There was not much romance for Bill Dunham in making his bed on a blanket out under the stars, for even the bones of tired youth will find the inequalities of the sod, every stick and small stone, before daylight breaks. Bill Dunham wondered if men ever grew so hardened to the earth's unpadded surface for a mattress that they could stretch out, lie still and sleep serenely. It was a matter open to the most substantial doubt.
His second night on a cowboy's bed was not as successful as his first, for he was a grain between the millstones of conscience and the lumpy surface of buffalo-grass sod. He tossed and groaned, thinking what a dunce he had been to leave the land of feather beds to come out there pursuing the enchantment of distance, where romance materialized as trouble and the selfishness of men stood out raw-boned on the gray-green prairie without a bush to hide its vulpine ugliness.
Dunham was troubled over what he had done. While he knew very well his act had been within the law, he didn't like to think of the possible devastation Texas fever might work in the herds of men quite innocent of any affront to him. He had been moved by a flare of hate against Moore, which had cooled now and left a taste like the nausea of a debauch in his mouth.
While his resentment had not been without justification, he admitted now that it had not been sufficient to warrant him in setting out maliciously to ruin Moore by a means which might break a hundred men whom he never had met. He might as well have gone on and forgotten it, as he had gone on and forgotten many a threat to knock his head off before. Moore had been testy that day. He was a man full of troubles, and it no doubt seemed to him that Dunham was a sort of pestiferous insect that couldn't be fanned away.
Bill saw it all in a wiser and cooler mind as he lay gazing wide-eyed at the stars, for that is a very good situation for a man to get hold of himself, measuring his stature against the universe that way, and finding out how very little he actually weighs.
A worse feature of the business was the certain alienation of Zora Moore. She would pass him as a stranger from that day; she would scorn him as a traitor to the interests of his native state, by which a man was required to stand and put up a good fight, after the heroic traditions of Old John Brown. And he had been thinking of arriving at that happy pass with her when he might hold her soft white chin in the cup of his hand, as he used to hold the chins of little girls—cold little chins, and wind-rough—when they fell and bumped them on the ice, long, long ago.
Bill had parted company with Hughes after the cattle were bedded down for the night, pickets thrown around them to guard against dispersion by panic or wanton design. Dunham had gone on north ten or twelve miles, withdrawn from the trail, hobbled his horse and stretched out for needed repose. The strain of the day had been heavy; he was weary, and sore from unaccustomed travel in the saddle.
There was a smell of summer in the night wind, a sound of summer in the zirr of insects, which seemed far away, distant revellers in what bowers of green he could not guess. He was lonesome; he longed for the scent of a black, moist furrow, the melon-sweet odor of blooming corn.
It didn't appeal to him as much of a life, riding by day, and day after day, in the unvarying dumb routine of guarding plodding cattle on the trail, or watching over them on the range, to bunk down on the ground at night like a hog. Romance had glamored over the mind-cramping routine and the hardships, as romance always gilds its trumpery, after the fashion of sin.
As soon as it was light enough to find his horse, which had wandered far in the freedom of a too-humane hobble, Bill mixed up a mess of biscuit dough, which turned out a distressing failure of burnt crust and clammy interior, and leaded himself down like a diver. He thought if he felt as heavy to the horse as he did to himself with that mess inside him, he'd wear the poor old devil out before he reached the Arkansas. The sun was well up when he took the trail again, with a look toward the south, where he expected to see the dust of Hughes' herd on the march.
There was no sign of the herd. Bill speculated on how things were with Hughes by that time: whether the Kansas cattlemen had forced him to go back, or were permitting him to advance under guard. He rode on northward in a leisurely canter, with the feeling of a man whose time was all his own, and not so very valuable at that.
Dunham soldiered along, making little side excursions now and then to inspect the varying nature of the soil, with more the interest of agriculturist than stockman, delaying purposely to bring himself past the Moore ranch about noon. He believed he would have a better chance of slipping by unseen at that hour, when the family would be feeding in the heavy-going, earnest range fashion.
All was quiet there when he passed, the sun hot on his shoulders, hot in the dust-white road. A few horses were dozing, neck over neck, in the corral; they lifted their heads and set their ears in a listless interest when they heard him. A few hens lolling in dust-wallows beside the road cut for the fence, expressing chicken resentment over the disturbance, which is a weak kind of protest at the best. Dunham felt a crawling thrill of apprehension in his scalp at the cackling. He feared one of the boys would pop out to see who was going by, and shout the news to Zora.
It would be an awkward thing to explain to Zora that he was the kind of a man who couldn't stay hired, in spite of her confident assurance that he'd stick this time. One explanation would involve another, and Zora would be the girl who could say things to make a man squirm. So Bill breathed easier when he had passed the house and rounded the little point of cottonwoods at the bend of the road.
He probably never should see Zora again, for he felt that his way led wide from that land. It gave him a sinking pang to think of that, for Zora was a girl that a man could easily like too well for his own peace. It made him lonesome and hollow-feeling to think of the entrancing allurement of her round white chin.
Bill rode along with his head bent, his heart as heavy as the sour biscuit dough he had mixed that morning. His road was drawing out between him and Zora; she would soon be far behind him, for his path would not lead back that way again, the one precious reality among the false figures and fancies which romance had set to deceive his eagerly credulous eyes.
How could he have been so stupid as to think of humbling Moore's arrogance and bringing his fortunes low without including Zora in the disaster? She would suffer as keenly as her father in any humiliation or loss that might fall on him. It was strange, but he had not thought of Zora as John Moore's daughter while his rage drove him on against the cattleman. It was hard, even in sober sanity and half-acknowledged regret, to think of Zora in that relation. She was no more like her father than an egg is like a hen.
A nice girl, a generous girl, where her father was overbearing, full of loud egotism, and profanely coarse. Perhaps Zora would grow to a fleshy redness in that atmosphere of cattle after a while, when she had married some cavalier of the range with a big mustache under his snout. Bill sighed over the thought. He wished better fortune for Zora, but there did not appear to be any plan in his horoscope for helping her out. He was on his way; where it might lead he did not know.
Bill sighed again, turning a quick glance over his shoulder to see if anybody had come out of the house. All was quiet there; even the horses had lapsed into their sunny somnolence. From the hilltop where Shad Brassfield had told of the fittified man's revival, Bill took one last look at the house and said good-by. It was a shame that such a nice girl as Zora didn't have a father worthy of her.
From there Dunham swung on a little more briskly, thinking of the explanation he'd have to give MacKinnon, and of selling his horse and getting his ticket to Santa Fé, Zora Moore persisting in the background of his thoughts like prism spots before the eyes after one has looked too openly at the sun. At a turn of the trail he met her, the very substance of the shadow that could not be excluded from his mind.
Zora pulled up with a startled look; Bill hauled in so suddenly he skidded his horse through the dust, raising considerable commotion, for he had been pounding along at a pretty lively clip. Zora looked at him coldly. Bill's heart swung low at sight of her pale face and unfriendly eyes. The news of his exploit with the Texas herd had beaten him to Pawnee Bend.
"I see they let you live!" Zora said contemptuously.
"They didn't exac'ly kill me," Bill admitted, but with weak embarrassment, as if he apologised for being undeservedly alive.
"You bluffed it through, but you wouldn't 'a' done it if I'd been there!"
"No, Miss Zora," Bill replied, his voice steady and frank, "I wouldn't even 'a' tried it."
"You made it on the bluff you threw in my father's face, singlin' him out that way from the rest of them," she charged, hot blood rising in her pale face. "You knew darned well he wasn't a fightin' man—not that kind of a fightin' man."
"When you get the straight of it some day, and stand off and look at it calm and cool," Bill said, beginning to feel his contrition dissolving fast away as the incidents of his reception at Moore's camp flashed up like a flare revealing his just grievance, "you'll be a little easier on me, maybe."
"You made a quick deal, sellin' out on the fame you got by killin' Ford Kellogg," she sneered. "Your big nhame's worth money to you now, but wait and see where you'll land."
Bill turned his horse and drew up beside her, heading the way he had come. He put out his hand with a dignified slow motion, as if to fix her attention on some object down the road.
"I could say a whole lot on my side of this thing, but I know it wouldn't do a bit of good," he said. "I bid you good-by when I passed your house, so I guess I'll be rackin' on."
"Good-by?" She looked at him queerly, her eyes stretching, her mouth half open. "You must be crazy! I wasn't there."
"No, but I thought you were."
"Oh, Mr. Dunham! what made you do it, what made you do it!" she said, her contemptuous hard manner changed suddenly to injured lamentation. "What made you want to turn on us this way and ruin us all?"
Bill looked at the road, his long face as solemn as if his last hope lay in the dust at his horse's feet. He sat that way in his meditative posture a little while, her beseeching, sorrowfully regretful words echoing in his ears.
"I stood there and sweat blood to keep my hand off of my gun"—looking up with disconcerting suddenness—"I took what he—what they said with my teeth shut on my tongue, and I rode away with a bullet singin' over my head. I let 'em cuss me and belittle me, and tell me what kind of big men they needed to keep Texas cattle out of here, and then I headed over that river swearin' I'd show him—show them if I wasn't man enough to help keep 'em out I was man enough to bring 'em in. I didn't so much consider the consequences then, for I was sore—I was sore to the bone."
He turned his earnest face away, to look off toward the south as if for the evidence that would prove to her he had made good on his intention. But the herd was many miles away; its dust was not rising high enough, if rising at all, to be seen at that great distance.
"Maybe I was wrong," he said, "but I was tired of bein' the under dog. I had to bear that long enough when I was a starved, cowed boy, picked on and kicked around by the bigger and richer fellers when I wasn't able to help myself. I put them days behind me when I came out here— Excuse me, Miss Zora."
He cooled off suddenly, as if he had became alarmed at showing that corner of his heart. The red embers of anger faded out of his lean cheeks, the fire of resentment out of his eyes.
"I always did talk too much," he said slowly, his voice low as if he lay the charge to his own conscience, and not for the ears of anybody at all.
Zora reached out with quick impulse, leaning, and touched his shoulder.
"Did you give pa that letter?"
"I didn't think of it that minute, I was so rattled. They started on me as soon as I rode into camp. I sent it to him after I came back across the river yesterday morning."
"It might have made a big difference in the way he talked to you if you'd handed him the letter first," she said regretfully. "You saw what a difference it made in all of them after they'd heard about Kellogg. If it hadn't been for that you'd never 'a' got that herd through, Bill."
"I wasn't any better man after that than before."
"They thought you were, anyhow. If that herd brings in the fever it'll clean us out. Oh, Bill! why didn't you think of me—me and mother and the boys? We tried to treat you right when you were here."
"Hughes, the man that owns them, says they're clean cattle."
"They all say that, but they don't know. Their cattle never show it."
"Yes, you folks treated me white," Bill said, going back to the question which he was too honest to dodge.
"Hal Garland came by last night and told us about you bringin' the herd in. Everybody's gettin' their cattle away from the trail—they're going to let this herd come on and load, now the damage is done. The news is all over the range to-day, and everybody's sore at you. Where are you going now?"
"Up to Pawnee Bend to sell my horse."
"Leavin'?"
Bill nodded, heavy with remorse for having brought this shadow of disaster to Zora's door. She was still friendly, in spite of the way she had come at him, and ready to be more than friendly, as he never had hoped she would be, only indulging the alluring speculation as another mirage of romance that he never could approach.
"I hoped you'd stay," she confessed wistfully, as for something gone. "But I don't see how you can stay now."
"I didn't think there was anything to stay for," Bill said miserably.
"Whatever there was you spoiled it."
"I'm sorry," Bill said, his contrition far deeper than the waters of the Cimarron.
"Where are you going when you sell your horse, Bill?"
"I was thinkin' of New Mexico, but I may make it California; I don't know."
"Oh, what made you do it! what made you do it!"
There was a shake in her voice; it broke at the end in asob. She turned her face away, to hide her tears, Bill knew. If he had suspected himself of treason to her before, he stood convicted of it now.
"I was a damn fool!" he said in abject bitterness.
Zora put her handkerchief to her nose. Bill saw her round white chin quiver as she gulped her tears.
"You—sure—was!" she said. "But maybe"—hopefully, turning to him with a quick light in her tearful eyes—"if it is a clean herd you can come back."
"And if it ain't," Bill leaned yearningly, his hand put out in expressive gesture of appeal, "if it ain't, Zora, maybe you can come to me?"
She shook her head and turned away, handkerchief pressed hard to her teeth.
"You'll be outlawed on this range, even mother will be against you. What made you do it, Bill—what made you do it!"
Bill couldn't answer that question even to his own satisfaction now. A reason for a man's acts might appear entirely valid when he hadn't a friend on earth; quite different when he had just one friend like Zora Moore. He felt so abject and mean he couldn't say a word.
"I know how you felt about it, Bill; I don't blame you like the rest of them do. Garland said he told them they'd made a mistake treatin' you that way, but he don't excuse you for endangerin' everybody to play even with a few. Nobody will, or not many, anyhow. It would have been better if you'd pulled your gun and cleaned up on 'em, but the way it stands I don't see what there is for you to do but go."
"Nobody's goin' to lose any cattle, Zora," he said. "Hughes has got a lot of Herefords, as fine and healthy lookin' cattle as any on this range—better than any I've seen on it so far. I'd bet my life on it they never had anything wrong with 'em in their lives."
"That's what you've done," Zora said, nodding her head sadly. "No matter how it turns out, you've bet your life. They may not be expecting you to come on ahead of the herd—maybe you've got a chance if you work fast. But if you can't sell your horse don't hang around Pawnee Bend for that. Leave it there; I'll take care of sellin' it and send you the money if you'll write. They'll be down on me for it, but I don't give a darn. They might 'a' given you a little more decent deal than they did—pa and all the rest of them."
"You're the best friend I ever had, Zora. Nobody ever offered to risk as much as a dog-bite for me before in my life."
"They'll be after you as soon as they find you've left the Texas herd and come to town. It'd be safer if you didn't wait at all, but put your horse in the stable and take the first train. You can write to me when you get where you're going. I don't suppose there'll be much harm in that."
"I hate a fuss," Bill said cogitatively, looking hard at the ground, "but I don't like to be crowded when I'm goin' someplace. I never was run out of anywhere yet, Zora, and if they come at me that way they'll find me kind of hard to scare. I didn't break any law when I brought that Texas herd over the river."
"No, it would have been different if you'd broken the law. They don't go after a man down here near the line half as hard for breakin' the law as they do for hurtin' their feelings. You've hurt their pride, even if they come through without losing any cattle, and that's going to be hard to square."
"Yes, I guess it runs in the human breed that way."
"You intended to leave the country, Bill," she said, as if reminding him of a good intention in the way of being disregarded.
"Of my own free will; not with somebody tellin' me I had to go. I don't mind dancin', either, but I object to somebody tryin' to make me do it by shootin' at my feet."
"But you were going, Bill—you were going!" Zora spoke almost frantically, as if everything in her life depended on his pursuit and faithful performance of his original intention.
"Yes, but I didn't have anything to stay for then," Bill replied serenely.
Zora pressed him farther, urging him, for her sake at last, to go. But the best she could get out of him when all was said was maybe. Maybe he'd go, maybe he wouldn't. He'd let her know.
There was no reservation in Bill's mind when they parted. He was not going to leave that country; that was a cinch. Not when he had found there the most precious thing that ever had entered his lean and lonely life. He didn't want to set up in business as a professional fighting man, but there was a whole lot of comfort in the thought that if they went to throwing lead he was a pretty handy man that way himself.
He looked around the broad open country, untrammeled by a fence, unmarked by the habitation of man as far as the eye could sweep, enlarging with a pleasant home-feeling as he drew his breath deeply and felt his happiness increase. That country, lately so bare and unfriendly to his gaze, had become the most beautiful, the one to be desired above all the lands of earth.
More than that: it was Kansas, his Kansas. It was home. He'd like to see the color of any man's hair that was going to make him dig his toes in the road to leave it, now that he had more to stay for than flocks and herds, or suzeranity over unfenced plains.