Bruce of the Circle A Part 26

"I have thought it all over," she said, as if he had challenged her with words, "and I've made up my mind that my place, for the time, anyhow, is with Ned. It's best for me to be here; it's best for Ned to know and have it over with.... Have a complete understanding."

He looked away from her, failing to mark the significance of her last words or to see the fresh determination in her face.

"It had to come sometime. I expect now's about as likely a day as any,"

he said, gloomily, and untied the roll from her saddle. "I'll show you around th' house so you'll know where things are,"--and started across toward the shade of the ash tree.

Ann walked beside him, wanting to speak, not knowing what to say. She found no words at all, until they gained the kitchen and stood within.

Bayard placed her bundle on the table.

"Do you mean that you won't be here?" she faltered.

"Well, that's th' best way," he said, looking down and rubbing the back of a chair thoughtfully.

"I can't...."

"Yes, you can,"--divining what was in her mind and interrupting. "I'll be glad to have you meet him here, ma'am. 'Twould offend me if you went away, but I think, considerin' everythin', how you've been apart so long an' all, it'd be better for me to leave you two alone. I've got business in town anyhow," he lied. "I'd have to go in either to-night or in th'

mornin'. It's th' best way all round."

He did not look at her during this, could not trust himself to. He felt that to meet her gaze would mean that he would be tempted again to declare his love for her, his hatred for her husband, because this hour was another turning point for them all. For the safety of Ned Lytton to hold himself in accord with his own sense of right, it was wise for him to be away at the meeting of husband and wife; not fear for himself but of himself drove him from his hearth. He knew that Ann's eyes were on him, steady and inquiring, felt somehow that she had suddenly become mistress of the situation. Heretofore, he had dominated all their interviews. But now that eminence was gone. He was retreating from this woman and not wholly in good order, for he could not remain with her nor could he trust himself to give a true explanation of his departure.

To delay longer, to just stand there and discuss the very embarra.s.sing situation, would be no relief, might only lead to greater discomfiture, he knew, so he said:

"All th' things to cook with are in that cupboard, ma'am,"--turning away from her to indicate. "All th' pots an' pans an' dishes are below there, on those shelves. He ... your husband knows, anyhow. He can show you round.

"In here.... This is his room."

He paused when halfway across the floor, turned and looked at her. In her eye he caught a troubled quality.

"He's been sleepin' here," he repeated, walking on and opening the door.

The woman followed and looked over his shoulder.

"But I've another room; my room, in here,"--moving to another door.

"This is mine, an' as I won't be here you can use it as you ... as you want to."

Nothing in his tone or manner of speech suggested anything but the idea contained in his words, but Ann's eyes rested on his profile with a sudden grat.i.tude, a warmth. Surprise came to her a moment later and she exclaimed,

"Oh, how fine!"

He had thrown the door back and stood aside for her to enter. Light came into the room from three windows and before the gentle breeze white curtains billowed inward. Navajo blankets covered the floor. The bed, in one corner, was spread with a gay serape and beside it was a bookcase with shelves well filled. In the center of the room stood a table and on it a reading lamp. About the walls were pictures, few in number but interesting.

At Ann's exclamation Bruce smiled broadly, pleased.

"I'm glad you like it," he said. "I do. I thought maybe you would."

"Why, it's splendid!" she cried again. "It doesn't look like a room in the house of a bachelor rancher. It doesn't look like...."

She stopped and looked up at him, puzzled, questioning so eloquently with her gaze that it was unnecessary for him to await the spoken query.

"Yes, I did it myself," he said with a flushed laugh. Their self-consciousness was relieved by the change of thought. "It's mine; all mine. You ... You're the first person to come in here, ma'am, except Tim.... He was my daddy, an' he's dead. I don't ask folks in here 'cause it's so much trouble to explain to most of 'em. They'd think I'm stuck up, with lace curtains an' all...."

He waved his hands to include the setting.

"I can live with th' roughest of 'em an' enjoy it; I can put up with anything when it's necessary, but somehow I've always wanted something different, something that'll fill a place that plenty of grub an' a hot stove don't always satisfy.

"Them curtains,"--with a chuckle--"came from th' Manzanita House. They were th' first decorations I put up. I woke up one mornin' after I'd been ... well, relieving my youth a little. I was in one of th' hotel rooms. 'Twas about this time of year an' th' wind was soft an' gentle, blowin' through th' windows like it does now, an' them curtains looked so cool an' clean an' homelike that I... Well, I just rustled three pair, ma'am!"

He laughed again and crossed the room to free one curtain that had caught itself on a protruding hook.

"Tim an' me had a great argument, when I brought 'em home. Tim, he says that if I was goin' to have curtains, I ought to go through with th'

whole deal an' have gilt rods to hang 'em on. I says, no, that was goin'

too far, gettin' to be too dudish, so I nailed 'em up!"

He pointed to show her the six-penny nails that held them in place, and Ann laughed heartily.

"Then, I played a little game that th' boys out here call Monte. It's played with cards, ma'am. I played with a Navajo I know--an' cards--an'

he had just one kind of luck, awful bad. That's where these blankets come from,"--smiling in recollection.

All this pleased him; he saw the humor of a man of his physique, his pursuit, furnis.h.i.+ng a room with all the pains of a girl.

"Those are good rugs. See? They're all black an' gray an' brown: natural colors. Red an' green are for tourists.

"I bought that serape from a Mexican in Sonora when I was down there lookin' around. That lamp, though, that's th' best thing I got."

He leaned low to blow the dust from its green shade with great pains, and Ann laughed outright at him.

"I never could learn to dust proper, ma'am. It don't bother me so long's I don't see it," he confessed. "A man who came out here to stay with us for his health--a teacher--brought that lamp; when he went back, he left it for me. I think a lot of it."

"You read by it?" she asked.

"Lord, yes! Those,"--waving his hand toward the books, and she walked across to inspect them, Bayard moving beside her. "He left 'em for me.

He keeps sendin' me more every fall. I ... I learnt all I know out of them, an' from what he told me. It ain't much--what I know. But I got it all myself; that makes it seem more."

Ann's throat tightened at that, but she only leaned lower over the shelves. d.i.c.kens was there, and Thackeray; one or two of Scott and a broken set of Dumas. History and travel predominated, with a volume of Kipling verse and a book on mythology discovered in a cursory inspection.

"I think a lot of my books. I like 'em all.... I liked that story 'bout Oliver Twist th' best of 'em," he said, pointing to the d.i.c.kens. "Poor kid! An' old Bill Sykes! Lord, he was a h.e.l.lion--a bad one, ma'am,"--correcting himself hastily. "An' Miss Sharpe this man Thackeray wrote about in his book! I'd like to know a woman like her; she sure was a slick one, wasn't she? She'd done well in th' cow business."

"Do you like these?" she asked, indicating the Scott.

"Well, sometimes," he said. "I like th' history in 'em, but, unless I got a lot of time, like winter, I don't read 'em much. I like 'Ivanhoe'

pretty well any time, but in most of 'em Walt sure rounded up a lot of words!"

She smiled at that.

"This is th' best of 'em all, though," he said, drawing out Carlyle's French Revolution. "It took me all one winter to get on to th' hang of that book, but I stayed by her an' ... well, I'd rather read it now than anythin'. Funny that a man writin' so long ago could say so many things that keep right on makin' good.

"I'd like to know him," he said a moment later. "I could think up a lot of questions to ask a man like that."

He stood running over the worn, soiled pages of his "French Revolution"