“Look at the cowardly dastard!” sneered Creede bitterly. “D’ye know what he would do if that was me? He’d shoot me in the back. Ah, God A’mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this–every dam’ one of ’em–and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty.” He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.
“God A’mighty,” he moaned, “I can’t keep nothin’!” And stumbling back into the house he slammed the door behind him.
A gloom settled down over the place, a gloom that lasted for days. The cowboys came back from driving the town herd and, going up on the mesa, they gathered a few head more. Then the heat set in before its time and the work stopped short. For the steer that is roped and busted in the hot weather dies suddenly at the water; the flies buzz about the ears of the new-marked calves and poison them, and the mother cows grow gaunt and thin from overheating. Not until the long Summer had passed could the riding continue; the steers must be left to feed down the sheeped-out range; the little calves must run for sleepers until the fall rodéo. Sheep and the drought had come together, and the round-up was a failure. Likewise the cowmen were broke.
As they gathered about the fire on that last night it was a silent company–the rodéo boss the gloomiest of them all. Not since the death of Tommy had his eyes twinkled with the old mischief; he had no bets to offer, no news to volunteer; a dull, sombre abstraction lay upon him like a pall. Only when Bill Lightfoot spoke did he look up, and then with a set sneer, growing daily more saturnine. The world was dark to Creede and Bill’s fresh remarks jarred on him–but Bill himself was happy. He was of the kind that runs by opposites, taking their troubles with hilarity under the impression that they are philosophers. His pretext for this present happiness was a professed interview with Kitty Bonnair on the evening that the town herd pulled into Moreno’s. What had happened at this interview was a secret, of course, but it made Bill happy; and the more morose and ugly Jeff became about it the more it pleased Lightfoot to be gay. He sat on a box that night and sang risqué ditties, his enormous Colt’s revolver dangling bravely at his hip; and at last, casting his weather eye upon Creede, he began a certain song.
“Oh, my little girl, she lives in the town–”
And then he stopped.
“Bill,” said the rodéo boss feelingly, “you make me tired.”
“Lay down an’ you’ll git rested, then,” suggested Lightfoot.
“A toodle link, a toodle link, a too-oodle a day.”
“I’ll lay you down in a minute, if you don’t shut up,” remarked Creede, throwing away his cigarette.
“The hell you say,” commented Lightfoot airily.
“And last time I seen her she ast me to come down.”
At this raw bit of improvisation the boss rose slowly to his feet and stalked away from temptation.
“And if anybody sees her you’ll know her by this sign,”
chanted the cowboy, switching to an out-and-out bad one; and then, swaying his body on his cracker box, he plunged unctuously into the chorus.
“She’s got a dark and rolling eye, boys;
She’s got a dark and rolling eye.”
He stopped there and leapt to his feet anxiously. The mighty bulk of the rodéo boss came plunging back at him through the darkness; his bruising fist shot out and the frontier troubadour went sprawling among the pack saddles.
It was the first time Creede had ever struck one of his own kind,–men with guns were considered dangerous,–but this time he laid on unmercifully.
“You’ve had that comin’ to you for quite a while, Bill Lightfoot,” he said, striking Bill’s ineffectual gun aside, “and more too. Now maybe you’ll keep shut about ‘your girl’!”
He turned on his heel after administering this rebuke and went to the house, leaving his enemy prostrate in the dirt.
“The big, hulkin’ brute,” blubbered Lightfoot, sitting up and aggrievedly feeling of his front teeth, “jumpin’ on a little feller like me–an’ he never give me no warnin’, neither. You jest wait, I’ll–”
“Aw, shut up!” growled Old Man Reavis, whose soul had long been harrowed by Lightfoot’s festive ways. “He give you plenty of warnin’, if you’d only listen. Some people have to swallow a few front teeth before they kin learn anythin’.”
“Well, what call did he have to jump on me like that?” protested Lightfoot. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”
“No, nothin’ but singin’ bawdy songs about his girl,” sneered Reavis sarcastically.
“His girl, rats!” retorted the cowboy, vainglorious even in defeat, “she’s my girl, if she’s anybody’s!”
“Well, about your girl then, you dirty brute!” snarled the old man, suddenly assuming a high moral plane for his utter annihilation. “You’re a disgrace to the outfit, Bill Lightfoot,” he added, with conviction. “I’m ashamed of ye.”
“That’s right,” chimed in the Clark boys, whose sensibilities had likewise been harassed; and with all the world against him Bill Lightfoot retired in a huff to his blankets. So the rodéo ended as it had begun, in disaster, bickering, and bad blood, and no man rightly knew from whence their misfortune came. Perhaps the planets in their spheres had cast a malign influence upon them, or maybe the bell mare had cast a shoe. Anyhow they had started off the wrong foot and, whatever the cause, the times were certainly not auspicious for matters of importance, love-making, or the bringing together of the estranged. Let whatsoever high-priced astrologer cast his horoscope for good, Saturn was swinging low above the earth and dealing especial misery to the Four Peaks; and on top of it all the word came that old Bill Johnson, after shooting up the sheep camps, had gone crazy and taken to the hills.
For a week, Creede and Hardy dawdled about the place, patching up the gates and fences and cursing the very name of sheep. A spirit of unrest hovered over the place, a brooding silence which spoke only of Tommy and those who were gone, and the two partners eyed each other furtively, each deep in his own thoughts. At last when he could stand it no longer Creede went over to the corner, and dug up his money.
“I’m goin’ to town,” he said briefly.
“All right,” responded Hardy; and then, after meditating a while, he added: “I’ll send down some letters by you.”
Late that evening, after he had written a long letter to Lucy and a short one to his father, he sat at the desk where he had found their letters, and his thoughts turned back to Kitty. There lay the little book which had held their letters, just as he had thrust it aside. He picked it up, idly, and glanced at the title-page: “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” How dim and far away it all seemed now, this world of the poets in which he had once lived and dreamed, where sweetness and beauty were enshrined as twin goddesses of light, and gentleness brooded over all her children. What a world that had been, with its graceful, smiling women, its refinements of thought and speech, its aspirations and sympathies–and Kitty! He opened the book slowly, wondering from whence it had come, and from the deckled leaves a pressed forget-me-not fell into his hand. That was all–there was no mark, no word, no sign but this, and as he gazed his numbed mind groped through the past for a forget-me-not. Ah yes, he remembered! But how far away it seemed now, the bright morning when he had met his love on the mountain peak and the flowers had fallen from her hair–and what an inferno of strife and turmoil had followed since! He opened to the place where the imprint of the dainty flower lay and read reverently:
“If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile–her look–her way
Of speaking gently–for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’–
For these things in themselves, Belovéd, may
Be changed, or change for thee–and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheek dry–
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”
The spell of the words laid hold upon as he read and he turned page after page, following the cycle of that other woman’s love–a love which waited for years to be claimed by the master hand, never faltering to the end. Then impulsively he reached for a fair sheet of paper to begin a letter to Kitty, a letter which should breathe the old gentleness and love, yet “for love’s sake only.” But while he sat dreaming, thinking with what words to begin, his partner lounged in, and Hardy put aside his pen and waited, while the big man hung around and fidgeted.
“Well, I’ll be in town to-morrer,” he said, drearily.
“Aha,” assented Hardy.
“What ye got there?” inquired Creede, after a long silence. He picked up the book, griming the dainty pages as he turned them with his rough fingers, glancing at the headings.
“Um-huh,” he grunted, “‘Sonnets from the Portegees,’ eh? I never thought them Dagos could write–what I’ve seen of ’em was mostly drivin’ fish-wagons or swampin’ around some slaughterhouse. How does she go, now,” he continued, as his schooling came back to him, “see if I can make sense out of it.” He bent down and mumbled over the first sonnet, spelling out the long words doubtfully.
“I thought once how The-o-crite-us had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And as I mused it in his an–”
“Well say, what’s he drivin’ at, anyway?” demanded the rugged cowboy. “Is that Dago talk, or is he jest mixed in his mind? Perfectly clear, eh? Well, maybe so, but I fail to see it. Wish I could git aholt of some good po’try.” He paused, waiting for Hardy to respond.
“Say,” he said, at last, “do me a favor, will ye, Rufe?”
The tone of his voice, now soft and diffident, startled Hardy out of his dream.
“Why sure, Jeff,” he said, “if I can.”
“No, no ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ about it!” persisted Creede. “A lucky feller like you with everythin’ comin’ his way ought to be able to say ‘Yes’ once in a while without hangin’ a pull-back on it.”
“Huh,” grunted Hardy suspiciously, “you better tell me first what you want.”
“Well, I want you to write me a letter,” blurted out Creede. “I can keep a tally book and order up the grub from Bender; but, durn the luck, when it comes to makin’ love on paper I’d rather wrastle a bear. Course you know who it is, and you savvy how them things is done. Throw in a little po’try, will you, and–and–say, Rufe, for God’s sake, help me out on this!”
He laid one hand appealingly upon his partner’s shoulder, but the little man squirmed out from under it impatiently.
“Who is it?” he asked doggedly. “Sallie Winship?”
“Aw, say,” protested Creede, “don’t throw it into a feller like that–Sal went back on me years ago. You know who I mean–Kitty Bonnair.”
“Kitty Bonnair!” Hardy had known it, but he had tried to keep her name unspoken. Battle as he would he could not endure to hear it, even from Jeff.
“What do you want to tell Miss Bonnair?” he inquired, schooling his voice to a cold quietness.
“Tell her?” echoed Creede ecstatically. “W’y, tell her I’m lonely as hell now she’s gone–tell her–well, there’s where I bog down, but I’d trade my best horse for another kiss like that one she give me, and throw in the saddle for pelon. Now, say, Rufe, don’t leave me in a hole like this. You’ve made your winnin’, and here’s your nice long letter to Miss Lucy. My hands are as stiff as a burnt rawhide and I can’t think out them nice things to say; but I love Kitty jest as much as you love Miss Lucy–mebbe more–and–and I wanter tell her so!”
He ended abjectly, gazing with pleading eyes at the stubborn face of his partner whose lips were drawn tight.
“We–every man has to–no, I can’t do it, Jeff,” he stammered, choking. “I’d–I’d help you if I could, Jeff–but she’d know my style. Yes, that’s it. If I’d write the letter she’d know it was from me–women are quick that way. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is–every man has to fight out his own battle, in love.”
He paused and fumbled with his papers.
“Here’s a good pen,” he said, “and–and here’s the paper.” He shoved out the fair sheet upon which he had intended to write and rose up dumbly from the table.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, and slipped quietly out of the room. As he lay in his blankets he could see the gleam of light from the barred window and hear Jeff scraping his boots uneasily on the floor. True indeed, his hands were like burnt rawhide from gripping at ropes and irons, his clothes were greasy and his boots smelled of the corral, and yet–she had given him a kiss! He tried to picture it in his mind: Kitty smiling–or startled, perhaps–Jeff masterful, triumphant, laughing. Ah God, it was the same kiss she had offered him, and he had run away!
In the morning, there was a division between them, a barrier which could not be overcome. Creede lingered by the door a minute, awkwardly, and then rode away. Hardy scraped up the greasy dishes and washed them moodily. Then the great silence settled down upon Hidden Water and he sat alone in the shadow of the ramada, gazing away at the barren hills.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BIG DRUNK
The sun rose clear for the hundredth time over the shoulder of the Four Peaks; it mounted higher, glowing with a great light, and the smooth round tops of the bowlders shone like half-buried skulls along the creek-bed; it swung gloriously up to its zenith and the earth palpitated with a panting heat. Summer had come, and the long days when the lizards crawl deep into their crevices and the cattle follow the scanty shade of the box cañons or gather in standing-places where the wind draws over the ridges and mitigates the flies. In the pasture at Hidden Water the horses stood head and tail together, side by side, each thrashing the flies from the other’s face and dozing until hunger or thirst aroused them or perversity took them away. Against the cool face of the cliff the buzzards moped and stretched their dirty wings in squalid discomfort; the trim little sparrow-hawks gave over their hunting; and all the world lay tense and still. Only at the ranch house where Hardy kept a perfunctory watch was there any sign of motion or life.
For two weeks now he had been alone, ever since Jeff went down to Bender, and with the solitary’s dread of surprise he stepped out into the ramada regularly, scanning the western trail with eyes grown weary of the earth’s emptiness.
At last as the sun sank low, throwing its fiery glare in his eyes, he saw the familiar figure against the sky–Creede, broad and bulky and topped by his enormous hat, and old Bat Wings, as raw-boned and ornery as ever. Never until that moment had Hardy realized how much his life was dependent upon this big, warm-hearted barbarian who clung to his native range as instinctively as a beef and yet possessed human attributes that would win him friends anywhere in the world. Often in that long two weeks he had reproached himself for abandoning Jeff in his love-making. What could be said for a love which made a man so pitiless? Was it worthy of any return? Was it, after all, a thing to be held so jealously to his heart, gnawing out his vitals and robbing him of his humanity? These and many other questions Hardy had had time to ask himself in his fortnight of introspection and as he stood by the doorway waiting he resolved to make amends. From a petty creature wrapped up in his own problems and prepossessions he would make himself over into a man worthy of the name of friend. Yet the consciousness of his fault lay heavy upon him and as Creede rode in he stood silent, waiting for him to speak. But Jeff for his part came on grimly, and there was a sombre glow in his eyes which told more than words.
“Hello, sport,” he said, smiling wantonly, “could you take a pore feller in over night?”
“Sure thing, I can,” responded Hardy gayly. “Where’ve you been all the time?”
And Creede chanted:
“Down to Bender,
On a bender,
Oh, I’m a spender,
You bet yer life!
“And I’m broke, too,” he added, sotto voce, dropping off his horse and sinking into a chair.
“Well, you don’t need to let that worry you,” said Hardy. “I’ve got plenty. Here!” He went down into his pocket and tossed a gold piece to him, but Creede dodged it listlessly.
“Nope,” he said, “money’s nothin’ to me.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Hardy anxiously. “Are you sick?”
“Yes,” answered Creede, nodding his head wearily, “sick and tired of it all.” He paused and regarded his partner solemnly. “I’m a miserable failure, Rufe,” he said. “I ain’t got nothin’ and I ain’t worth nothin’. I never done nothin’–and I ain’t got a friend in the world.”
He stopped and gazed at the barren land despondently, waiting to see if his partner would offer any protests.
“Rufe,” he said, at last, his voice tremulous with reproach, “if you’d only helped me out a little on that letter–if you’d only told me a few things–well, she might have let me down easy, and I could’ve took it. As it was, she soaked me.”
Then it was that Hardy realized the burden under which his partner was laboring, the grief that clutched at his heart, the fire that burned in his brain, and he could have wept, now that it was too late.
“Jeff,” he said honestly, “it don’t do any good now, but I’m sorry. I’m more than sorry–I’m ashamed. But that don’t do you any good either, does it?”
He stepped over and laid his hand affectionately upon his partner’s shoulder, but Creede hunched it off impatiently.
“No,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “not a dam’ bit.” There was no bitterness in his words, only an acknowledgment of the truth. “They was only one thing for me to do after I received that letter,” he continued, “and I done it. I went on a hell-roarin’ drunk. That’s right. I filled up on that forty-rod whiskey until I was crazy drunk, an’ then I picked out the biggest man in town and fought him to a whisper.”
He sighed and glanced at his swollen knuckles, which still showed the marks of combat.
“That feller was a jim-dandy scrapper,” he said, smiling magnanimously, “but I downed ’im, all right. I couldn’t quite lick the whole town, but I tried; and I certainly gave ’em a run for their money, while it lasted. If Bender don’t date time from Jeff Creede’s big drunk I miss my guess a mile. And you know, after I got over bein’ fightin’ drunk, I got cryin’ drunk–but I never did get drunk enough to tell my troubles, thank God! The fellers think I’m sore over bein’ sheeped out. Well, after I’d punished enough booze to start an Injun uprisin’, and played the faro bank for my wad, I went to sleep; and when I woke up it seemed a lo-ong time ago and I could look back and see jest how foolish I’d been. I could see how she’d jollied me up and got me comin’, playin’ me off against Bill Lightfoot; and then I could see how she’d tantalized me, like that mouse the cat had when you was down in Bender; and then I could see where I had got the big-head bad, thinkin’ I was the only one–and all the time she was laughin’ at me! Oh, it’s nothin’ now–I kin laugh at it myself in a month; but I’m so dam’ ’shamed I could cry.” He lopped down in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and shook his head gloomily.
“They ain’t but one girl I ever knowed,” he said solemnly, “that wasn’t stringin’ me, and that was Sallie Winship. Sal liked me, dam’d if she didn’t. She cried when she went away, but the old lady wouldn’t stand for no bow-legged cowpuncher–and so I git euchred, every time.”
For lack of some higher consolation Hardy cooked up a big supper for his low-spirited partner, and after he had done the honors at the feast the irrepressible good health of the cowboy rose up and conquered his grief in spite of him. He began by telling the story of his orgy, which apparently had left Bender a wreck. The futile rage of Black Tex, the despair of the town marshal, the fight with the Big Man, the arrest by the entire posse comitatus, the good offices of Mr. Einstein in furnishing bail, the crying and sleeping jags–all were set forth with a vividness which left nothing to the imagination, and at the end the big man was comforted. When it was all over and his memory came down to date he suddenly recalled a package of letters that were tied up in his coat, which was still on the back of his saddle. He produced them forthwith and, like a hungry boy who sees others eat, sat down to watch Rufe read. No letters ever came for him–and when one did come it was bad. The first in the pack was from Lucy Ware and as Hardy read it his face softened, even while he knew that Creede was watching.
“Say, she’s all right, ain’t she?” observed Jeff, when his partner looked up.
“That’s right,” said Hardy, “and she says to take you on again as foreman and pay you for every day you didn’t carry your gun.”
“No!” cried Creede, and then he laughed quietly to himself. “Does that include them days I was prizin’ up hell down in Bender? Oh, it does, eh? Well, you can tell your boss that I’ll make that up to her before the Summer’s over.”
He leaned back and stretched his powerful arms as if preparing for some mighty labor. “We’re goin’ to have a drought this Summer,” he said impressively, “that will have the fish packin’ water in canteens. Yes, sir, the chaser is goin’ to cost more than the whiskey before long; and they’s goin’ to be some dead cows along the river. Do you know what Pablo Moreno is doin’? He’s cuttin’ brush already to feed his cattle. That old man is a wise hombre, all right, when it comes to weather. He’s been hollerin’ ‘Año seco, año seco,’ for the last year, and now, by Joe, we’ve got it! They ain’t hardly enough water in the river to make a splash, and here it’s the first of June. We’ve been kinder wropt up in fightin’ sheep and sech and hain’t noticed how dry it’s gittin’; but that old feller has been sittin’ on top of his hill watchin’ the clouds, and smellin’ of the wind, and measurin’ the river, and countin’ his cows until he’s a weather sharp. I was a-ridin’ up the river this afternoon when I see the old man cuttin’ down a palo verde tree, and about forty head of cattle lingerin’ around to eat the top off as soon as she hit the ground; and he says to me, kinder solemn and fatherly:
“‘Jeff,’ he says, ‘cut trees for your cattle–this is an año seco.”
“‘Yes, I’ve heard that before,’ says I. ‘But my cows is learnin’ to climb.’”
“‘Stawano,’ he says, throwin’ out his hands like I was a hopeless proposition. But all the same I think I’ll go out to-morrow and cut down one of them palo verdes like he show’d me–one of these kind with little leaves and short thorns–jest for an expeeriment. If the cattle eat it, w’y maybe I’ll cut another, but I don’t want to be goin’ round stuffin’ my cows full of twigs for nothin’. Let ’em rustle for their feed, same as I do. But honest to God, Rufe, some of them little runty cows that hang around the river can’t hardly cast a shadder, they’re that ganted, and calves seems to be gittin’ kinder scarce, too. But here–git busy, now–here’s a letter you overlooked.”
He pawed over the pile purposefully and thrust a pale blue envelope before Hardy–a letter from Kitty Bonnair. And his eyes took on a cold, fighting glint as he observed the fatal handwriting.
“By God,” he cried, “I hain’t figured out yet what struck me! I never spoke a rough word to that girl in my life, and she certainly gimme a nice kiss when she went away. But jest as soon as I write her a love letter, w’y she–she–W’y hell, Rufe, I wouldn’t talk that way to a sheep-herder if he didn’t know no better. Now you jest read that”–he fumbled in his pocket and slammed a crumpled letter down before his partner–“and tell me if I’m wrong! No, I want you to do it. Well, I’ll read it to you, then!”
He ripped open the worn envelope, squared his elbows across the table, and opened the scented inclosure defiantly, but before he could read it Hardy reached out suddenly and covered it with his hand.
“Please don’t, Jeff,” he said, his face pale and drawn. “It was all my fault–I should have told you–but please don’t read it to me. I–I can’t stand it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” retorted Creede coldly. “I reckon you can stand it if I can. Now suppose you wrote a real nice letter–the best you knowed how–to your girl, and she handed you somethin’ like this: ‘My dear Mr. Creede, yore amazin’ letter–’ Here, what ye doin’?”
“I won’t listen to it!” cried Hardy, snatching the letter away, “it’s–”
“Now lookee here, Rufe Hardy,” began Creede, rising up angrily from his chair, “I want to tell you right now that you’ve got to read that letter or lick me–and I doubt if you can do that, the way I happen to be feelin’. You got me into this in the first place and now, by God, you’ll see it out! Now you read that letter and tell me if I’m wrong!”
He reared up his head as he spoke and Hardy saw the same fierce gleam in his eyes that came when he harried the sheep; but there was something beside that moved his heart to pity. It was the lurking sadness of a man deep hurt, who fights the whole world in his anguish; the protest of a soul in torment, demanding, like Job, that some one shall justify his torture.
“All right, Jeff,” he said, “I will read it–only–only don’t crowd me for an answer.”
He spread the letter before him on the table and saw in a kind of haze the angry zigzag characters that galloped across the page, the words whose meaning he did not as yet catch, so swiftly did his thoughts rise up at sight of them. Years ago Kitty had written him a letter and he had read it at that same table. It had been a cruel letter, but unconsidered, like the tantrum of a child. Yes, he had almost forgotten it, but now like a sudden nightmare the old horror clutched at his heart. He steadied himself, and the words began to take form before him. Surely she would be gentle with Jeff, he was so big and kind. Then he read on, slowly, grasping at the meaning, and once more his eyes grew big with horror at her words. He finished, and bowed his head upon the table, while the barren room whirled before him.
From his place across the table the big cowboy looked down upon him, grim and masterful, yet wondering at his silence.
“Well, am I wrong?” he demanded, but the little man made no answer.
Upon the table before Hardy there lay another letter, written in that same woman’s hand, a letter to him, and the writing was smooth and fair. Jeff had brought it to him, tied behind his saddle, and he stood before him now, waiting.
“Am I wrong?” he said again, but Hardy did not answer in words. Holding the crumpled letter behind him he took up his own fair missive–such a one as he would have died for in years gone by–and laid it on the fire, and when the tiny flame leaped up he dropped the other on it and watched them burn together.
“Well, how about it?” inquired Creede, awed by the long silence, but the little man only bowed his head.
“Who am I, to judge?” he said.