Bruce of the Circle A Part 14

Bayard, too, fought his bitter fight. The urge in him was to take her, to bear her away, to defy the laws that men had made to hurt her and to devil him; but something behind, something deep in him, forbade. He must go on, nursing back to strength that mockery of manhood who could lift his fuddled, obscene head and, with the blessing of society, claim Ann Lytton as his--her body, her soul! He must go on, though he wanted to strangle all life from the drunken ruin, because in him was the same rigid adherence to things that have been which held the woman there on her bed, face down, even though her limbs twitched to race after him and her arms yearned to twine about his neck, to pull herself close to his good chest, within which the great heart pumped.

And Nora? Was she conscienceless? Indeed, not. She had promised to befriend this strange woman because Bruce Bayard had asked it. It was not for Ann's sake she dully planned diversion; it was because of her love for the owner of the Circle A that she stifled her sorrow, her natural jealousy. She knew that to refuse him, to follow her first impulses, would hurt him; and that would react, would hurt her, for her devotion was that sort which would go to any length to make the man of her heart happier.

To Ann's ears came Bruce's sharp little whistle, and she could no longer lie still. She rose, half staggered to the window and stood holding the curtains the least bit apart, watching him stand motionless in the middle of the thoroughfare. Again, his whistle sounded and from a distance she heard the high call of the sorrel horse who had moved along the strip of gra.s.s that grew close beside the buildings, nibbling here and there. The animal approached his master at a swinging trot, holding his head far to the right, nose high in the air, that the trailing reins might not dangle under his feet. All the time he nickered his rea.s.surance and, when he drew to a halt beside his master, Abe's voice retreated down into his long throat until it was only a guttural murmur of affection.

"Old Timer, if I was as good a man as you are horse, I'd find a way,"

Bruce said half aloud as he gathered the reins.

He mounted with a rhythmical swing of shoulder and limb, and gave the stallion his head, trotting out of town with never a look about.

CHAPTER IX

LYTTON'S NEMESIS

That which followed was a hard night for both Bayard and Lytton. The wounded arm was doing nicely, but the shattered nervous system could not be repaired so simply. Since the incident of the ransacked house and the pilfered whiskey, Lytton had not had so much as one drink of stimulant and, because of that indulgence of his appet.i.te, his suffering was made manifold. Denial of further liquor was the penalty Ned was forced to pay for the abuse of Bayard's trust. Much of the time the sick man kept himself well in hand, was able to cover up outward evidence of the torture which he underwent, and in that fact rested some indication of the determination that had once been in him. But this night the effects of his excesses were tearing at his will persistently and sleep would not come.

He walked the floor of the room into which his bed had been moved from the kitchen after the first few days at the ranch; his strength gave out and for a time he lay on the bed, muttering wildly,--then walked again with trembling stride.

Bayard heard. He, too, was suffering; sleep would not come to ease him.

He did not talk, did not yearn for action; just lay very quiet and thought and thought until his mind refused to function further with coherence. After that, he forced himself to give heed to other matters for the sake of distraction and became conscious of the sounds from the next room. When they increased with the hours rather than subsiding, he got up, partly dressed, made a light and went to Lytton.

Quarrelling followed. The sick man raved and cursed. He blamed Bayard for all his suffering, denounced him as a meddler, whining and storming in turn. He declared that to fight against his weakness was futile; the next moment vowed that he would return to town, and face temptation there and beat it; and within a breath was explaining that he could easily cure himself, if he could only be allowed to taper off, to take one less drink each day. Before it all, Bayard remained quietly firm and the incident ended by Lytton screaming that at daylight he would leave the ranch and die on the Yavapai road before he would submit to another day of life there.

But when dawn came he was sleeping and the rancher, after covering him carefully, retired to his room for two hours' rest before rousing for a morning's ride through the hills.

He was back at noon and found Lytton white faced, contrite. Together they prepared a meal.

"I was pretty much of an a.s.s last night," Lytton said after they had eaten a few moments in silence. It was one of those rare intervals in which a bearing of normal civility struggled through his despicability and Bayard looked up quickly to meet his indecisive gaze, feeling somehow that with every flash of this strength he was rewarded for all the work he had done, the unpleasantness he had undergone. Rewarded, though it only made Lytton a stronger, more enduring obstacle between him and a consummation of his love.

"I'm sorry," the man confessed. "It wasn't I. It was the booze that's still in me."

"I understand," the cowman said, with a nod. A moment of silence followed.

"There's something else, I'm sorry about," Lytton continued. "The other day I tried to get nasty about a girl, the girl Nora at the Manzanita House, didn't I?"

"Oh, you didn't know what you said."

"Well, if I didn't, that's no excuse." He was growing clearer, obtaining a better poise, a.s.suming a more decided personality. "I apologize to you for what I said, and, if you think best, I'll go see her and apologize for the advances I made to her."

"No, no,"--with a quick gesture. "That wouldn't do any good; she'll never know."

"As you say, then. I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry; that's all. I know how a fellow feels when his girl's name is dragged into a brawl that way. I've noticed you sort of dolling up lately when you've started for town,"--with a faint twinkle in his eyes and a smile that approximated good nature. "I know how it is with you fellows who still have the woman bug,"--a hint of bitterness. "I know how touchy you'll all get. You ... you seem to be rather interested in that Nora girl."

Bayard made no answer. He was uneasy, apprehensive.

"I've heard 'em talk about it in town. Funny that she's the only woman you've fallen for, Bayard. They tell me you won't look at another, that you brought her to Yavapai yourself several years ago. You're so particular that you have to import one; is that it?"

He laughed aloud and a hint of nastiness was again in the tone. The other man did not answer with more than a quickly pa.s.sing smile.

"Well, you fellows have all got to have your whirl at it, I suppose,"

Lytton went on, the good nature entirely gone. "You'll never learn except from your own experience. Rush around with the girls, have a gay time; then, it's some one girl, next, it's marriage and she's got you,"--holding up his gripped fist for emphasis. "She's got you hard and fast!"

He stirred in his chair and broke another biscuit in half.

"Believe me, I know, Bayard! I've been there. I.... h.e.l.l, I married a girl with a conscience,"--drawling the words, "That's the kind that hangs on when they get you ... that _good_ kind! She's too d.a.m.n fine for human use, she and her kind. You know," ... laughing bitterly--"she started out to reform me. One of that kind; get me? A d.a.m.ned straight-laced Puritan! She snivelled and prayed and, instead of helping me, she just drove me on and on. She's got me. See? I can't get away from her and the only good thing about being here is that there are miles between us and I don't hear her cant and prating!"

"Seems to me that a woman who sticks by a man when he goes clean to h.e.l.l must amount to something," observed Bayard, gazing at him pointedly.

Lytton shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe ... in some ways, but who the devil wants that kind hanging around his neck?" He pushed his plate away and stared surlily out through the door. Bayard tilted back in his chair and looked the Easterner in the face critically.

"Suppose somebody was to come along an' tell you they was goin' to take her off your hands. What'd you say then?"

"What do you mean?" disgruntled at the challenge in Bayard's query.

"Just what I say. You've been tellin' me what a bad mess mixin' with women is. I'm askin' you what you'd do if somebody tried to take your woman. You say it's bad, bein' tied up. How about it, if somebody was to step in an' relieve you?"

The other moved in his chair.

"That's different," he said. "To want to be away from a woman until she got some common sense, and to have another man _take_ your wife are two different things. To have a man take your wife would make anybody want to kill, no matter what trouble you might have had with her. Breaking up marriages, taking something that belongs to another man, has nothing to do with what I was talking about."

"You don't want her yourself. You don't want anybody else to have her.

Is that it?"

"Didn't I say that those were two different--"

"You want to look out, Neighbor!" Bayard said, with a smile, dropping the forelegs of his chair to the floor and leaning his elbows on the table. "You're talking one thing and meaning another. You want to keep your head, if you want to keep your wife. Don't make out you want to let go when you really want to hang on. Women are funny things. They'll stick to men like a burr, they'll take abuse an' suffer and give no sign of quittin', because they want love, gentleness, and they hate to give up thinkin' they'll get it from the man they'd planned would give it to 'em.

"But some day, while they're stickin' to a man who don't appreciate 'em, they'll see happiness goin' by ... then, they're likely to get it. And sometime that's goin' to happen to your wife; she'll see happiness somewhere else an' she'll go after it; then, she won't be around your neck, but somebody else'll have her!

"Oh, they're queer things ... funny things! You can't tell where th'

man's comin' from that'll meet 'em an' take their heart an' their head.

He may be right near 'em all th' time an' they never wake up to it for years; he may come along casual-like, not lookin' for anything, an' see 'em just by chance an' open his heart an' take 'em....

"Once I was in th' Club in Prescott an' I heard a mining engineer from th' East sing a song about some man who lived on th' desert.

"'From th' desert I come to thee,'

"it went,

"'On a stallion shod with fire....'

"An' then he goes on with th' finest love song you ever heard, endin'