The Last Straw Part 7

"Nothin' much, judgin' by his conversation," replied the man who had driven the car.

"Visitor?"

"Dude. Regular dude from N'Yawk, b' Gosh!" He spat and grinned. "Come in yesterday and was busier 'n h.e.l.l all day buzzin' around town. First thing this a. m. he wants to come here. Great attraction you've got, it seems."

"The new boss?"

"Th' same, indeed! I seen her. Quite a peach, I'll go on record. But ... Th' boys tell me she's going to run this outfit with her own lily white hands."

"So she says," replied Dad benevolently. "I think she'll do a good job, too."

"Like so much h.e.l.l, you do! An' I hear you're foreman, Dad. You figurin' on marryin' the outfit or gettin' rich by honest endeavor?"

"Sho, Larry! You and your jokes!" the man grumbled good naturedly and entered the building.

"Well, if any of you waddies are calculatin' marryin' this filly you've got to build to her. This dude sure means business. He's found out more about the HC in one day than I ever knew. Besides, what I knew an' he didn't he got comin' out. Sure's a devil for obtainin' news.

"There he is now; see?"

He gestured toward the ranch house where Jane and the stranger stood on the veranda, the girl pointing to the great sweep of country which showed down creek. Then they turned and reentered the house.

"And so this is yours!" the man laughed. "Yours and your business!"

"My business, d.i.c.k! For the first time I feel as though I had a real object in living."

He smiled cynically.

"Jane, Queen of the Range!" he mocked.

She did not smile with him, but said soberly:

"I expect it is funny to you. It must be funny to all the old crowd. I can hear them, as soon as they know that I have decided to stay here, the girls at tea, the men in their clubs, talking it over. Jane Hunter, burying herself in the mountains and _doing_ something, becoming earnest and serious minded, getting up with the sun and going to bed at dark! It is strange!"

"It's too strange for life, Jane," he said, pulling up his trousers gingerly and sitting on the davenport. He leaned back and smoothed his sleek hair. "It isn't real. You're going to wake up before long and find that out.

"It was absurd enough for you to come here, but this preposterous notion that you are going to _stay_.... Why, that's beyond words!

What got into you, anyhow?"

He eyed her closely.

"I don't know, yet. It's a strange impulse but it's real, the first real thing that's ever gotten into me, I guess. I know only that ...

except that it is a pleasant sensation.

"When I left New York I was desperate. I came here to take something tangible that was mine and go back with it and now I've found out that the thing I want is nothing that I can see or touch, that I can't take it away with me. Not for a long time, anyhow. It isn't waiting ready-made for me; I must create it from the materials that are in my hands."

He continued to look at her a thoughtful moment.

"You've told me a lot about yourself and about this ranch and about these men who are working for you. You've told me about this country and, rather vaguely, about your plans. I suspect you don't know much about them yet," he added parenthetically. "You've not asked a question about New York, nor why I came."

She picked a yellowed leaf from a geranium plant and turned to face him.

"As for New York," she said with a lift of the eyebrows and a quick tilt of her head, "I don't give a ... d.a.m.n,"--softly. "As for your coming, I didn't need ask. When a man has followed a girl wherever she has gone, to sea, to other countries, for four years, there is nothing surprising in the fact that he should trail her only two-thirds of the way across this continent....

"But it's no use, d.i.c.k. I made up my mind that I would not marry you before I came here. I tried to convince you of the honesty of my purpose in my last letter, but perhaps I failed because I wasn't truly honest with myself then. I thought I was through, but, in reality, I was only planning a variation of the old way of doing things.

"Now I'm finished, absolutely, with the rot I've called life!"

She lifted her chin and shook her head in emphasis. The man laughed.

"You amuse as much as you thrill me," he said, looking at her hungrily.

"That's a splendid way to help a fellow: to laugh at the first effort I make to justify my existence."

"I want to help you, Jane. I've always wanted to help you. I've put myself and what I have at your disposal. I've not only done that, but I've begged and pleaded and schemed to make you take them. You'd never listen when I talked love to you.

"You've always seemed to be a peculiarly material-minded girl and I had to play on that. But when I've talked ease and comfort and luxury to you, you know that I've meant more than just those things. It's been love, Jane ... love in every syllable."

He rose and walked to stand before her.

"That hurt," she said, with a sharp little laugh. "That ...

materialism. But I believe it was only too true. It had to be, you see.

It was the only thing I could see to live for. There was the one thing I missed, the thing I had expected to find. It was the thing you talked about: Love. I wanted love, tried to find love and at twenty-five gave it up. That's a horrible thing, d.i.c.k. Giving that up at twenty-five!"

"But I have offered you love, continually, for four years."

"d.i.c.k ... oh, d.i.c.k! You don't know what that means. You showed that when you selected your tactics: trying to give me things that I could taste and touch and see.

"If it had been love, the real thing, that you felt, you'd have overwhelmed me with it, you would not have allowed another consideration to enter, you'd have swept me off my feet with making me understand that it was love. You wouldn't have talked places and motors, luxury and aimlessness."

Her voice shook. She was hurt, bordering on anger.

"You pa.s.s the buck," he retorted evenly. "You've told me, time after time, that love didn't matter to you."

"Not the sort you offered. It never could."

"There's another kind, then?"

"Somewhere,"--with an emphatic nod.

"You think you can find the sort you're looking for here?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought of that yet, but I know there is something else I can find."

"And that?"

"Myself!"--stoutly.

He threw back his head with a hearty laugh.