Bruce of the Circle A Part 8

"Don't you know me?"

The fevered eyes held on him, studying laboriously, and a smile struggled to bend the puffed lips.

"Sure ... you're the fellow, Nora's fellow ... the girl in the hotel. I tried to ... and she said you'd beat me up...." Something intended for a laugh sounded from his throat. The face of the man above him flushed slightly and the jaw muscles bulged under his cheek. "Where in h.e.l.l am I? How'd I get here?"

"I brought you here last night. You'd gone the limit in town. Somebody tried to shoot you an' got as far's your arm. I brought you here to try to make somethin' like a man of you,"--ending with a hint of bitterness in spite of the whimsical smile with which he watched the effect of his last words.

Lytton stirred.

"d.a.m.ned arm!" he muttered, thickly, evidently conscious of only physical things. "I thought something was wrong. It hurts like.... Say, whatever your name is, haven't you got another drink?"

"My name is Bayard; you know me when you're sober. You're at my ranch, th' Circle A. You've had your drink for to-day."

"May--Bayard. Say, for G.o.d's sake, Bayard, you ain't going to let me.... Why, like one gentleman to another, when your girl Nora, the waitress ... said you'd knock me ... keep away. I wasn't afraid....

Didn't know she was yours.... I quit when I knew.... Treated you like a gentleman. Now why ... don't you treat me like a gentle ... give me a drink. I kept away from your wo--"

"Oh, shut up!"

The ominous quality of the carelessly spoken, half laughing demand carried even to Lytton's confused understanding and he checked himself between syllables, staring upward into the countenance of the other.

"In the first place, she's not my woman, in th' way you mean; if she was, I wouldn't stand here an' only tell you to shut your mouth when you talked about her like that. Sick as you are, I'd choke you, maybe. In th' second place, I'm no gentleman, I guess,"--with a smile breaking through into a laugh. "I'm just a kind of he-man an' I don't know much about th' way you gentlemen have dealin's with each other.

"No more booze for you to-day. Get that in your head, if you can. I've got coffee for you now an' some soup."

He turned and walked to the stove in the far corner, kicked open the draft and took a cup from the shelf above. All the while the bleared, scarce understanding gaze of the man in bed followed him as though he were trying to comprehend, trying to get the meaning of Bayard's simple, direct sentences.

After he had been helped in drinking a quant.i.ty of hot coffee and had swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup, Lytton dropped back on the pillow, sighed and, with his puffed eyes half open, slipped back into a state that was half slumber, half stupor.

Bayard took the wounded arm from beneath the cover, unwrapped the bandages, eyed the clotted tear critically and bound it up again. Then he walked to the doorway and, with hands hooked in his belt, scowled out across the lavendar floor of the treeless valley which spread before and below him, rising to blue heights in the far, far distance. He stood there a long, silent interval, staring vacantly at that vast panorama, then, moved slowly across the fenced dooryard, let himself into a big enclosure and approached a round corral, through the bars of which the sorrel horse watched his progress with alert ears. For a half hour he busied himself with currycomb and brush, rubbing the fine hair until the sunlight was shot back from it in points of golden light and all the time the frown between his brows grew deeper, more perplexed. Finally, he straightened, tapped the comb against a post to free it of dust, flung an arm affectionately about the horse's neck, caressed one of the great, flat cheeks, idly, and, after a moment, began to laugh.

"Because we set our fool eyes on beauty in distress we cross a jag-cure with a reform school an' set up to herd th' cussed thing!" he chuckled.

"Abe, was there ever two bigger fools 'n you an' me? Because she's a beauty, she'll draw attention like honey draws bees; because she's in trouble an' can't hide it, she'll have everybody prospectin' round to locate her misery an' when they do, we'll be in th' middle of it all, keepin' th' worthless husband of a pretty young woman away from her. All out of th' goodness of our hearts. It won't sound good when they talk about it an' giggle, Abe. It won't sound good!" And then, very seriously,

"How 'n h.e.l.l could she marry a ... thing like that?"

During the day Lytton roused several times and begged for whiskey, incoherently, scarce consciously, but only once again did Bayard respond with stimulants. That was late evening and, after the drink, the man dropped off into profound slumber, not to rouse from it until the sun again rose above the hills and once more flooded the room with its glorious light. Then, he looked up to see Bayard smiling seriously at him, a basin and towel in his hands.

"You're a good sleeper," he said. "I took a look at your pinked arm an'

you didn't even move; just cussed me a little."

The other smiled, this time in a more human manner, for the swelling had partly gone from his lips and his eyes were nearer those of his species.

"Now, sit up," the cowman went on, "an' get your face washed, like a good boy."

Gently, swiftly, thoroughly, he washed Lytton's face and neck in water fresh from the well under the ash tree, and, when he had finished, he took the sick man in the crook of his big, steady arm, lifted him without much effort and placed him halfway erect against the re-arranged pillows.

"Would you eat somethin'?" he asked, and for the first time that day his patient spoke.

"Lord, yes! I'm starved,"--feebly.

Bayard brought coffee again and eggs and stood by while Lytton consumed them with a weak show of relish. During this breakfast only a few words were exchanged, but when the dishes were removed and Bayard returned to the bed with a gla.s.s of water the other stared into his face for the s.p.a.ce of many breaths.

"Old chap, you're mighty white to do all this," he said, and his voice trembled with earnestness. "I ... I don't believe I've ever spoken to you a dozen times when I was sober and yet you.... How long have you been doing all this for me?"

"Only since night before last," Bayard answered, with a depreciating laugh. "It's no more 'n any man would do for another ... if he needed it."

Lytton searched his face seriously again.

"Oh, yes, it is," he muttered, with a painful shake of his head. "No one has ever done for me like this, never since I was a little kid....

"I ... I don't blame 'em; especially the ones out here. I've been a rotter all right; no excuse for it. I ... I've gone the limit and I guess whoever tried to shoot me was justified ... I don't know,"--with a slow sigh--"how much h.e.l.l I've raised.

"But ... but why did you do this for me? You've never seen me much; never had any reason to like me."

The smile went from Bayard's eyes. He thought "I'm doing this not for you, but for a woman I've seen only once...." What he said aloud was: "Why, I reckoned if somebody didn't take care of you, you'd get killed up. I might just as well do it as anybody an' save Yavapai th' trouble of a funeral."

They looked at one another silently.

"A while ago ... yesterday, maybe ... I said something to you about a, about a woman," the man said, and an uneasiness marked his expression.

"I apologize, Old Man. I don't know just what I said, but I was nasty, and I'm sorry. A ... a man's woman is his own affair; n.o.body's else."

"You think so?" The question came with a surprising bluntness.

"Why, yes; always."

Bayard turned from the bedside abruptly and strode across the floor to the table where a pan waited for the dirty dishes, rolling up his sleeves as he went, face troubled. Lytton's eyes followed him, a trifle sadly at first, but slowly, as the other worked, a cunning came into them, a s.h.i.+ftiness, a crafty glitter. He moistened his lips with his tongue and stirred uneasily on his pillow. Once, he opened his mouth as though to speak but checked the impulse. When the dishpan was hung away and Bayard stood rolling down his sleeves, Lytton said:

"Old man, yesterday you gave me a drink or two. Can't ... haven't you any left this morning?"

"I have," the rancher said slowly, "but you don't need it to-day. You did yesterday, but this mornin' you've got some grub in you, you got somethin' more like a clear head, an' I don't guess any snake juice would help matters along very fast. There's more coffee here an' you can fill up on that any old time you get shaky."

"Coffee!" scoffed the other, a sudden weak rage a.s.serting itself. "What th' h.e.l.l do I want of coffee? What I need's whiskey! Don't you think I know what I want? Lord, Bayard, I'm a man, ain't I? I can judge for myself what I want, can't I?"

"Yesterday, you said you was a gentleman," Bayard replied, reminiscently, his tone lightly chaffing, "an' I guess that about states your case. As for you knowin' what you want ... I don't agree with you; judgin' from your past, anyhow."

The man in the bed bared his teeth in an unpleasant smile; two of the front teeth were missing, another broken, result of some recent fight, and with his swollen eyes he was a revolting sight. As he looked at him, Bayard's face reflected his deep disgust.

"What's your game?" Lytton challenged. "I didn't ask you to bring me here, did I? I haven't asked any favors of you, have I? You ... You shanghaied me out to your d.a.m.ned ranch; you keep me here, and then won't even give me a drink out of your bottle. h.e.l.l, any sheepherder'd do that for me!

"If you think I'm ungrateful for what you've done--sobered me up, I mean--just say so and I'll get out. That was all right. But what was your object?"

"I thought by bringing you out here you might get straightened up. I did it for your own good. You don't understand right now, but you may ...

sometime."

"My own good! Well, I've had enough for my own good, now, so I guess I won't wait any longer to understand!"

He kicked off the covers and stood erect, swaying dizzily. Bayard stepped across to him.

"Get back into bed," he said, evenly, with no display of temper. "You couldn't walk to water an' you couldn't set on a horse five minutes.