Play the Game! Part 25

Drink--the water--out of this canteen!"

Mechanically, her eyes always on his face, Honor loosened the cap and opened the canteen and drank.

"There,--that's enough!" said Jimsy, sharply. "Now, wait five minutes before you take any more." He took the canteen away from her. "Sit down!" He was not meeting her eyes.

"Did you have any, Jimsy?"

"Gallons. I didn't have any trouble to speak of, really. Only one fellow actually on guard. We had a little rough-house. He struck me in the leg, and it bled a lot. That's what kept me. And it took--some time--with him."

"Jimsy, is it bad? Is it still bleeding? Let me see!"

He pushed her away, almost roughly. "It's all right. Juan tied it up.

It'll do. I guess you can have a little more water, now,--but take it slowly.... There! Now you'd better go and see about the rest. Don't let them take too much at first."

"I'm not going away," said Honor, quietly. "I'm not going to leave you again, ever." She pulled her chair close beside the bed and took his hand in both of hers. "Jimsy, I know. I know everything."

"That darn' Indian," said Jimsy, crossly. "If he'd stayed in here, with the door locked! I'd have been back in half an hour longer."

"And he poured the whisky back into the decanter. Oh, Jimsy----"

"Well, I suppose it was a fool stunt, but I knew I could put it over. I did a booze-fighter in the Junior play,--and I guess it comes pretty easy!" He turned away from her, his face to the wall. "I'd like to be alone, now, Skipper. You'd better look after Cart'. Watch him on the water. He'll kill himself if he takes too much."

"Jimsy, I'm not going to leave you."

He lifted himself on his elbow. "Skipper, dear," he said gently, "what's the use? I suppose I took a crazy kid way to show you I wasn't worth your sticking to, and I guess I'm not, if it comes to that, but the fact remains, and we can't get away from it."

"What fact, Jimsy?"

"That you--care--for Carter."

"Jimsy, have you lost your senses? I--care for _Carter_?"

"He told me."

"Then," said Honor, her eyes darkening, "he told you a lie."

He dropped back on the pillow. He had lost a lot of blood before Yaqui Juan found him and tied up his cut, and he looked white and spent. "Oh, Skipper, please.... Let's not drag it out. I saw your message to him."

"What message?"

"The one you sent to the steamer, after he'd lost his head and told you he loved you,--and--and asked you if you loved him." Difficult words; grotesque and meaningless, but he must manage with them. "I'm not blaming you, Skipper. I know I'm slow in the head beside Cart' and he can give you a lot that I can't. And nothing--hanging over him. You'd have played the game through to the last gun; I know that. But it wouldn't have been right for any of us. I'm glad Cart' blew up and told me."

Honor laid his hand gently back on the bedspread of exquisite Mexican drawnwork and stood up. "Carter showed you the telegram I sent him from Genoa?"

"Yes. He carries it always in his wallet."

"He told you it meant that I loved him?"

"Skipper, don't feel like that about it. It had to come out, some time."

His voice sounded weary and weak.

She bent over him, speaking gently. "Be quiet, Jimsy; lie still. I'm going to bring Carter up here."

"Oh, Skipper, what's the use? You--you make me wish that greaser had finished me, down at the well. Please----"

"Wait!"

He heard her feet in the hall, flying down the stairs, and he turned his face to the wall again, his young mouth quivering.

She found Carter lying on the wide couch, one arm trailing limply over the side of it, the emptied canteen dangling from his hand, and he was breathing with difficulty. His face was darkly mottled and congested but Honor did not notice it. "Carter," she said, "I want you to come with me and tell Jimsy how you lied to him. I want you to tell him what my message really meant."

"I--can't come--now," he gasped. "I can't--" he tried to raise himself but he fell back on the pillows.

"Then give me your wallet," she said, implacably, bending over him.

"No, _no_! It isn't there--wait! By and by I'll----" but his eyes betrayed him.

Roughly, with fierce haste, she thrust her hand into his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet of limp leather with the initials in slimly wrought gold letters.

"Please, Honor! Please,--let me--I'll give you--I'll find it--" he clutched at her dress but she stepped back from the couch and he lost his balance and fell heavily to the floor.

When she pulled out the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red tiles. He s.n.a.t.c.hed at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump letter in her hands.

"Jimsy's letter to me," she said at last in a flat, curious tone. "The one he gave you to mail." She was not exclamatory. She was too utterly stunned for that. She seemed to be considering a course of action, her brows drawn. "I won't tell Jimsy; I'm--afraid of what he'd do. I'll let him go on believing in you, if you go away."

He looked up at her from his horrid huddle on the floor, through his bloodshot eyes, the boy who had taught her so much about books and plays and dinners in restaurants and the right sort of music to admire, and it seemed to him that her long known, long loved face was a wholly strange one, sharply chiseled from cold stone.

"If you'll go away," she went on, "I won't tell him about the letter."

She was looking at him curiously, as if she had never seen him before.

"All these years I've been sorry for you because you limped. But I haven't been sorry enough. I see now; it's--your soul that limps. Well, you must limp away, out of our lives. I won't have you near us. You've tried and tried to drag him down but something--somewhere--has held him up! As soon as help comes-to-morrow--to-day--I'm going to marry him, here, in Mexico, and I'll never leave him again as long as we live. Do you hear?"

She turned to go, but he made a smothered, inarticulate sound and she looked down at him, and down and down, to the depths where he lay. "You poor--thing," she said, gently. "Oh, you poor thing!"

She ran up to Jimsy and sat down on the edge of his bed and gathered him into her arms, so that his head rested on her breast. "Carter--poor Carter," she said, "is too weak to come upstairs now, but I am going to tell you the whole truth, and you are going to believe me. Listen, dearest----"

They were still like that, still talking, when Madeline King rushed into the room. "Children," she cried, "oh, my dears--haven't you heard them?

Don't you know?"

"No," they told her, smiling with courteous young attention.

"They're here--the soldiers! It's all right!" She was crying contentedly. "Rich' is conscious,--he understands. My dears, we're saved! I tell you we're saved!"

"Oh, we knew that," said Honor, gravely.