I argued that when you look for a man who has done a crime you got to
figure on what he said and done last, so as to get a line on what he's
going to do next; and when I come to study over that hired man had
mostly said to me I remembered it was about Wyoming and ropes and
cows--things like that. I knowed he was batty, like so many people is,
about Western things--not that Western men is any different from anybody
else, though a lot of people think they are.
Now I figured that the place he'd make a break to was, like enough, the
range. He'd told me he knowed the Circle Arrow, too, his boss being a
whole lot interested in the Circle Arrow.
I put one thing together with another; and, without saying anything to
Old Man Wright about it, I bought a ticket for the Yellow Bull country
and pulled out for there as fast as I could go.
It was a good bet. When I got to the station for our old ranch, below
Cody, forty miles from where our ranch was when we lived there, there
wasn't very many people around the station that I knew. A good many new
men was there, with wide hats, and leggings on their legs, and breeches
that buttons on the side--folks that had come out West to be right
Western. Most of 'em come out to raise bananas on the Yellow Bull and be
gentlemen farmers, I reckon.
I looks around among these people for a good while. None of them paid
much attention to me. At last I seen him. Yes; it was that hired man. He
was getting ready to drive out of town with a pair of mules hitched to a
buckboard. He was fixing in some boxes and things. I knowed him in a
minute.
But where was she? I waited to see if Bonnie Bell would come out
anywhere; but she didn't.
I walked over to him; and he seen me standing there looking at him just
as he was going to pull out. I went on over and got onto the seat with
him.
"Drive right on straight out of town," says I, quiet. "Don't say
anything. Just act like nothing had happened," says I.
Under my coat I pushed the muzzle of my gun into his ribs. He looked
straight ahead and done what I told him to. If he was scared bad he
didn't let on.
"I haven't got any gun," says he after a while. "I don't pack one."
"I haven't packed one for years myself," says I. "Sometimes a man has
to pack one for coyotes and such things," says I.
He got kind of red in his face, but he didn't say anything.
"I'm just that kind of a man--when it comes to a show-down I don't care
what happens," says I. "And I reckon you see it's a show-down now. Tell
me where she is."
"She's out at our place," says he; "forty miles or so--you know where it
is. I've got the Arrow Head Spring homestead; I bought it a while ago.
I've got a few cows--not many. You see," says he, "I've saved a little
money--not a whole lot. Our property isn't paid for yet. We've got a
quarter section, but you know the range is in back of it. We think we
can make some sort of a start."
"With her? Her that was used to so much?" says I. "Are you married? But,
of course, that was what you was after--her money, not her."
He flushed plumb red then, and sort of swallowed several times.
"You think high of me and her, don't you, Curly?" says he.
I seen that, after all, I was too late; and my gun dropped down into the
bottom of the buckboard, and neither of us noticed it.
"You married her--our girl," says I, "that we'd tried so hard to get a
place for? She could of owned the whole ranch--and you give her forty
acres, part paid for! That's fine--for the girl we loved so much!"
"You don't love her no more than I do," says he. "You never tried harder
for her than I'll try for her. Love--why, what do you know about it? If
she hadn't loved me do you think she'd of done what she done and run
away with me? Do you think she'd of broke her father's heart and forgot
all that had been done for her if it hadn't been for love? If it hadn't
been for thinking of those things we'd be the happiest two young fools
in all the world. We are now! She's some happy anyway. But it breaks my
own heart to think she isn't any happier."
After a while he goes on:
"What could I do, Curly? It's a awful thing to love a woman this way;
it's a terrible thing. There's no sense nor reason about it at all,"
says he. "But now if I only could have had any decent chance----"
"Pick up your gun," says he after a while; "it might fall out."
We rode on for quite a while. He made like he was going to reach into
his pocket for something and I covered him quick, but he only hauled out
a piece of Arrow Head plug. He offered me a chaw, absent-minded.
"No," says I; "I can't take no chaw of tobacco with such as you."
He put it back in his pocket, then, and didn't take none his own self.
His face was right red and troubled now.
"Curly," says he, "what am I going to do? What's right to do? I hadn't
much to give up, but such as it was I give it up gladly for her; I'd
give up everything in the world--if I had everything--for her. That's
what she means to me," says he. "We are so much to one another that I
haven't any time to be scared of you. We haven't got around to that
yet--not that I'm so cheap as to believe you're bluffing; I know you're
not."
"No, I ain't," says I. "This thing has got to be squared and I come out
here to square it. I know your record--I've heard you talk to more'n one
woman. You've got a cast iron nerve," says I; "but it won't do you no
good. Drive right on now till I tell you to stop."
"If you want to kill her too," says he, "all right--then shoot me down.
Ride on out then and explain to her what you've done. Look at her face
the way it will be then. Maybe you can tell then whether she cares
anything for me or not. Do you want to see a woman's face looking
thataway--see it all your life? And do you think you can square things
or end things by killing me or her, or both of us? Maybe you'd murder
more--who knows? We're man and wife. Would that square things, Curly? I
don't know much myself, but I don't seem to think it would."
It was curious, but it seemed like it was true--he didn't seem to have
got around to thinking of whether he was in danger or not. And I knowed
he wasn't running any cheap bluff, neither, any more than me. He looked
right on ahead and didn't pay no attention to my gun.
"Curly," says he, "you didn't make this and you can't end it. This is a
case of man and woman, the way God made them. 'Male and female made He
them.' If I died today--if she did too--I'd thank God that we had gone
this far anyways together.
"Why," says he, going on like he was half talking to hisself, "I didn't
believe in anything much--I was a atheist and a socialist--till I saw
her. I couldn't see anything much worth while in the world--till I saw
her. I didn't want to do or be anything much--till I saw her. And now, I
see it all--everything! I see how much worth while the world is, and how
much worth while she is and I am, and how much worth while other people
are too. I just didn't know it before--till I saw her. Then I knew what
life was all about. Do you think you can settle this now, or help it,
Curly? No; it's too late."
We drove on quite a little way yet.
"Curly," says he at last, "I've made my talk. If any man says I married
Bonnie Bell for anything but love--the best and cleanest of love--he's
making the cruelest mistake in the world; and he's a damned liar too.
You ask her, Curly."
"What's that?" says I. "Me ask her? I didn't come for that. I couldn't
look at her. That girl can get my goat any station. I don't want to talk
to her."
"But you wouldn't of lynched a cow thief on the range in the old days on
such a showing as this."
"Thief?" says I to him. "She said she was a thief--she'd stole the life
and happiness of her pa and others----"
"That's true," says he quiet like. "When you think of it, all life is
only a theft every way. Each human being steals from all others. That's
the way the world goes on. The coming generation steals always from the
one that has gone by. Tell me, is that wrong? And tell me, can you and I
judge if it is?"
I set and thought for quite a while, trying to figure out things. I
couldn't. At last I reached up and threw my gun away into the sage.