Bruce of the Circle A Part 10

"He's doin' fine, ma'am," he said, and her fingers tightened on his, sending a thrill up his arm and making its muscles contract to draw her a bit closer to him. "He's doin' fine," he repeated, relinquishing his grasp. "He's feelin' better an' lookin' better an' he'll begin to gain strength right off."

An inarticulate exclamation of gladness broke from her.

"Oh, it's been an age!" she said, smiling wanly and shaking her head slowly as she looked up into his face. "Every hour has seemed a day, every day a week. I didn't dare, didn't dare think; and I've hoped so long, with so little result that I didn't dare hope!"

She bowed her head and held her folded hands against her mouth. For a moment they were so, the cowboy looking down at her with a restless, covetous light in his eyes and it was the impulsive lifting of one hand as though he would stroke the blue-black braids that roused her.

"Come, sit down," she said, indicating a chair opposite hers by the open window. "I want you to tell me everything and I want to ask you if it isn't best that I go to him now.

"Now, from the beginning, please!"

He looked into her eyes as though he did not hear her words. Her expression of eager antic.i.p.ation changed; her look wavered, she left off meeting his gaze and Bayard, with a start, moved in his chair.

"There ain't much to tell," he mumbled. "I got him home easy enough an'

sent th' team back that day by a friend of mine who happened along...."

Her eyes returned to his face, riveting there with an impersonal earnestness that would not be challenged. Her red lips were parted as she sat with elbows on knees in the low rocker before him. It was his gaze, now, that wavered, but he hastened on with his recital of what he thought best to tell about what had occurred at his ranch in the last two days.

From time to time he glanced at her and on every occasion the mounting appreciation of her beauty, the unfaltering earnestness of her desire to learn every detail about her husband, the wonder that her sort could remain devoted to Ned Lytton's kind, combined to enrage him, to make him rebel hotly, even as he talked, at thought of such impossible human relations, and he was on the point of giving vent to his indignation when he remembered with a decided shock that on their first meeting she had told him that she loved her husband. Beyond that, he reasoned, nothing could be said.

"He's awful weak, of course, but he was quiet," he concluded. "I left him sleepin' an' I'll get back before he rouses up, it's likely."

"Well, don't you think I might go back with you?" she asked, eagerly.

"Don't you think he's strong enough now, so I might be with him?"

He had expected this and was steeled against it.

"Why, you might, ma'am, if things was different," he said. "It's sort of rough out there; just a shack, understand, an' you've never lived that kind of life. There's only one room, an' I...."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of crowding you out! Please don't think I'd overlook your own comfort."

Her regret was so spontaneous, that he stirred uneasily, for he was not accustomed to lying.

"Not at all, ma'am. Why, I'd move out an' sleep in th' hills for you, if I knew it was best ... for you!"

The heart that was in his voice startled her. She sat back in her chair.

"You've been very kind ... so kind!" she said, after a pause.

He fidgetted in his chair and rose.

"n.o.body could help bein' kind ... to you, ma'am," he stammered. "If anybody was anything but kind to you they deserve...."

He realized of a sudden that the man for whose sake she was undergoing this ordeal had been cruel to her, and checked himself. Because bitterness surged up within him and he felt that to follow his first impulses would place him between Ann Lytton and her husband, aligned against the man in the role of protector.

She divined the reason for his silence and said very gently,

"Remember the cripples!"

He turned toward her so fiercely that she started back, having risen.

"I'm tryin' to!" he cried, with a surprising sharpness. "Tryin' to, ma'am, every minute; tryin' to remember th' cripples."

He looked about in flushed confusion. Ann stared at him.

His intensity frightened her. The men of her experience would not have presumed to show such direct interest in her affairs on brief acquaintance. A deal of conventional sparring and shamming would have been required for any of them to evince a degree of pa.s.sion in the discussion of her predicament; but this man, on their second meeting, was obviously forced to hold himself firmly, restraining a natural prompting to step in and adjust matters to accord with his own sense of right. The girl felt instinctively that his motives were most high, but his manner was rough and new; she was accustomed to the usual, the familiar, and, while her confidence in Bayard had been profoundly aroused, her inherent distrust of strangeness caused her to suspect, to be reluctant to accept his att.i.tude without reserve. Looking up at her he read the conflict in her face.

"I'd better go now," he added in a voice from which the vigor had gone.

"I..."

"But you'll let me know about Ned?" she asked, trying to rally her composure.

"I'll come to-morrow, ma'am," he promised.

"That'll be so kind of you!"

"You don't understand, maybe, that it's no kindness to you," he said.

"It might be somethin' else. Have you thought of that? Have you thought, ma'am, that maybe I ain't th' kind of man I'm pretendin' to be?"

Then, he walked out before she could answer and she stood alone, his words augmenting the disquiet his manner had aroused. She moved to the window, anxiously waiting to see him ride past. He did, a few minutes later, his head down in thought, his fine, flat shoulders braced backward, body poised splendidly, light, masterly in the saddle, the wonderful creature under him moving with long, sure strides. The woman drew a deep breath and turned back into the room.

"I mustn't ... I mustn't," she whispered.

Then wheeled quickly, s.n.a.t.c.hed back the curtains and pressed her cheek against the upper panes to catch a last glimpse of him.

Next day Bayard was back and found that the hours Ann had spent alone had taken their toll and she controlled herself only by continual repression. He urged her to talk, hoping to start her thinking fresh thoughts, but she could think, then, only of the present hour. Her loneliness had again broken down all barriers. Bayard was her confessor, her talk with him the only outlet for the emotional pressure that threatened her self-control; that relief was imperative, overriding her distrust of the day before. For an hour the man listened while she gave him the dreary details of her married life with that eagerness of the individual who, for too long a period, has hidden and nursed heart-breaking troubles. She was only twenty-four and had married at twenty. A year later Ned's father had died, the boy came into sudden command of considerable property, lost his head, frittered away the fortune, drank, could not face the condemnation of his family and fled West on the pretext of developing the Sunset mine, the last tangible a.s.set that remained. She tried to cover the entire truth there, but Bayard knew that Lytton's move was only desertion, for she told of going to work to support herself, of standing between Ned and his relatives, of shielding him from the consequences of the misadministration of his father's estate, of waiting weeks and months for word of him, of denying herself actual necessities that she might come West on this mission.

At the end she cried and Bayard felt an unholy desire to ride to his Circle A ranch and do violence to the man who had functioned in this woman's life as a maker of misery. But he merely sat there and put his hands under his thighs to keep them from reaching out for the woman, to comfort her, to claim a place as her protector....

The talk and tears relieved Ann and she smiled bravely at him when he left; a tenderness was in her face that disturbed him.

Day after day the rancher appeared in Yavapai, each time going directly to the hotel and to Ann. Many times he talked to her in her room; often, they were seen together on the veranda; occasionally, they walked short distances. The eyes of the community were on Ann anyhow, because, being new, she was intrinsically interesting, but this regularity on the part of Bayard could not help but attract curious attention and cause gossip, for in the years people had watched him grow from a child to manhood one of the accepted facts about him had been his evident lack of interest in women. To Nora, the waitress, he had given frank, companionable attention and regarding them was a whispered tradition arising when the unknown girl arrived in Yavapai and Bruce appeared to be on intimate terms with her from the first.

But now Nora received little enough of his time. She watched his comings and goings with a growing concern which she kept in close secret and no one, unless they had watched ever so closely, would have seen the slow change that came over the brown haired girl. Her amiable bearing toward the people she served became slightly forced, her laughter grew a trifle hard, and, when Bruce was in sight, she kept her eyes on him with steady inquiry, as one who reads eagerly and yet dreads to know what is written.

One day the cattleman came from the hotel and crossed the street to the Yavapai saloon where a dozen men were a.s.sembled. Tommy Clary was there among others and, when they lined up before the bar on Bruce's arrival, feet on the piece of railroad steel that did service as footrail, Tommy, with a wink to the man at his right said:

"Now, Bruce, you're just in time to settle 'n argument. All these here other _hombres_ are sayin' you've lost your head an' are clean skirt crazy, an' I've been tellin' 'em that you're only tryin' to be a brother to her. Ain't that right, now? Just back me up, Bruce!"

He stood back and gestured in mock appeal, while the others leaned forward over the bar at varying degrees that they might see and grinned in silence. Bayard looked straight before him and the corners of his mouth twitched in a half smile.

"Who is this lady you're honorin' by hitchin' me up with?" he asked.

"Ho, that's good! I s'pose you don't quite comprehend our meanin'! Well, I'll help you out. This Lytton girl, sister to our hydrophobia skunk!

They think you're in love, Bruce, but I stick up for you like a friend ought to. I think you're only brotherly!"

"Why, Tommy, they ought to take your word on anythin' like that," Bayard countered, turning slowly to face the other. "Th' reason th' _Yavapai Argus_ perished was 'cause Tom Clary beat th' editor to all th' news, wasn't it?"