Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West Part 21

"I should like a porterhouse with mushrooms," he announced promptly.

"You can't have it. You know what the doctor said." Very peremptorily she smiled this at him.

"He's an old granny, Miss Messiter."

"You may have an egg on toast."

"Make it two," he pleaded. "Excitement's just like caviar to the appet.i.te, and seeing y'u safe--"

"Very well--two," she conceded.

They ate supper together in a renewal of the pleasant intimacy so delightful to both. He lay on the lounge, propped up with sofa cushions, the while he watched her deft fingers b.u.t.ter the toast and prepare his egg. It was surely worth while to be a convalescent, given so sweet a comrade for a nurse; and after he had moved over to the table he enjoyed immensely the gay firmness with which she denied him what was not good for him.

"I'll bet y'u didn't have supper like this at Robbers' Roost." he told her, enthusiastically.

"It wasn't so bad, considering everything." She was looking directly at him as she spoke. "Your cousin is rather a remarkable man in some ways.

He manages to live on the best that can be got in tin-can land."

"Did he tell y'u he was my cousin?" he asked, slowly.

"Yes, and that his name was Ned Bannister, too?"

"Did that explain anything to y'u?"

"It explained a great deal, but it left some things not clear yet."

"For instance?"

"For one thing, the reason why you should bear the odium of his crimes.

I suppose you don't care for him, though I can see how you might in a way."

"I don't care for him in the least, though I used to when we were boys. As to letting myself be blamed for his crimes. I did it because I couldn't help myself. We look more or less alike, and he was cunning enough to manufacture evidence against me. We were never seen together, and so very few know that there are two Bannisters. At first I used to protest, but I gave it up. There wasn't the least use. I could only wait for him to be captured or killed. In the meantime it didn't make me any more popular to be a sheepman."

"Weren't you taking a long chance of being killed first? Some one with a grudge against him might have shot you."

"They haven't yet," he smiled.

"You might at least have told me how it was," she reproached.

"I started to tell y'u that first day, but it looked so much of a fairy tale to unload that I pa.s.sed it up."

"Then you ought not to blame me for thinking you what you were not."

"I don't remember blaming y'u. The fact is I thought it awful white of y'u to do your Christian duty so thorough, me being such a miscreant,"

he drawled.

"You gave me no chance to think well of you."

"But yet y'u did your duty from A to Z."

"We're not talking about my duty," she flashed back. "My point is that you weren't fair to me. If I thought ill of you how could I help it?"

"I expaict your Kalamazoo conscience is worryin' y'u because y'u misjudged me."

"It isn't," she denied instantly.

"I ain't of a revengeful disposition. I'll forgive y'u for doing your duty and saving my life twice," he said, with a smile of whimsical irony.

"I don't want your forgiveness."

"Well, then for thinking me a 'bad man.'"

"You ought to beg my pardon. I was a friend, at least you say I acted like one--and you didn't care enough to right yourself with me."

"Maybe I cared too much to risk trying it. I knew there would be proof some time, and I decided to lie under the suspicion until I could get it. I see now that wasn't kind or fair to you. I am sorry I didn't tell y'u all about it. May I tell y'u the story now?"

"If you wish."

It was a long story, but the main points can be told in a paragraph. The grandfather of the two cousins, General Edward Bannister, had worn the Confederate gray for four years, and had lost an arm in the service of the flag with the stars and bars. After the war he returned to his home in Virginia to find it in ruins, his slaves freed and his fields mortgaged. He had pulled himself together for another start, and had practiced law in the little town where his family had lived for generations. Of his two sons, one was a ne'er-do-well. He was one of those brilliant fellows of whom much is expected that never develops.

He had a taste for low company, married beneath him, and, after a career that was a continual mortification and humiliation to his father, was killed in a drunken brawl under disgraceful circ.u.mstances, leaving behind a son named for the general. The second son of General Bannister also died young, but not before he had proved his devotion to his father by an exemplary life. He, too, was married and left an only son, also named for the old soldier. The boys were about of an age and were well matched in physical and mental equipment. But the general, who had taken them both to live with him, soon discovered that their characters were as dissimilar as the poles. One grandson was frank, generous, open as the light; the other was of a nature almost degenerate. In fact, each had inherited the qualities of his father. Tales began to come to the old general's ears that at first he refused to credit. But eventually it was made plain to him that one of the boys was a rake of the most objectionable type.

There were many stormy scenes between the general and his grandson, but the boy continued to go from bad to worse. After a peculiarly flagrant case, involving the character of a respectable young girl, young Ned Bannister was forbidden his ancestral home. It had been by means of his cousin that this last iniquity of his had been unearthed, and the boy had taken it to his grandfather in hot indignation as the last hope of protecting the reputation of the injured girl. From that hour the evil hatred of his cousin, always dormant in the heart, flamed into active heat. The disowned youth swore to be revenged. A short time later the general died, leaving what little property he had entirely to the one grandson. This stirred again the bitter rage of the other. He set fire to the house that had been willed his cousin, and took a train that night for Wyoming. By a strange irony of fate they met again in the West years later, and the enmity between them was renewed, growing every month more bitter on the part of the one who called himself the King of the Bighorn Country.

She broke the silence after his story with a gentle "Thank you. I can understand why you don't like to tell the story."

"I am very glad of the chance to tell it to you," he answered.

"When you were delirious you sometimes begged some one you called Ned not to break his mother's heart. I thought then you might be speaking to yourself as ill people do. Of course I see now it was your cousin that was on your mind."

"When I was out of my head I must have talked a lot of nonsense,"

he suggested, in the voice of a question. "I expect I had opinions I wouldn't have been scattering around so free if I'd known what I was saying."

He was hardly prepared for the tide of color that swept her cheeks at his words nor for the momentary confusion that shuttered the shy eyes with long lashes cast down.

"Sick folks do talk foolishness, they say," he added, his gaze trained on her suspiciously.

"Do they?"

"Mrs. Winslow says I did. But when I asked her what it was I said she only laughed and told me to ask y'u. Well, I'm askin' now."

She became very busy over the teapot. "You talked about the work at your ranch--sheep dipping and such things."

"Was that all?"

"No, about lots of other things--football and your early life. I don't see what Mrs. Winslow meant. Will you have some more tea?"

"No, thank y'u. I have finished. Yes, that ce'tainly seems harmless. I didn't know but I had been telling secrets." Still his unwavering eyes rested quietly on her.

"Secrets?" She summoned her aplomb to let a question rest lightly in the face she turned toward him, though she was afraid she met his eyes hardly long enough for complete innocence "Why, yes, secrets." He measured looks with her deliberately before he changed the subject, and he knew again the delightful excitement of victory. "Are y'u going to read to me this evening?"