by B. M. Bower
“Anybody to home?” he called, seeing the front door shut tight.
There was a stir within, and Val, still pale, and with an almost furtive expression in her eyes, opened the door and looked out.
“Oh, it’s you, Polycarp,” she said lifelessly. “Is there anything—”
“What’s the matter? Sick? You look kinda peaked and frazzled out. I met Man las’ night, and he told me you needed wood; I thought I’d ride over and see. By granny, you do look bad.”
“Just a headache,” Val evaded, shrinking back guiltily. “Just do whatever there is to do, Polycarp. I think—I don’t believe the chickens have had anything to eat today—”
“Them headaches are sure a fright; they’re might’ nigh as bad as rheumatiz, when they hit you hard. You jest go back and lay down, and I’ll look around and see what they is to do. Any idee when Man’s comin’ back?”
“No.” Val brought the word out with an involuntary sharpness.
“No, I reckon not. I hear him and Fred De Garmo come might’ near havin’ a fight las’ night. Blumenthall was tellin’ me this mornin’. Fred’s quit the Double Diamond, I hear. He’s got himself appointed dep’ty stock inspector—and how he managed to git the job is more ’n I can figure out. They say he’s all swelled up over it—got his headquarters in town, you know, and seems he got to lordin’ it over Man las’ night, and I guess if somebody hadn’t stopped ’em they’d of been a mix-up, all right. Man wasn’t in no shape to fight—he’d been drinkin’ pretty—”
“Yes—well, just do whatever there is to do, Polycarp. The horses are in the upper pasture, I think—if you want to haul wood.” She closed the door—gently, but with exceeding firmness, and, Polycarp took the hint.
“Women is queer,” he muttered, as he left the house. “Now, she knows Man drinks like a fish—and she knows everybody else knows it—but if you so much as mention sech a thing, why—” He waggled his head disapprovingly and proceeded, in his habitually laborious manner, to take a chew of tobacco. “No matter how much they may know a thing is so, if it don’t suit ’em you can’t never git ’em to stand right up and face it out—seems like, by granny, it comes natural to ’em to make believe things is different. Now, she knows might’ well she can’t fool me. I’ve hearn Man swear at her like—”
He reached the corral, and his insatiable curiosity turned his thoughts into a different channel. He inspected the four calves gravely, wondered audibly where Man had found them, and how the round-up came to miss them, and criticized his application of the brand; in the opinion of Polycarp, Manley either burned too deep or not deep enough.
“Time that line-backed heifer scabs off, you can’t tell what’s on her,” he asserted, expectorating solemnly before he turned away to his work.
Prom a window, Val watched him with cold terror. Would he suspect? Or was there anything to suspect? “It’s silly—it’s perfectly idiotic,” she told herself impatiently; “but if he hangs around that corral another minute, I shall scream!” She watched until she saw him mount his horse and ride off toward the upper pasture. Then she went out and began apathetically picking seed pods off her sweet-peas, which the early frosts had spared.
“Head better?” called Polycarp, half an hour later, when he went rattling past the house with the wagon, bound for the river bottom where they got their supply of wood.
“A little,” Val answered inattentively, without looking at him.
It was while Polycarp was after the wood, and while she was sitting upon the edge of the porch, listlessly arranging and rearranging a handful of long-stemmed blossoms, that Kent galloped down the hill and up to the gate. She saw him coming and set her teeth hard together. She did not want to see Kent just then; she did not want to see anybody.
Kent, however, wanted to see her. It seemed to him at least a month since he had had a glimpse of her, though it was no more than half that time. He watched her covertly while he came up the path. His mind, all the way over from the Wishbone, had been very clear and very decided. He had a certain thing to tell her, and a certain thing to do; he had thought it all out during the nights when he could not sleep and the days when men called him surly, and there was no going back, no reconsideration of the matter. He had been telling himself that, over and over, ever since the house came into view and he saw her sitting there on the porch. She would probably want to argue, and perhaps she would try to persuade him, but it would be absolutely useless; absolutely.
“Well, hello!” he cried, with more than his usual buoyancy of manner—because he knew he must hurt her later on. “Hello, Madam Authoress. Why this haughty air? This stuckupiness? Shall I get a ladder and climb up where you can hear me say howdy?” He took off his hat and slapped her gently upon the top of her head with it. “Come out of the fog!”
“Oh—I wish you wouldn’t!” She glanced up at him so briefly that he caught only a flicker of her yellow-brown eyes, and went on fumbling her flowers. Kent stood and looked down at her for a moment.
“Mad?” he inquired cheerfully. “Say, you look awfully savage. On the dead, you do. What do you care if they sent it back? You had all the fun of writing it—and you know it’s a dandy. Please smile. Pretty please!” he wheedled. It was not the first time he had discovered her in a despondent mood, nor the first time he had bantered and badgered her out of her gloom. Presently it dawned upon him that this was more serious; he had never seen her quite so colorless or so completely without spirit.
“Sick, pal?” he asked gently, sitting down beside her.
“No-o—I suppose not.” Val bit her lips, as soon as she had spoken, to check their quivering.
“Well, what is it? I wish you’d tell me. I came over here full of something I had to tell you—but I can’t, now; not while you’re like this.” He watched her yearningly.
“Oh, I can’t tell you. It’s nothing.” Val jerked a sweet-pea viciously from its stem, pressed her hand against her mouth, and turned reluctantly toward him. “What was it you came to tell me?”
He watched her narrowly. “I’ll gamble you’re down in the mouth about something hubby has said or done. You needn’t tell me—but I just want to ask you if you think it’s worth while? You needn’t tell me that, either. You know blamed well it ain’t. He can’t deal you any more misery than you let him hand out; you want to keep that in mind.”
Another blossom was demolished. “What was it you came to tell me?” she repeated steadily, though she did not look at him.
“Oh, nothing much. I’m going to leave the country, is all.”
“Kent!” After a minute she forced another word out. “Why?”
Kent regarded her somberly. “You better think twice before you ask me that,” he warned; “because I ain’t much good at beating all around the bush. If you ask me again, I’ll tell you—and I’m liable to tell you without any frills.” He drew a hard breath. “So I’d advise you not to ask,” he finished, half challengingly.
Val placed a pale lavender blossom against a creamy white one, and held the two up for inspection.
“When are you going?” she asked evenly.
“I don’t know exactly—in a day or so. Saturday, maybe.”
She hesitated over the flowers in her lap, and selected a pink one, which she tried with the white and the lavender.
“And—why are you going?” she asked him deliberately.
Kent stared at her fixedly. A faint, pink flush was creeping into her cheeks. He watched it deepen, and knew that his silence was filling her with uneasiness. He wondered how much she guessed of what he was going to say, and how much it would mean to her.
“All right—I’ll tell you why, fast enough.” His tone was grim. “I’m going to leave the country because I can’t stay any longer—not while you’re in it.”
“Why—Kent!” She seemed inexpressibly shocked.
“I don’t know,” he went on relentlessly, “what you think a man’s made of, anyhow. And I don’t know what you think of this pal busines
s; I know what I think: It’s a mighty good way to drive a man crazy. I’ve had about all of it I can stand, if you want to know.”
“I’m sorry, if you don’t—if you can’t be friends any longer,” she said, and he winced to see how her eyes filled with tears. “But, of course, if you can’t—if it bores you—”
Kent seized her arm, a bit roughly, “Have I got to come right out and tell you, in plain English, that I—that it’s because I’m so deep in love with you I can’t. If you only knew what it’s cost me this last year—to play the game and not play it too hard! What do you think a man’s made of? Do you think a man can care for a woman, like I care for you, and—Do you think he wants to be just pals? And stand back and watch some drunken brute abuse her—and never—Here!” His voice grew testier. “Don’t do that—don’t! I didn’t want to hurt you—God knows I didn’t want to hurt you!” He threw his seem around her shoulders and pulled her toward him.
“Don’t—pal, I’m a brute, I guess, like all the rest of the male humans. I don’t mean to be—it’s the way I’m made. When a woman means so much to me that I can’t think of anything else, day or night, and get to counting days and scheming to see her—why—being friends—like we’ve been—is like giving a man a teaspoon of milk and water when he’s starving to death, and thinking that oughta do. But I shouldn’t have let it hurt you. I tried to stand for it, little woman. These were times when I just had to fight myself not to take you up in my arms and carry you of and keep you. You must admit,” he argued, smiling rather wanly, “that, considering how I’ve felt about it, I’ve done pretty tolerable well up till now. You don’t—you never will know how much it’s cost. Why, my nerves are getting so raw I can’t stand anything any more. That’s why I’m going. I don’t want to hang around till I do something—foolish.”
He took his arm away from her shoulders and moved farther off; he was not sure how far he might trust himself.
“If I thought you cared—or if there was anything I could do for you,” he ventured, after a moment, “why, it would be different. But—”
Val lifted her head and turned to him.
“There is something—or there was—or—oh, I can’t think any more! I suppose”—doubtfully—“if you feel as you say you do, why—it would be—wicked to stay. But you don’t; you must just imagine it.”
“Oh, all right,” Kent interpolated ironically.
“But if you go away—” She got up and stood before him, breathing unevenly, in little gasps. “Oh, you mustn’t go away! Please don’t go! I—there’s something terrible happened—oh, Kent, I need you! I can’t tell you what it is—it’s the most horrible thing I ever heard of! You can’t imagine anything more horrible, Kent!”
She twisted her fingers together nervously, and the blossoms dropped, one by one, on the ground. “If you go,” she pleaded, “I won’t have a friend in the country, not a real friend. And—and I never needed a friend as much as I do now, and you mustn’t go. I—I can’t let you go!” It was like her hysterical fear of being left alone after the fire.
Kent eyed her keenly. He knew there must have been something to put her into this state—something more than his own rebellion. He felt suddenly ashamed of his weakness in giving way—in telling her how it was with him. The faint, far-off chuckle of a wagon came to his ears. He turned impatiently toward the sound. Polycarp was driving up the coulee with a load of wood; already he was nearing the gate which opened into the lower field. Kent stood up, reached out, and caught Val by the hand.
“Come on into the house,” he said peremptorily. “Polly’s coming, and you don’t want him goggling and listening. And I want you,” he added, when he had led her inside and closed the door, “to tell me what all this is about. There’s something, and I want to know what. If it concerns you, then it concerns me a whole lot, too. And what concerns me I’m going to find out about—what is it?”
Val sat down, got up immediately, and crossed the room aimlessly to sit in another chair. She pressed her palms tightly against both cheeks, drew in her breath as if she were going to speak, and, after all, said nothing. She looked out of the window, pushing back the errant strand of hair.
“I can’t—I don’t know how to tell you,” she began desperately. “It’s too horrible.”
“Maybe it is—I don’t know what you’d call too horrible; I kinda think it wouldn’t be what I’d tack those words to. Anyway—what is it?” He went close, and he spoke insistently.
She took a long breath.
“Manley’s a thief!” She jerked the words out like as automaton. They were not, evidently, the Words she had meant to speak, for she seemed frightened afterward.
“Oh, that’s it!” Kent made a sound which was not far from a snort. “Well, what about it? What’s he done? How did you find it out?”
Val straightened in the chair and gazed up at him. Once more her tawny eyes gave him a certain shock, as if he had never before noticed them.
“After all our neighbors have done for him,” she cried bitterly; “after giving him hay, when his was burned and he couldn’t buy any; after building stables, and corral, and—everything they did—the kindest, best neighbors a man ever had—oh, it’s too shameful for utterance! I might forgive it—I might, only for that. The—the ingratitude! It’s too despicable—too—”
Kent laid a steadying hand upon her arm.
“Yes—but what is it?” he interrupted.
Val shook off his hand unconsciously, impatient of any touch.
“Oh, the bare deed itself—well, it’s rather petty, too—and cheap.” Her voice became full of contempt. “It was the calves. He brought home five last night—five that hadn’t been branded last spring. Where he found them I don’t know—I didn’t care enough about it to ask. He had been drinking, I think; I can usually tell—and he often carries a bottle in his pocket, as I happen to know.
“Well, he had me make a fire and heat the iron for him, and he branded them—last night; he was very touchy about it when I asked him what was his hurry. I think now it was a stupid thing for him to do. And—well, in the night, some time, I heard a cow bawling around close, and this morning I went out to drive her away; the fence is always down somewhere—I suppose she found a place to get through. So I went out to drive her away.” Her eyes dropped, as if she were making a confession of her own misdeed. She clenched her hands tightly in her lap.
“Well—it was a Wishbone cow.” After all, she said it very quietly.
“The devil it was!” Kent had been prepared for something of the sort; but, nevertheless, he started when he heard his own outfit mentioned.
“Yes. It was a Wishbone cow.” Her voice was flat and monotonous. “He had stolen her calf. He had it in the corral, and he had branded it with his own brand—with a VP. With my initials!” she wailed suddenly, as if the thought had just struck her, and was intolerably bitter. “She had followed—had been hunting her calf; it was rather a little calf, smaller than the others. And it was crowded up against the fence, trying to get to her. There was no mistaking their relationship. I tried to think he had made a mistake; but it’s of no use—I know he didn’t. I know he stole that calf. And for all I know, the others, too. Oh, it’s perfectly horrible to think of!”
Kent could easily guess her horror of it, and he was sorry for her. But his mind turned instantly to the practical side of it.
“Well—maybe it can be fixed up, if you feel so bad about it. Does Polycarp—did he see the cow hanging around?”
Val shook her head apathetically. “No—he didn’t come till just a little while ago. That was this morning. And I drove her out of the coulee—her and her calf. They went off up over the hill.”
Kent stood looking down at her rather stupidly.
“You—what? What was it you did?” It seemed to him that something—some vital point of the story—had eluded him.
“I drove them away. I didn’t think they ought to be permitted to hang around here.” Her lips quivered aga
in. “I—I didn’t want to see him—get—into any trouble.”
“You drove them away? Both of them?” Kent was frowning at her now.
Val sprang up and faced him, all a-tremble with indignation. “Certainly, both! I’m not a thief, Kent Burnett! When I knew—when there was no possible doubt—why, what, in Heaven’s name, could I do? It wasn’t Manley’s calf. I turned it loose to go back where it belonged.”
“With a VP on its ribs!” Kent was staring at her curiously.
“Well, I don’t care! Fifty VP’s couldn’t make the calf Manley’s. If anybody came and saw that cow, why—” Val looked at him rafter pityingly, as if she could not quite understand how he could even question her upon that point. “And, after all,” she added forlornly, “he’s my husband. I couldn’t—I had to do what I could to shield him—just for sake of the past, I suppose. Much as I despise him, I can’t forget that—that I cared once. It’s because I wanted your advice that I—”
“It’s a pity you didn’t get it sooner, then! Can’t you see what you’ve done? Why, think a minute! A VP calf running with a Wishbone cow—why, it’s—you couldn’t advertise Man as a rustler any better if you tried. The first fellow that runs onto that cow and calf—well, he won’t need to do any guessing—he’ll know. It’s a ticket to Deer Lodge—that VP calf. Now do you see?” He turned away to the window and stood looking absently at the brown hillside, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.
“And there’s Fred De Garmo, with his new job, ranging around the country just aching to cinch somebody and show his authority. It’s a matter of days almost. He’d like nothing better than to get a whack at Man, even if the Wishbone—”
Outside, they could hear Polycarp throwing the wood off the wagon; knowing him as they did, they knew, it would not be long before he found an excuse for coming into the house. He had more than once evinced a good deal of interest in Kent’s visits there, and shown an unmistakable desire to know what they were talking about. They had never paid much attention to him; but now even Val felt a vague uneasiness lest he overhear. She had been sitting, her face buried in her arms, crushed beneath the knowledge of what she had done.
