The Fighting Shepherdess Part 15

He shrugged a shoulder, then asked teasingly:

"Well--what were you thinking of doing about it?"

"I said--I promised," she blurted it out bluntly, "that we'd loan them money."

"What!" incredulously.

"I did, Uncle Joe."

He answered with a frown of annoyance:

"You exceeded your authority, Katie."

"But you will, won't you?" she pleaded. "You've never refused me anything that I really wanted badly, and I've never asked much, have I?"

"No, girl, you haven't," he replied gently. "And there's hardly anything you could ask, within reason, that wouldn't be granted."

"But they only need five hundred until he gets into something. You could let them have that, couldn't you?"

His face and eyes hardened.

"I could, but I won't," he replied curtly.

When Prouty was in its infancy, certain citizens had been misled by Mormon Joe's mild eyes, low voice and quiet manner. His easy-going exterior concealed an incredible hardness upon occasions, but this was Kate's first knowledge of it. He never had displayed the slightest authority. In any difference, when he had not yielded to her good-naturedly, they had argued it out as though they were in reality partners. At another time she would have been wounded by his brusque refusal, but to-night it angered her. Because of her intense eagerness and confidence that she had only to ask him, it came as the keenest of disappointments. This together with her fatigue combined to produce a display of temper as unusual in her as Mormon Joe's own att.i.tude.

"But I promised!" she cried, impatiently. "And you've told me I must always keep my promise, 'if it takes the hide'!"

"You exceeded your authority," he reiterated. "You've no right to promise what doesn't belong to you."

"Then it's all 'talk' about our being partners," she said, sneeringly.

"You don't mean a word of it."

"You shan't make a fool of yourself, Katie, if I can help it," he retorted.

"Because you don't care for friends, you don't want me to have any!" she flung at him hotly.

He was silent a long time, thinking, while she waited angrily, then he responded quietly and with obvious effort:

"That's where you're mistaken, Katie. If I have one regret it is that in the past I have not more deliberately cultivated the friendship of true men and gentle women when I have had the opportunity. It doesn't make much difference whether they are brilliant or rich or successful, if only they are true-hearted. Loyalty is the great attribute--but," and he shrugged a shoulder, "it is my judgment that you will not find it in that quarter."

"You're prejudiced."

"It is my privilege to have an opinion," he replied coldly.

"We were going to be friends--Mrs. Toomey and I--we shook hands on it!"

Tears of angry disappointment were close to the surface.

He replied, doggedly:

"If you have to buy your friendships, Katie, you'd better keep your money."

The speech stung her. She glared at him across the narrow table, and, in the moment, each had a sense of unreality. The quarrel was like a bolt from the blue, as startling and unexpected--as most quarrels are--the bitterest and most lasting. Then she sprang to her feet and hurled a taunt at him some Imp of Darkness must have suggested:

"You're jealous!" She stamped a foot at him. "That's the real reason.

You're jealous of everybody that would be friends with me! You're jealous of Hughie. You didn't like his coming here and you don't like his writing to me! I _hate_ you--I won't stay any longer!" It was the blood of Jezebel of the Sand Coulee talking, and there was the look of her mother on the girl's face, in her reckless, uncontrolled fury.

Mormon Joe winced, exactly as though she had struck him. He sat quite still while the color faded, leaving his face bloodless. Kate never had known anything like the white rage it depicted. Persons at the Sand Coulee who lost their temper cursed volubly and loudly, and threatened or made bodily attacks upon the cause of it. In spite of herself she shrank a little as he, too, got up slowly and faced her. She didn't know him at all--this man who first threw his cigarette away carefully, as though he were in a drawing room and must regard the ashes--he was a personality from an environment with which she was unfamiliar. Then, as though she were his equal in years, experience and intelligence, he spoke to her in a tone that was cool and impersonal, yet which went slash! slash! slash! like the fine, deep, quick cut of a razor.

"I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is something in the nature of a--er--revelation. You are quite right about leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about everything--right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave it, right in your a.s.sertion that I am jealous. I am--but not in the sense in which you mean it.

"I have been jealous of your dignity--of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!"

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager--a bet--to prove that he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you--for a story with which to regale his friends and laugh over."

She groped for the edge of the table.

"Who told you?"

"Toomey."

"I don't believe it!"

"Teeters verified it."

She sat down on the box from which she had risen.

Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued:

"You went to that dance against my wishes. What I expected to happen did happen, though you did not choose to tell me.

"In my descent through various strata of society I have learned something of types and of human nature. In protesting, my only thought was to save you pain and disappointment--as in this instance--but experience, it seems, is the only teacher.

"To-morrow I am going to Prouty, hire a herder to do your work and mortgage the outfit for half its value. It will be yours to use as it pleases you. You have earned it. Then," with a gesture of finality, "the door is open to you. I want you to go where you will be happy."

With his usual deliberation of movement he put on his hat and went out to change the horses on picket, while Kate, stunned by the incredible crisis and the revelation concerning Hugh Disston, sat where she had dropped, staring at the agate-ware platter upon which the mutton grease was hardening.

It was Mormon Joe's invariable custom to help her with the dishes, but he did not return, so she arose, finally, and set the food away automatically, with the unseeing look of a hypnotic subject. She washed the dishes and dried them, trying to realize that she would be leaving this shortly--that there would be a last time in the immediate future.

Her anger was lost in grief and amazement. There was something so implacable, so steel-like in Mormon Joe's hardness that it did not occur to her to plead with him for forgiveness. And Hughie! She told herself that she could not turn to a traitor for help or sympathy. She blew out the lantern, tied the tent flap behind her, and ran through the fast falling snow to her wagon.

Kate dozed towards morning after a sleepless night of wretchedness and was awakened by a horse's whinny. Listening a moment, she sprang out and looked through the upper half of the door which opened on hinges. It was a white world that she saw, with some four inches of snow on the level, though the fall had ceased and it was colder. Mormon Joe, dressed warmly in leather "chaps" and sheep-lined coat, was riding away on one of the work horses.

Never since they had been together had he gone to Prouty without some word of farewell--careless and casual, but unfailing. Nor could she remember when he had not turned in the saddle and waved at her before they lost sight of each other altogether. This time she waited vainly.

He went without looking behind him, while she stood in the cold watching his peaked high-crowned hat bobbing through the giant sagebrush until it vanished. She had thrust out a hand to detain him--to call after him--and had withdrawn it. Her pride would not yet permit her to act as her heart prompted.