A SHAME TO WASTE IT
In Old Heck's eyes was a set, determined look when he came out of the
court-house and stepped up to the Clagstone "Six" in which he had left
Ophelia a few moments before. The end of a long yellow envelope
protruded from the side pocket of his coat. His face was flushed and his
hand trembled slightly as he opened the door of the car and climbed into
the front seat beside the widow. He pressed his foot on the "starter,"
threw the clutch into gear and turning the car about drove slowly toward
the home of Reverend Hector R. Patterson, Eagle Butte's only resident
clergyman.
He did not speak until the car stopped at the gate of the little
unpainted parsonage beside the white, weather-boarded church.
"Wait a minute," he said as Ophelia started to get out of the Clagstone
"Six," "maybe I'll go in with you!"
"Splendid," the widow replied, settling again against the cushions. "I'd
be delighted to have you come along and I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Patterson
would be glad to see you!"
"Well, it--it"--Old Heck stammered, not knowing how to begin what he
wanted to say--"it--it all depends on you! Here"--he said abruptly as a
bright thought came to him--"read that and--and--tell me what you think
about it!" at the same time pulling the yellow envelope from his pocket
and handing it to Ophelia.
With a questioning lift of her eyebrows the widow drew the folded,
official-looking document from the envelope.
"Why, it's a--it's a--" she started to say and stopped confused, her
cheeks blazing crimson.
"It's a marriage license--" Old Heck said, coming to her rescue, "--made
out for you and me. I--I--didn't know what to tell the clerk when he
asked me how old you was--so I just guessed at it!"
The widow looked shyly down at the names written on the document.
The license granted "Ophelia Cobb, age _twenty-three_, of Hartville,
Connecticut, and Josiah Alonzo Heck, age forty-eight, of Kiowa County,
Texas," the right to marry.
Ophelia's actual years were thirty-nine!
From under drooping lashes she glanced up suspiciously into the earnest
gray eyes beside her. She saw that Old Heck had been sincere in his
"guess."
"But--but--"
"I know it's kind of unexpected," Old Heck interrupted nervously,
"--perhaps I had ought to have said something about it first, but, well,
I figured I'd go on and get the license and show that my intentions was
good and--and--sort of risk the whole thing on one throw! It always
seemed like there was something missing at the Quarter Circle KT," he
went on, his voice grown softer and trembling a bit, "and--and when you
came I--I--found out what it was--"
Ophelia sat silently with downcast eyes, her pulse racing, the license
unfolded on her lap, while she bit uncertainly at the tip of the finger
of her glove.
"I--I--know I ain't very good-looking or--or--anything," Old Heck
continued, "but I thought maybe you--you--liked me a little--enough
anyhow to get married--that is if you--. Oh-h--thunder, Ophelia!" he
exclaimed in despair, feeling that he was hopelessly floundering,
"I--I--love you! Please let's use that license! Let's use it right away
--to-day--and get it over with!" he urged as the widow still hesitated.
"But--I--I'm not suitably dressed--" she stammered.
"I think that dress you've got on is the prettiest goods I ever saw in
my life," he interrupted, looking adoringly at the clinging summer
fabric caressing Ophelia's shapely form, "I always did think it would be
awful appropriate for us to--to--get married in!" he finished
pleadingly.
"But--Carolyn June and--and--Parker--" Ophelia murmured.
At the mention of Parker, Old Heck started while a look of anguish came
into his eyes. So she loved Parker! That was why she was so backward, he
thought. Well, the Quarter Circle KT foreman was a little
better-looking, maybe, and some younger! He couldn't blame her.
His head dropped. For a moment Old Heck was silent, a dull, sickening
hurt gripping his heart. A deep sigh escaped from his lips. He reached
over and picked up the license.
"I--I--guess I made a mistake," he said numbly. "We'll just--just--tear
this thing up and forget about it!"
Ophelia looked demurely up at him, her mouth twitching. One small gloved
hand slipped over and rested on the strong brown fingers that held the
license. Roses flamed over the full round throat and spread their blush
to her cheeks. Her eyes were like pools of liquid blue:
"Don't tear it--it--up!" she whispered with a little laugh--a laugh that
sent the blood leaping, like fire, through Old Heck's veins, "it--it
would be a shame to waste it!"
For an instant Old Heck was dazed. He looked at her as if he could not
believe he had heard aright. Suddenly a wave of undiluted happiness
swept over him.
"Ophelia!" he cried huskily. "Oh, Ophelia!" and the minister's three
small sons, pausing in their play in the grassless yard at the side of
the house, while they watched the beautiful car standing in front of
the parsonage gate, saw the owner of the Quarter Circle KT, in broad
daylight, on the principal residence street of Eagle Butte, before the
eyes of the whole world--if the whole world cared to look--throw his
arms around the plump lady sitting beside him and press one long,
rapturous kiss on her moist, unresisting lips!
A moment later Ophelia and Old Heck, both much embarrassed but
tremulously happy, stepped inside the door of the parsonage.
They were driving away from the minister's house--going to the
Occidental Hotel for a little all-by-their-ownselves "wedding
luncheon"--before either thought of the matter concerning which Ophelia
had desired to see the clergyman's wife.
"Gee whiz!" Old Heck exclaimed, "you forgot that consultation or
whatever it was with Mrs. Patterson to start your woman's suffrage
'movement'--"
"To start my what?"
"Your 'woman's rights,' 'female voter's organization'--or whatever it
is!" Old Heck explained, a new-born tolerance in his voice. "I didn't
mean to interfere with your political activities--"
Ophelia threw back! her head, while a ripple of laughter trilled out
above the purr of the Clagstone "Six."
"Why, my dear--dear--Old Boy!" she cried, "I am not engaged in
'political activities,' or 'suffragette movements!' Of course," she
continued archly, "I believe women ought to be allowed to vote--if they
haven't intelligence enough for that they haven't brains enough to be
good 'pardners' with their husbands--"
"By gosh, you're right!" Old Heck agreed, "I never thought of it that
way before!"
"And," she continued, "naturally I shall vote whenever the opportunity
comes, but I'm not an 'Organizer' for anything of that kind. Mrs.
Patterson and I are going to organize the wives, sisters and
sweethearts, in Eagle Butte, into a club for the study of 'Scientific
and Efficient Management of the Home!' We think we should be as
proficient in those arts--and which we believe are peculiarly womanly
functions--as the men are in the direction of the more strenuous
business affairs in which they themselves are engaged."
"So that's what you're an 'Organizer' for?" Old Heck queried while a
radiant contentment spread over his face.
"That is it," Ophelia said simply, adding with a most becoming
heightening of color, "it is so we will be--will be--better wives!"
"My Gawd!" Old Heck breathed fervently. "My Gawd! The Lord has been good
to me to-day!"
While Old Heck and Ophelia were in Eagle Butte getting married, Skinny
and Carolyn June had been riding line on the upland pasture fence. They
had just returned to the Quarter Circle KT, unsaddled their horses,
turned them into the pasture, gone to the house and stopped a moment on
the front porch to watch the glow in the west--the sun was dipping into
a thundercap over the Costejo Mountains--when the Clagstone "Six" rolled
down the grade and up to the string of poplars before the house.
"Gee, we thought you two had eloped!" Carolyn June laughed as the couple
climbed out of the car and came, rather bashfully, in at the gate. Old
Heck and Ophelia looked at each other guiltily.
"We did come darn near it!" Old Heck chuckled, plunging at once into the
task of breaking the news. "We got married--I reckon you'd call that the
next thing to eloping!"
"Got married?" Skinny and Carolyn June cried together.
"Who--who--got married?" Skinny repeated incredulously.
"Ophelia and me," Old Heck answered with a sheepish grin but proudly.
"Who else did you think we meant? We just thought," he continued by way
of explanation, "we'd go ahead and do it kind of private and save a lot
of excitement and everything!"
Carolyn June threw her arms around Ophelia and kissed her.
"Good-by, chaperon," she laughed With a half-sob in her throat,
"h--hello, 'Aunt.'" Then she strangled Old Heck with a hug that made him
gasp.
"What the devil--are you trying to do--choke me?"
"Well, by thunder, Old Heck!" Skinny finally managed to ejaculate, "it
was the sensiblest thing you ever done! I--I've--been"--with a sidelong
look at Carolyn June--"kind of figuring on doing it myself!"
Carolyn June saw the expression in Skinny's eyes. A pained look came
into her own. She had known, for a long while, that sooner or later
there would have to come an understanding between this big, overgrown,
juvenile-hearted cowboy and herself. She resolved then that it should
come quickly. Further delay would be cruel to him. Besides, she was sick
of flirtations. Her disappointment in the character of the Ramblin' Kid,
her realization of his weakness, when he had gotten, as she believed,
beastly drunk at the moment so much depended on him the day of the
two-mile sweepstakes, had hurt deeply. Somehow, even his magnificent
ride and the fact that, in spite of his condition, he won the race, had
not taken the sting away. She had thought the Ramblin' Kid was
real--rough and crude, perhaps, but all man, rugged-hearted and honest.
Sometimes she wondered if the queer unexplainable antagonism between
herself and the sensitive young cowboy had not, in a measure, been
responsible for his sudden moral breaking down. The thought caused her
to lose some of that frivolity that inspired the dance and the wild
flirtations she carried on that night with all the cowboys of the
Quarter Circle KT. After all, these plain, simple-acting men of the
range were just boys grown big in God's great out-of-doors where things
are taken for what they seem to be. No wonder an artless look from
sophisticated brown eyes swept them off their feet!
She made up her mind to disillusion Skinny at once.
After supper the quartette gathered in the front room.
"Come on, Skinny," Carolyn June said with forced gaiety, "let us take a
walk. That pair of cooing doves"--with a playfully tender glance at
Ophelia and Old Heck--"wish nothing so much as to be permitted to
'goo-goo' at each other all by their little lonelies!"
Bareheaded she and Skinny strolled out the front gate and along the road
that led up to the bench. At the top of the grade they sat down, side by
side, on a large boulder that hung on the brink of the bench. The
Quarter Circle KT lay before them--restful and calm in the shadows of
early evening. The poplars along the front-yard fence stood limp in the
silent air. Across the valley the sand-hills were mellowing with the
coming softness of twilight. Up the river, to the west, beyond Eagle
Butte, a summer thunder-cloud was climbing higher and higher into the
sky. In the direction of Dry Buck, far toward the northwest, a fog of
dust was creeping along the horizon, gradually approaching the upland
pasture. Skinny saw it.
"By golly," he cried, "that's either Parker and the boys coming in with
the cattle--or else it's a band of sheep! It surely can't be
'woollys'--they never get over in there! If it's our outfit, though,
they've got through quicker than they figured!"
A few moments later the dim bulk of the "grub-wagon" appeared, miles
away, slowly crawling toward the Quarter Circle KT.
For a time Skinny and Carolyn June were silent.
Skinny's hand crept slyly across the rock and found the pink fingers of
Carolyn June. She did not draw away.
"Carolyn June," he whispered haltingly, "Carolyn June--I--Old Heck and
Ophelia have got married--let's you and--and--"
"Please, Skinny, don't say it!" she interrupted, her voice trembling.
"I--I know what you mean! It hurts me. Listen, Skinny"--she hurried on,
determined to end it quickly--"maybe you will despise me, but--I like
you, truly I do--but not _that_ way! I don't want to grieve you--I wish
us to be just good friends--that's why I'm telling you! Let's be
friends, Skinny--just friends--we can't be any more than that--"
Skinny understood. A dull, throbbing pain tightened about his throat.
His fingers gripped Carolyn June's hand an instant and then relaxed. The
whole world seemed suddenly blank.
"Can't you--won't you--ever--ca--care?" he asked in a voice filled with
despair.
"I do care, boy," she replied softly, "I do care--but not that way! Oh,
Skinny," she exclaimed, wishing to make it as easy as possible for the
sentimental cowboy at her side, "maybe I have done wrong to let you go
ahead, but, well, I found out--I guessed the 'arrangements'--how you had
been chosen to make 'love' to me and how Parker and Uncle Josiah were to
divide Ophelia between them. Perhaps that is why I have flirted so--just
to punish you all! Truly, Skinny, I'm sorry. Please don't hate me
like--like--the Ramblin' Kid does!" she finished with a shaky little
laugh.
"He--don't hate you," Skinny answered dully, "at least I don't think th'
Ramblin' Kid hates you--or anybody. And you knowed all the time that I
was getting paid to make love to you? Well, I was," he added chokingly,
"but I'd have done it for nothing if I'd had the chance!"
"Yes, Skinny," she replied, "I knew--I know--and I don't blame you!"
"I don't blame you, either," he said humbly, "it was a--a--excuse me,
Carolyn June--a damned mean trick to frame up on you and Ophelia that
way--but we didn't know what to do with you! I reckon," he continued in
the same despairing tone, "I was a blamed fool!"
For a long moment they sat silent.
"Carolyn June," Skinny finally said, a sigh of resignation breaking from
his lips, "I'll be what you said--just a good friend--I always will be
that to you! But before we start in, do you mind if I--if I--go up to
Eagle Butte and get--drunk!"
In spite of herself she laughed. But in it was a tenderness almost
mother-like.
"Poor disappointed, big boy," she answered and her eyes filled, "if it
will make you happy, go ahead and get--get--drunk, 'soused,' all
over--just this once!"
With only a passing pang Carolyn June was willing for Skinny to get
drunk--to do the thing she had been scarcely able to forgive in the
Ramblin' Kid!
For an instant she wondered why.
A half-hour later Skinny and Carolyn June went silently down the grade
to the ranch house. They had gone up the hill--lovers; they
returned--"good friends"--and such they would always be.
* * * * *
It was nearly ten o'clock when Sing Pete stopped the grub-wagon at the
bunk-house; Pedro wrangled the saddle cavallard into the pasture below
the barn; Parker and the cowboys jogged their bronchos to the stable
door and the Ramblin' Kid, riding the Gold Dust maverick--Captain Jack
at her heels--rode to the circular corral, jerked the saddle from the
filly's back and turned the little roan stallion and the outlaw mare
inside the corral.
Old Heck and Skinny heard the commotion and went out to where Parker and
the cowboys were unsaddling their horses.
"Well, you got through, did you?" Old Hack questioned casually.
"Yes," Parker replied, "we've got the beef critters in I guess--they're
in the upland pasture. There are seven hundred and ninety, I think it
is, that'll do for the market."
"That's pretty good," Old Heck answered with satisfaction. "We'll push
them right on into Eagle Butte to-morrow or next day and ship them. The
cars will be in to-night, the agent said. I'm sending them to Chicago
this time. I'd like to see you, private, a minute, Parker!" he finished
abruptly.
"What do you want?" Parker asked suspiciously, as he followed Old Heck
around the corner of the barn.
"It's about Ophelia--" Old Heck began.
Parker's heart leaped and then dropped with a sickening foreboding of
something disagreeable. The widow, he thought instantly, had told Old
Heck about that darned fool proposal of marriage and was going to insist
on him coming across and making good! There was no way out.
"I--I--reckon I'll have to do it if she's determined," Parker stuttered;
"but--aw, hell--I must have been crazy--"
"Who's determined on what?" Old Heck asked, puzzled by the queer jumble
coming from the lips of the Quarter Circle KT foreman, "and how crazy?"
"Ophelia determined on marrying me!" Parker blurted out.
"Ophelia marry _you_?" Old Heck exclaimed. "Marry you! She can't! Her
and me have already done it. We got married to-day--that was what I
wanted to tell you!"
Momentarily a pang of regret shot through Parker's heart. It was quickly
followed by a sense of relief.
"You--you--and Ophelia married?" he stammered.
"We sure are," Old Heck answered positively. "We done it to-day!"
Suddenly Parker determined to "cover up."
"My, lord!" he half-groaned, pretending terrible grief, "this is awful!
It--it--come so sudden--but there ain't no hard feelings, Old Heck!
I--I--wish you both joy and happiness!"
"Darned if that ain't white of you, Parker!" Old Heck exclaimed,
immensely relieved. "I won't forget it! When you and the boys take them
steers to Chicago, stay over a week or so and have a good time and count
it in on expenses!"
Parker turned his head and in the darkness winked solemnly at a yellow
star above the peak of Sentinel Mountain.
He and Old Heck started toward the house.
"Hey, you fellows!" Old Heck called, pausing and turning toward the barn
where the cowboys were putting away their saddles, "when you get through
all of you come on up to the house! Ophelia and me's married and the
bride is waiting to be congratulated!"
"Good lord," Charley gasped, "hear that, fellers? Old Heck said him and
the widow's married!"
"Gosh!" Chuck laughed, "it must have been a jolt to Parker! I bet his
heart's plumb bu'sted!"
As soon as their saddles were put away the cowboys hurried toward the
house. They met the Ramblin' Kid, crossing from the circular corral to
the bunk-house.
"Come on," Bert called to him, "Old Heck and Ophelia's gone and got
married! We're going up to the house to sympathize with the widow!"
"I ain't needed," the Ramblin' Kid answered with a careless laugh. "You
fellers can take my 'love' to th' afflicted couple!"
After the cowboys had gone to the house Skinny went and got Old Pie
Face. Stopping at the stable, he saddled the pinto and strolled over to
the bunk-house. The Ramblin' Kid was lying stretched on his bed. Skinny
rolled the white shirt carefully into a bundle and wrapped a newspaper
around it.
"What you goin' to do?" the Ramblin' Kid asked.
"I'm goin' to town!" Skinny answered shortly. "I'm going up to Eagle
Butte and get on a hell of a drunk--if I can get hold of any boot-leg
whisky--Carolyn June and me have bu'sted up on our love-making!"
"Going to get drunk, are you?" the Ramblin' Kid queried with a note of
scorn in his voice, "an' forget your sorrows?"
"Yes," Skinny retorted, "I'm going to get drunk as you was the day of
the race!"
"Drunk as I was th' day of th' race?" the Ramblin' Kid repeated
quizzically. "Oh, hell, yes--now I understand--" pausing, while a smile
curled his lips.
"Yes," Skinny retorted again. "Where'd you get yours that day?"
"Never mind," was the answer. "I guess I'll go to Eagle Butte with you!
You'll need somebody to ride herd on you while you're snortin' around.
Anyhow, I feel like goin' on a tear myself--not a drunk--a man's a
darned fool that'll let any woman make a whisky barrel out of him! But I
got an itchin' for a little poker game or somethin'. Wait till I get
Captain Jack!"
"Where's Skinny and th' Ramblin' Kid?" Old Heck asked after he and
Parker and the cowboys were at the house and the first flush of
embarrassment had passed.
Carolyn June thought she knew where Skinny was, but did not answer.
"I don't know what's become of Skinny," Parker said. "Th' Ramblin' Kid's
probably out mopin' somewhere. I think he's getting ready to 'ramble'
again--he's been acting plumb despondent ever since the Rodeo in Eagle
Butte!"
Carolyn June stepped to the door. Dimly through the darkness she saw
two riders pass up the grade that led to the bench and turn their horses
to the west, toward Eagle Butte, and ride straight into the outflung
shadow of the thunder-storm--from which now and then leaped jagged
flashes of lightning--and which was rolling from the Costejo Mountains
across the Kiowa range in the direction of the Quarter Circle KT.
Silent and with a heavy heart she turned away from the door.