"OLD DAME FORTUNE'S USED ME FOR A FOOTBALL"
Ward Warren sat before the fireplace with a cigarette long gone cold in
his fingers and stared into the blaze until the blaze died to
bright-glowing coals, and the coals filmed and shrank down into the bed
of ashes. Billy Louise had spoken to him twice, and he had not
answered. She had swept all around him, and he had shifted his feet
out of her way, and later his chair, like a man in his sleep who turns
from an unaccustomed light or draws the covers over shoulders growing
chilled, without any real consciousness of what he does. Billy Louise
put away the broom, hung the dustpan on its nail behind the door, and
stood looking at Ward curiously and with some resentment; this was not
the first time he had gone into fits of abstraction as deep as his
absorption in the books he read so hungrily. He had been at the
Wolverine a month, and they were pretty well acquainted by now and
inclined to friendliness when Ward threw off his moodiness and his air
of holding himself ready for some affront which he seemed to expect.
But for all that the distrust never quite left his eyes, and there were
times like this when he was absolutely oblivious to her presence.
Billy Louise suddenly lost patience. She stooped and picked up a bit
of bark the size of her thumb and threw it at Ward, with a little,
vexed twist of her lips. She had a fine accuracy of aim--she hit him
on the nape of the neck, just where his hair came down in a queer
little curly "cow-lick" in the middle.
Ward jumped up and whirled, and when he faced Billy Louise he had a gun
gripped in the fingers that had held the cigarette so loosely. In his
eyes was the glare which a man turns upon his deadliest enemy, perhaps,
but seldom indeed upon a girl. So they faced each other, while Billy
Louise backed against the wall and took two sharp breaths.
Ward relaxed; a shamed flush reddened his whole face. He shoved the
gun back inside the belt of his trousers--Billy Louise had never
dreamed that he carried any weapon save his haughty aloofness of
manner--and with a little snort of self-disgust dropped back into the
chair. He did not stare again into the fire, however; he folded his
arms upon the high chairback and laid his face down upon them, like a
woman who is hurt to the point of tears and yet will not weep. His
booted feet were thrust toward the dying coals, his whole attitude
spoke of utter desolation--of a loneliness beyond words.
Billy Louise set her teeth hard together to keep back the tears of
sympathy. Suffering of any sort always wrung the tender heart of her.
But suffering like this--never in her life had she seen anything like
it. She had seen her father angry, discouraged, morose. She had seen
men fight. She had soothed her mother's grief, which expressed itself
in tears and lamentations. But this hidden hurt, this stoical
suffering that she had seen often and often in Ward's eyes and that
sent his head down now upon his arms-- She went to him and laid her
two hands on his shoulders without even thinking that this was the
first time she had ever touched him.
"Don't!" she said, half whispering so that she would not waken her
mother, in bed with an attack of lumbago. "I--I didn't know. Ward,
listen to me! Whatever it is, can't you tell me? You--I'm your
friend. Don't look as if you--you hadn't a friend on earth!"
Still he did not move or give any sign that he heard. Billy Louise had
no thought of coquetry. Her heart ached with pity and a longing to
help him. She slid one hand up and pinched his ear, just as she would
playfully tweak the ear of a child.
"Ward, you mustn't. I've seen you think and think and look as if you
hadn't a friend on earth. You mustn't. I suppose you've got lots of
friends who'd stand by you through anything. Anyway, you've got me,
and--I understand all about it." She whispered those last words, and
her heart thumped heavily with trepidation after she had spoken.
Ward raised his head, caught one of her hands and held it fast while he
looked deep into her eyes. He was searching, questioning, measuring,
and he was doing it without uttering a word. The plummet dropped
straight into the clear, sweet depths of her soul. If it did not reach
the bottom, he was satisfied with the soundings he took. He drew a
deep breath and gave her hand a little squeeze and let it go.
"Did I scare you? I'm sorry," he said, speaking in a hushed tone
because of the woman in the next room. "I was thinking about a man I
may meet some day; and if I do meet him, the chances are I'll kill him.
I--didn't--I forgot where I was--" He threw out a hand in a gesture
that amply completed explanation and apology and fumbled in his pocket
for tobacco and papers. Abstractedly he began the making of a
cigarette.
Billy Louise put wood on the fire, pulled up a square, calico-padded
stool, and sat down. She waited, and she had the wisdom to wait in
complete silence.
Ward leaned forward with a twig in his hand, got it ablaze, and lighted
his cigarette. He did not look at Billy Louise until he had taken a
whiff or two. Then he stared at her for a full minute, and ended by
flipping the charred twig playfully into her lap, and laughing a little
because she jumped.
"What made you catch your breath when I told my name that night I
came?" he asked quizzically, but with a tensity behind the lightness of
his tone and behind the little smile in his eyes as well. "Where had
you ever heard of me before?"
Billy Louise gasped again, sent a lightning-thought into the future,
and answered more casually than she had hoped she could.
"When I was a kid I ran across the name--somewhere--and I used it to
play with--"
"Yes?"
"You know--I was always making believe different things. I never had
anyone to play with in my life, so I had a pretend-girl, named Minervy.
And I had you. I used to have you rescue us from Indians and things,
but mostly you were a road-agent or a robber, and when you weren't
holding me or Minervy for ransom, I was generally leading you over some
most ungodly trails, saving you from posses and things. I used," said
Billy Louise, forcing a laugh, "to have some wild old times with you,
believe me! So when you told your name, why--it was just like--you
know; it was exactly like having a doll come to life!"
He eyed her fixedly until she tingled with nervousness.
"Yes--and what about--understanding all about it? Do you?" He drew in
his under lip, let it go, and drew it again between his teeth, while he
frowned at her thoughtfully. "Do you understand all about it?" he
insisted, leaning toward her and never once taking that boring gaze
from her face.
"I--well, I--do--some of it anyway." Billy Louise lifted a hand
spasmodically to her throat. This was digging deeper into the agonies
of life than she had ever gone before. "What was in the paper," she
whispered later, as if his eyes were drawing it from her by force.
"What was that? What did it say?"
"I--I--what difference does it make, what it said?" Billy Louise
turned imploring eyes upon him. Her breath was coming fast and uneven.
"It doesn't matter--to me--in the least. It--didn't say much.
I--can't tell exactly--" She was growing white around the mouth. The
horror of being compelled to say, out loud--and to him!
"I didn't know there was a woman in the world like you," Ward said
irrelevantly and looked into the fire. "I thought women were just soft
things a man had to take care of and carry along through life, a dead
weight when they weren't worse. I never knew a woman could be a
friend--the kind of friend a man can be." He threw his cigarette into
the fire and watched the paper shrivel swiftly and the tobacco turn
into a thin, blue smoke-spiral.
"Life's a queer thing," he said, taking a different angle. "I started
out with big notions about the things I'd do. Maybe I started wrong,
but for a kid with nobody to point the trail for him, I don't think I
did so worse--till old Dame Fortune spotted me in the crowd and
proceeded to use me for a football." He leaned an elbow on one knee
and stared hard at a burning brand that was getting ready to fall and
send up a stream of sparks. Then he turned his head quite unexpectedly
and looked at Billy Louise. "What was it you read?" he asked abruptly.
"I--don't like to--say it," she whispered unsteadily.
"Well, you needn't. I'll say it for you, when I come to it. There's a
lot before that."
Ward Warren had never before opened his soul to any human; not
completely. Perhaps, sitting that evening in the deepening dusk, with
the firelight lighting swiftly the brooding face of the girl and
afterward veiling it softly with shadows, perhaps even then there were
desolate places in his life which his words did not touch. But so much
as a man may put into words, Ward told her; more, a great deal more,
than he would ever tell to any other woman as long as he lived. More
perhaps than he would ever tell to any man. And in it all there was no
word of love. It was of what lay behind him that he talked. The low,
even murmur of his voice was broken by long, brooding silences, when
the two stared into the shifting flames and saw there the things his
words had conjured. Sometimes the eyes of Billy Louise were soft with
sympathy. Sometimes they were wide and held the light of horror.
Once, with a small sob that had no tears, she reached out and clutched
his arm. "Oh, don't!" she gasped. "Don't go on telling--I--I can't
bear to listen to that!"
"It isn't nice for a woman to listen to, I guess," Ward gritted. "I
know it was hell to stand, but--" He was silent so long after that,
and his eyes grew so intent and so somber while he stared, that Billy
Louise pulled at his sleeve to recall him.
"Skip that part and tell me--"
Ward took up the story and told her much; more than she had ever
dreamed could be. I can't repeat any of it; what he said was for Billy
Louise to know and none other.
It was late when she finally rose from the stool and lighted the lamp
because her mother woke and called to her. Ward went out to turn the
horses into the stable and fasten the door. He should have sheltered
them two hours before. Billy Louise should long ago have made tea and
toast for her mother, for that matter. But when life's big, bitter
problems confront one, little things are usually forgotten.
They came back to everyday realities, though the spell which Ward's
impulsive unburdening had woven still wrapped them in that close
companionship of complete understanding. They played checkers for an
hour or so and then went to bed. Billy Louise lay in a waking
nightmare because of all the hard things she had heard about life.
Ward stared up into the dark and could not lose himself in sleep,
because he had opened the door upon the evil places in his memory and
let out all the trooping devils that lived there.
After that, though there was never any word of love between them, Billy
Louise, with the sure instinct of a woman innately pure, watched
unobtrusively for signs of those fits of bitter brooding; watched and
drove them off with various weapons of her own. Sometimes she
cheerfully declared that she was bored to death, and wasn't Ward just
dying for a game of "rob casino"? Sometimes she simply teased him into
retaliation. Frequently she insisted that he repeat the things he had
learned by heart, of poetry or humorous prose, for his memory was
almost uncanny in its tenacity. She discovered quite early, and by
accident, that she had only to shake her head in a certain way and
declaim: "Ah, Tam, noo, Tam, thou'lt get thy faring--In hell they'll
roast thee like a herring,"--she had only to say that to make him laugh
and repeat the whole of _Tam O'Shanter's Ride_ with a perfectly
devilish zest for poor Tam's misfortunes, and an accent which made her
suspect who were his ancestors.
Billy Louise meant only to wean him from his bitterness against Life,
and to convince him, by a somewhat roundabout method since at heart she
was scared to death of his aloofness, that he was not "old lady
Fortune's football" as he sometimes pessimistically declared. At
thirteen she had mixed him with her dreams and led him by difficult
trails to safety from the imaginary enemies that pursued him. At
nineteen she unconsciously mixed him with her life and led him--more
surely than in her dreams, and by a far more difficult trail, had she
only known it--safe away from the devils of memory and a distrust of
life that pursued him more relentlessly than any human foe.
She only meant to wean him from pessimism and rebuild within him a
healthy appetite for life. If she did more than that, she did not know
it then; for Ward Warren had learned, along with other hard lessons,
the art of keeping his thoughts locked safely away, and of using his
face as a mask to hide even the doorway to his real self. Only his
eyes turned traitors sometimes when he looked at Billy Louise; though
she, being a somewhat self-centered young person, never quite read what
they tried to betray.
She took him up the canyon and showed him her cave and Minervy's. And
she had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing him doubled over the
saddle-horn in a paroxysm of laughter when she led him to the
historical washout and recounted the feat of the dead Indians with
which he had made a safe passing for her.
"Well, they did it in history," she defended at last, her cheeks redder
than was perfectly normal. "I read about it--at Waterloo when the Duke
of Wellington--wasn't it? You needn't laugh as if it couldn't be done.
It was that sunken-road business put it into my head in the first
place; and I think you ought to feel flattered."
"I do," gasped Ward, wiping his eyes. "Say, I was some bandit, wasn't
I, William Louisa?"
Billy Louise looked at him sidewise. "No, you weren't any bandit at
all--then. You were a kind scout, that time. I was here, all
surrounded by Indians and saying the Lord's prayer with my hair all
down my back like mommie's Rock of Ages picture--will you shut up
laughing?--and you came riding up that draw over there on a big, black
horse named Sultan (You needn't snort; I still think Sultan's a dandy
name for a horse!). And you hollered to me to get behind that rock,
over there. And I quit at 'Forgive us our debts'--daddy always had so
many!--and hiked for the rock. And you commenced shooting-- Oh, I'm
not going to tell you a single other pretend!" She sulked then, which
was quite as diverting as the most hair-raising "pretend" she had ever
told him and held Ward's attention unflaggingly until they were half
way home.
"Sing the _Chisholm Trail_," she commanded, when her temper was
sunshiny again. This had been a particularly moody day for Ward, and
Billy Louise felt that extra effort was required to rout the
memory-devils. "Daddy knew a little of it, and old Jake Summers used
to sing more, but I never did hear it all."
"Ladies don't, as a general thing," Ward replied, biting his lips.
"Why? I know there's about forty verses, and some of them are kind of
sweary ones; but go ahead and sing it. I don't mind damn now and then."
This sublime innocence was also diverting, even to a man haunted by the
devils of memory. Ward's lips twitched, and a flush warmed his
cheek-bones at the mere thought of singing it all in her presence.
"I'll sing all of _Sam Bass_, if you like," he temporized, with a grin.
"Oh, I hate _Sam Bass_! We had a Dutchman working for us when I was
just a kid, and he was forever bawling out: 'Sa-am Pass was porn in
Injiany, it was-s hiss natiff ho-o-ome!'"
Billy Louise was a pretty good mimic. She had Ward doubled over the
horn again and shouting so that the canyon walls roared echoes for
three full minutes. "I've always wanted to hear the _Chisholm Trail_.
I know how it was sung from Mexico north on the old cattle-trails, and
how every ambitious puncher who had enough imagination and could make a
rhyme, added a verse or so, till it's really a--a classic of the
cow-camps."
"Ye-es--it sure is all that." Ward eyed her furtively.
"And with that memory of yours, I simply know that you can sing every
single word of it," Billy Louise went on pitilessly--and innocently.
"You're a cowpuncher yourself, and you must have heard it all, at one
time and another; and I don't believe you ever forgot a thing in your
life." She caught her breath there, conscience-stricken, and added
hastily and imperiously, "So go on--begin at the beginning and sing it
all. I'll keep tab and see if you sing forty verses." And she
prompted coaxingly:
"Come along, boys, and listen to my tale,
I'll tell you of my troubles on the old Chisholm trail,
Coma ti yi--"
and nodded her head approvingly when Ward took up the ditty where she
left off and sang it with the rollicking enthusiasm which only a man
who has soothed restless cattle on a stormy night can put into the
doggerel.
He did not sing the whole forty verses, for good and sufficient reasons
best known to punchers themselves. But, with swift, shamed skipping of
certain lines and some hasty revisions, he actually did sing thirty,
and Billy Louise was so engrossed that she forgot to count them and
never suspected the omissions; for some of the verses were quite
"sweary" enough to account for his hesitation.
The singing of those thirty verses brought a reminiscent mood upon the
singer. For the rest of the way, which they rode at a walk, Ward sat
very much upon one side of the saddle, with his body facing Billy
Louise and his foot dangling free of the stirrup, and told her tales of
trail-herds, and the cow-camps, and of funny things that had happened
on the range. His "I remember one time" opened the door to a more
fascinating world than Billy Louise's dream-world, because this other
world was real.
So, from pure accident, she hit upon the most effective of all weapons
with which to fight the memory-devils. She led Ward to remembering the
pleasanter parts of his past life and to telling her of them.
When spring came at last, and he rode regretfully back to his claim on
Mill Greek, he was not at all the morose Ward Warren who had ridden
down to the Wolverine that stormy night in January. The distrust had
left his eyes, and that guarded remoteness was gone from his manner.
He thought and he planned as other men thought and planned, and looked
into the future eagerly, and dreamed dreams of his own; dreams that
brought the hidden smile often to his lips and his eyes.
Still, the thing those dreams were built upon was yet locked tight in
his heart, and not even Billy Louise, whose instinct was so keen and so
sure in all things else, knew anything of them or of the bright-hued
hope they were built upon. Fortune's football was making ready to
fight desperately to become captain of the game, that he might be
something more to Billy Louise.