The Covered Wagon Part 14

"No. If it could, I would not be stopping here now to say so much."

He stepped closer, frowning.

"What is it you are saying then--that a man's a worse brute when he goes mad, as I did?"

"I expect not," said Molly Wingate queerly. "It is very far, out here.

It's some other world, I believe. And I suppose men have kissed girls. I suppose no girl ever was married who was not ever kissed."

"What are you saying?"

"I said I wanted you to know the truth about a woman--about me. That's just because it's not ever going to be between us. It can't be, because of that other matter in Mexico. If it had not been for that, I suppose after a time I wouldn't have minded what you did back there. I might have kissed you. It must be terrible to feel as you feel now, so ashamed. But after all--"

"It was criminal!" he broke out. "But even criminals are loved by women.

They follow them to jail, to the gallows. They don't mind what the man is--they love him, they forgive him. They stand by him to the very end!"

"Yes, I suppose many a girl loves a man she knows she never can marry.

Usually she marries someone else. But kissing! That's terrible!"

"Yes. But you will not let me make it splendid and not terrible. You say it never can be--that means we've got to part. Well, how can I forget?"

"I don't suppose you can. I don't suppose that--that I can!"

"What are you going to say? Don't! Oh, please don't!"

But she still went on, strangely, not in the least understanding her own swift change of mood, her own intent with him, _vis-a-vis_, here in the wilderness.

"While we were walking down here just now," said she, "somehow it all began to seem not so wrong. It only seemed to stay wrong for you to have deceived me about yourself--what you really were--when you were in the Army. I could maybe forgive you up to that far, for you did--for men are--well, men. But about that other--you knew all the time we couldn't--couldn't ever--I'd never marry a thief."

The great and wistful regret of her voice was a thing not to be escaped.

She stood, a very splendid figure, clean and marvelous of heart as she was begrimed and bedraggled of body now, her great vital force not abated by what she had gone through. She spread her hands just apart and looked at him in what she herself felt was to be the last meeting of their lives; in which she could afford to reveal all her soul for once to a man, and then go about a woman's business of living a life fed on the husks of love given her by some other man.

He knew that he had seen one more miracle. But, chastened now, he could, he must, keep down his own eager arms. He heard her speak once more, her voice like some melancholy bell of vespers of a golden evening.

"Oh, Will Banion, how could you take away a girl's heart and leave her miserable all her life?"

The cry literally broke from her. It seemed in her own ears the sudden voice of some other woman speaking--some unaccountable, strange woman whom she never had seen or known in all her life.

"Your--heart?" he whispered, now close to her in the dusk. "You were not--you did not--you--"

But he choked. She nodded, not brazenly or crudely or coa.r.s.ely, not even bravely, but in utter simplicity. For the time she was wholly free of woman coquetry. It was as though the elements had left her also elemental. Her words now were of the earth, the air, the fire, the floods of life.

"Yes," she said, "I will tell you now, because of what you have done for me. If you gave me life, why shouldn't I give you love--if so I could?"

"Love? Give me love?"

"Yes! I believe I was going to love you, until now, although I had promised him--you know--Captain Woodhull. Oh, you see, I understand a little of what it was to you--what made you--" She spoke disconnectedly.

"I believe--I believe I'd not have cared. I believe I could follow a man to the gallows. Now I will not, because you didn't tell me you were a thief. I can't trust you. But I'll kiss you once for good-by. I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry."

Being a man, he never fathomed her mind at all. But being a man, slowly, gently, he took her in his arms, drew her tight. Long, long it was till their lips met--and long then. But he heard her whisper "Good-by," saw her frank tears, felt her slowly, a little by a little, draw away from him.

"Good-by," she said. "Good-by. I would not dare, any more, ever again.

Oh, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart? I had but one!"

"It is mine!" he cried savagely. "No other man in all the world shall ever have it! Molly!"

But she now was gone.

He did not know how long he stood alone, his head bowed on his saddle.

The raucous howl of a great gray wolf near by spelled out the lonesome tragedy of his future life for him.

Quaint and sweet philosopher, and bold as she but now had been in one great and final imparting of her real self, Molly Wingate was only a wet, weary and bedraggled maid when at length she entered the desolate encampment which stood for home. She found her mother sitting on a box under a crude awning, and cast herself on her knees, her head on that ample bosom that she had known as haven in her childhood. She wept now like a little child.

"It's bad!" said stout Mrs. Wingate, not knowing. "But you're back and alive. It looks like we're wrecked and everything lost, and we come nigh about getting all burned up, but you're back alive to your ma! Now, now!"

That night Molly turned on a sodden pallet which she had made down beside her mother in the great wagon. But she slept ill. Over and over to her lips rose the same question:

"Oh, Will Banion, Will Banion, why did you take away my heart?"

CHAPTER XV

THE DIVISION

The great wagon train of 1848 lay banked along the Vermilion in utter and abject confusion. Organization there now was none. But for Banion's work with the back fires the entire train would have been wiped out. The effects of the storm were not so capable of evasion. Sodden, wretched, miserable, chilled, their goods impaired, their cattle stampeded, all sense of gregarious self-reliance gone, two hundred wagons were no more than two hundred individual units of discontent and despair. So far as could be prophesied on facts apparent, the journey out to Oregon had ended in disaster almost before it was well begun.

Bearded men at smoking fires looked at one another in silence, or would not look at all. Elan, morale, esprit de corps were gone utterly.

Stout Caleb Price walked down the wagon lines, pa.s.sing fourscore men shaking in their native agues, not yet conquered. Women, pale, gaunt, grim, looked at him from limp sunbonnets whose stays had been half dissolved. Children whimpered. Even the dogs, curled nose to tail under the wagons, growled surlily. But Caleb Price found at last the wagon of the bugler who had been at the wars and shook him out.

"Sound, man!" said Caleb Price. "Play up Oh, Susannah! Then sound the a.s.sembly. We've got to have a meeting."

They did have a meeting. Jesse Wingate scented mutiny and remained away.

"There's no use talking, men," said Caleb Price, "no use trying to fool ourselves. We're almost done, the way things are. I like Jess Wingate as well as any man I ever knew, but Jess Wingate's not the man. What shall we do?"

He turned to Hall, but Hall shook his head; to Kelsey, but Kelsey only laughed.

"I could get a dozen wagons through, maybe," said he. "Here's two hundred. Woodhull's the man, but Woodhull's gone--lost, I reckon, or maybe killed and lying out somewhere on these prairies. You take it, Cale."

Price considered for a time.

"No," said he at length. "It's no time for one of us to take on what may be done better by someone else, because our women and children are at stake. The very best man's none too good for this job, and the more experience he has the better. The man who thinks fastest and clearest at the right time is the man we want, and the man we'd follow--the only man. Who'll he be?"

"Oh, I'll admit Banion had the best idea of crossing the Kaw," said Kelsey. "He got his own people over, too, somehow."