DURING that three days Kay suffered more intensely than she had ever suffered before. She tried hard to reason with herself; after all, why not take him at his word? He had wanted to marry her. He need not have done it. A word to her that day and she would have gone back.
But now and then Herbert's words came back to her. "He's violent; he fights and he drinks—and he's a bad man with women."
A bad man with women! Then if that were so, perhaps this girl had a call on him. And he had said he had acted like a yellow dog to her. What did that imply? What was he doing in town all this time; this man who fought and drank, and perhaps debauched? This strange man who was her husband? A little more time, perhaps, and she would have been fairer, but in the early morning of the day after the Fair had closed, Kay who had been sleeping badly, heard his horse coming slowly up the lane, and sat up in her bed.
Tom did not come in at once. He went to the corral, grained the animals, waited until they had finished and then turned them out. Even then he seemed loath to come into the house. From the window as she was getting the breakfast she saw him rolling a cigarette by the corral. He looked very tired, and when he finally started for the house his limp was painfully apparent. He came slowly and evidently unwillingly, and as he neared her she saw a vivid bruise on his cheek.
She turned a little sick. Herbert was right after all! He was weak. He was one of the brotherhood who sought escape from reality in liquor. When he finally opened the kitchen door she was busy at the stove. She could not speak, and after eying her for a moment he threw up his head.
"I'll get you some water," he said without further greeting, and took the pail out to the pump. When he came back he had clearly made up his mind to a course of action.
"Breakfast's ready."
"I'm not eating. Not yet. You and I've got some things to clear up first."
"You'd better have some coffee," she said coldly. "You look as though you need it."
"About this girl," he began, ignoring her remark, "I just want to say this. She"
"It isn't about the girl; not now. I daresay I was foolish. That's all over."
He stared at her.
"Then what?"
"I think," she said, her lips shaking, "that you've been drinking again."
"What makes you think that?"
"Drinking and fighting," she persisted. "Maybe you haven't seen the bruise on your face."
She could hear the shrewish overstrained note in her own voice, but she could not control it. Tom put his hand to his cheek, and then turning went into the bedroom and closed the door. When he came out again he had a blanket over his arm, and the old felt slipper in his hand.
"When you're in a reasonable mood we'll talk this thing over," he said. "Until you tell me you're ready I'm sleeping in the barn."
She had a wild hysterical fit of crying after he had gone, lying face down on the bed; she was filled with self-pity. She had abandoned everything that made life worth while, recklessly staked all she had on one throw of the dice, and luck had been against her. But after a time the will power which was her inheritance from old Lucius Dowling asserted itself. She got up and set about the routine of the day, heated more water and washed the breakfast dishes from which nothing had been eaten, and swept and dusted the sitting room.
Tom did not come in again, and later on she saw him in the Ford, starting out. He never so much as glanced at the house as he went by. Suspicion was still doing strange things to her; was he going after more liquor? Some of the Mexicans at Judson were bootlegging. Or again, maybe he had brought some with him from town, and secreted it somewhere? In the barn, maybe.
White and wide-eyed, very near the point of a nervous collapse if she had known it, she waited until he had gone, and then went out, past the breaking corral to the barn. But she found no liquor. What she did find, hidden under his saddle, was Tom's boot, one of that handsome pair which he had put on so proudly. Rather than ask her, he had slit it with a knife. Rather than ask her.
He did not come back until late that night. Then he stalked into the house, the bruise on his cheek an even darker purple, laid the Ursula paper before her without a word and stalked out again. His supper was waiting, but he had not so much as glanced at the table.
She looked at the paper. He had marked a paragraph. It was entitled "Is riding dead in the West?" and ran as follows: "Anyone who believes that this country is not raising riders equal to any, should have watched Tom McNair yesterday in his battle with the Cheyenne horse, Satan, which came here with a record of never having been ridden before. The horse had thrown two good men on previous days, and only by clever work was Bert Ramson, on Thursday, saved from being trampled to death by the killer.
"Yesterday, McNair, who is still badly handicapped from a recent injury, fought the horse to a standstill"
But she did not finish. She was on her way to the barn.
Tom was just outside, unloading some packages from the car. He did not stop when she reached him.
"I'm sorry," she panted. "I can't bear it, Tom."
"Well," he said, without any particular feeling in his voice, "those little mistakes will happen."
She put her hand on his arm, but he evaded her and carried his parcels inside. When he came out again he stopped a little distance from her, and began to roll a cigarette.
"But if I say I'm sorry!"
He was silent. In that world she had left an apology was accepted, on the surface at least. Rancor and discord might remain, but they were glossed over. She felt helpless and defeated.
"What more can I say?" she asked desperately. "I can't go on fighting you, Tom. You're stronger than I am."
He gave a short bitter laugh.
"Me? Why, I'm a cripple! A child could knock me down and tramp on me!" Then, more gently, "You go back to the house, Kay. Don't you worry about me. I'm doing fine."
After that for some days they lived a curious sort of life. He came in for food, short constrained meals quickly over; he carried the water, chopped the wood for the stove, but he continued to sleep in the barn. Once again it was childish, absurd. But Kay began to wonder if something else did not lie behind his sense of injury; if this girl, this Clare, had not said something that had devastated his fierce pride, if she had not sown some seed of suspicion or distrust over which he was brooding. And in this she was correct. Out of all the hysterical reproaches of that unlucky afternoon, Tom had retained only one speech of hers, but that had stayed in his mind.
"I've watched her, Tom darling. You go in now and look at her. She thinks she's too good for this earth. She won't even speak to the folks around her. She acts as if they'd poison her if they touched her. And if she's too good for them she's too good for you. She'll leave you. She's sorry now. I used to see her from Dicer's crying her eyes out."
She believed it. There was sincerity in her red-rimmed eyes, in her weak quivering chin. And because she voiced his own fears they became fact to him.
"I've got to get back," he said morosely.
Her face hardened, her eyes narrowed.
"And there's something else," she said, her voice shrill. "She saw you in the show, and it carried her away. But it's different now. You're lame. I'll bet she hates that. It makes a difference, and don't you forget it."
"It doesn't seem to have made any difference to you," he reminded her, and smiled. But his heart was sick within him.
In the end it required what was by nature of a small calamity to bring him back to Kay.
He heard her calling to him, and he ran to the house. She was standing just inside the bolted door, and when he tried it her voice was frightened.
"Who is it?"
"Did you call me?"
She threw open the door, and he had a wild desire to catch her to him, but the next moment his pride took control once more.
"There was somebody outside the window, Tom. Looking in."
"Sure you didn't dream it?"
"I haven't been asleep," she said simply.
He looked down at her. In her bare feet, without the heels which gave her height, in her sleeveless nightgown, she looked small and young and infinitely appealing. Frightened too. For fear he would take her in his arms he swung around and stepped outside. After the lamplight—she had lighted a lamp—he could see nothing. He went back, got his revolver and started out again. There was starlight but no moon.
He made a round of the house; somewhere she heard him lighting matches, but when he opened the door again his face was impassive.
"I'll look a bit further," he told her. "Put out that lamp and lock the door again. I haven't seen anything, but you'll feel better."
She sat in the darkness, crouched and listening. There was no sound outside. After a time she could see, as she had in the bedroom, the faint rectangles which were the windows; she watched them, terrified, but that queer immobile outline did not return. Later on she crawled into bed for warmth, and sometime later, an hour or so, she heard him coming back. She admitted him, shivering. In the darkness he was a stranger to her, a big looming figure that did not reach out to her, but stood carefully just inside the door.
"I didn't find anybody, but if you're scared I'll roll up on the floor here."
"Why?" she said, her throat tight. "Why shouldn't you come into your own bed?"
"And be as welcome as poison ivy?"
"That's not true."
She tried to say "Oh, Tom, come back to me. I'm sorry. I love you; I love you madly." But her lips were stiff, and as if he had been waiting for something of the sort, he drew a long breath and moved into the room.
"I'm not asking any favors."
"I'm afraid to be alone, Tom."
He said nothing; he went out once more and looked around, and she stayed inside the door, waiting and listening. If he did not come back, she told herself, she would go home. She had reached her limit. She would cash her Aunt Bessie's check and go away. But soon she heard him coming from the corral; she had only time to get into the bed before he was at the door. Her heart was beating fast, her feet and hands were like ice. She listened to him moving about, preparing for the night. Once he struck a chair and swore under his breath, but he did not speak to her. When he got into bed it was to lie as far from her as possible, but toward dawn she wakened to find him sound asleep, with his arm around her.
It was late in the morning when he discovered that some one had cut through his dam and let out his precious hoard of water.