A MAN'S SUPPORT
Buck looked up as two crows flew low over his head and passed on their
way, croaking out their alarm and dissatisfaction. Mechanically his
eyes followed their movements. For he was well versed in the sights,
and sounds, and habits of his world.
Presently he turned again to the trail, and the expression of his eyes
had changed to one of speculation. Caesar was traveling eagerly. He had
not yet forgotten that farther on along that trail lay the old barn
which had been his home from his earliest recollections.
Buck had had no intention of making this visit to the farm when he
left Beasley's saloon. He had not had the remotest intention of
carrying out the man's broadly-given hint. A hint from Beasley was
always unwelcome to him, and generally roused an obstinate desire to
take an opposite course. Nor was it until he reached the ford of the
creek that the significance of the man's tone penetrated his dislike
of him. Quite abruptly he made up his mind to keep straight on.
Curiosity, added to a slight feeling of uneasiness, urged him, and,
leaving the ford behind him, he kept on down the trail.
His decision once taken, he felt easier as he rode on. Besides, he
admitted to himself now, he was rather thankful to the saloon-keeper
for providing him with something in the nature of an excuse for such a
visit. He was different from those others, who, in perfect confidence
and ignorance, required not the least encouragement to persecute Joan
with their attentions. He found it more than difficult to realize that
his visits were anything but irksome to the new owner of the farm now
that she had settled down with the adequate support of her "hired"
man.
Joan's graciousness to him was the one great delight of his every
waking hour. But he dreaded the moment when her manner might become
the mere tolerance she displayed toward Ike and Pete, and any of the
others who chose to make her farm a halting-place. So his visits had
become rarer; far rarer than made for his own peace of mind, for Joan
was always in his thoughts.
Tramping the long trail of the mountains her smiling eyes were always
somewhere ahead of him, encouraging him, and shedding a radiance of
hope and delight upon the dullest moments of his routine. Never for
one moment was the delightful picture of her presence absent from his
thoughts. And to him there was nothing in the whole wide world so
fair, and sweet, and worthy of the worship he so willingly cast at her
feet.
His life had always been full in his wilderness of Nature's splendor.
In his moments of leisure he had been more than happily content in the
pleasant friendship of the man who had sheltered him from childhood.
But now--now as he looked back over all those years, the associations
seemed dull and empty--empty of all that made life worth living. Not
only had he come to realize the woman's place in a man's life. It was
the old story of the fruit of knowledge. Woman had always been a
sealed book to him. Now, at last, the cover had been turned and the
pages lay before him for the reading. He yearned for Joan with all
the strength and passionate ardor of his strong young heart. Nor, even
in his yearning, had he full understanding of the real depths of his
feelings.
How could he study or analyze them? His love had no thought of the
world in it. It had no thought of anything that could bring it down to
the level of concrete sensation. He could not have told one feeling
that was his. With Joan at his side he moved in a mental paradise
which no language could depict. With Joan at his side he lived with
every nerve pulsating, attuned to a perfect consciousness of joy. With
Joan at his side there was nothing but light and radiance which filled
every sense with a happiness than which he could conceive no greater.
Alone, this great wide world about him was verily a wilderness.
The man's feelings quickly mastered his momentary uneasiness as his
horse bore him on toward his goal. The forest path over which he was
traveling had lost its hue of gloom which the shadowed pine woods ever
convey. There was light everywhere, that light which comes straight
from the heart and is capable of lending radiance even to the
grave-side itself.
The trail lay straight ahead of him for some distance. Then it swerved
in a big sweep away to the left. He knew this bend. The farm lay
something less than half a mile beyond it. As they neared it Caesar
pricked his ears and whinnied. Buck leant forward and patted his neck
out of the very joy of anticipation. It almost seemed to him as if the
creature knew who was waiting at the end of the journey and was
rejoicing with him. For once he had misunderstood the mood of his
horse.
He realized this in a moment. The eager creature began to move with a
less swinging stride, and his gait quickly became something in the
nature of a "prop." They were round the bend, and the horse whinnied
again. This time it raised its head and snorted nervously. And
instantly Buck was alive to the creature's anxiety. He understood the
quick glancing from side to side, and the halting of that changing
step which is always a sign of fear.
Ahead the trail completed the letter S it had begun. They were nearing
the final curve to the right. Buck searched the distance for the cause
of Caesar's apprehension. And all unconsciously his mind went back to
the winging of the crows overhead and the sound of their harsh voices.
He spurred the creature sharply, and steadied him down.
They reached the final bend and passed round it, and in a moment Buck
had an answer to the questions in his mind. It was a terrible
spectacle that greeted his eyes as he reined his horse in and brought
him to an abrupt halt. He had reached the battle-ground where death
had claimed its toll of human passion. There, swiftly, almost
silently, two men had fought out their rivalry for a woman's favor--a
favor given to neither.
It needed little enough imagination to read the facts. All the
ingredients of the swift-moving drama were there before his eyes--the
combatants stretched out in the sand of the trail, with staring eyes
and dropping jaws, gazing up at the brilliant vault of the heavens,
whither, may be, their savage spirits had fled; the woman crouching
down at the roadside with face buried upon outstretched arms, her
slight body heaving with hysterical sobs; the horses, horses he knew
well enough by sight, lost to the tragedy amidst the more succulent
roots of the parching grass beneath the shadow of overhanging trees.
One glance at the combatants told Buck all he wanted to know. They
were dead. He had been too long upon the western trail to doubt the
signs he beheld. His duty and inclination were with the living. In a
moment he was out of the saddle and at Joan's side, raising her from
her position of grief and misery in arms as gentle as they were
strong.
He had no real understanding of the necessities of the moment. All he
knew, all he desired, was to afford the girl that help and protection
he felt she needed. His first thought was to keep her from a further
sight of what had occurred. So he held her in his arms, limp and
yielding, for one uncertain moment. Then, for the second time in his
life, he bore her off toward her home.
But now his feelings were of a totally different nature. There was
neither ecstasy nor dreaming. He was anxious and beset. As he bore her
along he spoke to her, encouraging her with gentle words of sympathy
and hope. But her fainting condition left him no reward, and her
half-closed eyes, filled with unshed tears, remained dull and
unresponsive.
* * * * *
No sound broke the stillness in the parlor at the farm. Buck was
leaning against the small centre-table gravely watching the bowed head
of the silently-weeping girl, who was seated upon the rough settle
which lined the wall. Her slight figure was supported by the pillows
which had been set in place by the ministering hands of Mrs. Ransford.
Buck's reception by the farm-wife had been very different on this
occasion. She had met him with his burden some distance down the
trail, whither she had followed her young mistress, whose fleetness
had left her far behind. Her tongue had started to clack at once, but
Buck was in no mood to put up with unnecessary chatter. A peremptory
order had had the astonishing effect of silencing her, and a further
command had set her bustling to help her mistress.
Once immediate needs had been attended to, the man told his story
briefly, and added his interpretation of the scene he had just
witnessed. He further dispatched the old woman to summon the hired man
from his ploughing, and, for once, found ready obedience where he
might well have expected nothing but objection.
Thus it was the man and girl were alone in the parlor. Buck was
waiting for Joan's storm of tears to pass.
The moment came at last, and quite abruptly. Joan stirred; she flung
her head up and dashed the weak tears from her eyes, struggling
bravely for composure. But the moment she spoke her words belied the
resolution, and showed her still in the toils of an overwhelming
despair.
"What can I do?" she cried piteously. "What am I to do? I can see
nothing--nothing but disaster in every direction. It is all a part of
my life; a part of me. I cannot escape it. I have tried to, but--I
cannot. Oh, I feel so helpless--so helpless!"
Buck's eyes shone with love and pity. He was stirred to the depths of
his manhood by her appeal. Here again was that shadow she had spoken
of before, that he had become familiar with. He tried to tell himself
that she was simply unnerved, but he knew her trouble was more than
that. All his love drove him to a longing for a means of comforting
her.
"Forget the things you seen," he said in a low tone. And he felt that
his words were bald--even stupid.
The girl's troubled eyes were looking up into his in a desperate hope.
It was almost as if this man were her only support, and she were
making one final appeal before abandoning altogether her saving hold.
"Forget them? Oh, Buck, Buck, you don't know what you are saying. You
don't understand--you can't, or you would not speak like that. You
see," she went on, forgetting in her trouble that this man did not
know her story, "Ike was here. Here! He made--love to me. He--he
kissed me. He brutally kissed me when I had no power to resist him.
And now--now this has happened."
But the man before her had suddenly changed while she was speaking.
The softness had left his eyes. They had suddenly become hot, and
bloodshot, and hard. His breath came quickly, heavily, his thin
nostrils dilating with the furious emotion that swept through his
body. Ike had kissed her. He had forgotten all her sufferings in his
own sudden, jealous fury.
Joan waited. The change in the man had passed unobserved by her. Then,
as no answer was forthcoming, she went on--
"Wherever I go it is the same. Death and disaster. Oh, it is awful!
Sometimes I think I shall go mad. Is there no corner of the earth
where I can hide myself from the shadow of this haunting curse?"
"Ike kissed you?"
Buck's voice grated harshly. Somehow her appeal had passed him by.
All his better thoughts and feelings were overshadowed for the moment.
A fierce madness was sweeping through his veins, his heart, his brain,
a madness of feeling such as he had never before experienced.
The girl answered him, still without recognizing the change.
"Yes," she said in a dull, hopeless way. "And the inevitable happened.
It followed swiftly, surely, as it always seems to follow. He is
dead."
"He got it--as he should get it. He got no more than he'd have got if
I'd been around."
Buck's mood could no longer escape her. She looked into the hard,
young face, startled. She saw the fury in his eyes, the clenched jaws,
with their muscles outstanding with the force of the fury stirring
him.
The sight agitated her, but somehow it did not frighten. She half
understood. At least she thought she did. She read his resentment as
that of a man who sees in the outrage a breaking of all the laws of
chivalry. She missed the real note underlying it.
"What does his act matter?" she said almost indifferently, her mind on
what she regarded as the real tragedy. "He was drunk. He was not
responsible. No, no. It is not that which matters. It was the other.
He left me--to go to his death. Had Pete not been waiting for him it
would have been just the same. Disaster! Death! Oh! can you not see?
It is the disaster which always follows me."
Her protest was not without its effect. So insistent was she on the
resulting tragedy that Buck found himself endeavoring to follow her
thought in spite of his own feelings. She was associating this
tragedy with herself--as part of her life, her fate.
But it was some moments before the man was sufficiently master of
himself--before he could detach his thought altogether from the human
feelings stirring him. The words sang on his ear-drums. "He--he kissed
me." They were flaming through his brain. They blurred every other
thought, and, for a time, left him incapable of lending her that
support he would so willingly give her. Finally, however, his better
nature had its way. He choked down his jealous fury, and strove to
find means of comforting her.
"It's all wrong," he cried, with a sudden force which claimed the
girl's attention, and, for the time at least, held her troubled
thought suspended. "How can this be your doing? Why for should it be a
curse on you because two fellers shoot each other up? They hated each
other because of you. Wal--that's natural. It's dead human. It's been
done before, an' I'm sure guessin' it'll be done again. It's not you.
It's--it's nature--human nature. Say, Miss Joan, you ain't got the
lessons of these hills right yet. Folks out here are diffrent to city
folks. That is, their ways of doin' the same things are diff'rent. We
feel the same--that's because we're made the same--but we act
diff'rent. If I'd bin around, I'd have shot Ike--with a whole heap of
pleasure. An' if I had, wher's the cuss on you? Kissin' a gal like
that can't be done around here."
"But Pete was not here. He didn't know."
Joan was quick to grasp the weakness of his argument.
"It don't matter a cent," cried Buck, his teeth clipping his words.
"He needed his med'cine--an' got it."
Joan sighed hopelessly.
"You don't understand, and--and I can't tell it you all. Sometimes I
feel I could kill myself. How can I help realizing the truth? It is
forced on me. I am a leper, a--a pariah."
The girl leant back on her cushions, and her whole despairing attitude
became an appeal to his manhood. The last vestige of Buck's jealousy
passed from him. He longed to tell her all there was in his heart. He
longed to take her in his arms and comfort her, and protect her from
every shadow the whole wide world held for her. He longed to tell her
of the love that was his, and how no power on earth could change it.
But he did none of these things.
"The things you're callin' yourself don't sound wholesome," he said
simply. "I can't see they fit in anyway. Guess they ain't natural."
Joan caught at the word.
"Natural!" she cried. "Is any of it natural?" She laughed
hysterically.
Buck nodded.
"It's all natural," he said. "You've hit it. You don't need my word.
Jest you ask the Padre. He'll give it you all. He'll tell you jest how
notions can make a cuss of any life, an' how to get shut of sech
notions. He's taught me, an' he'll teach you. I can't jest pass his
words on. They don't git the same meaning when I say 'em. I ain't wise
to that sort of thing. But ther's things I am wise to, and they're the
things he's taught me. You're feeling mean, mean an' miser'ble, that
makes me ter'ble mean to see. Say, Miss Joan, I ain't much handin'
advice. I ain't got brain enough to hand that sort of thing around,
but I'd sure ask you to say right here ther' ain't no cuss on your
life, an' never was. You jest guess there's a cuss around chasin'
glory at your expense. Wal, git right up, an' grit your teeth an'
fight good. Don't sit around feeling mean. If you'd do that, I tell
you that cuss'll hit the trail so quick you won't git time to see it,
an' you'll bust yourself laffin' to think you ever tho't it was around
your layout. An' before I done talkin' I'll ast you to remember that
when menfolks git around insultin' a helpless gal, cuss or no cuss,
he's goin' to git his med'cine good--an' from me."
Buck's effort had its reward. The smile that had gradually found its
way into his own eyes caught something of a reflection in those of the
girl. He had dragged her from the depths of her despair by the force
of the frank courage that was his. He had lifted her by the sheer
strength and human honesty which lay at the foundation of his whole,
simple nature. Joan sighed, and it was an acknowledgment of his
success.
"Thank you, Buck," she said gently. "You are always so good to me. You
have been so ever since I came. And goodness knows you have little
enough reason for it, seeing it is I who have turned you out of this
home of yours----"
"We got your money," interrupted Buck, almost brusquely. "This farm
was the Padre's. You never turned me out. An' say, the Padre don't
live a big ways from here. Maybe you'd like him to tell you about
cusses an' things." His eyes twinkled. "He's sure great on cusses."
But Joan did not respond to the lightness of his manner, and Buck
realized that her trouble was still strong upon her.
He waited anxiously, watching for the signs of her acceptance of his
invitation. But they were not forthcoming. The deep violet of her eyes
seemed to grow deeper with a weight of thought, and gradually the
man's hopes sank. He had wanted her to see his friend, he had wanted
his friend to see her. But more than all he had wanted to welcome her
to his own home. Nor was the reason of his desire clear even to
himself.
At last she rose from her seat and crossed over to the window, just as
the sound of voices heralded the return of Mrs. Ransford and the hired
man. It was at that moment she turned to him, speaking over her
shoulder.
"They've got back," she said. "What are you going to do?"
"Send those--others--on into camp."
"Yes." Joan shivered.
Then she came back to him, and stood with one hand resting on the
table.
"I--I think I should like to see the Padre. Will you take me to him
one day?"