Bruce of the Circle A Part 4

"Is there anything else I can do for you now?"

He knew that she wanted to go, yet some quality about her made him suspect that she wanted to stay on, too.

"No, Miss, nothin' ..." he answered. "I've got to go tend to my horse.

He's such a baby that he won't leave his tracks for anybody so long's he knows I'm here, so I can't send anybody else to look after him. But you've done enough. I'll wait a while till somebody else comes along to watch--"

"No, no! let me stay here ... with him."

"But--"

"I came here to help you. Won't you let me go through with it?"

He thought again that it was her pride forcing her on; he could not know that the prompting in her was something far deeper, something tragic. He said:

"Why if you want to, of course you can. I won't be gone but a minute.

I've let up on this pressure a little; we'll keep letting up on it gradual ... I've done this thing before. He's got to be watched, though, so he don't pull the bandages off and start her bleeding again."

The woman seated herself on the chair as he turned to go.

"It'll only be a minute," he a.s.sured her again, hesitating in the doorway. "I wouldn't go at all, only, when my horse is the kind of a pal he is, I can't let him go hungry. See?"

"I see," she said, but her tone implied that she did not, that such devotion between man and beast was quite incomprehensible ... or else that she had given his word no heed at all, had only waited impatiently for him to go.

He strode down the hallway and she marked his every footfall, heard him go stumping and ringing down the stairs two at a time, heard him leave the porch and held her breath to hear him say,

"Well, Old Timer, I didn't plan to be so long."

Then, the sound of shod hoofs crossing the street at a gallop.

She closed her eyes and let her head bow slowly and whispered,

"Oh, G.o.d ... there _is_ manhood left!"

She sat so a long interval, suffering stamped on her fine forehead, indicated in the pink and white knots formed from her clenched hands.

Then, her lips partly opened and she lifted her head and looked long at the covered face of the man on the bed. Her breath was swift and shallow and her att.i.tude that of one who nerves herself for an ordeal. Once, she looked down at the hand on the bed near her and touched with her own the hardened, soiled fingers, then gave a shake to her head that was almost a shudder, straightened in her chair and muttered aloud,

"He said ... I had the sand...."

She leaned forward, stretched a hand to the towel which covered the man's face, hesitated just an instant, caught her breath, lifted the shrouding cloth and gave a long, s.h.i.+vering sigh as she sat back in her chair.

At that moment Bruce Bayard in the corral across the street, pulled the bridle over his sorrel's ears. He slung the contrivance on one arm and held the animal's hot, white muzzle in his hands a moment. He squeezed so tightly that the horse shook his head and lifted a fore foot in protest and then, alarmed, backed quickly away.

"... I didn't intend it, Abe," the man muttered. "... I was thinkin'

about somethin' else."

CHAPTER IV

A REVELATION

When Bayard returned to the Manzanita House, he ran up the stairs with an eagerness that was not in the least inspired by a desire to return to his watching over the man he had chosen to succor. He strode down the hallway and into the room with his keen antic.i.p.ation thinly disguised by a sham concern. And within the doorway he halted abruptly, for the woman who had helped him, whose presence there had brought him back from his horse on a run, sat at the bedside with her hands limp in her lap and about her bearing an air that quite staggered him. Her face was as nearly expressionless as a human countenance can become. It was as if something had occurred which had taken from her all emotion, all ability to respond to any mental or sensory influence. For the moment, she was crushed, and so completely that even her reflexes did not react to the horror of the revelation. She did not look at Bayard, did not move; she might have been without the sense of sight or hearing; she did not even breathe perceptibly; just sat there with a fixity that frightened him.

"Why, Miss!" he cried in confused alarm. "I ... I wouldn't left you--"

She roused on his cry and shook her head, and he thought she wanted him to stop, so he stood there through an awkward moment, waiting for her to say more.

"Course, it was too much for you!" he concluded aloud, self-reproachfully, when she did not speak. "You're tired; this ... this takin' care of this booze-soaked carca.s.s was too much to ask of you.

I--"

"Don't," she said, in a dry, flat voice, looking up at him appealingly, mastering her voice with a heroic effort. "Don't, please! This.... This booze-soaked ... carca.s.s ...

"He is my husband."

The words with which she ended came in a listless whisper; she made no further sound, and the hissing of Bayard's breath, as it slipped out between his teeth, was audible.

All that he had said against that other man came back to him, all the epithets he had used, all the pains he had taken to impress on this woman, his wife, a sense of the utter degradation, the vileness, of Ned Lytton. For the instant, he was filled with regret because of his rash speech; the next, he was overwhelmed by realizing that all he had said was true and that he had been justified in saying those things of this woman's husband. The thought unpoised him.

"I didn't think you was married," he said, slowly, distinctly, his voice unsteady, scarcely conscious of the fact that he was putting what transpired in his mind into words. "Especially ... to a thing like that!"

The gesture of his one arm which indicated the prostrate figure was eloquent of the contempt he felt and the posture of his body, bent forward from his hips, was indication of his sincerity. He was so intense emotionally that he could not realize that his last words might lash the suffering woman cruelly. The thought was in him, so strong, so revolting, that it had to come out. He could not have restrained it had he consciously appreciated the hurt that its expression would give the woman.

She stared up at him, her numb brain wondering clumsily at the storm indicated in his eyes, about his mouth, and they held so a moment before she sat back in her chair, weakly, one wrist against her forehead.

"Here, come over by the window ... never mind him," he said, almost roughly, stepping to her side, grasping her arm and shaking it.

Ten minutes before the careful watching of that unconscious man had been the one important thing of the night, but now it was an inconsequential affair, a bother. Ten minutes before his interest in the woman had been a light, transient fancy; now he was more deeply concerned with her trouble than he ever had been with an affair of his own. He lifted the bandaged arm and placed a pillow beneath it, almost carelessly; then closed the door. He turned about and looked at Ann Lytton, who had gone to stand by the window, her back to him, face in her hands.

He walked across and halted, towering over her, looking helplessly down at the back of her bowed head. His arms were limp at his sides, until she swayed as though she would fall, and, then, he reached out to support her, grasping her shoulders gently with his big palms; when she steadied, he left his hands so, lifting the right one awkwardly to stroke her s.h.i.+vering shoulder. They stood silent many minutes, the man suffering with the woman, suffering largely because of his inability to bear a portion of her grief. After a time, he forced her about with his hands and, when she had turned halfway around, she lifted her face to look into his. She blinked and strained her eyes open and laughed mirthlessly, then was silent, with the knuckles of her fist pressed tightly against her mouth.

"I am so glad ... so glad that it was you ..." she said, huskily, after a wait in which she mastered herself, the thought that was uppermost in her mind finding the first expression. "I heard you say, down there, that he was a cripple and that ... that's what he is ... what I thought.

You ... you understand, don't you? A woman in my place _has_ to think something like that!"--in unconscious confession to a weakness. "I heard you say he was a cripple ... the man you were carrying ... and I thought it must be Ned, because I've had to think that, too. You understand?

Don't you?"

She looked into his eyes with the directness of a pleading child and, gripping her shoulders, he nodded.

"I think I understand, ma'am. I ... and I hope you can forget all th'

mean things I've said about him to-night. I--"

"And when you called me in here," she interrupted, heedless of his attempt at apology, "I was afraid at first, because something told me it was he. I had come all the way from Maine to see him; to find out about him, and I didn't want to blind myself after that. I wanted to know ...

the worst."

"You have, ma'am," he said, grimly, and took his hands from her shoulders and turned away.

"I was afraid it was Ned from the very first, but out there, with those other men around, I ... couldn't make myself look at him. And after that the suspense was horrible. I was glad when you called me to help you because that made me face it ... and even knowing what I know now is better in some ways than uncertainty. I ... I might have dodged, anyhow, if you hadn't made me feel you were trying to find out how far I would go ... what I would do. Your doubting me made me doubt myself and that ... that drove me on.

"It took a lot of courage to look at his ... face. But I had to know. I had to; I'd come all this way to know."