A Woman's Loyalty
The first instinctive thought of a man reveals innate character; those
that follow, the moral that he has acquired through environment and
circumstances. That Jack Payson was at bottom good man is shown by his
first emotion, which was joy, and his first impulse, which was to
impart the glad news to everybody, upon receiving the letter from Dick
Lane telling that he was alive and soon to come home. He was in his
house at the time. Bud Lane had just brought in the packet of mail from
Florence, and was riding away. Jack uttered a cry of joy which brought
the young man back to the door. "What is it?" asked Bud. But Jack had
already had time for his damning second thought. He was stunned by the
consideration that the promulgation of the news in the letter meant his
loss of Echo Allen. He dissembled, though as yet he was not able to
tell an outright falsehood:
"It's a letter telling me that I may expect to receive enough money in
a month or so to pay off the mortgage. Now your brother's debt needn't
trouble you any longer, Bud."
"Whew-w!" whistled Bud. "That's great! Where does it come from?"
"Oh, from an old friend that I lent the money to some time ago. But,
say, Bud, there's another matter I want to talk with you about. You've
got to shake Buck McKee. I've got it straight that he is the worst man
in Arizona Territory, yes, worse than an Apache. Why, he has been with
Geronimo, torturing and massacring lone prospectors, and robbing them
of their gold."
"That's a damned lie, Jack Payson, and you know it!" cried the
hot-headed young man. "It was Buck McKee who stood by Dick's side and
fought the Apaches. And I'll stand by Buck against all the world.
Everybody is in a conspiracy against him, Polly and Slim Hoover and
you. Why are you so ready now to take a slanderer's word against his?
You were keen enough to accept his story, when it let you out of going
to Dick's rescue, and gave you free swing to court his girl. Let me
see the name of the damned snake-in-the-grass that's at the bottom of
all this!" And he snatched for the letter in Payson's hand.
The ranchman quickly thrust the missive into pocket. The injustice of
Bud's reflections on former actions gave to his uneasy conscience just
the pretext he desired for justifying his present course. His cause
being weak and unworthy, he whipped up his indignation by adopting a
high tone and overbearing manner, even demeaning himself by using his
position as Bud's employer to crush the younger man. Indeed, at the
end of the scene which ensued he well-nigh convinced himself that he
had been most ungratefully treated by Bud while sincerely attempting to
save the boy from the companionship of a fiend in human guise.
"No matter who told me, young man," he exclaimed; "I got it straight,
and you can take it straight from me. You either give up Buck McKee or
the Sweetwater Ranch. Snake-in-the-grass!" he was working himself up
into false passion; "it is you, ungrateful boy, who are sinking the
serpent's tooth in the hand that would have helped you. I tell you
that I intended to make you foreman, though Sage-brush Charley is an
older and better man. It was for Dick's sake I would have done it."
"No!" Bud burst forth; "for your guilty conscience's sake. It would
have been to pay for stepping into Dick's place in the heart of a
faithless girl. To hell with your job; I'm through with you!"
And, leaping on his horse, Bud rode furiously back to rejoin Buck McKee
in Florence.
Jack Payson's purpose was now cinched to suppress Dick Lane's letter
until Echo Allen was irrevocably joined to him in marriage. He argued
with himself that she loved him, Jack Payson, yet so loyal was she by
nature that if Dick Lane returned before the wedding and claimed her,
she would sacrifice her love to her sense of duty. This would ruin her
life, he reasoned, and he could not permit it. There was honesty in
this argument, but he vitiated it by deferring to act upon the
suggestion that naturally arose with it: Why, then, not take Jim
Allen, Echo's father, to whom her happiness was the chief purpose in
life, into confidence in regard to the matter? There will be time
enough to tell the Colonel before the wedding, he thought. In the
meantime something might happen to Dick,, and he may never return. He
is certain not to get back ahead of his money.
After the time that the note secured by the mortgage fell due, the
young ranchman had already secured two extensions of it for three
months each. He arranged a third, and began negotiating for the sale
of some of his cattle to take up the note at the time of payment. "I
can't take the money from Dick," he thought, "even if he does owe it to
me. And yet if I refuse it, it will be like buying Echo--'paying for
stepping into Dick's place,' as Bud expressed it. What to do I don't
know. Well, events will decide." And by this favorite reflection of
the moral coward, Jack Payson marked the lowest depths of his
degradation.
That afternoon Payson rode to Allen Hacienda to see Echo, and to sound
her upon her feelings to Dick Lane. He wished thoroughly to convince
himself that he, Jack Payson, held complete sway over her heart.
Perhaps he might dare to put her love to the test, and fulfil the trust
his friend had imposed on him, by giving her Dick's letter.
Payson overtook Polly riding slowly on her way home from Florence. She
barely greeted him. "Has she met Bud, and has he been slurring me?" he
thought. He checked his pacing horse to the half-trot, half-walk, of
Polly's mount, and, ignoring her incivility, began talking to her.
"'D'yeh see Bud in Florence?"
"Yep. Couldn't help it. Him an' Buck McKee are about the whole of
Florence these days."
"Too bad about Bud consorting with that rustler. I've had to fire him
for it."
"Fire him? Well you ARE a good friend. Talk about men's loyalty! If
women threw men down that easy you all would go to the bowwows too fast
for us to bake dog-biscuit. Now, I've settled Buck McKee's hash by
putting Slim Hoover wise to that tongue-slittin'. Oh, I'll bring Bud
around, all right, all right, even if men that ought to be his friends
go back on him."
"But, Pollykins--"
"Don't you girlie me, Jack Payson. I'm a woman, and I'm goin' to be a
married one, too, in spite of all you do to Bud. Yes, sirree, bob.
I've set out to make a man of him, and I'll marry him to do it if he
ain't a dollar to his name. But money'd make it lots quicker an'
easier. He was savin' up till he run in with Buck McKee."
A sudden thought struck Payson. Here was a way to dispose of Dick
Lane's money when it came.
"All right, Mrs. Bud Lane to be. Promise not tell Bud, and through you
I'll soon make good to him many times over for the foreman's wages he's
lost. It's money that's coming from an enterprise that his brother and
I were partners in, and Bud shall Dick's share. He's sore on me now,
and I can't tell him. Besides, he'd gamble it away before he got it to
Buck McKee. Bud isn't strictly ethical in regard to money matters,
Polly, and you must manage the exchequer."
"Gee, what funny big words you use, Jack! But I know what you mean;
he's too free-handed. Well, he'll be savin' as a trade rat until we
get our home paid for. And I'll manage the checker business when we're
married. No more poker and keno for Bud. Thank you, Jack. I always
knew you was square."
Polly's sincere praise of his "squareness" was the sharpest thrust
possible at Payson's guilty conscience. Well, he resolved to come as
near being square and level as he could. He had told half-truths to
Bud and Polly; he would present the situation to Echo as a possible,
though not actual, one. If Polly were wrong, and Echo loved him so
much that she would break the word she had pledged to Dick Lane, then
he would confess all, and they would do what could be done to make it
right with the discarded lover.
Echo, observing from the window who was Polly's companion, ran out to
Jack with a cry of joy. He looked meaningly at Polly. She said: "Oh,
give me your bridle; I know how many's a crowd." Jack leaped to the
ground and took Echo in his arms while Polly rode off with the horses
to the corral, singing significantly:
"Spoon, spoon, spoon,
While the dish ran away with the spoon."
Jack and Echo embraced clingingly and kissed lingeringly. "It takes a
crazy old song like that to express how foolish we lovers are," said
Jack. "Why, I feel that I could outfiddle the cat, outjump the cow,
outlaugh the dog, and start an elopement that would knock the
performance of the tableware as silly as--well, as I am talking now.
I'm living in a dream--a Midsummer Night's Dream, such as you were
reading to me."
"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," quoted Echo suggestively.
Dusk was falling. From the bunk-house rose the tinkling notes of a
mandolin; after a few preliminary chords, the player, a Mexican, began
a love-song in Spanish. The distant chimes of Mission bells sounded
softly on the evening air.
Jack and Echo sat down upon the steps of the piazza. Jack continued
the strain of his thought, but in a more serious vein:
"Echo, I'm so happy that I am frightened."
"Frightened?" she asked wonderingly.
"Yes, scared--downright scared," he answered. "I reckon I'm like an
Indian. An Indian doesn't believe it's good medicine to let the gods
know he's big happy. For there's the Thunder Bird--"
"The Thunder Bird?"
"The evil spirit of the storm," continued Jack. "When the Thunder Bird
hears a fellow saying he's big happy, he sends him bad luck--"
Echo laid her hand softly on the mouth of her sweetheart. "We won't
spoil our happiness, then, by talking about it. We will just feel
it--just be it."
She laid her head upon Jack's knee. He placed his arm lightly but
protectingly over her shoulder. They sat in silence listening to the
Mexican's song. Finally Jack bent over and whispered gently in her ear:
"Softly, so the Thunder Bird won't hear, Echo; tell me you love me;
that you love only me; that you will always love me, no matter what
shall happen; that you never loved, until you loved me."
Echo sat upright, with a start. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed.
"Of course I love you, and you only, but the future and the past are
beyond our control. Unless you know of something that is going to
happen which may mar our love, your question is silly, not at all like
your Mother Goose nonsense--that was dear. And as for the past, you
mean Dick Lane."
"Yes, I mean Dick Lane," confessed Payson, in a subdued tone. "I am
jealous of him--that is--even of his memory."
"That is not like Jack Payson. What has come over you? It is the
shadow of your Thunder Bird. You know what my feeling was for Dick
Lane, and what it is, for it remains the same, the only difference
being that now I know it never was love. Even if it were, he is dead,
and I love you, Jack, you alone. Oh, how you shame me by forcing me to
speak of such things! I have tried to put poor Dick out of my mind,
for every time I think of him it is with a wicked joy that he is dead,
that he cannot come home to claim me as his wife. Oh, Jack, Jack, I
didn't think it of you!"
And the girl laid her face within her hands on her lover's knee and
burst into a fit of sobbing.
Jack Payson shut his teeth.
"Well, since I have lowered myself so far in your esteem, and since
your mind is already sinning against Dick Lane, we might as well go on
and settle this matter. I promise I will not mention it again. I,
too, have troubles of the mind. I am as I am, and you ought to know
it. I said I was jealous of Dick Lane's memory. It is more. I am
jealous of Dick Lane himself. If he should return, would you leave me
and go with him--as his wife?"
Again she sat upright. By a strong effort she controlled her sobbing.
"The man I admired does not deserve an answer, but the child he has
proved himself to be and whom I cannot help loving, shall have it.
Yes, if Dick Lane returns true to his promise I shall be true to mine."
She arose and went into the house. Payson rode homeward through the
starlight resolved of tormenting doubt only to be consumed by torturing
jealousy. He now had no thought of confiding in Jim Allen. He
regretted that he had touched so dangerously near the subject of Dick
Lane's return in talking to Bud and Polly. His burning desire was to be
safely married to Echo Allen before the inevitable return of her former
lover.
"Fool that I was not to ask her one more question: Would she forgive
her husband where she would not forgive her lover? What will she think
of me when all is discovered, as it surely will be? Well, I must take
my chances. Events will decide."
On his return to Sweetwater Ranch he put the place in charge of his new
foreman, Sage-brush Charlie, and went out to a hunting-cabin he had
built in the Tortilla Mountains. Here he fought the problem over with
his conscience--and his selfishness won. He returned, fixed in his
decision to suppress Dick Lane's letter, and to go ahead with the
marriage.