KAY closed her door, and standing in the darkness of her room the iron repression of the evening, before William in the Mariposa, before Jake, suddenly gave way. She was suffering. She was suffering horribly. Tom could tell her what he had told her, imply what he had implied, and then go off and hunt out some girl of the town, some
Her cheeks burned with the cheapness of it. He had cheapened her. He had turned the situation between them into a tawdry thing. Maybe he had laughed about her with that girl.
"I've got a girl out at the ranch. Some girl, too. You'd better watch your step."
But by the time she had taken off her light frock and put on her night dress and a dressing gown, she was already making excuses for him. They had hurt him unbearably, and he had drifted back to an old weakness to forget it. They were to blame, largely. And how did they know he had been drinking? Just because he had done it before they were ready to think it of him now. He had not looked as though he had been drinking. And he had never had a chance, with that father who was always ready to move somewhere, provided it was West.
"Used to move so much, every time the chickens saw the team put in the wagon, they'd lie down on their backs and hold their legs up to be tied!"
It wasn't true. Even now he was plodding back through the night to the same thing again, if not here somewhere else. Hard work and small pay, hardships and dangers; for interest the care of another man's great herds of cows and horses, for relaxation the rough play of the bunk house, an occasional crap game, and for pleasure, what? The town and what little it could offer.
Who could blame him, if after weeks, maybe months of all this, he broke over? How many men she knew did not drink, even on occasion drink too much? She thought back resentfully to her life at home. There was the night of her coming-out ball, when Hilary Randall had drunk too much champagne punch and had had to be put to bed in the house.
Nobody had made a fuss about that. She had been supposed not to know, but she had known. And Hilary himself had seemed later to think it rather a joke.
After a long time she lighted a match and looked at the small diamond studded watch on her dresser. It was two o'clock. He must be very close. And soon after that she heard him coming in. She had made no plan, got nowhere, but the thought that the slow beat of the Miller's hoofs might be taking him out of her life was too much for her. Clad as she was she went down the stairs, opened the front door and ran toward the barn. She could hear him working there, unsaddling, turning the tired horse out into the night corral. As she got closer she could see him, saddle and bridle in his arms, staring in her direction.
"Tom!"
"Yes?" He dropped the saddle and came toward her. "What are you doing out here at this time of night?"
"I heard your horse, and I"
"What's that got to do with it? Look here, girl, you go back to bed and quit worrying about me. I'm not worth it."
"I have worried, awfully."
"I'm not worth it. I'm telling you."
"But if I don't think that, Tom?"
He hesitated, glancing toward the house. "Maybe we'd better talk this out," he said. "But not here. Too many open windows, and I don't want to make any more trouble for you. I guess I've done my bit!"
Even then, however, he hesitated as he looked about him. If he soiled everything he touched, as they seemed to think out here, he was not going to soil this girl. There was to be no chance of any misconception of this meeting, if it chanced to be seen in the starlight.
"You might as well beat a drum as wear that white thing," he said uneasily, "But we'll stay in sight, anyhow. Over there by the fence, how's that?"
She agreed quietly. After the storm of the last few days, to have him near her, sober and quiet, was utter peace. And as he led the way, carrying the saddle for her to sit on, she felt that there was power and strength in him. Not only physical strength; a sort of courage. Like her grandfather, perhaps like all strong men, he had the courage of his sins. And his first words bore this out.
"You'd better get the straight of this, Kay. I've been drinking, and that's putting it mild. I expect you know it. Percy would sure have the little rope all ready, the minute I stumbled."
"I do know it, Tom."
"Then what are you out here for? That ought to be enough to spoil any—friendly feeling you had for me."
"I don't like it. But I've thought maybe we were to blame. I was to blame."
"Forget that! I've done it before. And the way things are I reckon I'm likely to do it again."
"What do you mean by the way things are, Tom?"
He looked away from her. He was trying to play the game, but she was making it hard for him.
"Between you and me." And after a pause, when she said nothing: "Where are we going from here, you and me? Well, I'll tell you. You're going back East, home, and in about a month or two you'll be saying: 'Oh yes, that cowpuncher out at the ranch! What was his name now? Let's see—McNair. That was it. Tom McNair.'"
"You don't really think that, do you?" she said, her throat tight. "You know better than that, Tom."
"Maybe not in a month. I'll give you two, or three." And then in a burst of passion: "For God's sake, girl, let me alone! I'm trying to play this game square. I've done some thinking tonight on the way out, and that's the only way I can play it. You go away and forget me. That's the best advice I can give you."
"And you? What advice are you giving yourself?"
"The best thing that can happen to me is to break my neck and be done with it."
"It would break my heart, too."
She was mad surely. She was telling him she loved him, in so many words. She got up dizzily and put out both hands to hold him off.
"I shouldn't have said that. I'm going back now. Please stay here. Oh, please don't touch me. I must be crazy."
But it was too late. His arms were around her.
"Then we're both crazy," he said. "Ever since I first saw you I've been fighting against it, Kay. I'm mad about you. There's never been anybody else, not like this."
But the next moment reason, lost to her, reasserted itself in him. Without kissing her he let her go, and stood back.
"Now you go back to the house," he told her. "I'm not trusting myself too far. Nor you either."
"If you care, that's all I want."
"Care! If you think about it, you'll know. And you'll know you're all I've got, in heaven and earth. And I won't have that very long. Now go back to the house."
"You can have me always, if you want me."
"You don't know what you're saying," he said, roughly. "Go on back when I tell you. I'll wait until you're in the house."
There was nothing left for her to do. The finality of his tone forbade her reopening the question between them. She started across the lawn, and half way over she turned and looked back. He was where she had left him, rigid and watchful. She went drearily back to the house and crawled into her bed Toward morning, her slim bare arms relaxed on the counterpane, she even slept a little, but when she wakened it was to find that Tom had gone into the mountains, and would not be back until the round-up was over.
She was completely crushed.
"Kay, do you remember where you left your rain coat?"
"At the barn, mother."
"Run and get it, so Nora can pack it."
George Potter and the banker came out at noon. They lunched and then retired to the office and closed the door. After a time Herbert came out and got Jake Mallory, and Jake went in and the door was closed again. When Jake came out his face looked tired and old; he stood on the verandah steps and looked all around, at the mountains and the yellowing cottonwoods, at the long row of shelter yards beyond the barn, and the creek which had "the best water in the state, sir."
Kay was there too, looking out, but he did not see her.
She met the next day with courage, carried off the good-byes with an air, was neither more talkative nor less than usual on the way into town. But never once did she lift her eyes to the mountains. She sat as she had sat on that journey out weeks before, in the front seat of the car. But now there was no lighted window ahead, no feeling of coming home. Only the Mariposa on a sidetrack, and William in a fresh white coat and a broad cheerful grin.
"Shuah am glad to see you fohks again," he said. "The old Mariposa, she's got stiff from sittin' so long."
Then her little room again, with its broad bed, and Nora laying out the things from her dressing case, the little gold brushes, the jars, the mirror, the boxes for this and that.
"I'll leave your perfume in the bag, Miss Kay. It might spill if I put it out."
"Thanks, Nora."
All set now, her hat covered, her traveling coat protected with a sheet, the far-away whistle of twenty-two, which was to pick up the car; Jake on the platform, Stetson in hand, anxiously receiving some last instructions from her father; her mother's low-pitched voice, speaking to Joe, the cook.
A little crowd outside, staring at this magnificence.
"Do they eat in there too? Or do they use the diner?"
And on the fringe of the group, standing by herself, a girl in a small pull-on hat and a very short skirt, surveying the preparations for departure with a peculiar intensity. Kay knew her. It was the girl Tom had been with under the lamp post. That was the last thing she was to see as the car moved out, the picture she was to carry with her over all the long miles of that journey East. Clare, on the station platform, waiting for her to go.