"THEIR LAST RIDE TOGETHER"
"Good evening, Miss Drew," some one said politely.
Ruth drew in her breath. "Good evening," she returned coldly.
"Kind of surprised to see me?" "Gypsy Joe" inquired. "You have been
having great goings on about the ranch lately. I could have told you
about your gold mine in the early part of the summer, but I knew this
man Harmon would give me a better show than your overseer if I put him
on to my discovery and he got your ranch away from you."
Ruth turned irresolutely and then faced the man again. "Please don't
talk to me of your dishonesty," she protested, "and do get off the ranch
right away. You know what Mr. Colter told you." Ruth had a frightened
vision of Jim's returning to find this tramp lurking about the rancho,
and knew she would have small chance for a quiet evening with her lover
after such a catastrophe.
"Look here, Miss Drew, don't you think you might speak a good word to
your overseer and the young ladies for me?" Dawson whined. "Seems like
it isn't fair for me to have been the first to discover that gold mine
and not to have any share in it."
Ruth shrugged her shoulders. "We really can't help that. If you had told
Mr. Colter of it first I am sure he would have been fair with you.
Surely it is not our fault that you have cheated yourself in trying to
cheat us. I really don't see how we owe you anything!"
"Jim Colter, as he calls himself, owes me a whole lot. Say, I'm hard up.
Do you think you could get Colter to give me a job as a miner?" "Gypsy
Joe" urged. "They say the men are making a pretty good thing out of
that."
Slowly Ruth shook her head, knowing that Jim, who was the most gentle of
men and the most yielding in little things, was like adamant once his
mind was made up.
"I don't know what there is between you and Mr. Colter," Ruth answered
hurriedly, "but I'm sure I could not make him change his opinion of you
even if I wished to try. Do, do go away from here."
"I won't," the man replied. "You've got to hear something first." Ruth
made a movement, but he caught at her skirts. "I'm all-fired tired of
this man Colter's being so hard on me and having all the people around
here treat him like a tin god. I am not living under an assumed name and
he is. I have never done anything to make me proud of being called Joe
Dawson, but I don't have to hide it. Colter!" Joe Dawson laughed. "Your
friend is no more named Colter than I am. His name is Carter, John
Carter, and he hails from Virginia the same as I do. Colter was a pretty
good name to select when he came west, since a man named Colter happened
to be one of the first settlers in Wyoming."
"Be quiet and let me go, Mr. Dawson!" Ruth commanded, white with anger.
"Of course you understand I don't believe a word you have said, but you
sha'n't force me to listen to your slander."
"Oh, don't take my word for it," Dawson sneered. "Ask Carter if he
didn't run away from home because he stole a lot of money and broke his
mother's and father's hearts. The Carters are a proud lot and not
forgiving, and I expect they weren't sorry to have him change his name
to Colter. He and I were school-fellows together, and we have never been
friendly."
The man let go of her skirts, and Ruth ran back toward the rancho while
he walked off in the other direction. There could not be a word of truth
in what he had told her, yet the girl felt sick and trembling and dared
not go in where her friends could see her. Crying softly, Ruth dropped
down in the grass by the side of the road. Suddenly it occurred to her
that Jim had never told her one word of his past history and that the
ranch girls knew nothing of him before his coming to Wyoming; yet she
had confided every detail of her own narrow story to him, her school
days in Vermont and the teaching afterward, and then there was nothing
else until she came out west to him.
A horse trotted along the road and shied at the white figure in the
grass.
"Ruth, is anything the matter?" Jim asked in astonishment, recognizing
her at once.
"Nothing, only I was waiting for you," Ruth answered.
Jim had ridden close up to her. Now he leaned down from his horse and
lifted her up in the saddle with him. "Let's don't go in to the house
now, Ruth," he whispered. "I want to ride with you, alone."
Ruth did not have to speak, for she yielded herself utterly to Jim's
strength and tenderness. With a touch to his horse the man and woman
rode on, feeling the night wind of the prairies with its thousand
fragrances blow over them; seeing the sky with its ten million stars
above them and the great wide sweep of the open country beneath.
"It has been more than a week, Ruth, and I am weary of waiting," Jim
said, when his horse grew tired and they were moving toward home.
She turned her face toward him, flushed now with the joy of the night
and the stars and the new love that enthralled her. "You know I love
you, Jim," she murmured caressingly, "and I would rather be your wife
than any man's in the world."
After this there did not seem to be need for speech; but the man walked
his horse slowly, hoping that it might take forever before they reached
home.
Then Ruth said carelessly, because the tramp's story had passed out of
her thoughts until this moment: "Jim, don't be angry--I didn't want to
listen, but you must make that fellow, Joe Dawson, stop telling dreadful
stories about you. Why, I met him to-night and he told me such absurd
things. He said----"
Suddenly the man's arm stiffened about the woman he loved. "He said
what, Ruth?" Jim Colter inquired with a new note in his voice.
Ruth laughed nervously and clung more closely to him, as though she
feared to slip from her seat. "Just that your name was John Carter and
not Jim Colter. Please don't make me tell you any more of his stories,"
she begged.
"I would like to hear all, Ruth; it will be better for us in the end,"
Jim insisted.
"But I'm ashamed," the girl argued, "because it is so utterly unlike you
or anything you could do. You know, I believe you are the soul of honor,
Jim, yet this man said you had stolen money when you were a young man,
and run away from home to hide."
"The man told you the truth, Ruth," Jim Colter answered. "Don't be
frightened. I have done wrong, for I should have told you before. My
name is John Carter under the law, though I have borne the name of Jim
Colter for fourteen years and it seems far more like my own name than
the other, for I have learned to be a man under it."
Ruth drew herself away, clinging to the horse's mane, her body rigid and
her tears dry.
"You mean you have been deceiving me and have asked me to marry you
without my knowing your real name?" she asked, all her fear and
suspicion of men returning. If Jack had once hated what she called
"Ruth's schoolmarm manner," Jim Colter was now to know her in the light
of an upright judge.
"Of course I meant to tell you my story some day, Ruth," he replied
almost top humbly. "I thought things over a long time and I didn't see
how I was doing you any harm to keep my old name and past a secret from
you until you learned to love me. Maybe I was mistaken, but I didn't
want you to love the man I used to be, I wanted you to love the man I am
now. I could see that you were growing more understanding every day
about little things, and not so hard and narrow, and I thought maybe if
you loved me you'd be able to forgive something that happened so many
years ago it seems almost like a bad dream."
"I never could marry anyone who deceived me," the girl returned
frigidly.
"I wasn't deceiving you, I was just waiting to tell you. Maybe you will
listen to the story now?" Jim asked. "It won't take long." Then before
Ruth could reply he went on: "My father and mother had two sons, and I
was the older. We were an old Virginia family and had been rich before
the war. I was a good-for-nothing fellow, never studied, had no ambition
and used to spend all of my time out of doors. My brother Ben was a
different sort, a brilliant, studious chap, and we believed he would
some day restore the family fortunes. After graduating at the high
school he went to Richmond to study law, but as I had never studied
anything there was nothing for me to do but to get a job as clerk in a
store in our town. Both of us were boys at this time, Ben twenty and I
only a little older. One night pretty late I was alone in the store, and
Ben appeared, saying he had come down from Richmond because he had to
have three hundred dollars quick, that very night. Well, I knew that
father and mother and I didn't have thirty dollars between us. Ben
suggested that I borrow the money from my employer, as I knew the
combination of his safe. In a few days Ben was sure he would have the
money to pay back and I could explain the whole situation. I am not
excusing myself, Ruth. I knew I was sinning when I borrowed another
man's money without his consent. Ben couldn't pay back, and I told the
man I worked for what I had done. I offered to take any punishment the
law ordered and then to come back to his shop and work until I paid him
the last cent. The man forgave me, Ruth, and was willing to let me work
out my salvation; but there was one thing I had not counted on, and that
was family pride. When my father and mother learned what I had done they
asked me to leave town, change my name and never to come home again."
"Did they know you took the money for your brother?" Ruth queried.
Jim shook his head. "What was the use? My sin was just the same. I paid
the man back years ago, Ruth. Now can you forgive me?"
"I am sorry, Jim," Ruth answered kindly, but in a manner as remote from
him and his need as though she had been a thousand miles away. "I am
sure you will understand, but I must take back my promise. I can't be
the wife of a man who has done wrong, no matter how much he has
repented. Has no one ever known of what you did in all these years?"
"One man besides Joe Dawson, who is the nephew of the man from whom I
took the money," Jim returned. "He was John Ralston. I told him my story
a few days before he died and he left me the guardian of his little
girls, to manage their property until Jack is twenty-one." And this was
the only defense Jim Colter ever made for himself.
By and by he put Ruth down on the porch of the rancho and went away to
his tent for the night. In the morning he had gone from Rainbow Ranch to
attend to other business.