by Max Brand
The door shut with a slam behind her, and Duval could give his attention to Marian Lane.
Her usual manner of baby-faced sweetness she abandoned the instant they were alone, standing back against the wall with her hands folded behind her and looking rather wearily at Duval.
“This,” he said, “is the biggest compliment I’ve ever received.”
“Is it, David?” she asked. “What sort of a compliment?”
“You’ve swept up all your little mannerisms and put them away, and here is the real Marian Lane watching me, a little tired, as I guess by the shadows under her eyes, but finally fairly honest.”
“Do you want honesty, David?”
“Of course I do, as long as it’s pleasant.”
“And suppose it isn’t?”
“I don’t want to suppose that. Everything leads me to think that you’re more amiable today, my dear.”
“How do you come to that conclusion, then?”
“Because you’re almost beaten. In the game we’ve been playing.”
“I’m not a whit beaten!”
“See now,” he said cruelly. “You’re trembling a little.”
“I haven’t slept much, and my nerves are a little upset. That’s all.”
“But still you’re beaten. You haven’t done the thing that you wanted to do.”
“Will you tell me what that is, then?”
“Of course I shall. You set out to find out all about me. You’ve managed to drive me out of the town, but you haven’t learned.”
She started, almost imperceptibly. “Are you going to leave us, David?”
“I am.”
“Forever?”
“It matters a little, I see,” he remarked without exultation.
“Yes, it matters a good deal. Moose Creek is going to seem pretty cramped and small without you.”
“Thank you,” said Duval.
“You knocked out the walls and made us live in a bigger house,” she admitted. “But, of course, before the summer’s over, it will have burned away everything except a dim memory of you.”
“Not dim in you, Marian.”
“No?”
“Not a whit dim in you. You’ll remember me to your death day.”
“That’s not like you,” said the girl in her cold, judicial manner, which she often showed when she was with Duval. “You don’t often betray any vanity.”
“It isn’t vanity. It’s the most profound humility. But I think that it’s fair to say that a girl never forgets any man who has thrown himself at her feet.”
At this she scanned him a little more closely still, and finally smiled. “Have you thrown yourself at my feet?” she asked.
“Deliberately, devotedly, wildly,” Duval said, yawning a little.
“I like to hear you talk like this,” Marian said, coming forward to the counter, “because I always wonder how you’ll be able to dodge and tack until you’ve justified what you’ve said.”
“Do you think that I can’t?”
“Nothing’s impossible for you, of course. Let me hear you.”
“The reasoning would go like this. I have never made myself a fool about a woman before....”
“Have you made yourself a fool about me?”
“Tell me, Marian. Have I let you scorn me, treat me with contempt, baffle me, hunt me down with your hired men?”
“Hired men?” she echoed. “Hired men?”
“Certainly. Hired by the hope that you would at least smile at them, hired by the trust that you would reward them by taking them in as friends. Am I wrong?”
She did not answer.
“This is my day for frankness,” said Duval. “Will you make it your day, also?”
“Well,” she said, “I must play with you that far. Yes, they were hired, then, if you wish to put it that way.”
“Thank you,” said Duval. “We’ll get on at this rate. Then you admit that you’ve pursued me with horses and hounds, as it were, and whips and guns?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“For no other reason than because I wouldn’t tell you who I was?”
“You know that that’s only a part of the reason,” said the girl.
“Well, perhaps. However, you know that you’ve had me dodging.”
“Yes, A little. But never very far. Never enough to make me think that you were being driven away.”
“Driven from my house and my farm that I’ve invested so much labor in?”
“That’s a harsh way to put it. I never intended that, and I haven’t done that.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No.”
“If I prove it, will you admit that I’m right?”
“Well, perhaps.”
“Look here, Marian. What has driven me away?”
“I suppose you mean on account of Henry’s arrest, his escape...I wonder how you managed that...and because the idiots think that you’re what Henry is. But why should untrue things like that drive you away?”
“Because they now think that I’m a thief like Henry. Why should that drive me away?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll tell you a few good reasons. One of them is that every man jack in the county who has anything against me, would not hesitate to take a crack at me with my back turned now. I’m under the shadow. I’m no longer wanted. That’s the reason. This is dangerous hunting ground if I’m the fox and all the others are hounds.”
“You can’t blame all that on me.”
“Distinctly and definitely I can. Without you, Kinkaid never would have taken up my trail.”
“Are you back at that?”
“I am. You expected it, you dreaded it, that’s why you pretend that the subject wearies you. Am I right?”
She pursed her lips in contemplation and frowned a little. Then, impatiently, she rubbed the wrinkles out of her forehead and exclaimed: “You’d make an old woman of me in another month, with your talk, David!”
“You haven’t answered me.”
“I don’t intend to answer.”
“That’s all right. I’ll accept every point that’s surrendered in this manner. But now to continue with our good logic....”
“Which I detest,” she said.
“To continue, in spite of all of this hounding that I’ve heretofore received, here I am throwing myself at your feet, Marian.”
“Oh, stuff and nonsense,” said the girl.
“Literally at your feet, disregarding the insults and the dangers that you’ve thrown in my way.”
“At my feet,” she said. “And there I see you, almost yawning in my face, criticizing me, analyzing me like a chemical compound...telling yourself that I’m looking a trifle old today, that I’ll wither young...that, after all, it’s not a very interesting flirtation that you’re about to leave behind you, making a last summing up of poor Marian Lane, and her poor little store, in the wretched little town of Moose Creek.”
“Wretched, Marian? Wretched?”
“Yes...I hate it!”
“Because I’m to go away, and trail along with me a few faint clouds of glory from the romantic outside world. Is that true?”
She struck her hands together, and then she began to laugh. “I would be angry with you and your vanity. Only, it’s not vanity. You’re simply looking at both sides of everything.”
“The fact is,” said Duval, “that we’re horribly alike in most ways, and that’s why we’ll miss one another.”
“That’s not according to the proverb, which says that unlikes attract one another.”
“Only in a stupid way, however. Opposites are attracted by the essential mystery. They remain in love, for instance, until they know each other better. But people who are alike have ended the most miserable necessity in life
before it becomes a leveled gun at their heads.”
“What miserable necessity?”
“That of confession, which overwhelms us, otherwise, from time to time, and makes us talk our hearts out and then feel degraded, but lighter about the conscience.”
“You and I, for instance?”
“We know one another...the cynicism, the scoffing, the cruelty, the lightness, the bitter selfishness. We understand, we know that we are understood, and, therefore, we are at ease. Pain is removed. Will you grant that?”
She hesitated. Then he insisted: “That’s why it’s a restful and a delightful thing to be with one another?”
At this she nodded. “And that’s why,” she answered, “it’s absurd for you to speak of being at my feet.”
“Is it? Let me show you.”
With that he vaulted over the counter and suddenly dropped to his knees before her. He took her hands as she would have recoiled from him.
“Here you see me, Marian, literally on my knees, my heart bowed down, in the dust of your persecution, your contempt, telling you that I couldn’t do without you, that I would miss you more....”
“Than coffee in the morning?”
“Are you going to keep on scoffing, and force me to be poetic, eloquent, and pitiful? Or will you leave me a few shreds of self-respect?”
“I’ll leave you your self-respect, if you’ll go back across the counter.”
Instantly he was on the farther side of it, his eyes glittering at her with triumph and excitement. “At least I’ve made you take me almost seriously,” he said.
“Yes, you have...almost. What is it that you want to do with me, David?”
“Take you away with me.”
“Where?”
“Wherever luck and adventure lead us!”
“Shall I tell you where that would be?”
“Tell me what you guess.”
“Your home is back East, perhaps out on Long Island, surrounded with big lawns, gardens, gardeners, stables, grooms. Inside there is a gray-haired lady, your mother, a frosty aunt, with a professional smile, and everything prepared to overwhelm and crush poor Marian Lane.”
He drummed his fingers on the counter top. “Suppose that that were not true, Marian?”
“Well?”
“Would you take me seriously? Would you go off with me and give yourself a chance to fall really and truly in love?”
An odd warmth came into her musing eyes, and in her daydream, she looked aside, out the window. That instant her glance changed, and she was shocked back to reality.
“No!” said the girl.
Duval, following the direction of her look, saw through the window the looming bulk of Marshal Dick Kinkaid, who now turned into the store.
“Is it the marshal, then?” Duval said, contempt in his voice. “Does that hard-handed brute of a man mean so much to you?”
“You’d better go,” Marian said. “I think that he wants to say something to me.”
“On the contrary, I’ll stay,” said Duval, “because I have something to say to him.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
In the most casual manner, Kinkaid went to the counter, nodded to the girl, overlooked Duval, and asked for bacon and cornmeal, telling her to give him a few pounds of each.
Dust lay thick on his shoulders and in the creases of his trousers. Since rain had fallen the night before, it was plain that he had been riding far away. One had a sense of fatigue about him, too, although there was so much iron in the man that it did not readily strike the eye; it was rather felt than seen.
“Well, Dick,” said Duval, “I see that you’ve forgotten me?”
Kinkaid did not even turn his head. “If you’ll wrap that up in some of the oiled paper...,” he was saying to Marian. He added: “I remember you, somewhere. I sort of forget your real name, though.”
Duval did not watch him, nor he Duval, but both looked at the girl behind the counter as though her eyes were the mirror in which they would be able to see what they wanted to know.
She, eagerly alert, looked from one to the other, fairly on tiptoe with expectancy, her glance fluctuating rapidly.
Then Duval said slowly: “I’m giving a little supper party at my shack, tonight. Charlie Nash is coming. I hope that you two will both come. D’you accept, Kinkaid?”
The marshal did not answer.
“Marian is going to be there,” Duval said smoothly. “And I thought that you might enjoy being present at my last appearance in Moose Creek, Kinkaid?”
Still the marshal did not speak.
“Silence I’ll take for polite acceptance. Because, after you’ve turned the matter over in your agile brain for a time, you’ll understand why you must be there, Richard. So good bye until that happy time. By the way, you might ask your chum along, if you care to...I mean Larry Jude!”
With that Parthian shot, he retreated from the store, swung onto Cherry, and disappeared at once down the street.
The marshal continued to stare out the window, until the dust that the mare had raised in her gallop blew past or settled down again. Then he turned to Marian Lane. He pointed.
“You’re going up the hill, tonight?”
She shrugged her shoulders, studying him.
“You’re going up there with him, Marian, to his house?” His voice rose as he spoke, against his will, booming loud and ominous.
And she, watching him with her head canted a little to one side, and an almost meaningless smile on her lips, said: “I hadn’t heard his invitation until you came in, Dick.”
She paused a little before that familiar nickname, and it came so softly and gently on her lips that Kinkaid thought he never before had heard real music.
“He hadn’t asked you, then? You hadn’t said you’d go?” the marshal asked eagerly.
She nodded. “But, of course, I’d better go with you, Dick.”
The pleasant poison ran warmly through his veins. Still, through a hot haze, he talked sense to her: “Y’understand that it’s a challenge that he’s sending to me, Marian?”
“I suppose it is, in a way?”
“A sneaking, low challenge, asking you along to see that there’s no real trouble started? I never figured it before, but I can see now that he’s afraid of me, and, by gravy, he’s gonna have reason for his fear.”
“Not tonight, Dick.”
“Tonight? In front of a woman? No, not tonight. There’s plenty of days afterward.”
She nodded, still thoughtful, only murmuring: “I wouldn’t be sure that he’s afraid of anyone...hardly even of you, Dick.”
But Kinkaid had progressed beyond even the thought of Duval, that somber rival. He said thickly: “I wanna say something to you, Marian, if you’ll listen.”
She gripped the counter, but she maintained her steady smile at him. “Yes? Of course, I’ll listen.”
“Marian, there’s one grand job on my hands...Duval. I gotta finish that job, and when it’s done...mind you, you steered me onto it...I’m gonna have something to say to you that’ll mean something. D’you understand?”
She did not answer.
“What I’d like to know now, is there any sort of a hope for me, that you’d take me serious, I mean? I ain’t a man that can talk, say pretty things, play the fool around a woman. But you’ve opened the door and stepped inside of my brain, Marian. You’re lodged there, and I could never get you out. D’you believe it?”
She answered suddenly: “I couldn’t doubt a thing you say in that way. It’s a great thing and a wonderful thing, to have such a man as you are, speaking to me so seriously, Dick. I believe you.”
“You couldn’t answer me now?” the marshal asked, leaning his elbows on the counter, so that suddenly his bulk was impending over her.
In spite of herself, she glanced up with a
frightened widening of her eyes.
Kinkaid was instantly himself again, and standing erect at a little distance.
“I dunno how to talk, I dunno how to do...,” he began. “I got no kind of manners, honey, but I could sort of learn. I could sort of study the things that would make you happy, if you’ll try to believe that.”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“If I look big and rough, and if there’s some that call me tolerable mean, maybe they’re right. There ain’t a thing that’s ever stepped inside of my eyesight that’s meant much to me. I never was no kid to think much of my pa and ma. My brothers and sisters, they never was anything to me. I never had no friends. I never knew nobody very good. I never wanted to. But you’re different. I dunno that I understand you. I don’t ask to. What I want is a chance to take care of you, have you, work for you, dress you up pretty slick, set and look at you at the end of the day, find you in the garden when I come home at night. I wanna love you, Marian, though I ain’t got the proper kind of words to set off what I’m saying....” He paused, his big, booming voice rolling away like disappearing thunder.
And she, in spite of herself, was only half hearing what he had to say, and marking the manner of his saying. In her mind, as vividly, appeared the picture of Duval on his knees, sneering, laughing, ironically protesting his love.
It was much that such a man as Kinkaid should have confessed as he now confessed, yet in the end such a man as he was doomed. She could have told it in the distance. Any woman could have known that the giant would eventually fall. It only needed a pretty face and a little art to undo him. What, then, did he care for in her? Her grace, her charm of an affected manner, her pretended childishness, and perhaps, also, some touches of shrewdness that he could not have failed to observe in her.
So he loved her. But Duval?
There was a different matter. If he cared at all, it was because he saw her almost more clearly than she saw herself. When she was with him, she felt his sensitive intelligence surround and embrace her mind and her spirit. She was, in a sense, in his hand. And, if she could have felt the same possession of him, would she have hesitated one instant before telling him that she, also, loved him, and far more truly than ever he could care for her. Out of this musing she was drawn by the voice of the marshal.
