The united families bade them farewell, and Saterlee brought down the
whip sharply upon the bony flank of the old horse which he had bought.
But not for a whole minute did the sensation caused by the whip appear
to travel to the ancient mare's brain. Not till reaching a deep puddle
did she seem suddenly aware of the fact that she had been whipped. Then,
however, she rushed through the puddle, covering Saterlee and the lady
with mud, and having reached the other side, fell once more into a
halting walk.
The lady was tightly wedged between Saterlee and the side of the buggy.
Every now and then Saterlee made a tremendous effort to make himself
narrower, but it was no use.
"If you begin to get numb," he said, "tell me, and I'll get out and walk
a spell.... How clear the air is! Seems as if you could stretch out your
hand and touch the mountains. Do you see that shadow half way up--on the
left--about three feet off? Carcasonne House is somewhere in that
shadow. And it's forty miles away."
Once more the road ran under a shallow of water. And once more the old
mare remembered that she had been whipped, and made a rush for it. Fresh
mud was added to that which had already dried upon them by the dry
miracle of the air.
"She'd ought to have been a motor-boat," said Saterlee, the mud which
had entered his mouth gritting unpleasantly between his teeth. "Last
year there was _one_ spring hole _somewhere_ in these parts--this year
it's all lakes and rivers--never was such rains before in the memory of
man. Wonder what Gila River's doing?"
"What is Gila River?" she asked.
"It's a sand gully," he said, "that winds down from the mountains, and
out across the plain, like a sure enough river. Only there's no water in
it, only a damp spot here and there. But I was thinking that maybe it'll
be going some now. We ought to strike it before dark."
The mare rushed through another puddle.
The lady laughed. "Please don't bother to hold her," she said; "I don't
mind--now."
"I guess your dress ain't really hurt," commented Saterlee. "I remember
my old woman--Anna--had a brown silk that got a mud bath, and came
through all right."
"This is an old rag, anyway," said the showy lady, who was still showy
in spite of a wart-like knot of dried mud on the end of her nose. And
she glanced at her spattered but graceful and expensive white linen and
hand-embroidered dress.
"Well, I can see one thing," said Saterlee, "that you've made up your
mind to go through this experience like a good sport. I wish I didn't
have to take up so much room."
"Never mind," she said, "I like to think that I could go to sleep
without danger of falling out."
"That's so--that's so," said Saterlee. "Maybe it's just as well we're
something of a tight fit."
"I have always mistrusted thin men," said the lady, and she hastily
added: "Not that you're _fat_"
"My bones are covered," said Saterlee; "I admit it."
"Yes," she said, "but with big muscles and sinews."
"I am not weak," said Saterlee; "I admit it."
"What air this is," exclaimed the lady; "what delicious air. No wonder
it cures people with lung trouble. Still, I'm glad mine are sound."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ma'am," said Saterlee. "When you said
you were bound for Carcasonne House, I thought to myself, 'Mebbe she's
got it,' and I felt mighty sorry."
"Do I look like a consumptive?" she asked.
"Bless me--no," said he. "But you're not stout, and, considering where
you said you was going, you mustn't blame me for putting two and two
together and getting the wrong answer."
"I don't blame you at all," she said, but a little stiffly. "It was
perfectly natural. No," she said, "my daughter is at Carcasonne House.
She had a very heavy cold--and other troubles--and _two_ doctors agreed
that her lungs were threatened. Well, perhaps they were. I sent her to
Carcasonne House on the doctors' recommendation. And it seems that she's
just as sound as I am."
"What a relief to you, Ma'am," said Saterlee hastily.
"Yes," she said, but without enthusiasm, "a great relief."
He screwed his massive head around on his massive neck, not without
difficulty, and looked at her. His voice sounded hurt.
"You don't seem very glad, Ma'am," he said.
Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him.
"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood
will--_must_ tell?"
"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand
dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's
because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made
a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation.
"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their
affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to
reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could
stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do
you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and
steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger."
"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for
hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!"
"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a
young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know
this: that his father has buried three wives."
The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the
lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands,
did not perceive this convulsion of nature.
"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same
brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and
to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks
when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man.
No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow,
too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee,
the cattle man--do you know him?"
"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton.
"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother
to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me."
"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can
count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire
sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee
had _divorced_ three wives...."
The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of
blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and
was pleased.
"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first
wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire
was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am.
But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is
a difference. Because God Almighty Himself says in one of His books that
man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a
faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking
for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is
he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who
can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such
people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding."
"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the
applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her
composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he
dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love
to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if
he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back.
Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the
service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can
trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem
identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man
who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself
marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still
loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical.
And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible."
"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and
vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of
it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a
snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have
buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I
don't seem a regular hell-hound."
"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you
that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself
up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that
I act for my living--"
"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew
more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at
Carcasonne House is the same as yours."
She was silent for a moment. And then:
"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem
to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying
each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."
"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he
fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to
her. She read it in the waning light.
"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute
of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"
She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully
and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.
"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound
like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.
"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing
brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were
in his own eyes.
"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."
"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."