TOM watched the car down the drive; he had had a drink or two, but they had only served to stimulate him, to overcome his shyness in these strange surroundings, and to make him feel the equal if not the superior to the men he saw around him.
He was extraordinarily happy. He took a deep breath, and the top button of his coat flew off and hit a pillar with a whack like a pistol shot; but he only muttered "hell" and fell back into ecstasy again. In the darkness the links stretched away to unseen boundaries, beyond which here and there were the lights of houses. And in that cool darkness his girl, his wonderful girl, was moving toward one of them.
After a time he turned and looked into the club house behind him. He could see the man he was dining with, in consultation with two or three others, in a room furnished with a luxury he had never dreamed of. He was not thinking, certainly he had no plan. He was vaguely relieved that he had not seen Herbert Forrest, but that was about all.
The dinner was announced.
But he found that certain ceremonies preceded the meal. Back in the grill room bottles were produced from lockers, ice ordered, and cocktails mixed. The group toasted the West, and in another round of drinks he had to reply for the East. His head was buzzing, but he managed something.
"To the East," he said, rather grimly, smiling. "It's crowded and dirty and ornery, but it eats our beef and drinks good drinks. God bless it."
It was after eight when they sat down to dinner, and all his resolves faded before their well enough meant hospitality. They ate in the grill, and by the time the dinner parties preceding the dance had been seated in the dining room he had taught them a song and they were lustily singing it. Scraps of sound penetrated beyond the closed doors: Tom's clear if slightly inarticulate tenor:
I ain't got no father,
I ain't got no father,
To buy the clothes I wear."
And then a chorus, rather more noisy than musical:
I'm a poor lonesome cowboy,
I'm a poor lonesome cowboy,
And a long ways from home."
The song was interminable. It appeared that Tom not only lacked a father, but divers other members of a family. The wailing chorus rose over the clatter of dishes in the dining room, and over the hum of conversation. People began to listen and comment, and one of the governors of the club, a gentleman of great dignity in impeccable evening clothes, came in and made a protest.
"Not quite so much noise here, gentlemen," he said. "If you feel you must sing, there is plenty of room outside."
Nine o'clock came, and nine-thirty, and Kay had not come. And always they were pressing drinks on him. Out of the generosity of cocktails and highballs they expanded to champagne.
"The way you find liquor, you'd sure make a good bird dog!" was Tom's comment to the man who brought it.
By ten o'clock, although he was still perfectly steady, he was concealing his resentment at Kay's defection under a swaggering boastfulness.
"Sure I shot him. He owed me a bill for that cow, and I collected it. You don't think we fellows ride the range for our health, do you? Why, say, the Sheriff's got a warrant for me for everything from arson to murder, right now."
He puzzled them, at that. One of the men told an incident out of his extremely private life, and the others greeted it with roars and applause. But Tom flushed and turned on him.
"Out our way," he said deliberately, "when a fellow tells a story like that on a woman, we shoot him first and then hang him to make sure."
They laughed it off, but he sat for some time, plainly ugly and dangerous.
It was Tom, to do them justice, who suggested shooting crap. His swagger had returned, but his luck was bad. Not one of them suspected that he was broke when he quit. They had to drink to better luck next time, and then the group began to break up. But a few still remained, and some resourceful genius brought in a rope and asked him if he could use it. He was bored and increasingly tired, and the clock showed half after ten, but he owed them a dinner and more other hospitality than he should have accepted, and so he took it. After that, poor as the rope was, there was no question of their admiration for him. Big loop and small loop, he did all he knew for them, and they were insatiable. They plied him with liquor and kept him at it, and finally some enterprising youth had a bright thought and the crowd took it up eagerly.
The plan was to go down the drive, and have Tom rope the driver of the next open car which came in. To be fair to him he protested, but the crowd was excited and hilarious. It had begun to put money up, too, and confused as he was by that time and increasingly reckless, he finally agreed.
And the driver of the car turned out to be Herbert! He did not lose control, either of the car or of himself. He brought it to a stop, loosened the noose from around his neck, and quietly got out into the roadway.
"Who among this crowd of drunks threw that rope?" he demanded.
"Don't get sore, Herb. We've got a wild man from the West here, and he's just practising a bit."
"Then you'd better send him back where he came from."
But Tom had recognized the voice by that time, and it had partially sobered him. He shoved the crowd aside and stepped out into the road.
"Do you want to repeat that suggestion to me?" he demanded.
Herbert was bewildered. He stood there, trying to penetrate the darkness.
"Is that McNair?"
"It is, and I've just asked you a question."
"I don't quarrel with a drunken man," Herbert said contemptuously. "If you fellows have any respect for yourselves or this club you'll stop this kind of thing and clear out." He got back into the car. "As for you, McNair, better get to bed somewhere and sleep it off."
Before Tom could make a move toward him he had gone on.
The men he had left laughed, but they were vaguely uncomfortable. One of them picked up Herbert's hat, lying in the road, and they kicked it back to the club house. But Tom moved along morosely. There was bitterness and despair in his heart; the unexpected meeting with Herbert in the cool night air had effectually sobered him. And Herbert's contemptuous attitude rankled in his mind. He had stood in the light of the car lamps, immaculate in evening dress, and politely refused to soil his hands with him. Well, he could make him do that, if he wanted. He could walk into the club house and smack that tidy face of his. Or he
At the foot of the steps lay Herbert's soft hat, battered and dusty. As the men went on he hung behind them, and when his chance came he picked it up.
He waited until they were on the terrace above him. He had no feeling of resentment toward them. They were good fellows, and he had eaten their bread and drunk their liquor. It was not their fault that Kay had abandoned him to them; had gone away and not come back.
"Well, so long, everybody," he said. "I reckon I'll be moving on."
They protested, vigorously and sincerely, but he only smiled up at them and shook his head.
"If I go in again I'll have to kill your little Herbert," he told them. "And I'd hate to mess up your place for you."
He drew on Herbert's battered hat with a flourish, turned, and went down the drive.
As a matter of fact, Kay passed him in the car on her way to the club. But she was engrossed and anxious. She never saw the tall, weary and disheartened figure, limping slightly in its tight tan shoes.
When he reached the railroad station Tom simply took to the tracks and turned west. It would be incorrect to say that he walked and starved to Chicago, but it would be fairly close to the truth. Now and then a motor or a truck picked him up, and he shared the driver's food. Or he lay overnight in a barn and the farmer's wife gave him a breakfast. Ing Chicago he was able to sell the blue suit, however, and so secured money for his meals' on the train back. He could not sell the shoes; they were worn paper thin.
But in one way, the constant effort to move west and to subsist while doing so had been good for him. He had been cold and hungry; there had been times when the mere effort of putting one foot before the other had required all the will power he could summon. But there was little time in his general misery to think back. Such faculties as he had were directed only to getting back home again.
So it was that the Ursula paper one day announced his return.
"Tom McNair has returned from riding the big circle in the East. Tom looks a bit leg weary, but reports a good time was had by all."
At Omaha he had wired the Sheriff, but when one evening he descended from the day coach Allison was not in sight. The platform was dark and deserted save for the station agent, peering at him.
"That you, Tom? Well, say, I thought you'd lit out for good!"
God, it was good to be back; to feel the brisk night air, to see the loom of the mountains again, to find silence once more and familiar voices and faces. He stared at the lights of the town; he knew every one of them. This was home, this little corner of the earth, and beyond the lights there was the great back country. His country. Let those who wanted to live the other life; for him the long trail or the open plain, and a good horse under him.
He drew a long breath.
"Allison around?"
"Why, no. He left a message for you to go around and see him in the morning."
He went up the street to the Martin House. Ed was behind the cigar-stand desk, cleaning his finger nails with a pen-knife.
"Hello, Tom. When'd you drift in?"
"Just now, on twenty-one. Anything new?"
"I guess your coming back is the latest! Some of the fellows are upstairs."
But Tom shook his head. He had no money for poker and no inclination for a party.
"What I want's a good bed. I may be sleeping on a plank in the pen before long!"
But he discovered the next morning no immediate intention on Allison's part to curtail his liberty. He found the Sheriff in his office, a bare place with an oak desk for business and a cuspidor on a square of oilcloth for pleasure, and Allison received him without animus.
"Figured you'd be getting in about now, Tom," he said. "Have a good time?"
"Not so bad. You going to lock me up?"
"Well, I guess that's hardly necessary. We'll fix up some bail for you and let you go home. But don't take another notion to go traveling; it won't be healthy. Your man's still alive, but they throw out the doctor's stuff, and the medicine man's doing all he can to kill him. I suppose Dowling will go on your bail?"
And he was surprised to have Tom say:
"If that's the way I'm to get out you can lock me up until I rot."
"It was his beef, or so you claim."
"It was his beef all right, but I'm not taking anything from him in the way of help. You folks needn't be afraid I'll beat it. I'm seeing it through all right."
And, after complying with certain formalities, Allison let him go.
He knew Tom's popularity in the county; he was its best bronc rider and trick roper. And he knew too that the region as a whole supported his action in shooting Weasel Tail. He himself, an old cow-man, had a sneaking sympathy for him. Allison was coming up for reelection soon. It was no time to stress the law too hard.
By noon, to all intents and purposes, Tom was free. Old Tulloss, the banker, had to Tom's surprise gone on his bond. It was only when he was leaving that the Sheriff uttered a final word of caution.
"Better keep away from the Reservation, Tom," he said. "I understand your friend Little Dog's been stirring them up considerable, and they've got some bad actors up there."
"I'm aiming to get out of this trouble before I look for any more."
"That's the talk."
But Tom had one errand to be discharged before he left town for the ranch. There was no particular virtue in his attitude. The whole town was ringing with his return, and knew Clare must have heard of it. So to the bungalow, at Clare's lunch hour, he reluctantly repaired.
She was not at home yet, and her mother admitted him without cordiality.
"You can come in and wait if you want. She'll be here soon."
She started out, paused in the doorway with her lips tight, went on again.
He was uneasy; he rolled and lit a cigarette. After a wait he heard Clare coming in. She came slowly across the porch, and he heard her in the narrow hall.
"All right, mom."
Her voice was dispirited.
"You got company in the parlor," Mrs. Hamel called from the kitchen.
She opened the door, and the next moment flung herself at Tom with a little cry.
"I thought you'd gone," she said. "I thought you'd gone out to the ranch."
He released her as soon as he could, awkwardly.
"Couldn't very well do that, could I? After the little sport you'd been?"
His rebuff frightened her, but she kept her voice steady.
"Listen, Tom. They know." She jerked her head toward the kitchen. "I was late getting back, and they're raising hell."
"Well, what about it? They can't do anything."
"You promised, Tom!"
"There hasn't been any talk outside, has there?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Mom talks a lot. But you promised me, Tom."
"Now see here," he said desperately, "you've been fine to me, Clare, helping me the way you'did. But I'm not a marrying man. You know that. What have I got to marry on? Besides, if this Indian dies"
"I don't care what you've got."
"I wish to God you'd put me out of your head."
"I wish to God I could," she said shrilly. "Don't you suppose I know I'm a damned fool? I just can't help it. That's all."
And that was the way things stood when he left her. He was resentful and surly as he started for the ranch. After all he had not harmed her. She had been willing enough; she had the shrewdness of the small-town girl the world over, the knowledge of her physical power over a man once she had yielded. But some instinct of caution had saved him.
He shrugged his shoulders as he walked down the street.
"Then what's all the shootin' for?" he asked himself impatiently.
But on the way out the sheer joy of home-coming wiped her out of his mind. Even the knowledge that this home-coming of his was but a temporary thing, that before long, with luck as to Weasel Tail, he would be drifting again, all his worldly gear behind him on the saddle, had not the power to take away the sense of peace at last. The road left the town, rose over a hill and dropped again. And the hill wiped out the town as though it had never been.
The weather had moderated, and in the fields on either side of the road ploughing was going on. The sharp blades of the sulky-plough bit through the surface and laid the dark earth over in long ribbons; the four great horses abreast strained, the ploughman lurched in his small seat. Here and there a man was drilling in his winter wheat. Three horses instead of four then, and behind in the tiny furrow a delicate scattering of seed; the machine moved on, the wheat was covered. Soon, please God, it would come up, lie warm under the winter snows, and in the spring wax strong under the early sun.
His contempt for the men who were turning the old range into farms began to die in him. They were his friends, his own people. He waved his hand to them, and they nodded and bumped and lurched along.