The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 15

Her answer, on a totally different topic, surprised him.

"Do you believe in blood?" she said. "Do you believe that blood will--_must_ tell?"

"Ma'am," he said, "if I can draw my check for twenty-five thousand dollars it's because I was born believing that blood will tell. It's because I've acted on it all my life. And it's the truth, and I've made a fortune out of it.... Cattle," he added in explanation.

"I don't know what you think of women," she said, "who talk of their affairs to strangers. But my heart is so full of mine. I did so hope to reach Carcasonne early this evening. It don't seem to me as if I could stand hours and hours behind that horse without talking to some one. Do you mind if I talk to you?" she appealed. "Somehow you're so big and steady-minded--you don't seem like a stranger."

"Ma'am," said Saterlee, the most chivalrous courtesy in his voice, for hers had sounded truly distressed, "fire away!"

"It's about my daughter," she said. "She has made up her mind to marry a young man whom I scarcely know. But about him and his antecedents I know this: that his father has buried three wives."

The blood rushed into Saterlee's face and nearly strangled him. But the lady, who was leaning forward, elbows on knees and face between hands, did not perceive this convulsion of nature.

"If blood counts for anything," said she, "the son has perhaps the same brutish instincts. A nice prospect for my girl--to suffer--to die--and to be superseded. The man's second wife was in her grave but three weeks when he had taken a third. I am told he is a great, rough, bullying man.

No wonder the poor souls died. The son is a tremendous great fellow, too. Oh! blood will tell every time," she exclaimed. "M. A. Saterlee, the cattle man--do you know him?"

"Yep!" Saterlee managed, with an effort that would have moved a ton.

"I am going to appeal to her," said the lady. "I have been a good mother to her. I have suffered for her. And she must--she shall--listen to me."

"If I can help in any way," said Saterlee, somewhat grimly, "you can count on me.... Not," he said a little later, "that I'm in entire sympathy with your views, Ma'am.... Now, if you'd said this man Saterlee had _divorced_ three wives...."

The lady started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread fingers, and was pleased.

"If you had said that this man," he went on, "had tired of his first wife and had divorced her, or been divorced by her, because his desire was to another woman, then I would go your antipathy for him, Ma'am.

But I understand he buried a wife, and took another, and so on. There is a difference. Because G.o.d Almighty Himself says in one of His books that man was not meant to live alone. Mebbe, Ma'am, the agony of losing a faithful and tender companion is what sets a man--some men--to looking for a successor. Mebbe the more a man loved his dead wife the quicker is he driven to find a living woman that he can love. But for people who can't cling together until death--and death alone part 'em--for such people, Ma'am, I don't give a ding."

"And you are wrong," said the lady, who, although nettled by the applicability of his remarks to her own case, had recovered her composure. "Let us say that a good woman marries a man, and that he dies--not the _death_--but dies to her. Tires of her, carries his love to another, and all that. Isn't he as dead, even if she loved him, as if he had really died? He is dead to her--buried--men don't come back.

Well, maybe the more she loved that man the quicker she is to get the service read over him--that's divorce--and find another whom she can trust and love. Suppose that happens to her twice. The cases would seem identical, sir, I think. Except that I could understand divorcing a man who had become intolerable to me; but I could never, never fancy myself marrying again--if my husband, in the course of nature, had died still loving me, still faithful to me. So you see the cases are not identical.

And that only remarriage after divorce is defensible."

"I take your point," said Saterlee. She had spoken warmly and vehemently, with an honest ring in her voice. "I have never thought of it along those lines. See that furrow across the road--that's where a snake has crossed. But I may as well tell you, Ma'am, that I myself have buried more than one wife. And yet when I size myself up to myself I don't seem a regular h.e.l.l-hound."

"If we are to be on an honest footing," said the lady, "I must tell you that I have divorced more than one husband, and yet when I size myself up, as you call it, I do not seem to myself a lost woman. It's true that I act for my living--"

"I know," he interrupted, "you are Mrs. Kimbal. But I thought I knew more about you than I seem to. I'm Saterlee. And my business at Carcasonne House is the same as yours."

She was silent for a moment. And then:

"Well," she said, "here we are. And that's lucky in a way. We both seem to want the same thing--that is, to keep our children from marrying each other. We can talk the matter over and decide how to do it."

"We can talk it over anyway, as you say," said Saterlee. "But--" and he fished in his pocket and brought out his son's letter and gave it to her. She read it in the waning light.

"But," he repeated gently, "that don't read like a letter that a brute of a son would write to a brute of a father; now, does it?"

She did not answer. But she opened her purse and took out a carefully and minutely folded sheet of note-paper.

"That's my Dolly's letter to me," she said, "and it doesn't sound like--" her voice broke. He took the letter from her and read it.

"No, it doesn't," he said. And he said it roughly, because nothing brought rough speech out of the man so surely as tears--when they were in his own eyes.

"Well," said Mrs. Kimbal with a sigh, "let's talk."

"No," said Saterlee, "let's think."

IV

They could hear from far ahead a sound as of roaring waters.

"That," said Saterlee dryly, "will be Gila River. Mebbe we'll have to think about getting across that first. It's a river now, by the sound of it, if it never was before."

"Fortunately it's not dark yet," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"The last time I had trouble with a river," said Saterlee, "was when my first wife died. That was the American River in flood. I had to cross it to get a doctor. We'd gone prospectin'--just the old woman and me--more for a lark than profit."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Kimbal sympathetically.

"She took sick in an hour," he went on. "From what I've heard since, I guess it was appendicitis. Anyway, I rode off for help, h.e.l.l for leather, and when I come to the river the whole thing was roaring and foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, Mark,' he says, 'it's wanting to be sure that I make the right choice.' I says: 'She was in terrible pain, Jim. Many a time she's done you a good turn; some you know of, some you don't.' That fetched him. He caught up his bridle and drove his spurs into his horse, and was swept down-stream like a leaf. I rode along the bank to help if I could. But he got across on a long diagonal--horse and all. I waved to him to go on and not mind about me. And he rode off at the gallop. But I was too heavy, I guess. I lost my second horse in that flood, and had to foot it into camp. I was too late. Pain had made her unconscious, and she was dead. But before givin' in she'd wrote me a letter." He broke off short. "And there's Gila River," he said.

"I hoped you were going to tell me what your poor wife said in her letter," said Mrs. Kimbal.

"Oh, Ma'am," he said, hesitated, cleared his throat, and became routed and confused.

"If you'd rather not--" said Mrs. Kimbal.

"It isn't that," he said. "It would seem like bragging."

"Surely not," she said.

Saterlee, with his eyes on the broad, brown flood which they were approaching, repeated like a lesson:

"'Mark--I'm dying. I want it to do good, not harm. Jenny always thought the world of you. You'll be lonely when I'm gone. I don't want you to be lonely. You gave me peace on earth. And you can't be happy unless you've got a woman to pet and pamper. That's your nature--'"

He paused.

"That was all," he said, and wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. "It just stopped there."

"I'm glad you told me," said Mrs. Kimbal gently. "It will be a lesson to me not to spring to conclusions, and not to make up my mind about things I'm not familiar with."

When they came to where the road disappeared under the swift unbroken brown of Gila River, the old horse paused of her own accord, and, turning her bony and scarred head a half revolution, stared almost rudely at the occupants of the buggy.

"It all depends," said Saterlee, "how deep the water runs over the road, and whether we can keep to the road. You see, it comes out higher up than it goes in. Can you swim, Ma'am?"

Mrs. Kimbal admitted that, in clothes made to the purpose, and in very shallow water, she was not without proficiency.