AT THE CIRCLE A
Ned Lytton swam back to consciousness through painful half dreams. Light
hurt his inflamed eyes; a horrible throbbing, originating in the center
of his head, proceeded outward and seemed to threaten the solidity of
his skull; his body was as though it had been mauled and banged about
until no inch of flesh remained unbruised; his left forearm burned and
stung fiendishly. He was in bed, undressed, he realized, and covered to
the chin with clean smelling bedding. He moved his tortured head from
side to side and marveled dully because it rested on a pillow.
It was some time before he appreciated more. Then he saw that the fine
sunlight which hurt his eyes streamed into the room from open windows
and door, that it was flung back at him by whitewashed walls and
scrubbed floor. He was in someone's house, cared for without his
knowing. He moved stiffly on the thought. Someone had taken him in,
someone had shown him a kindness, and, even in his semi-stupor, he
wondered, because, for an incalculable period, he had been hating and
hated.
He did not know how Bayard had dragged a bed from another room and set
it up in his kitchen that he might better nurse his patient; did not
know how the rancher had slept in his chair, and then but briefly, that
he might not be tardy in attending to any need during the early morning
hours; did not realize that the whole program of life in that
comfortable ranch house had been altered that it might center about him.
He did comprehend, though, that someone cared, that he was experiencing
kindness.
The sound of moving feet and the ring of spurs reached him; then a boot
was set on the threshold and Bruce Bayard stepped into the room. He was
rubbing his face with a towel and in the other hand was a razor and
shaving brush. He had been scraping his chin in the shade of the ash
tree that waved lazily in the warm breeze and tossed fantastically
changing shadows through the far window. He looked up as he entered and
encountered the gaze from these swollen, inflamed eyes set in the
bruised face of Ned Lytton.
"Hello!" he cried in surprise. "You're awake?"
He put down the things he carried and crossed the room to the bedside.
"Yes.... For God's sake, haven't you got a drink?"--in a painful rasp.
"I have; one; just one, for you," the other replied, left the room and
came back with a tumbler a third filled with whiskey. He propped
Lytton's head with one hand and held the glass to his misshapen lips,
while he guzzled greedily.
"More ... another ..." Lytton muttered a moment after he was back on his
pillow.
"Seems to me you'd ought to know you've punished enough of this by now,"
the rancher said, standing with his hands on his hips and looking at the
distorted expression of suffering on Lytton's face.
The sick man moved his head slightly in negation. Then, after a moment:
"How'd I get here? Who are you ... anyhow?"
"Don't you know me?"
The fevered eyes held on him, studying laboriously, and a smile
struggled to bend the puffed lips.
"Sure ... you're the fellow, Nora's fellow ... the girl in the hotel. I
tried to ... and she said you'd beat me up...." Something intended for a
laugh sounded from his throat. The face of the man above him flushed
slightly and the jaw muscles bulged under his cheek. "Where in hell am
I? How'd I get here?"
"I brought you here last night. You'd gone the limit in town. Somebody
tried to shoot you an' got as far's your arm. I brought you here to try
to make somethin' like a man of you,"--ending with a hint of bitterness
in spite of the whimsical smile with which he watched the effect of his
last words.
Lytton stirred.
"Damned arm!" he muttered, thickly, evidently conscious of only physical
things. "I thought something was wrong. It hurts like.... Say, whatever
your name is, haven't you got another drink?"
"My name is Bayard; you know me when you're sober. You're at my ranch,
th' Circle A. You've had your drink for to-day."
"May--Bayard. Say, for God's sake, Bayard, you ain't going to let
me.... Why, like one gentleman to another, when your girl Nora, the
waitress ... said you'd knock me ... keep away. I wasn't afraid....
Didn't know she was yours.... I quit when I knew.... Treated you like a
gentleman. Now why ... don't you treat me like a gentle ... give me a
drink. I kept away from your wo--"
"Oh, shut up!"
The ominous quality of the carelessly spoken, half laughing demand
carried even to Lytton's confused understanding and he checked himself
between syllables, staring upward into the countenance of the other.
"In the first place, she's not my woman, in th' way you mean; if she
was, I wouldn't stand here an' only tell you to shut your mouth when you
talked about her like that. Sick as you are, I'd choke you, maybe. In
th' second place, I'm no gentleman, I guess,"--with a smile breaking
through into a laugh. "I'm just a kind of he-man an' I don't know much
about th' way you gentlemen have dealin's with each other.
"No more booze for you to-day. Get that in your head, if you can. I've
got coffee for you now an' some soup."
He turned and walked to the stove in the far corner, kicked open the
draft and took a cup from the shelf above. All the while the bleared,
scarce understanding gaze of the man in bed followed him as though he
were trying to comprehend, trying to get the meaning of Bayard's simple,
direct sentences.
After he had been helped in drinking a quantity of hot coffee and had
swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup, Lytton dropped back on the pillow,
sighed and, with his puffed eyes half open, slipped back into a state
that was half slumber, half stupor.
Bayard took the wounded arm from beneath the cover, unwrapped the
bandages, eyed the clotted tear critically and bound it up again. Then
he walked to the doorway and, with hands hooked in his belt, scowled out
across the lavendar floor of the treeless valley which spread before and
below him, rising to blue heights in the far, far distance. He stood
there a long, silent interval, staring vacantly at that vast panorama,
then, moved slowly across the fenced dooryard, let himself into a big
enclosure and approached a round corral, through the bars of which the
sorrel horse watched his progress with alert ears. For a half hour he
busied himself with currycomb and brush, rubbing the fine hair until the
sunlight was shot back from it in points of golden light and all the
time the frown between his brows grew deeper, more perplexed. Finally,
he straightened, tapped the comb against a post to free it of dust,
flung an arm affectionately about the horse's neck, caressed one of the
great, flat cheeks, idly, and, after a moment, began to laugh.
"Because we set our fool eyes on beauty in distress we cross a jag-cure
with a reform school an' set up to herd th' cussed thing!" he chuckled.
"Abe, was there ever two bigger fools 'n you an' me? Because she's a
beauty, she'll draw attention like honey draws bees; because she's in
trouble an' can't hide it, she'll have everybody prospectin' round to
locate her misery an' when they do, we'll be in th' middle of it all,
keepin' th' worthless husband of a pretty young woman away from her. All
out of th' goodness of our hearts. It won't sound good when they talk
about it an' giggle, Abe. It won't sound good!" And then, very
seriously,
"How 'n hell could she marry a ... thing like that?"
During the day Lytton roused several times and begged for whiskey,
incoherently, scarce consciously, but only once again did Bayard respond
with stimulants. That was late evening and, after the drink, the man
dropped off into profound slumber, not to rouse from it until the sun
again rose above the hills and once more flooded the room with its
glorious light. Then, he looked up to see Bayard smiling seriously at
him, a basin and towel in his hands.
"You're a good sleeper," he said. "I took a look at your pinked arm an'
you didn't even move; just cussed me a little."
The other smiled, this time in a more human manner, for the swelling had
partly gone from his lips and his eyes were nearer those of his species.
"Now, sit up," the cowman went on, "an' get your face washed, like a
good boy."
Gently, swiftly, thoroughly, he washed Lytton's face and neck in water
fresh from the well under the ash tree, and, when he had finished, he
took the sick man in the crook of his big, steady arm, lifted him
without much effort and placed him halfway erect against the re-arranged
pillows.
"Would you eat somethin'?" he asked, and for the first time that day his
patient spoke.
"Lord, yes! I'm starved,"--feebly.
Bayard brought coffee again and eggs and stood by while Lytton consumed
them with a weak show of relish. During this breakfast only a few words
were exchanged, but when the dishes were removed and Bayard returned to
the bed with a glass of water the other stared into his face for the
space of many breaths.
"Old chap, you're mighty white to do all this," he said, and his voice
trembled with earnestness. "I ... I don't believe I've ever spoken to
you a dozen times when I was sober and yet you.... How long have you
been doing all this for me?"
"Only since night before last," Bayard answered, with a depreciating
laugh. "It's no more 'n any man would do for another ... if he needed
it."
Lytton searched his face seriously again.
"Oh, yes, it is," he muttered, with a painful shake of his head. "No one
has ever done for me like this, never since I was a little kid....
"I ... I don't blame 'em; especially the ones out here. I've been a
rotter all right; no excuse for it. I ... I've gone the limit and I
guess whoever tried to shoot me was justified ... I don't know,"--with a
slow sigh--"how much hell I've raised.
"But ... but why did you do this for me? You've never seen me much;
never had any reason to like me."
The smile went from Bayard's eyes. He thought "I'm doing this not for
you, but for a woman I've seen only once...." What he said aloud was:
"Why, I reckoned if somebody didn't take care of you, you'd get killed
up. I might just as well do it as anybody an' save Yavapai th' trouble
of a funeral."
They looked at one another silently.
"A while ago ... yesterday, maybe ... I said something to you about a,
about a woman," the man said, and an uneasiness marked his expression.
"I apologize, Old Man. I don't know just what I said, but I was nasty,
and I'm sorry. A ... a man's woman is his own affair; nobody's else."
"You think so?" The question came with a surprising bluntness.
"Why, yes; always."
Bayard turned from the bedside abruptly and strode across the floor to
the table where a pan waited for the dirty dishes, rolling up his
sleeves as he went, face troubled. Lytton's eyes followed him, a trifle
sadly at first, but slowly, as the other worked, a cunning came into
them, a shiftiness, a crafty glitter. He moistened his lips with his
tongue and stirred uneasily on his pillow. Once, he opened his mouth as
though to speak but checked the impulse. When the dishpan was hung away
and Bayard stood rolling down his sleeves, Lytton said:
"Old man, yesterday you gave me a drink or two. Can't ... haven't you
any left this morning?"
"I have," the rancher said slowly, "but you don't need it to-day. You
did yesterday, but this mornin' you've got some grub in you, you got
somethin' more like a clear head, an' I don't guess any snake juice
would help matters along very fast. There's more coffee here an' you can
fill up on that any old time you get shaky."
"Coffee!" scoffed the other, a sudden weak rage asserting itself. "What
th' hell do I want of coffee? What I need's whiskey! Don't you think I
know what I want? Lord, Bayard, I'm a man, ain't I? I can judge for
myself what I want, can't I?"
"Yesterday, you said you was a gentleman," Bayard replied,
reminiscently, his tone lightly chaffing, "an' I guess that about states
your case. As for you knowin' what you want ... I don't agree with you;
judgin' from your past, anyhow."
The man in the bed bared his teeth in an unpleasant smile; two of the
front teeth were missing, another broken, result of some recent fight,
and with his swollen eyes he was a revolting sight. As he looked at him,
Bayard's face reflected his deep disgust.
"What's your game?" Lytton challenged. "I didn't ask you to bring me
here, did I? I haven't asked any favors of you, have I? You ... You
shanghaied me out to your damned ranch; you keep me here, and then won't
even give me a drink out of your bottle. Hell, any sheepherder'd do that
for me!
"If you think I'm ungrateful for what you've done--sobered me up, I
mean--just say so and I'll get out. That was all right. But what was
your object?"
"I thought by bringing you out here you might get straightened up. I did
it for your own good. You don't understand right now, but you may ...
sometime."
"My own good! Well, I've had enough for my own good, now, so I guess I
won't wait any longer to understand!"
He kicked off the covers and stood erect, swaying dizzily. Bayard
stepped across to him.
"Get back into bed," he said, evenly, with no display of temper. "You
couldn't walk to water an' you couldn't set on a horse five minutes.
You're here an' you're goin' to stay a while whether you like it or
not."
The cords of his neck stood out, giving the only evidence of the anger
he felt. He gently forced the other man back into bed and covered him,
breathing a trifle swiftly but offering no further protest for
explanation.
"You keep me here by force, and then you prate about doing it for my own
good!" Lytton panted. "You damned hypocrite; you.... It's on account of
a woman, I know! She tried to get coy with me; she tried to make me
think she was all yours when I followed her up. She told you about it
and ... damn you, you're afraid to let me go back to town!"--lifting
himself on an elbow. "Come, Bayard, be frank with me: the thing between
us is a woman, isn't it?"
The rancher eyed him a long time, almost absently. Then he walked slowly
to the far corner of the room and moved a chair back against the wall
with great pains; it was as though he were deciding something, something
of great importance, something on which an immediate decision was
gravely necessary. He faced about and walked slowly back to the bedside
without speaking. His lips were shut and the one hand held behind him
was clenched into a knot.
"Not now ... a woman," he said, as though he were uncertain himself.
"Not now ... but it may be, sometime...."
The other laughed and fell back into his pillows. Bayard looked down at
him, eyes speculative beneath slightly drawn brows.
"And then," he added, "if it ever comes to that...."
He snapped his fingers and turned away abruptly, as if the thought
brought a great uneasiness.