The Forfeit Part 39

"Maybe you'll remember what I said to you about Ronny just after we were--married. I don't guess you'll have forgotten, seeing things are as they are. What I said then stands now. If you'd been a man I'd have shot you down in your tracks when I got to home last night. That should say all that need be said about how I'm feeling now. You aren't a man, and you're my wife. Well--you're still my wife. That means it's up to me to keep you as though this thing hadn't broken things up. I intend to act as right as I can by you. This is your home. You must use it, if you feel that way. The Obar has to go on. It's your means of living.

It's my means of living. Then there are others concerned in it. For these reasons I shall carry on things, and your knowledge of this sort of work should hand you a reasonable share in the running of this place. If you feel you can act this way, without remembering we're man and wife, why, I guess we can agree to live our--separate--lives under the same roof. If you don't feel you can do this, why, you need to say so right here an' now, an' state your wishes. I'll do my best to carry them through, provided you understand our lives are separate from now on. Do you get that?"

Did she get it? Could there be any mistaking those cold tones, that ruthless decision?

From slightly behind him Elvine had stood watching with straining eyes the still figure, speaking with so obvious a repression of feeling, his eyes steadily fixed upon the distant horizon. Once or twice an ominous flush had suddenly flamed up in her eyes. A deep flush had stained her cheeks. But as he ceased speaking the same shrinking, the same humility marked her att.i.tude. She knew instinctively she dared not say the things she was yearning to pour out. She knew instinctively that any such course would at once break down that thin veneer of restraint he was exercising. And for perhaps the first time in her life she stood awed and cowed by a man.

But this woman was the slave of her pa.s.sions, and she knew it. It was this now that made a coward of her. With all the power of self in her she had abandoned herself to her love for her husband. And, with slavish submission, she was prepared to accept his words rather than banish herself out of his presence altogether. A mad, wild hope lay somewhere deep down in her heart that some day he could be made to forget. That some day, through what looked to her like endless days of devotion and help, she might win back something of what she had lost. She knew her own attraction. She knew her own powers. Might there not then be hope in the dim future?

She had no pride where Jeff was concerned. She wanted him. His love was all life to her now. If she had followed the natural course which should have been hers and refused his proposal, she would have been closing the door, finally, upon all that made life possible. If she submitted there still remained to her the vaguest possible shadow of hope. This was her thought and motive in the crisis with which she was faced, and her calculations were made out of her yearning, and without true understanding of the man with whom she was dealing.

Jeff awaited her decision under an enforced calm.

"It's for you to say," she said, after some moments. "Nor is the choice mine. I shall obey. You've said I can help in the work. Maybe it's my right. I'll claim that right anyway. It's the only right I'll claim.

I've only one other thing to say, and maybe you'll let me speak it this once."

"Go on."

"I didn't guess I was doing wrong. I don't know now I did wrong.

Anyway, if what I did was wrong it's against G.o.d's laws and not man's.

Maybe you've a right to punish me. I don't know. Anyway, my life and interests are bound to yours, and I want you to know every effort of mine will be to further--your interests. This has made no change in me--that way. You can trust me as you'd trust yourself. I'm not here to squeal for any mercy from you, Jeff. And maybe some day you'll--understand. I guess your breakfast's ready. I'll have mine later."

Later in the day Elvine rode out from the ranch house. Nor did she concern herself with her object, nor her course, beyond a wild desire for the solitude of the hills. The full torture of the new life, on the threshold of which she now stood, had not come upon her until after the effects of her interview with her husband had had time to calm down.

Then to remain in the house, which had become a sort of prison to her, was made impossible. She must get out. She must break into activity.

She felt that occupation alone could save her reason.

So she struck out for the hills. Their claim of earlier days was upon her. The hills, and their wooded valleys. Their brooding calm, their dark shadows, their mysterious silence. These things claimed her mood.

She rode recklessly across the wide spread of Rainbow-Hill Valley. She had no thought for the horse under her. She would have welcomed the pitfalls which mighty have robbed her of the dreadful consciousness of the disaster which had overwhelmed her. She was striving to flee from thoughts from which she knew there was no escape. She was striving to lose herself in the activities of the moment.

The switchback of the plain rose and fell under her horse's busy hoofs.

It rose higher, and ever higher, as she approached the western slopes.

She left the fenced pastures behind her, and the last signs of the life to which she was now committed. Before her the woodlands rose up shrouded in their dark foliage. The mourning aspect of the pines suited her temper; she felt as though their drooping boughs were in harmony with the bereavement of her soul.

She plunged amidst the serried aisles of leafless trunks with something like welcome for their shadows. She rode on regardless of distance and direction.

From the crest of a hill she looked down upon narrow mountain creek surging between borders of pale green foliage. The sound of the waters came up to her, and the wilderness of it all appealed, as, at that moment, nothing else could have appealed. She pressed her blowing horse forward, and rode down to the banks so densely overgrown.

She leaped from the saddle. She relieved her horse of its saddle and flung herself upon the mossy ground in the shelter of a cl.u.s.ter of spruce. The humid heat was oppressive. The tumbling waters were unable to stir the atmosphere. But their music was soothing, and the sight of their turbulent rush seemed to hold sympathy for her troubled heart. And so she lay there, her head propped upon a supporting hand, and yielded herself to the sway of her emotions.

After a while tears dimmed her eyes. They overflowed down her cheeks.

She had reached the end of endurance before yielding to her woman's pitiful weakness. Time had no meaning now. Place had lost its influence. She saw nothing, knew nothing but the trouble which had robbed her of all she lived for.

Then came the inevitable. Her tears eventually relaxed the tension of her nerves, and, after several ineffectual attempts to keep them open, the weight of the atmosphere closed her eyes and yielded her the final mercy of sleep.

Elvine awoke with a start. She awoke with the conviction of the presence of the man she had met in the hill regions before. She knew some one was near her, but, for the moment----

Yes. She sat up. A pair of brown eyes were gazing down into hers. Then came the voice, and it was low, and gentle. It had nothing startling in it.

"Why, say, an' I've been hunting your trail this hour, taking you for--some one else."

Nan had been standing with her arm linked through her horse's reins. Now she relinquished them, and flung herself upon the ground before the startled woman.

Elvine stared at her with unease in her dark eyes. Nor did she gain rea.s.surance from the pretty face with its soft brown hair, and the graceful figure beneath its brown cloth riding suit. Yet she was not insensible to the companionship. Her greater fears had been of the man, Sikkem, who had been in her waking thoughts.

"You were following my tracks?" she demanded uncertainly.

Nan's eyes grew grave.

"I certainly was. Though I didn't guess they were yours. Say, you must have crossed the tracks I was following," she added thoughtfully. "Did you see anybody? Four fellers? Mighty tough-looking citizens, an'

strangers?"

The frankness of the girl reestablished confidence.

Elvine sat up.

"No," she said. Then the wonder of it possessed her. "But you--you alone were following on the tracks of four tough strangers?" she cried incredulously.

Nan smiled. Her smile was pretty. It was a confident, wise little smile.

"Sure," she said. "I saw them, and it was up to me. You see, Evie, we folks out here kind of need to think diff'rent. A girl can't just help being a girl, but when rustlers are around, raising small Cain with her men-folks' goods, why, she's got to act the way they would when they light on a suspicious trail. I was guessing that track would lead me somewhere. But," she added with a grimace, "I wasn't as smart as I figgered. You must have crossed it, an' I lost 'em."

"But can't you get back to it? Maybe I can help some. I've followed a trail before," Elvine added, in a tone which Nan understood better than the other knew.

But the girl shook her head.

"My plug is tired, and there's the chase back to home. I guess we'll leave 'em, and just--report. But there's something doing. I mean something queer. These folk don't reckon to show themselves in daytime, and I guess they were traveling from the direction of Spruce Crossing."

"That's where the man Sikkem's stationed," said Elvine.

"Sure. But I don't guess they been near his shanty. They wouldn't fancy gettin' around Sikkem's lay-out in daytime. You see, he's--sudden."

Nan's confidence was not without its effect. But Elvine was less sure.

"This Sikkem. I don't like him. But----"

Nan dismissed the matter in her own way.

"Sikkem's been on the ranch nigh three years. He's a cattleman first, and hates rustlers worse than poison. But he's tough. Oh, he's tough, all right. I wouldn't gamble a pea-shuck he hasn't quite a dandy bunch of notches on his gun. But we're used to his sort."

Then she went on in a reflective fashion as though hollowing out a train of thought inspired by the man under discussion:

"Sort o' seems queer the way we see things. Right here on the prairie we mostly take folks on trust, an' treat 'em as we find 'em. Maybe they're wanted for all sorts of crimes. Maybe they done a turn in penitentiary.

Maybe they even shot up folk cold. These things don't signify a cent with us so they handle cattle right, and are ready to push lead into any bunch of rustlers lyin' around. Guess it's environment makes us that way. The prairie's so mighty wide it helps us folks to get wide."