BECK'S DEPARTURE
Night had come upon the round-up camp, fires near the cook wagon were
dying. On the rise to the southward the night-hawk sat with an eye on
the saddle stock which grazed over a wide area and in their tee-pees
the men were sleeping, preparatory to the first day's riding.
Tom Beck sat alone by the glowing remnants of the cook's fire, staring
stolidly into the coals, mouth set, struggling with his pride. That
quiet, inner voice continued its insistence that he yield a trifle,
give Jane Hunter one more chance. "What?" it asked, "will you gain by
denying her this? What, indeed, will be left for you if you persist?"
But the voice was weaker than it had been early that day. The
alternative it raised in his consciousness less appealing, and a
determination to smother it grew steadily. He had been crossed; he had
been duped!
Oh, he had been a fool! he told himself. He had thrown to the winds his
caution and his reserve; he had taken the biggest chance that life, the
trickster, dangles before men. He had taken it blindly, against his
better judgment; it left him embittered, with nothing beyond except the
position which he held among men. That was a mawkish attainment now; it
was so cheap and inconsequential compared to the sense of
accomplishment which had been his when Jane Hunter had thrown herself
into his arms and begged that he carry her into his life! Deluded
though he may have been, that moment had opened to him sensations,
vistas, that he had never before imagined existed.
And now! All else that remained was gray and dead. He had been lifted
up to see what might be, only to find that it was denied him; more,
those moments of glory had taken the zest from the life that had been
his before and that now remained.
For long he sat there and gradually the inner voice died entirely,
slowly a cold, heartless desire to cling to a dead thing like his
standing in the country took its place as his chief interest in life.
He had written Jane that such was all that remained to him. He had not
realized as he scrawled those words what a pitiful bauble it was but
now it was necessary to endow it with values that he could not truly
feel. But he forced himself to believe it of consequence, for men like
Tom Beck must have some one valuable thing to live for.
The tee-pees were quiet when he arose, dropped his dead cigarette into
the expiring embers and sought his bed. But in one tee-pee a man looked
out at the faint jingle of spurs. It was Riley who, with others from
the lower country, was riding with the HC wagon to help the larger
outfit and, in turn, to be helped in his branding. He was bunked with
Jimmy Oliver and Oliver said:
"What's he doin'?"
"Turnin' in."
Riley settled back in his blankets and muttered:
"It's funny ... damned funny, Jim."
"He's like a man that's _through_. Didn't appear to have any real
interest in the work today, seems like he don't give a damn. I don't
understand it."
"If it wasn't Tom Beck I'd say that they'd got his goat. It's hard to
believe of him."
"It can't be that." Oliver was loyal. "It's somethin' else, but it
seems like somethin' worse than a man bein' sick of his job. Still, he
said twice today that he wouldn't be here long an' the way he said
_long_ made me think it'd be a mighty short time."
Silence for a time.
"Mebby," said Riley, "it's her."
"Mebby you're right," the other replied. "Tom didn't used to give a
damn whether school kept or not. Then, after she come he changed, got
to takin' things seriously and anybody could see he was gone on her.
Now....
"Well, he ain't afraid of men. There ain't bad men enough in this
country to drive Tom Beck out.... But women.... They'll put a crimp in
th' best of us!"
* * * * *
It was the following evening that news of the destruction of Cathedral
Tank was brought to Tom Beck. Riley had ridden the far circle himself
and had found no cattle at the waterhole which the HC foreman had
visited only a few days before. That is, no live cattle. He found four
steer carcasses, already ravaged by coyotes and buzzards, found the
fresh gash in the rock basin and had ridden back to help those cowboys
who were on shorter circles, holding explanation of the fact that he
returned empty handed until he could give it first to Beck.
Tom received the news silently.
"I expect you can fix up the basin with some concrete so it'll hold
next winter," Riley said.
"It's likely," the other responded, "but next winter's plans for this
outfit ain't worryin' me, Riley."
He meant, of course, that there were matters of greater importance just
then. The dynamiting had been accomplished after his warning to Webb
and Hepburn, which was clear evidence that the war went on as
desperately as before and that these other men were not cowed, their
determination to run him from the country had not been shaken. A hot
rage swept through him. Next winter's plans were remote indeed! Fate
had taken his woman from him; these renegades would take away the last
hold on life!
But Riley did not construe his meaning as such and when, the following
morning, Tom called Jimmy Oliver aside and talked to him the
misunderstanding of what went on in his mind was more complicated for
he said:
"Jimmy, you're goin' to lead this round-up for a while ... mebby for
good."
"So, Tom?"--in surprise, and in hope that an explanation would be
forthcoming.
"I'm leavin' here an' mebby I won't be back."
Beck was thinking that he would inspect that tank and track down the
men responsible for its destruction and make them pay. He said that he
might not be back because he had warned them away from HC property and
could expect no leniency if he invaded their stronghold. Invade it he
would, for this had gone past the point where he could play a waiting
game. So long as it had been his safety which mattered most he could
assume and retain the defensive, but now Two-Bits had all but lost his
life while executing his orders and HC cattle had been driven by
hundreds into high country before he had planned they should come. It
was time to counter-attack.
Rapidly the word ran through the camp: Beck was leaving! As it passed
from man to man it grew, as rumors all will, and took more definite
shape: Beck was quitting.
He ate silently with the others and his very silence was so marked that
it quieted the rest, warded off the questions which under other
circumstances might have been put to him.
The wrangler brought in the horses and Beck was the first to approach
the cavet with rope ready. He selected his big roan, looked the animal
over carefully and slinging a canteen over the horn, climbed rather
heavily to the saddle.
Other men were catching up their horses. One was pitching and fighting
the rope; two others were trying desperately to break out of the cavet.
There was running about and confusion, but as Beck rode away to the
west-way, head down, so obviously absorbed in himself, men stopped to
watch and to wonder.
* * * * *
The HC foreman was not the only individual in that country who, as the
sun shoved over the far rim of the world, thought so intensely of his
own, wholly personal interests that consciousness of what transpired
about him was lost.
Jane Hunter sat suddenly up in her bed, golden hair in a shower about
her shoulders, blue eyes that had been waking and painful until dawn,
filled with tears. She stared about her as one will who rouses abruptly
from a startling dream, lips parted, a hand to her flushed throat,
breath quick and irregular. She held so a moment, then sank back into
the pillows, calling softly:
"Tom; Tom!"
Her slender body quivered spasmodically and her sobbing became like
that of a child. One hand, flung across the cover, clenched feebly and
feebly beat the bedding, as though it hammered hopelessly at walls
which held her in, making her a prisoner ... as she was, a prisoner to
her pride.
And high up on the point which formed the western flank of the Gap to
Devil's Hole, Sam McKee dropped down from his gray horse and stood
looking far out across the level country beneath him. In the clear air
he could see the smoke of the round-up camp fire.
Yesterday he had watched from there, with Hilton's words still in his
ears, Hilton's hope in his heart, and had known that Riley rode to the
tank. Last night he had talked and walked in the darkness with the
Easterner again, had heard Hilton's crafty questioning of Hepburn and
Webb which caused them to repeat again and again their belief that Tom
Beck would take it upon himself to inspect the damage done by dynamite.
He had slept fitfully, in a fever of anticipation.
And yet he had kept secret his achievement in shooting down Two-Bits.
There was a time for all things and the time to divulge that minor
accomplishment was not yet. For long he had been belittled, and had no
standing among his associates; now they were banded in common cause, he
had made one step toward triumph and that move had reestablished the
confidence that had lain dormant for long. It had enabled Hilton's
suggestions to take hold, enabled him to whet his own hate, to work
himself into a paroxysm of rage, and today he was to emerge a figure of
consequence, for he was to remove the obstacle which was in the path of
all.
Webb's battered field glasses were slung over his shoulder and as he
picked out the lone dot of moving life, coming slowly in his direction,
he unstrapped the case with hands that trembled. It required but one
moment to identify that horse for none but Beck's roan swung along with
the same distance-eating shack; but McKee stared for a long interval,
his body tense, his breath slow and audible, as if tantalizing himself
by sight of that isolated rider, teasing his hatred, teasing it....
Then he mounted the gray and swung down the treacherous point, seeking
a big wash that made a wrinkle on in the floor of the desert where
storm waters had rushed toward the tank for countless decades. In this
he could ride unseen and he went forward at a trot, eyes straight
ahead, moistening his lips from time to time....