Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in
his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were
there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved
together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered
in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and
golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the
greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered
the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel
of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the
trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the
cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.
Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,
sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by
his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney
into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the
afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher
sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were
not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of
him--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with
bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently
he lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word “Neighbor”
engraved upon it.
“I wonder,” said he, aloud, “if she keeps the rust off mine?” Then he
lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word “Neighbor.”
The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but
no one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a little
distance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched for
the vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then they
came, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but sat
down again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were in
silence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, with
good looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of the
eye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now,
upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settled
upon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and to
everything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, dead
noise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hung
low. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came into
his face and went away.
“Good-evening,” said he, clearing his throat. “We heard you was in
cow-camp.”
The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish change
crossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legs
out as he sat.
“You look natural,” said the woman, familiarly.
“Seem to be fixed nice here,” continued the man. “Hadn't heard of it.
Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you.”
“Your wheel wants greasing,” said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.
“Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening.”
“Stay to supper,” said McLean, always seated on his chair.
“Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone.” He twitched
the reins.
McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. “Better
stay to supper,” he suggested, very distinctly.
“It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker before
he--”
The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. “Better
stay to supper,” drawled McLean.
The man looked up at his wife.
“So yus need me!” she broke out. “Ain't got heart enough in yer
played-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down.”
The husband stepped to the ground. “I didn't suppose you'd want--”
“Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out.”
Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, her
blue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.
“No, yus ain't changed,” she said. “Same in your looks and same in your
actions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?”
“I just wanted chickens for supper,” said he.
Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. “I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.
As for--” She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name
“Neighbor.” “As for you,” she continued to Mr. Lusk, “don't you be
standing dumb same as the horse.”
“Better take him to the stable, Lusk,” said McLean.
He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in his
room, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave his
guests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where he
was, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and down
in the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as he
made ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in the
setting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the host
looked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal was
served, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her back
to him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replaced
something. He saw that she had been examining “Neighbor,” and his face
hardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeated
quietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down to
their meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from one
or other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch and
mentioned the hour.
“Yu've not ate especially hearty,” said Lin, resting his arms upon the
table.
“I'm going,” asserted Lusk. “Governor Barker may start out. I've got my
interests to look after.”
“Why, sure,” said Lin. “I can't hope you'll waste all your time on just
me.”
Lusk rose and looked at his wife. “It'll be ten now before we get to
Drybone,” said he. And he went down to the stable.
The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. “I know you seen
me,” she said, without looking at him.
“Saw you when?”
“I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me.” She sat twisting and
pressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, now
and then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothing
that he wished to reply.
“If you claim that pistol is yourn,” she said next, “I'll tell you I
know better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would not
have to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her.”
She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she could
have seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning on
his arms.
“Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!” The woman uttered another
sudden laugh. “I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in this
world. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its own
good time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!” Her voice
grew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidly
resumed: “It had travelled around about you and her like it always will
travel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you she
would have you, and then told you she would not when she learned about
you and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in their
lives had to have their word about her facing you down you had another
wife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and him
livin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages could
not have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to no
hinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give me
a queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to her
face that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin!
Yu' never hit me yet.”
“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Nor now. I'm not Lusk.”
“Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.
Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,
'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!”
“Yes,” breathed McLean.
“She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the ticket-office,
but--”
“I know,” the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.
“It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this Miss
Jessamine Buckner?'”
At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to a
flash.
“And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman can
tell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her room
there, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it better
than I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' She
put her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without never
speaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' says
she. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.
“Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.
“I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'
a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and things
around there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seen
your six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your face
before ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on Bear
Creek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke right
out different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.
“'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How could
you act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made me
madder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if they
report correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, and
hard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come to
yus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up more
that was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.
I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the first
time how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave me
go on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says to
her, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'
“'I know,” she says, thoughtful-like.
“And at her whispering that way I gets madder.
“'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know that
you have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, though
different. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is that
luscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd never
suspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his is
the kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the gray
hairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhood
like him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' the
best will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after a
while. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to Miss
Jessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,
Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he's
walled up for a while.”
“She could have told you it was a lie,” said the cow-puncher.
“She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.'
'That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yus
wants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss Second
Best.'
“Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!
“And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' I
says. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture and
little “Neighbor,” which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt in
his heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres after
his talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words of
mine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'
me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazy
thing to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tell
her about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married to
me till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with the
rest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?
You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, not
mine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn right
now--he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face of
his! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don't
touch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love for
you hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us is
different when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but they
ain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't make
yus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn their
nature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'll
be homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself and
found another girl.'
“Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'
what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin'
at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I saw
him I would tell him to find a home.'”
“Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeing
her?” asked the cow-puncher.
Mrs. Lusk laughed. “Oh, you innocent!” said she.
“She said if I came she would leave Separ,” muttered McLean, brooding.
Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.
“I have kept my promise,” Lin continued.
“Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.
Maybe she's gone.”
“What's that?” said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. “I could
be there by to-morrow night,” he murmured. Then his face softened. “She
would never do such a thing!” he said, to himself.
He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him matters
that concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no more
interest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at his
eyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked at
him, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavy
beauty relighted the features.
“You are the same, same Lin everyways,” she said. “A woman is too many
for you still, Lin!” she whispered.
At her summons he looked up from his revery.
“Lin, I would not have treated you so.”
The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he sat
quite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.
“You!” he said. “At least I've had plenty of education in you.”
“Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near I
come shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!
“I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it was
hern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman in
you somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you come
to know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, and
you just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, so
comic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon.
Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?”
“I can't hardly say,” said the cow-puncher. “Only noticing him so
turruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking.”
“You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them were
good times.”
“Which times?”
“You know. You can't tell me you have forgot.”
“I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?”
“Yus never loved me!” she exclaimed.
“Shucks!”
“Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say you
did. Only say it was once that way.” And as he sat, she came and put her
arms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself be
held; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struck
her down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he went
out of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, looking
after him and smiling.
McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,
where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned his
hand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.
Then he continued on his way. “Lusk!” he called, presently, and in a few
steps more, “Lusk!” Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet the
husband he began, with quiet evenness, “Your wife wants to know--” But
he stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. The
door was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where the
road went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and stars
were faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawks
as they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among the
trees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close by
sounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horses
fed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut it
again. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alone
there. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate of
the corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from the
roof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped the
vine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middle
of the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. But
he ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into the
corral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men's
saddles--from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door with
the horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where she
had sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him look
in at the door.
“Lusk has gone,” said he. “I don't know what he expected you would do,
or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone.”
She looked at him with her dumb stare. “Gone?” she said.
“Get up and ride,” said McLean. “You are going to Drybone.”
“Drybone?” she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.
He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.
Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the table
clean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements she
followed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a small
bundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horse
beside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked his
cabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it and
be at home.
She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed.
“It's about his size,” she murmured.
Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--this
they had often done together in former years--and so they took their way
down the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the first
two lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put to
a canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the trees
and pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of the
greater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discernible
through the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneath
this half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapeless
to the looming mountains, or to nothing.
“I will ask you one thing,” said Lin, after ten miles.
The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.
“Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might be
going away from Separ?”
“How do I know what you understood?”
“I thought you said--”
“Don't you bother me, Lin McLean.” Her laugh rang out, loud and
forlorn--one brief burst that startled the horses and that must have
sounded far across the sage-brush. “You men are rich,” she said.
They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Drybone
road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over
the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and
presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they
made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.
“Put your carbine down,” said McLean to Lusk. “It's not robbers. It's
your wife I'm bringing you.” He spoke very quietly.
The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher “Get in, then,” he said
to his wife.
“Town's not far now,” said Lin. “Maybe you would prefer riding the
balance of the way?”
“I'd--” But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcame
her, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the three
continued slowly climbing the hill together.
From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that the
road slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon the
immensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was the
whole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emerged
from the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloom
it cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents of
sand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level to
breathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them through
the stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybone
bridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bank
showed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on over
the table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone's
chief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards and
wind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. They
passed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutings
and high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw the
sparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.
The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling from
their muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could be
known.
“There's a dance to-night,” said the wife to the husband. “Hurry.”
He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.
“I'm telling you to hurry,” she repeated. “My new dress is in that
wagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends than
you.”
She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music and
the older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throat
and spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullen
voice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,
following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. If
he did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncher
was still less to his mind.
“It ain't only her he's stopped caring for,” mused Lin, as he rode
slowly along. “He don't care for himself any more.”