THE BLOOD OF JEZEBEL
The prognostication made by the citizens of Prouty that it was "gettin'
ready for somethin'" seemed about to be verified out on the sheep range
twenty miles distant, for at five o'clock one afternoon the wind stopped
as suddenly as it had arisen and heavy snow clouds came out of the
northeast with incredible swiftness.
Mormon Joe walked to the door of the cook tent and swept the darkening
hills with anxious eyes. Kate should have been back long before this. He
always had a dread of her horse falling on her and hurting her too badly
to get back. That was about all there was to fear in summer time, but
to-night there was the coming storm.
Kate's sense of direction was remarkable, but the most experienced
plainsman would be apt to lose himself in these foothills, with the snow
falling thick and the night so black he could not see his hand before
his face.
Mormon Joe shook his head and turned back to his task of peeling
potatoes. While he worked he reproached himself that he had not hunted
those horses himself; but she had been so insistent upon going. She did
not mind the wind, she had said, but then she did not "mind" anything,
when it came to that. What would have been hardships for another were
merely adventures to her.
At any rate, Kate was more comfortable now than she had been the year
before. He smiled a little as he recalled her delight in the sheep
wagon which he had given her to be her own quarters. He had had to
borrow the money at the bank in addition to what he already had borrowed
for running expenses, but his circumstances justified it. He was getting
ahead, not with phenomenal rapidity, but satisfactorily. With the
leases, and the land he owned, he was building the future upon a
substantial foundation. A few years more of economy and attention to
business and he could give Kate the advantages he wished. He listened,
got up from the condensed-milk box upon which he sat and walked to the
entrance of the tent once more. He strained his ears, but death itself
was not more still than the opaque night.
Kate had left immediately after breakfast, and since the horses had only
a few hours' start and would probably feed as they went, she had
expected to be back by noon.
Kate was exceedingly resourceful--she knew what to do if caught out, he
assured himself, unless she had been hurt. It was this thought that gave
him a curious stillness at his heart. What would life be without her
now? With the knife in his hand he stopped as he turned inside and
stared at the potatoes on the box. He never had thought of that
before--it left him aghast.
The girl had twined herself into every fiber of his nature from the time
she had come to him as a child. She was identified with every hope.
Humph! He knew well enough what the answer would be if anything happened
to Kate. He would shoot the chutes, again--quick. It was she who had
awakened his ambition and kept him tolerably straight. Without her?
Humph!
He stoked the sheet-iron camp stove, put the potatoes to boil, cut chops
enough for two and laid the table with the steel knives and forks and
tin plates. Then he set out a tin of molasses and the sour-dough bread,
after which there was nothing to do but wait for the potatoes to boil,
and for Kate.
He was trying the potatoes with a fork when he raised his head sharply.
He was sure he heard the rattle of rocks. A faint whoop followed.
"Thank God!" He breathed the ejaculation fervently, yet he said merely
as he stood in the entrance puffing his pipe as she rode up, "Got 'em, I
see, Katie!"
"Sure. Don't I always get what I go after?" Then, with a tired laugh,
"I'm disappointed; I thought you would be worried about me."
He smiled quizzically.
"I don't know why you'd think that."
"I'll know better next time," she replied good-humoredly, as she swung
down with obvious weariness.
"There won't be any next time," he replied abruptly, "at least not at
this season of the year."
"Oh, but I'm glad I went," she interposed hastily.
As Mormon Joe unwrapped the lead-rope from the saddle horn and took the
horses away to picket, he wondered what wonderful adventure she would
have to relate, for she seemed able to extract entertainment from nearly
anything. By the time he returned she had removed her hat, gloves and
spurs, washed her dust-streaked face, smoothed her hair, slipped on an
enveloping apron over her riding clothes and had the chops frying.
The sight warmed his heart as he paused for a moment outside the circle
of light which came through the entrance.
He had seen the same thing often before, but it never had impressed him
particularly. Her presence in the canvas tent made the difference
between home and a mere shelter. The small crumbs of bread he had cast
upon the water were indeed coming back to him.
"I've ridden over forty miles since morning," she chattered, while he
flung the snow flakes from his hat brim and brushed them from his
shoulders. "The wind blew the horses' tracks out so I couldn't follow
them. I never caught sight of them until just this side of Prouty. You
can sit down, Uncle Joe--everything's ready."
They talked of the coming snowstorm, and the advisability of holding the
sheep on the bed-ground if it should be a bad one; of the trip to town
that he was contemplating; of the coyote that was bothering and the
possibility of trapping him. There was no dearth of topics of mutual
interest. Nevertheless, Mormon Joe knew that she was holding something
in reserve and wondered at this reticence. It came finally when they had
finished and still lingered at the table.
"Who do you suppose I met to-day when I was hunting horses?"
"Teeters?" Mormon Joe was tearing a leaf from his book of cigarette
papers.
"Guess again."
He shook his head.
"Can't imagine."
She announced impressively:
"Mrs. Toomey!"
He was distributing tobacco from the sack upon the crease in the paper
with exactitude. He made no comment, so Kate said with increased
emphasis:
"She was crying!"
Still he was silent, and she demanded:
"Aren't you surprised?"
She looked crestfallen, so he asked obligingly:
"Where did all of this happen?"
"In a draw a couple of miles this side of Prouty, where I found the
horses. They had gone there to get out of the wind and it was by only a
chance that I rode down into it.
"She was in the bottom, huddled against a rock, and didn't see me until
I was nearly on her. I thought she was sick--she looked terrible."
"And was she?"
"No--she was worried."
"Naturally. Any woman would be who married Toomey."
"About money."
"Indeed." His tone and smile were ironic.
Kate, a trifle disconcerted, continued:
"He's had bad luck."
"He's had the best opportunities of any man who's come into the
country."
"Anyway," she faltered, "they haven't a penny except when they sell
something."
He shrugged a shoulder, then asked teasingly:
"Well--what were you thinking of doing about it?"
"I said--I promised," she blurted it out bluntly, "that we'd loan them
money."
"What!" incredulously.
"I did, Uncle Joe."
He answered with a frown of annoyance:
"You exceeded your authority, Katie."
"But you will, won't you?" she pleaded. "You've never refused me
anything that I really wanted badly, and I've never asked much, have I?"
"No, girl, you haven't," he replied gently. "And there's hardly anything
you could ask, within reason, that wouldn't be granted."
"But they only need five hundred until he gets into something. You could
let them have that, couldn't you?"
His face and eyes hardened.
"I could, but I won't," he replied curtly.
When Prouty was in its infancy, certain citizens had been misled by
Mormon Joe's mild eyes, low voice and quiet manner. His easy-going
exterior concealed an incredible hardness upon occasions, but this was
Kate's first knowledge of it. He never had displayed the slightest
authority. In any difference, when he had not yielded to her
good-naturedly, they had argued it out as though they were in reality
partners. At another time she would have been wounded by his brusque
refusal, but to-night it angered her. Because of her intense eagerness
and confidence that she had only to ask him, it came as the keenest of
disappointments. This together with her fatigue combined to produce a
display of temper as unusual in her as Mormon Joe's own attitude.
"But I promised!" she cried, impatiently. "And you've told me I must
always keep my promise, 'if it takes the hide'!"
"You exceeded your authority," he reiterated. "You've no right to
promise what doesn't belong to you."
"Then it's all 'talk' about our being partners," she said, sneeringly.
"You don't mean a word of it."
"You shan't make a fool of yourself, Katie, if I can help it," he
retorted.
"Because you don't care for friends, you don't want me to have any!" she
flung at him hotly.
He was silent a long time, thinking, while she waited angrily, then he
responded quietly and with obvious effort:
"That's where you're mistaken, Katie. If I have one regret it is that in
the past I have not more deliberately cultivated the friendship of true
men and gentle women when I have had the opportunity. It doesn't make
much difference whether they are brilliant or rich or successful, if
only they are true-hearted. Loyalty is the great attribute--but," and he
shrugged a shoulder, "it is my judgment that you will not find it in
that quarter."
"You're prejudiced."
"It is my privilege to have an opinion," he replied coldly.
"We were going to be friends--Mrs. Toomey and I--we shook hands on it!"
Tears of angry disappointment were close to the surface.
He replied, doggedly:
"If you have to buy your friendships, Katie, you'd better keep your
money."
The speech stung her. She glared at him across the narrow table, and, in
the moment, each had a sense of unreality. The quarrel was like a bolt
from the blue, as startling and unexpected--as most quarrels are--the
bitterest and most lasting. Then she sprang to her feet and hurled a
taunt at him some Imp of Darkness must have suggested:
"You're jealous!" She stamped a foot at him. "That's the real reason.
You're jealous of everybody that would be friends with me! You're
jealous of Hughie. You didn't like his coming here and you don't like
his writing to me! I _hate_ you--I won't stay any longer!" It was the
blood of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee talking, and there was the look of
her mother on the girl's face, in her reckless, uncontrolled fury.
Mormon Joe winced, exactly as though she had struck him. He sat quite
still while the color faded, leaving his face bloodless. Kate never had
known anything like the white rage it depicted. Persons at the Sand
Coulee who lost their temper cursed volubly and loudly, and threatened
or made bodily attacks upon the cause of it. In spite of herself she
shrank a little as he, too, got up slowly and faced her. She didn't know
him at all--this man who first threw his cigarette away carefully, as
though he were in a drawing room and must regard the ashes--he was a
personality from an environment with which she was unfamiliar. Then, as
though she were his equal in years, experience and intelligence, he
spoke to her in a tone that was cool and impersonal, yet which went
slash! slash! slash! like the fine, deep, quick cut of a razor.
"I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is
something in the nature of a--er--revelation. You are quite right about
leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about
everything--right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave
it, right in your assertion that I am jealous. I am--but not in the
sense in which you mean it.
"I have been jealous of your dignity--of the respect that is due you. I
have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston
was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not
shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!"
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager--a bet--to prove that
he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you--for a story with which
to regale his friends and laugh over."
She groped for the edge of the table.
"Who told you?"
"Toomey."
"I don't believe it!"
"Teeters verified it."
She sat down on the box from which she had risen.
Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued:
"You went to that dance against my wishes. What I expected to happen
did happen, though you did not choose to tell me.
"In my descent through various strata of society I have learned
something of types and of human nature. In protesting, my only thought
was to save you pain and disappointment--as in this instance--but
experience, it seems, is the only teacher.
"To-morrow I am going to Prouty, hire a herder to do your work and
mortgage the outfit for half its value. It will be yours to use as it
pleases you. You have earned it. Then," with a gesture of finality, "the
door is open to you. I want you to go where you will be happy."
With his usual deliberation of movement he put on his hat and went out
to change the horses on picket, while Kate, stunned by the incredible
crisis and the revelation concerning Hugh Disston, sat where she had
dropped, staring at the agate-ware platter upon which the mutton grease
was hardening.
It was Mormon Joe's invariable custom to help her with the dishes, but
he did not return, so she arose, finally, and set the food away
automatically, with the unseeing look of a hypnotic subject. She washed
the dishes and dried them, trying to realize that she would be leaving
this shortly--that there would be a last time in the immediate future.
Her anger was lost in grief and amazement. There was something so
implacable, so steel-like in Mormon Joe's hardness that it did not occur
to her to plead with him for forgiveness. And Hughie! She told herself
that she could not turn to a traitor for help or sympathy. She blew out
the lantern, tied the tent flap behind her, and ran through the fast
falling snow to her wagon.
Kate dozed towards morning after a sleepless night of wretchedness and
was awakened by a horse's whinny. Listening a moment, she sprang out
and looked through the upper half of the door which opened on hinges. It
was a white world that she saw, with some four inches of snow on the
level, though the fall had ceased and it was colder. Mormon Joe, dressed
warmly in leather "chaps" and sheep-lined coat, was riding away on one
of the work horses.
Never since they had been together had he gone to Prouty without some
word of farewell--careless and casual, but unfailing. Nor could she
remember when he had not turned in the saddle and waved at her before
they lost sight of each other altogether. This time she waited vainly.
He went without looking behind him, while she stood in the cold watching
his peaked high-crowned hat bobbing through the giant sagebrush until it
vanished. She had thrust out a hand to detain him--to call after
him--and had withdrawn it. Her pride would not yet permit her to act as
her heart prompted.