A RIFT IN THE LUTE
THEY were married. And in swift procession the months followed the
weeks.
At the Circle Diamond, Ruth queened it with a naïve childishness from
which her youth had not yet escaped. Eagerly she played at housekeeping
for a fortnight under the amused eyes of Mrs. Stovall, who had been
employed by McCoy to do the cooking, her term as postmistress having
expired. The next game that drew her was the remodelling of the house.
Carpenters and decorators from Wagon Wheel came up, filled the place
with litter and confusion, and under the urge of the young mistress
transformed the interior of the unsightly dwelling into a delightful
home. An absorbing period of needlework followed. New and pretty dresses
took shape and were exhibited to Rowan, who did not have to feign
admiration. For if she had been Paris gowned the slender grace of the
girl could not have been enhanced in his eyes. She had a native instinct
for style, a feeling for the harmonies and values of dress. Whatever she
wore became an expression of her personality.
Ruth’s husband confessed to himself with a sinking heart that she did
not really belong on a frontier ranch. The girl wife brought to her new
home all the fastidiousness that had charmed him. Her sewing room was
cheerful with Indian paint brushes and columbines, her little bedroom a
study in delicate blues. He was glad of that. He did not want the dust
of the commonplace to dull her vividness.
It pleased him that she accepted lightly all responsibility except that
of having a good time. She had shipped her own piano to Wyoming, and she
played a good deal. Sometimes she read a little, more often rode or
hunted. Occasionally Rowan joined her on these excursions, but usually
she went alone. For business more and more absorbed his time. The war
between the sheep and cattle interests was becoming acute. Ranchmen,
watching the range jealously, saw themselves being pushed closer to
bankruptcy by Tait and his associates. Already there had been sheep
raids. Cattle had been found dead at the water holes. Bullets had sung
back and forth.
But though Rowan could spend little time with the girl he had married, a
deep tenderness permeated his thought of her. It was still a miracle to
him that she had come to the Circle Diamond as his wife.
When he rode the range he carried with him mental etchings of her little
graces—the swiftness of the ready smile, the turn of the small,
beautifully poised head, the virginal shyness that always captivated
him. He missed sheer joy because he was profoundly unsure of holding
her. Ruth, he felt, was in love with life, and he was merely a detail of
the Great Adventure. Some day she might grow weary, take wings, and fly.
Meanwhile a certain diffidence born of reticence sealed his lips. He
found it impossible to express the emotion he knew so poignantly. It was
of the hill code that a man must not show his naked soul.
On an August morning Ruth, dawdling over breakfast alone, glimpsed
through the dining-room window a rider galloping toward the ranch. Since
Rowan had been in the saddle and away long before she was awake, the
young woman answered the hail from without by going to the door.
The horseman had dismounted, flung the bridle rein to the ground, and
was coming up the porch steps when Ruth appeared. He lifted the broad
hat from his curly head and bowed.
“Rowan at home?” he asked.
“No, he isn’t.”
Swift anger blazed in the eyes of the girl. She had seen this slender,
black-haired stranger twice before, once in the orchard of the Dude
Ranch, again astride a volcanic bronco in the arena at Bad Ax.
Some wise instinct warned him not to smile. He spoke gravely. “Sorry.
I’ve got news for him. It’s important. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say when he would be back?”
“No.” Ruth cut short the conversation curtly. “I’ll send one of the boys
to talk with you.”
She turned and walked into the house, leaving him on the porch. Out of
the tail of her eye she caught sight of her husband riding into the yard
with his foreman. From the dining-room window she presently watched
McCoy canter away in the company of Silcott.
Ruth was annoyed, even though she recognized that her vexation at Rowan
was not quite fair. It was true that he had lately fallen into a habit
of disappearing for a day at a time without explanation of his absence.
He was worried about something, and he had not made a confidante of her.
This was bad enough, but what she resented most was the fact that he was
on the best of terms with the handsome young scamp who had kissed her so
blithely in the orchard. Of course she had no right to blame her husband
for this, since she had never told him of the episode. Yet she did. For
her mind moved by impulse and not by logic.
She wandered into the kitchen and whipped together a salad for luncheon.
She knitted two rows on a sweater at which she was working, and flung it
aside to plunge into one of Chopin’s waltzes at the piano. But Ruth was
not in the mood for music. Restlessly she turned to a magazine, fingered
the pages aimlessly, read at a story for a paragraph or two, then with a
sudden decision tossed the periodical on the table and walked out of the
house to the garage. Yet a minute, and she was spinning down the road
toward Bovier’s Camp.
It was such a day in late summer as comes only to the Rockies. From a
blue sky, flecked with a few mackerel clouds, poured a bath of sunshine.
Her lungs drank in an air like wine, pure and strong. The sunny slopes
of the high peaks pushed up into the rare, untempered light of Wyoming.
The scent of the pines was in her nostrils. Once, when she stopped to
look at a doubtful tire, the murmurous voices of the desert whispered in
her ears. In spite of herself Ruth’s heart answered the call of the
distant, shining mountain to rejoice and be glad.
The car topped the rim of the saucer-shaped valley and swept down toward
the little village. What Ruth saw quickened her blood. Beyond the post
office a great huddle of sheep was being driven forward. At the head of
them rode a man with a rifle in one hand lying across the horn of the
saddle. On the porch of the store sat Larry Silcott and her husband
watching the man steadily. Neither of them carried any arms exposed to
view.
The young wife drove the car down the basin and stopped near the store,
leaving the engine still running. None of the men even glanced her way.
Their eyes were focused on each other with a tenseness that made her
want to scream. She waited, breathless, uncertain what to expect. The
pulse in her throat beat fast with excitement. That a collision of some
sort impended she did not need to be told.
The man with the rifle spoke thickly in a heavy, raucous voice: “I’ve
been looking for you, Rowan McCoy. First off, I’ll tell you something.
I’m here with my sheep like I promised, on the way to Circle Diamond.
I’m going right past the door of the ranch to Thunder Mountain. If any
man tries to stop me, I’ll fix his clock. Get that?”
Rowan’s eyes were like chilled steel, his body absolutely motionless.
“Better turn back while you can, Tait,” he advised quietly.
“I’ll see you in hell first. I’m going through. But there’s another
thing I’ve got to settle with you, Rowan McCoy. That’s about my wife.
Stand up and fight, you white-livered coyote!” A sudden passionate venom
leaped into the voice of the sheepman. He cursed his enemy savagely and
flung at him a string of vile names.
Ruth, terror-stricken, believed the man was working himself up to do
murder. She wanted to cry out, to rush forward and beg him to stop. But
her throat was parched and her limbs weighted with heavy chains.
“Your wife left you because you are a bully and a drunkard. I had
nothing to do with her going,” retorted McCoy.
“You’re a liar—a rotten liar! You got her to run away with you. You
took her in your car to Wagon Wheel. You gave her money to buy a ticket.
You were seen on the train with her. I swore I’d kill you on sight, and
I’m going to do it. Get out of the way, Silcott!”
The energy flowed back into Ruth’s limbs. She threw in the clutch and
drove forward furiously. There was the sound of a shot, then of another.
Next moment she was pushing home the brake and shutting off the gas. The
car slammed to a halt, its wheels hard against the porch. She had driven
directly between the sheepman and his intended victim.
Out of the haze that for a moment enveloped Ruth’s senses boomed a
savage, excited voice:
“Turn me loose, Mac! Lemme go! I’ll finish the damned sheepman while I’m
on the job.”
The scene opened before her eyes like a moving-picture film. On the
porch her husband was struggling with a man for the possession of a gun,
while young Silcott was sagging against a corner pillar, one hand
clutched to his bleeding shoulder. Thirty yards away Tait lay on the
ground, face down, beside his horse. From the corral, from the store,
from the adjoining doctor’s office men poured upon the scene.
The place was suddenly alive with gesticulating people.
Rowan tore the rifle from the man with whom he was wrestling. “Don’t be
a fool, Falkner. You’ve done enough already. I shouldn’t wonder if Tait
had got his.”
“He had it coming to him, if ever a man had. If I’d been two seconds
later you’d have been a goner, Mac. I just beat him to it. Good riddance
if he croaks, I say.”
McCoy caught sight of Ruth. He moved toward her, his eyes alive with
surprise and dismay.
“You—here!”
“He didn’t hit you!” She strangled a sob.
“No. Falkner fired from the store window. It must have shaken his aim.
He hit Larry.”
Rowan turned swiftly to his friend, who grinned feebly up at him.
“’S all right, Mac. I’ll ride in a heap of round-ups yet. He punctured
my shoulder.”
“Good! Let’s have a look at it.”
A fat little man with a doctor’s case puffed up to the porch as McCoy
was cutting away the shirt of the wounded man from the shoulder.
“Here! Here! Wha’s the matter? Lemme see. Get water—bandages,” he
exploded in staccato snorts like the engine of a motor cycle.
Ruth flew into the house to obey orders. When she returned with a basin
of water and towels the doctor had gone.
“Doc is over looking at Tait,” explained her husband. “Says Larry has
only a flesh wound. We’ll take him home with us in the car. You don’t
mind?”
“Of course we’ll look after him till he’s well,” Ruth agreed.
“I wouldn’t think of troubling you, Mrs. McCoy,” objected Silcott. “All
I need is——”
“Rest and good food and proper care. You’ll get it at the Circle
Diamond,” the girl interrupted decisively. “We needn’t discuss that.
You’re going with us.”
She had her way, as she usually had. After Doctor Irwin had dressed the
shoulder the young ranchman got into the back seat of the car beside
Ruth. McCoy asked a question point-blank of the fussy little physician:
“What about Tait? Will he live?”
“Ought to. If no complications. Just missed lower intestines—near
thing. Lot of damn fools—all of you!” he snorted.
“Sure thing,” grinned Silcott. “Come and see me to-night, Doc.”
“H’mp!”
“I’ll be looking for you, Doctor Irwin,” Ruth called back from the
moving car.
The doctor growled out what might be taken for a promise if one were an
optimist.
From the rim of the valley McCoy looked down and spoke grimly: “I notice
that Tait’s herders have changed their minds. They’re driving the sheep
back along the road they came.”
“Before we’re through with them they’ll learn where to head in,” boasted
Larry querulously, for his wound was aching a good deal. “Next time they
cross the dead line there’ll be a grave dug for someone.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Larry,” objected Rowan gently. “We’d better cut
out threats. They lead to trouble. We don’t want to put ourselves in the
wrong unnecessarily. Take Falkner now. I was just in time to keep him
from finishing Tait.”
“Oh, Falkner! He’s crazy to be a killer. But at that I don’t blame him
this time,” commented the younger man.
Silcott went to bed in the guest chamber between clean sheets, and sank
back with a sigh of content into the pillow. The atmosphere of home
indefinably filled the room. The cool tints of the wall paper, the
pictures, the feminine touches visible here and there, all were
contributing factors, but the light-footed girl, so quiet and yet so
very much alive in every vivid gesture, every quick glance, was the
centre of the picture.
He knew that she had something on her mind, that she was troubled and
distrait. He thought he could guess the reason, and felt it incumbent
upon him to set himself right with her. When, toward evening, she
brought him a dainty tray of food he could keep away from the subject no
longer.
“I was a sweep,” he confessed humbly.
For an instant she did not know what he meant. Then: “Yes,” she agreed.
“I’m sorry. You’ve made me ashamed. Won’t you forgive me?” he pleaded.
Ruth had plenty of capacity for generosity. This good-looking boy was
ill and helpless. He appealed strongly to the mother instinct that is
alive in all good women. He was the central figure, too, of an adventure
which had excited her and intrigued her interest. Moreover, she was
cherishing a new and more important resentment, one which made her
annoyance at him of small moment.
“Do you mean it? Are you really sorry?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think so. I know I ought to be. Anyhow, I’m sorry you’re
angry at me,” he answered with a little flare of boyish audacity.
She bit her lip, then laughed in spite of herself. She held out her hand
a little hesitantly, but he knew he was forgiven.
Young Silcott’s fever mounted toward evening, but when Doctor Irwin
arrived he gave him a sleeping powder and before midnight the wounded
man fell asleep. Ruth tiptoed about the room while she arranged on a
little table beside the bed his medicines and drinks in case he awakened
later. After lowering the light she stole away silently to her own
bedroom.
Rowan knocked a few minutes later. He heard her move across the floor in
her soft slippers. She wore a dainty crepe-de-Chine robe that lent
accent to the fresh softness of her young flesh. She had just been
brushing her hair, and the long, heavy, blue-black braids were thrown
forward over her shoulders.
All day McCoy had been swept by waves of tenderness for this girl wife
of his who had risked her life to save him by driving into the line of
fire so pluckily. He had longed to open his heart to her, and he had not
dared. Now there was a new note about her that puzzled him, one he had
never seen before. The eyes that flashed into his were fierce with
defiance. Her slim figure was very erect and straight.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
He was taken aback. Never before had her manner been less than friendly
to him. While she was in this mood he could not voice his surcharge of
feeling for her.
“You are tired,” he suggested.
A sudden gusty passion flared in her face. “Did you come to tell me
that?”
“No. To thank you.”
“What for?”
“For risking your life for me this morning. It was splendid.”
She dismissed his thanks with a contemptuous little snap of finger and
thumb.
“If that’s all you have to say——”
“That’s all, except good-night, dear.”
Definitely she refused his wistfulness, definitely withdrew into herself
and met his appeal icily.
“Good-night.” Her voice rejected flatly the love he offered.
Always he had been chary of embraces with her. To him she was so fine
and exquisite that her kisses were a privilege not to be claimed of
right. Now he merely hid his hurt with a patient smile.
“I hope you’ll sleep well.”
Her eyes flamed with scorn. She closed the door. He heard the key turn
in the lock. Rowan knew that she was locking him out of her heart as
well as out of the room.