and mischief, her selfish and cruel desire to punish boys whose offense had been to like her.
In her own eyes, she now became guilty of things she never would have confessed to Cal or anyone. Her quick, practical intelligence laid the blame for her character at other feet than hers. But that was no consolation, no help here in this extremity. She had
been more than vain, selfish, thoughtless, cruel. She had been blind, weak, wicked. Her relation to the Tonto now enlarged to any community. And the stunning truth came with realization that in spite of all the arguments she had brought West with her, and which had so distressed Mary, she would not want a daughter of hers to think and act as she had done. That was the climax which bowed her head. Life was life, East or West. What might be done with impunity back in the sophisticated East could not be done at all here in the Tonto. People did not understand. And through the simplicity and primitiveness of these Thurmans it was easy to see how far the so-called Eastern freedom was wrong. There were things women dared not do, unless they disregarded the progress of the world.
Thus in Georgiana formed the nucleus of a revolt. It was not a pity that Cal Thurman had the character to fight for her. The world was a better place when men fought for women, even if it was a matter of possession. The pity was that she, and all her kind, were not worth it. Georgiana saw how her sister Mary had been a helpful, guiding, splendid influence among these Tonto young people. But Georgiana felt that she had been the opposite. Once realizing that she knew she would never rest, never have any peace, until she had corrected what was wrong. What happened to her did not matter in the least. Had she considered what her vicious personality would do to Cal Thurman or Bid Hatfield? She could no longer be a traitress. She could not leave the Tonto. She was chained there by her conscience, by her longing to make amends, by something that brought a flame to her cheek.
CHAPTER
17
O
UT of the pain of the succeeding days; out of the watching by Cal in the dead of night, listening to his muttered dreams; out of the hours when he lay with discolored face to the wall, and the weak moments when he wept in his misery; out of nursing him and tending his injuries, and reading to him, talking to make him forget; and lastly out of long association alone with him during this ordeal—Georgiana underwent the developing and transforming experience of real love.
It brought her deeper pangs, yet a vision of future happiness. It made her a woman. It relieved her burden. It decided the future.
