The Barrier Part 20

"Would his people object to--to such a thing?" questioned the girl.

They were alone in the store, and so they could talk freely. "I'm just supposing, you know."

"Oh, Lord! Would they object?" Corporal Thomas laughed in a highly artificial manner that made Necia bridle and draw herself up indignantly.

"Why should they, I'd like to know? I'm just as pretty as other girls, and I'm just as good. I know just as much as they do, too, except--about certain things."

"You sure are all of that and more, too," the Corporal declared, heartily, "but if you knowed more about things outside you'd understand why it ain't possible. I can't tell you without hurtin' your feelin's, and I like you too much for that, Miss Necia. Seems as if I'm almost a daddy to you, and I've only knowed you for a few weeks--"

"Go ahead and tell me; I won't be offended," insisted the girl. "You must. I don't know much about such things, for I've lived all my life with men like father and Poleon, and the priests at the Mission, who treat me just like one of themselves. But somebody will want to marry me some day, I suppose, so I ought to know what is wrong with me." She flushed up darkly under her brown cheeks.

The feeling came over Corporal Thomas that he had hurt a helpless animal of some gentle kind; that he was bungling his work, and that he was not of the calibre to go into the social amenities. He began to perspire uncomfortably, but went on, doggedly:

"I'm goin' to tell you a story, not because it applies to Lieutenant Burrell, or because he's in love with you, which of course he ain't any more than you be with him--"

"Of course," said the girl.

"--but just to show you what I mean. It was a good long spell ago, when I was at Fort Supply, which was the frontier in them days like this is now. We freighted in from Dodge City with bull teams, and it was sure the fringe of the frontier; no women--no society--nothin' much except a fort, a lot of Injuns, and a few officials with their wives and families. Now them kind of places is all right for married men, but they're tough sleddin' for single ones, and after a while a feller gets awful careless about himself; he seems to go backward and run down mighty quick when he gets away from civilization and his people and restaurants and such things; he gets plumb reckless and forgetful of what's what. Well, there was a captain with us, a young feller that looked like the Lieutenant here, and a good deal the same sort--high-tempered and chivalrious and all that sort of thing; a West Pointer, too, good family and all that, and, what's more, a captain at twenty-five. Now, our head freighter was married to a squaw, or leastways he had been, but in them days n.o.body thought much of it any more than they do up here now, and particularly because he'd had a government contract for a long while, ran a big gang of men and critters, and had made a lot of money. Likewise he had a girl, who lived at the fort, and was mighty nice to look at, and restful to the eye after a year or so of cactus-trees and mesquite and buffalo-gra.s.s.

She was twice as nice and twice as pretty as the women at the post, and as for money--well, her dad could have bought and sold all the officers in a lump; but they and their wives looked down on her, and she didn't mix with them none whatever. To make it short, the captain married her.

Seemed like he got disregardful of everything, and the hunger to have a woman just overpowered him. She'd been courted by every single man for four hundred miles around. She was pretty and full of fire, and they was both of an age to love hard, so Jefferson swore he'd make the other women take her; but soldierin' is a heap different from any other profession, and the army has got its own traditions. The plan wouldn't work. By-and-by the captain got tired of trying, and gave up the attempt--just devoted himself to her--and then we was transferred, all but him. We shifted to a better post, but Captain Jefferson was changed to another company and had to stay at Supply. Gee! it was a rotten hole! Influence had been used, and there he stuck, while the new officers cut him out completely, just like the others had done, so I was told, and it drifted on that way for a long time, him forever makin' an uphill fight to get his wife reco'nized and always quittin'

loser. His folks back East was scandalized and froze him cold, callin'

him a squaw-man; and the story went all through the army, till his brother officers had to treat him cold in order to keep enough warmth at home to live by, one thing leading to another till he finally resented it openly. After that he didn't last long. They made it so unpleasant that he quit the service--crowded him out, that's all. He was a born soldier, too, and didn't know nothing else nor care for nothing else; as fine a man as I ever served under, but it soured him so that a rattlesnake couldn't have lived with him. He tried to go into some kind of business after he quit the army, but he wasn't cut out for it, and never made good as long as I knew of him. The last time I seen him was down on the border, and he had sure grown cultus. He had quit the squaw, who was livin' with a greaser in Tucson--"

"And do you think I'm like that woman?" said Necia, in a queer, strained voice. She had listened intently to the Corporal's story, but he had purposely avoided her eyes and could not tell how she was taking it.

"No! You're different, but the army is just the same. I told you this to show you how it is out in the States. It don't apply to you, of course--"

"Of course!" agreed Necia again. "But what would happen to Lieutenant Burrell if--if--well, if he should do something like that? There are many half-breed girls, I dare say, like this other girl, or--like me."

She did not flush now as before; instead, her cheeks were pale.

"It would go a heap worse with him than it did with Captain Jefferson,"

said the Corporal, "for he's got more ahead of him and he comes from better stock. Why, his family is way up! They're all soldiers, and they're strong at headquarters; they're mighty proud, too, and they wouldn't stand for his doing such a thing, even if he wanted to. But he wouldn't try; he's got too much sense, and loves the army too well for that. No, sir! He'll go a long ways, that boy will, if he's let alone."

"I never thought of myself as an Indian," said Necia, dully. "In this country it's a person's heart that counts."

"That's how it ought to be," said the Corporal, heartily; "and I'm mighty sorry if I've hurt you, little girl. I'm a rough old rooster, and I never thought but what you understood all this. Up here folks look at it right, but outside it's mighty different; even yet you don't half understand."

"I'm glad I'm what I am!" cried the girl. "There's nothing in my blood to be ashamed of, and I'm white in here!" She struck her bosom fiercely. "If a man loves me he'll take me no matter what it means to him."

"Right for you," a.s.sented the other; "and if I was younger myself, I'd sure have a lot of nice things to say to you. If I'd 'a' had somebody like you I'd 'a' let liquor alone, maybe, and amounted to something, but all I'm good for now is to give advice and draw my pay." He slid down from the counter where he had been sitting. "I'm goin' to hunt up the Lieutenant and get him to let me off. Mebbe I can stake a claim and sell it."

The moment he was gone the girl's composure vanished and she gave vent to her feelings.

"It's a lie! It's a lie!" she cried, aloud, and with her fists she beat the boards in front of her. "He loves me! I know he does!" Then she began, to tremble, and sobbed: "I'm just like other girls."

She was still wrestling with herself when Gale returned, and he started at the look in her face as she approached him.

"Why did you marry my mother?" she asked. "Why? Why did you do it?"

He saw that she was in a rage, and answered, bluntly, "I didn't."

She shrank at this. "Then why didn't you? Shame! Shame! That makes me worse than I thought I was. Oh, why did you ever turn squaw-man? Why did you make me a breed?"

"Look here! What ails you?" said the trader.

"What ails me?" she mocked. "Why, I'm neither white nor red; I'm not even a decent Indian. I'm a--a--" She shuddered. "You made me what I am. You didn't do me the justice even to marry my mother."

"Somebody's been saying things about you," said Gale, quietly, taking her by the shoulders. "Who is it? Tell me who it is."

"No, no! It's not that! n.o.body has said anything to my face; they're afraid of you, I suppose, but G.o.d knows what they think and say to my back."

"I'll--" began the trader, but she interrupted him.

"I've just begun to realize what I am. I'm not respectable. I'm not like other women, and never can be. I'm a squaw--a squaw!"

"You're not!" he cried.

"It's a nice word, isn't it?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"No honest man can marry me. I'm a vagabond! The best I can get is my bed and board, like my mother."

"By G.o.d! Who offered you that?" Gale's face was whiter than hers now, but she disregarded him and abandoned herself to the tempest of emotion that swept her along.

"He can play with me, but nothing more, and when he is gone another one can have me, and then another and another and another--as long as I can cook and wash and work. In time my man will beat me, just like any other squaw, I suppose, but I can't marry; I can't be a wife to a decent man."

She was in the clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneath Gale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then she leaned exhausted against a post and wiped her eyes, for the tears were coming now.

"That's all d.a.m.ned rot," he said. "There's fifty good men in this camp would marry you to-morrow."

"Bah! I mean real men, not miners. I want to be a lady. I don't want to pull a hand-sled and wear moccasins all my life, and raise children for men with whiskers. I want to be loved--I want to be loved! I want to marry a gentleman."

"Burrell!" said Gale.

"No!" she flared up. "Not him nor anybody in particular, but somebody like him, some man with clean finger-nails."

He found nothing humorous or grotesque in her measure of a gentleman, for he realized that she was strung to a pitch of unreason and unnatural excitement, and that she was in terrible earnest.

"Daughter," he said, "I'm mighty sorry this knowledge has come to you, and I see it's my fault, but things are different now to what they were when I met Alluna. It wasn't the style to marry squaws where we came from, and neither of us ever thought about it much. We were happy with each other, and we've been man and wife to each other just as truly as if a priest had mumbled over us."

"But why didn't you marry her when I came? Surely you must have known what it would mean to me. It was bad enough without that."

The old man hesitated. "I'll own I was wrong," he said, finally, staring out into the sunshine with an odd expression. "It was thoughtless and wrong, dead wrong; but I've loved you better than any daughter was ever loved in this wide world, and I've worked and starved and froze and saved, and so has Alluna, so that you might have something to live on when I'm gone, and be different to us. It won't be long now, I guess. I've given you the best schooling of any girl on the river, and I'd have sent you out to a convent in the States, but I couldn't let you go so far away--G.o.d! I loved you too much for that--I couldn't do it, girl. I've tried, but you're all I've got, and I'm a selfish man, I reckon."

"No, no! You're not," his daughter cried, impulsively. "You're everything that's good and dear, but you've lived a different life from other men and you see things differently. It was mean of me to talk as I did." She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. "But I'm very unhappy, dad."

"Don't you aim to tell what started this?" he said, gently, caressing her with his great, hard hand as softly as a mother. But she shook her head, and he continued, "I'll take the first boat down to the Mission and marry your ma, if you want me to."