Then I'll Come Back to You Part 35

"That proves my point right now." He was imperturbable. "You're begging the question to gain----"

"You said----" she flashed, and then grew red.

"I said I'd let you ask no pardon of me. I said I'd let myself find no flaw in you. But how does that embarra.s.s my present argument?

Flawless perfection would be a mighty difficult thing to live with, day in and day out. Living with a woman who never made a mistake could have no appeal for me. She'd always be emphasizing my own shortcomings. You become consistent and you'll catch me yawning some day; grow logical and you'll almost scare me off! Why, you're a girl!"

Her laughter was like a bell on the still air.

"And you--you still sit there and insist that perfection has no attraction for you? When you've just described, without knowing it, the--the sort of a girl you think is perfect."

His lips curled in a way to quicken any woman's pulse.

"You have me beaten," he laughed. His eyes, dark as was the shadow upon his face, made her breath unsteady. "I would like to watch you play poker with Fat Joe. Your game would puzzle him more than a little. Yes, you've surely left me without a leg on which to hobble off, because it would be small spirited in me, wouldn't it, if I were to tell you that you are the exception that makes my general rule hold sound? I wouldn't, however, prescribe such a degree of perfection for any other man's daily diet. It would prove his destruction."

"Your own superiority, of course, rendering you immune?"

"Maybe." At least, whether she knew it or not, she loved his serenity.

"Maybe--and maybe I'm an exception too."

He sat very still. She had turned away once more.

"You'll be back again in the spring?" he asked with that gentleness he saved for her alone.

"I hope--I think so." The smallness of her voice angered her. She feigned a short, carefree laugh. "Unless I am too busy. Getting married seems to become a more and come complicated problem of proper costuming, doesn't it, with every pa.s.sing season!"

She couldn't have told why she said it; she was trying to think of something else to say which would be kinder by far. And then, half lifting her, he had swung her around to him. For a moment he held her, face close to that small, frightened face buried in its deep collar, while she struggled uselessly against those hard arms which tried not to hurt her. Her lips continued to rebel, long after her eyes had closed--long after body and brain were quiescent.

"You mustn't!" she gasped. "Oh, I can't let you . . . the moon . . .

we--we're sure to be seen!"

His lips on hers silenced that last incoherent resistance. She sat, wavy brown head bowed, when he had set her free.

"I was going to ask you not to forget!" There was no weariness now in his voice. "I had planned to ask you just that, a little ago, and it would have been a weak and useless request, wouldn't it? Any man who has to beg to be remembered is not the sort to remain long in any woman's brain. So I have taught you to remember, instead. You aren't going to forget, ever, now! You're coming back in the spring, and you're coming to stay! And now _I'm_ telling _you_ good-bye. It's time you were asleep."

He helped her to her feet. Together they turned--and Archibald Wickersham, tall to gauntness in the moonlight, was coming across toward them from the direction of the cabin. The girl's slim body stiffened, but Steve saw her chin come up. His own body grew lazier still, it seemed, in length and limb.

Wickersham's approaching steps were crisply precise; he stopped an arm's length in front of them, and his words were an echo of that last sentence of Steve's.

"It's time you retired," he said, ignoring the other man's presence entirely. "It's cold, and you have a long, hard ride ahead of you to-morrow."

For a barely perceptible moment, with the eyes of both men upon her, Barbara kept her place. Neither of them saw that her teeth were tightly closed over one full lip; neither knew that she had closed her eyes, dizzily, for an instant. And then, without a word, she put her hand upon the arm which Wickersham offered her; but Steve, on the other side, walked with her that night, as far as the door of the storehouse shack. Miriam herself opened the door and s.n.a.t.c.hed Barbara within, and then laughed with her consummate impudence into both men's faces.

"G'lang wid ye's now," she flung at them, "an' quit disturbin' dacint folks that likes to sleep o' nights!"

She slammed the door upon them.

They stood there a second or two, Wickersham an inch or more taller and inches narrower in shoulder and girth of chest. Perfunctorily they nodded, each to the other, and wheeled silently upon their heels.

Steve did not respond the next morning when Joe summoned the rest with a long spoon applied heartily to the flat of a huge tin basin; and over the breakfast table Joe explained to the a.s.sembled guests the reason for his absence. Before daybreak a rider had come from Morrison, bearing word from Hardwick Elliott that Ainnesley was on from Manhattan and wanted to talk with him; before the camp was fairly awake he had ridden away into the south. And returning two days later, travelling the lower, lesser trails that followed the river, in order to save time, Steve missed her party going out. So, in the last moment, after days and days of patient waiting, did Chance trick him sadly.

How much or how little Wickersham might have overseen the night before he betrayed not at all at breakfast the next morning, either by word or look. And throughout that day, and the day that followed, while she rode at his side, undetermined whether she should attempt an explanation, Barbara found his face inscrutable. It was a week later, the night preceding her departure from the hills, long after the girl had ceased to think of him at all in connection with the incident, before she learned how much he really knew.

Miss Sarah had found her brother most uncommunicative upon his return from Thirty-Mile. In response to her first question concerning Steve he had a.s.sured her, lifelessly, that the latter was looking very well indeed, and let it go at that. Because she was a very remarkable woman, Miss Sarah had been able to curb her curiosity for several days, but on that particular evening she found it impossible calmly to wait longer.

"You have not told me yet, Cal," she reproached him at dinner, in her slightly lisping voice, "how much progress Steve seems to have made.

You know how interested I am, and you must realize how undignified a thirty-mile dash on horseback would be on my part, in order to find out, myself."

While up-river Caleb had found much time in which to talk with Garry Devereau--that is to say, quite a little time, in view of the fact that Miriam Burrell, in boots and mackinaw, had insisted upon following Garry wherever he went. And since his return to Morrison he had been spending a surprisingly large share of his days in conference with Hardwick Elliott and his partner, Ainnesley. Now his reply to his sister's query was startlingly fervid.

"Progress!" he exclaimed. "Progress! I tell you he's going to win out, in spite of all of them, d.a.m.n 'em!"

Miss Sarah froze in her chair.

"Caleb!" she expostulated. "Caleb!"

And Caleb's face went hot.

"I am very sorry," he muttered contritely. "But I couldn't help it.

When I think of the way that boy has plugged on alone, all his life, with no one to give him a lift, it--it angers me to think that the very man whom I have prized as a friend should be the one to make his problem harder."

"Would you mind explaining, lucidly?" Miss Sarah requested. "And if it is business to which you are referring, will you please try to make it as brief and non-technical as possible?"

Once he started to tell her, Caleb realized that it was just what he had needed to do all along, without knowing it. Briefly as she had requested, he sketched for her the facts which, so far as he was concerned, had made of his first sneaking suspicion an absolute certainty. And he waxed wroth in the recital.

"It's treachery," he snapped, "rank, contemptible treachery. And the worst part of it all is that, even now, when I am morally certain of his culpability, I--I can't bring myself to despise the man. He's been my friend for thirty years, Dexter has, and d.a.m.n it---- I beg your pardon, Sarah--but, d.a.m.n it, I keep on thinking of him, in soft moments, as my friend now. I sit by the hour trying to foist the blame upon Archie Wickersham, and he's no more guilty than Dexter. Dexter's merely good-natured about his crookedness; wholesome about it, somehow.

And Wickersham's a sneak!"

In all the years they had lived together Miss Sarah had never heard her brother talk so bitterly. Yet her voice remained soft.

"It's very unpleasant, no doubt," she sympathized, "although I can't quite see why they don't all join hands and try to make a success of the project between them. Surely it seems feasible. And, somehow, even after listening to you, I don't seem to find myself greatly perturbed about our boy, Steve. He's very big and strong, Cal, and--and I am very old-fashioned. I still believe in the might of right. It may sound very feminine to you, but I do not find myself worried at all over his lack of a.s.sistance in his work. And I must confess that I did not have it in mind, at all, when I asked in regard to his progress."

Caleb looked up, suspiciously.

"Well?" he said.

"I meant how--how did he and Barbara appear to--get on together?"

Caleb spilled a spoonful of soup.

"Her!" he exploded with no regard for his grammar. "Why, she is true to her blood! If she weren't she wouldn't be engaged to that thief who masquerades as a gentleman. She isn't blind, and she's going to marry him!"

"You are positively violent, Cal," reproved his sister. "And your reference to Barbara does not do you credit. If I were your wife I suppose I'd rise coldly now and sweep upstairs to leave you alone with your bad mood. But being merely your sister I remain to hear you apologize. Barbara is not yet married to Wickersham, I might add."

"I am exceedingly sorry," said Caleb.

"And, without any reason for it, save my womanly intuition, I feel very certain that she will never marry him," Miss Sarah went on. "But you spoke about Steve having no one upon whom he could depend for a.s.sistance, and it was really a helpful hint to me. Did I fail to hear you say how they seemed to get on together?"

"She didn't think he was good enough for her, ten years ago," growled Caleb. "She wouldn't think so, now. He cares for her, so she treats him like a dog, of course."