The next morning Susan could not help stealing inquiring looks at Lucy.
Surely the participant in such a nocturnal adventure must bear some
signs of it upon her face. Lucy had suddenly become a disturbing and
incomprehensible problem. In trying to readjust her conception of the
practical and energetic girl, Susan found herself confronted with the
artifices of a world-old, feminine duplicity that she had never before
encountered, and knew no more of than she did of the tumult that had
possession of poor Lucy's tormented soul. Here was the heroine of a
midnight rendezvous going about her work with her habitual nervous
capability, dressing the children, preparing the breakfast, seeing that
Bella was comfortably disposed on her mattress in the wagon. She had
not a glance for Zavier. Could a girl steal out to meet and kiss a man
in the moonlight and the next morning look at him with a limpid,
undrooping eye as devoid of consciousness as the eye of a preoccupied
cat?
The standards of the doctor's daughter were comparative and their range
limited. All she had to measure by was herself. Her imagination in
trying to compass such a situation with Susan Gillespie as the heroine,
could picture nothing as her portion but complete abasement and, of
course, a confession to her father. And how dreadful that would have
been! She could feel humiliation stealing on her at the thought of the
doctor's frowning displeasure. But Lucy had evidently told no one.
Why had she not? Why had she pretended not to like Zavier? Why? Why?
Susan found her thoughts trailing off into a perspective of questions
that brought up against a wall of incomprehension above which Lucy's
clear eyes looked at her with baffling secretiveness.
It was a warm morning, and the two girls sat in the doctor's wagon.
Lucy was knitting one of the everlasting stockings. In the heat she
had unfastened the neck of her blouse and turned the edges in, a
triangle of snowy skin visible below her sunburned throat. She looked
thin, her arms showing no curve from wrist to elbow, the lines of her
body delicately angular under the skimpy dress of faded lilac cotton.
The sun blazing through the canvas cast a tempered yellow light over
her that toned harmoniously with the brown coating of freckles and the
copper burnish of her hair. Her hands, vibrating over her work with
little hovering movements like birds about to light, now and then
flashing out a needle which she stabbed into her coiffure, were
large-boned and dexterous, the strong, unresting hands of the
frontierswoman.
Susan was lazy, leaning back on the up-piled sacks, watching the quick,
competent movements and the darts of light that leaped along the
needles. Before they had entered the wagon she had decided to speak to
Lucy of what she had overseen. In the first place she felt guilty and
wanted to confess. Besides that the need to give advice was strong
upon her, and the natural desire to interfere in a matter of the heart
was another impelling impulse. So she had determined to speak for
conscience, for friendship, for duty, and it is not beyond the bounds
of possibility, for curiosity.
But it was a hard subject to approach, and she was uncomfortable.
Diplomacy had not been one of the gifts the fairies gave her when they
gathered at her cradle. Looking at the quivering needles she tried to
think of a good beginning, and like most direct and candid people
concluded there was no better one than that of the initial fact, before
the complicating intrusion of inference:
"I woke up in the middle of the night last night."
Lucy knit unmoved.
"The moonlight was as bright as day. Out beyond the shadow where my
tent was I could see the weeds and little bunches of grass."
"How could you see them when you were in your tent?" This without
stopping her work or raising her head.
Susan, feeling more uncomfortable than ever, answered, her voice
instinctively dropping, "I got up and looked out of my tent."
She kept her eyes on the busy hands and saw that the speed of their
movements slackened.
"Got up and looked out? What did you do that for?"
The time for revelation had come. Susan was a little breathless.
"I heard people whispering," she said.
The hands came to a stop. But the knitter continued to hold them in
the same position, a suspended, waiting expectancy in their attitude.
"Whispering?" she said. "Who was it?"
"Oh, Lucy, you know."
There was a pause. Then Lucy dropped her knitting and, raising her
head, looked at the anxious face opposite. Her eyes were quiet and
steady, but their look was changed from its usual frankness by a new
defiance, hard and wary.
"No, I don't know. How should I?"
"Why, why"--Susan now was not only breathless but pleading--"it was
you."
"Who was me?"
"The woman--Lucy don't look at me like that, as if you didn't
understand. I saw you, you and Zavier, wrapped in the blanket. You
walked out into the moonlight and I _saw_."
Lucy's gaze continued unfaltering and growing harder. Under the
freckles she paled, but she stood her ground.
"What do you mean? Saw me and Zavier? Where?"
"Under the trees first and then you went out into the moonlight with
the blanket wrapped round your shoulders."
"You didn't see me," the hardness was now in her voice. "It was some
one else."
A feeling of alarm rose in the other girl. It was not the lie alone,
it was the force behind it, the force that made it possible, that gave
the teller will to hold her glance steady and deny the truth. A
scaring sense of desperate powers in Lucy that were carrying her
outside the familiar and established, seized her friend. It was all
different from her expectations. Her personal repugnance and
fastidiousness were swept aside in the menace of larger things. She
leaned forward and clasped Lucy's knee.
"Don't say that. I saw you. Lucy, don't say I didn't. Don't bother
to tell me a lie. What did it mean? Why did you meet him? What are
you doing?"
Lucy jerked her knee away. Her hands were trembling. She took up the
knitting, tried to direct the needles, but they shook and she dropped
them. She made a sharp movement with her head in an effort to avert
her face, but the light was merciless, there was no shade to hide in.
"Oh, don't bother me," she said angrily. "It's not your affair."
Susan's dread rose higher. In a flash of vision she had a glimpse into
the storm-driven depths. It was as if a child brought up in a garden
had unexpectedly looked into a darkling mountain abyss.
"What are you going to do?" she almost whispered. "You mustn't. You
must stop. I thought you didn't care about him. You only laughed and
everybody thought it was a joke. Don't go on that way. Something
dreadful will happen."
Lucy did not answer. With her back pressed against the roof arch and
her hands clinched in her lap--she sat rigid, looking down. She seemed
gripped in a pain that stiffened her body and made her face pinched and
haggard. Under the light cotton covering her breast rose and fell.
She was an embodiment of tortured indecision.
Susan urged: "Let me tell my father and he'll send Zavier away."
Lucy raised her eyes and tried to laugh. The unnatural sound fell with
a metallic harshness on the silence. Her mouth quivered, and putting
an unsteady hand against it, she said brokenly,
"Oh, Missy, don't torment me. I feel bad enough already."
There was a longer pause. Susan broke it in a low voice:
"Then you're going to marry him?"
"No," loudly, "no. What a question!"
She made a grab at her knitting and started feverishly to work, the
needles clicking, stitches dropping, the stocking leg trembling as it
hung.
"Why, he's an Indian," she cried suddenly in a high, derisive key.
"But"--the questioner had lost her moment of vision and was once again
floundering between ignorance and intuition--"Why did you kiss him
then?"
"I didn't. He kissed me."
"You let him. Isn't that the same thing?"
"No, no. You're so silly. You don't know anything." She gave a
hysterical laugh and the bonds of her pride broke in a smothered cry:
"I couldn't help it. I didn't want to. I didn't mean to. I didn't
mean to go out and meet him and I went. I--" she gathered up the
stocking and, needles and all, buried her face in it. It was the only
thing she could find to hide behind. "I'm so miserable," she sobbed.
"You don't know. It's such a terrible thing first feeling one way and
then the other. I'm so mixed up I don't know what I feel. I wish I
was dead."
There was a sound of men's voices outside, and the wagon came to a
jolting halt. Daddy John, on the driver's seat, silhouetted against
the circle of sky, slipped the whip into its ring of leather and turned
toward the girls. Lucy threw herself backward and lay with her face on
the sacks, stifling her tears.
"What are you two girls jawing about in there?" he asked, squinting
blindly from the sun dazzle into the clear, amber light of the canvas
cavern.
"We're just telling stories and things," said Susan.
The old man peered at Lucy's recumbent figure.
"Ain't she well?" he queried. "Thought I heard crying."
"Her head aches, it's so hot."
"Let her stay there. We'll do her cooking for her. Just stay where
you are, Lucy, and don't worrit about your work."
But the voices outside demanded her. It was the noon halt and Lucy was
an important factor in the machinery of the train. Glen's call for her
was mingled with the fresh treble of Bob's and Bella's at a farther
distance, rose in a plaintive, bovine lowing. She stretched a hand
sideways and gripped Susan's skirt.
"I can't go," she gasped in a strangled whisper. "I can't seem to get
a hold on myself. Ask Zavier to build the fire and cook. He'll do it,
and Courant will help him. And tell the others I'm sick."
Lucy's headache lasted all through the dinner hour, and when the train
started she still lay in the back of the doctor's wagon. For once she
seemed indifferent to the comfort of her relatives. The clamor that
rose about their disorderly fire and unsavory meal came to her ears
through the canvas walls, and she remained deaf and unconcerned. When
Susan crept in beside her and laid a cool cheek on hers, and asked her
if she wanted anything, she said no, she wanted to rest that was all.
Daddy John turned his head in profile and said:
"Let her alone, Missy. She's all tuckered out. They've put too much
work on her sence her sister took sick. You let her lie there and I'll
keep an eye to her."
Then he turned away and spat, as was his wont when thoughtful. He had
seen much of the world, and in his way was a wise old man, but he did
not guess the secret springs of Lucy's trouble. Women on the trail
should be taken care of as his Missy was. Glen McMurdo was the kind of
man who let the women take care of him, and between him and the
children and the sick woman they'd half killed the girl with work.
Daddy John had his opinion of Glen, but like most of his opinions he
kept it to himself.
Susan had no desire for talk that afternoon. She wanted to be alone to
muse on things. As the train took the road for the second stage, she
drew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pass her.
She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance,
then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David was
hunting in the hills with Courant, Zavier driving in his stead. The
little caravan passed her with the dust hovering dense around it and
the slouching forms of the pack horses hanging fringe-like in its rear.
They were nearing the end of their passage by the river, shrunk to a
clear, wild stream which they came upon and lost as the trail bore
westward. Their route lay through an interminable sequence of plains
held together by channels of communication that filtered through the
gaps in hills. The road was crossed by small streams, chuckling at the
bottom of gullies, the sides of which were cracked open like pale,
parched lips gasping for air. The limpid transparency of the prospect
was blotted by the caravan's moving dust cloud. Beyond this the plain
stretched, empty as the sky, a brown butte rising here and there.
Susan heard hoof beats behind her and turned. Courant was riding
toward her, his rifle across his saddle. She made a motion of
recognition with her hand and turned away thinking how well he matched
the surroundings, his buckskins melting into the fawn-colored shading
of the earth, his red hair and bronzed face toning with the umber
buttes and rustlike stains across the distance. He was of a piece with
it, even in its suggestion of an unfeeling, confidant hardness.
He joined her and they paced forward. It was the first time he had
ever sought any conversation with her and she was conscious and
secretly shy. Heretofore it had been his wont to speak little to her,
to sweep an indifferent eye over her which seemed to include her in the
unimportant baggage that went to the making of the train. Now, though
his manner was brusque, he spoke simply and not discourteously of the
hunt in the hills. He had got nothing, but David had killed a
black-tailed deer, and possessed by the passion of the chase, was
following the tracks of a second. The girl flushed with pleasure.
"David's a very good shot," she said complacently, not at all sure of
her statement, for David did not excel in the role of Nimrod. "He kept
us supplied with buffalo meat all the way up the Platte."
This was a falsehood. Daddy John and Leff had been the hunters of the
party. But Susan did not care. Courant had never said a word in her
hearing derogatory to David, but she had her suspicions that the
romantic nature of her betrothed was not of the stuff the mountain man
respected.
"First rate," he said heartily. "I didn't know it. I thought he
generally rode with you or drove the wagon."
To an outsider the tone would have seemed all that was frank and open.
But Susan read irony into it. She sat her horse a little squarer and
allowed the muse to still further possess her:
"David can shoot anything, an antelope even. He constantly brought
them in when we were on the Platte. It was quite easy for him. Daddy
John, who's been in all sorts of wild places, says he's never seen a
better shot."
A slight uneasiness disturbed the proud flow of her imagination at the
thought that Daddy John, questioned on this point, might show a
tendency to contradict her testimony. But it didn't matter. The joy
of proving David's superiority compensated. And she was setting
Courant in his place which had a separate and even rarer charm.
His answer showed no consciousness of the humbling process:
"You think a lot of David, don't you?"
Susan felt her color rising. This time she not only sat squarer in her
saddle, but raised her shoulders and chin a trifle.
"Yes. I am engaged to be married to him."
"When will you be married?" said the uncrushable man.
She inclined her head from its haughty pose just so far that she could
command his face from an austere eye. Words were ready to go with the
quelling glance, but they died unspoken. The man was regarding her
with grave, respectful attention. It is difficult to suddenly smite a
proud crest when the owner of the crest shows no consciousness of its
elevation.
"When we get to California," she said shortly.
"Not till then? Oh, I supposed you were going to marry him at Bridger
or along the road if we happened to meet a missionary."
The suggestion amazed, almost appalled her. It pierced through her
foolish little play of pride like a stab, jabbing down to her secret,
sentient core. Her anger grew stronger, but she told herself she was
talking to one of an inferior, untutored order, and it was her part to
hold herself in hand.
"We will be married when we get to California," she said, seeing to it
that her profile was calm and carried high. "Sometime after we get
there and have a home and are settled."
"That's a long time off."
"I suppose so--a year or two."
"A year or two!" he laughed with a careless jovial note. "Oh, you
belong to the old towns back there," with a jerk of his head toward the
rear. "In the wilderness we don't have such long courtships."
"We? Who are we?"
"The mountain men, the trappers, the voyageurs."
"Yes," she said, her tone flashing into sudden scorn, "they marry
squaws."
At this the man threw back his head and burst into a laugh, so deep, so
rich, so exuberantly joyous, that it fell upon the plain's grim silence
with the incongruous contrast of sunshine on the dust of a dungeon.
She sat upright with her anger boiling toward expression. Before she
realized it he had leaned forward and laid his hand on the pommel of
her saddle, his face still red and wrinkled with laughter.
"That's all right, little lady, but you don't know quite all about us."
"I know enough," she answered.
"Before you get to California you'll know more. There's a mountain man
and a voyageur now in the train. Do you think Zavier and I have squaw
wives?"
With the knowledge that Zavier was just then so far from contemplating
union with a squaw, she could not say the contemptuous "yes" that was
on her tongue. As for the strange man--she shot a glance at him and
met the gray eyes still twinkling with amusement. "Savage!" she
thought, "I've no doubt he has"--and she secretly felt a great desire
to know. What she said was, "I've never thought of it, and I haven't
the least curiosity about it."
They rode on in silence, then he said,
"What's made you mad?"
"Mad? I'm not mad."
"Not at all?"
"No. Why should I be?"
"That's what I want to know. You don't like me, little lady, is that
it?"
"I neither like nor dislike you. I don't think of you."
She immediately regretted the words. She was so completely a woman, so
dowered with the instinct of attraction, that she realized they were
not the words of indifference.
"My thoughts are full of other people," she said hastily, trying to
amend the mistake, and that was spoiled by a rush of color that
suddenly dyed her face.
She looked over the horse's head, her anger now turned upon herself.
The man made no answer, but she knew that he was watching her. They
paced on for a silent moment then he said:
"Why are you blushing?"
"I am not," she cried, feeling the color deepening.
"You've told two lies," he answered. "You said you weren't angry, and
you're mad all through, and now you say you're not blushing, and your
face is as pink as one of those little flat roses that grow on the
prairie. It's all right to get mad and blush, but I'd like to know why
you do it. I made you mad someway or other, I don't know how. Have
_I_ made you blush, too?" he leaned nearer trying to look at her.
"How'd I do that?"
She had a sidelong glimpse of his face, quizzical, astonished, full of
piqued interest. She struggled with the mortification of a petted
child, suddenly confronted by a stranger who finds its caprices only
ridiculous and displeasing. Under the new sting of humiliation she
writhed, burning to retaliate and make him see the height of her
pedestal.
"Yes, I _have_ told two lies," she said. "I was angry and I _am_
blushing, and it's because I'm in a rage with you."
The last touch was given when she saw that his surprise contained the
bitter and disconcerting element of amusement.
"Isn't that just what I said, and you denied it?" he exclaimed. "Now
_why_ are you in a rage with me?"
"Because--because--well, if you're too stupid to know why, or are just
pretending, I won't explain. I don't intend to ride with you any more.
Please don't try and keep up with me."
She gave her reins a shake and her horse started on a brisk canter. As
she sped away she listened for his following hoof beats, for she made
no doubt he would pursue her, explain his conduct, and ask her pardon.
The request not to keep up with her he would, of course, set aside.
David would have obeyed it, but this man of the mountains, at once
domineering and stupid, would take no command from any woman. She kept
her ear trained for the rhythmic beat in the distance and decided when
she heard it she would increase her speed and not let him catch her
till she was up with the train. Then she would coldly listen to his
words of apology and have the satisfaction of seeing him look small,
and probably not know what to say.
Only it didn't happen that way. He made no attempt to follow. As she
galloped across the plain he drew his horse to a walk, his face dark
and frowning. Her scorn and blush had left his blood hot. Her last
words had fired his anger. He had known her antagonism, seen it in her
face on the night when Bella was sick, felt its sting when she turned
from him to laugh with the others. And it had stirred him to a secret
irritation. For he told himself she was only a baby, but a pretty
baby, on whose brown and rosy face and merry slits of eyes a man might
like to look. Now he gazed after her swearing softly through his beard
and holding his horse to its slowest step. As her figure receded he
kept his eyes upon it. They were long-sighted eyes, used to great
distances, and they watched, intent and steady, to see if she would
turn her head.
"Damn her," he said, when the dust of the train absorbed her. "Does
she think she's the only woman in the world?"
After supper that evening Susan called David over to sit on the edge of
her blanket. This was a rare favor. He came hurrying, all alight with
smiles, cast himself down beside her and twined his fingers in her warm
grasp. She answered his hungry glance with a sidelong look, glowingly
tender, and David drew the hand against his cheek. Nobody was near
except Daddy John and Courant, smoking pipes on the other side of the
fire.
"Do you love me?" he whispered, that lover's text for every sermon
which the unloving find so irksome to answer, almost to bear.
But now she smiled and whispered,
"Of course, silly David."
"Ah, Susan, you're awakening," he breathed in a shaken undertone.
She again let the soft look touch his face, sweet as a caress. From
the other side of the fire Courant saw it, and through the film of pipe
smoke, watched. David thought no one was looking, leaned nearer, and
kissed her cheek. She gave a furtive glance at the man opposite, saw
the watching eyes, and with a quick breath like a runner, turned her
face to her lover and let him kiss her lips.
She looked back at the fire, quiet, unflurried, then slowly raised her
lids. Courant had moved his pipe and the obscuring film of smoke was
gone. Across the red patch of embers his eyes gazed steadily at her
with the familiar gleam of derision. Her tenderness died as a flame
under a souse of water, and an upwelling of feeling that was almost
hatred, rose in her against the strange man.