The Fighting Shepherdess Part 44

"What's the use?" indifferently.

"I might help you."

"How?"

"In ways that friends can help each other."

"I've tried that," she answered dryly.

"You've grown so self-sufficient that you make me feel superfluous and helpless."

"A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn't it?"

Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him:

"Better loosen your horse's cinch; he'll feed better."

He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment?

He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarra.s.sed by the silence. Save for an occasional whimsical soliloquy, she seldom spoke without a definite purpose nowadays. To Disston, who remembered her faculty for finding something interesting or amusing in everything about which to chatter, the difference was noticeable.

It saddened him, the change in her, yet he was conscious that she still retained her strong attraction for him. With nerves relaxed, content, he had an absurd notion that he could sit beside her on that rock indefinitely, without speaking, and be happy.

Kate did not ask him the purpose of his visit, for her etiquette was the etiquette of the ranges, which does not countenance questions, and Disston, absorbed in the beauty of the sunset and his own thoughts, was in no mood to introduce the unpleasant subject of the dynamiting of the sheep wagon.

The pink deepened on gypsum cliffs and sandstone b.u.t.tes of the distant Bad Lands, while purple shadows crept over the green foothills and blackened the canyons.

"Isn't it wonderful?" he said, finally, in a half whisper.

"Yes," she replied, huskily, wondering if Heaven itself had anything like this to offer.

It seemed as though without his volition his hand sought hers and covered it.

She left it so for a moment, then took hers away and got up abruptly.

"They are working up to the bed-ground and will lie down pretty soon.

When they're settled, I'll go to camp and get you something to eat." Her tone was matter-of-fact, casual. She stooped, and, picking up a pebble, tossed it at two bucks that were b.u.t.ting each other violently:

"Here--you! Stop it! You give me a headache to look at you."

He did not even interest her, that was evident. Disston tried to a.s.sure himself that he would not have it otherwise, that anything else would be a misfortune in the circ.u.mstances; but self-deception was useless--his feelings were not a matter for argument or logic, they were of the heart, not the head, when he was near her, and his mind had nothing to do with them.

She walked away a little and stood apart with her face to the sunset, a lonely figure, silent, aloof, fitting perfectly into the picture.

Disston tried to a.n.a.lyze his feelings, the emotions she inspired in him as he looked at her, but his lines of thought with their many ramifications always came back to the starting point--to the sure knowledge that he wanted her tremendously, that he yearned and hungered for her with every fiber of his nature.

She was the last woman in the world who would seem to need protection, yet he had a savage primitive desire to protect her, to put his arm about her and defy the world, if need be.

Beth's helpless femininity inspired no such pa.s.sionate chivalry. He saved her annoyances, s.h.i.+elded her, helped her over the rough places, from habit--but this was different. And it had been so, he reflected, from that night at the Prouty House when he would gladly have fought those who had slighted and hurt her, when he would have shed blood, had his judgment not restrained him. Ever since then the least insinuation or slur against Kate had set his blood tingling, and Beth's ridicule had been one of the hardest things he had found to overlook in her. And, too, the curious serenity, the sense of completeness which came to him when she sat quietly beside him, puzzled him. He wondered if it was only a temporary state of mind, or would it last forever if he were with her. He would conquer himself--of course, he must; and he had proved by his life thus far that he was strong enough to do anything he had to.

Suddenly Hugh felt a keen desire to know what she was thinking, that she was so long silent, and he asked her. He was not sure that she answered his question when she said prosaically:

"You had better go on down to camp and feed your horse--it's over the ridge there; make a fire and put on the tea kettle. I'll be down in half an hour or three-quarters."

Disston lingered to watch her as she pulled the bedroll from her horse; and, clearing a s.p.a.ce with her foot, freeing it of sticks and pebbles, spread out the canvas, pulling the "tarp" over a pillow beneath which he noticed a box of cartridges and a six-shooter.

"For close work," she said, with a short laugh, observing his interest.

He did not join her; instead his brows contracted.

"I can't bear to think of you going through such hards.h.i.+ps."

"This isn't hards.h.i.+p--I'm used to it--I like it. I like to get awake in the night and look at the stars and to feel the wind in my face. When it rains, I pull the tarp over my head, and I love to listen to the patter on it. The sheep 'bed' all around me, and some of them lie on the corners, so it's not lonely." She said it with a touch of defiance, as though she resented his pity and wished him to believe there was no room for it.

"You see," she added, "I'm a typical sheepherder, even to mumbling to myself occasionally."

The sheep in the meantime had grazed to the top of the ridge and had spread out over the flat backbone for a few final mouthfuls before pawing their little hollows. Soon they would sink down singly and in pairs, by the dozen and half dozen, with a crackling of joints, their jaws waggling, sniffing, coughing, grunting from overladen stomachs, raising in their restless stirrings a little cloud of dust above the bed-ground.

As he stood to go, Disston pictured her night after night waiting in patient silence for the sheep to grow quiet and then creeping between her blankets to sleep among them.

He left her reluctantly at length, for he had a feeling that, since his time with her was short, each minute that he was away from her was wasted; but as it was her wish, he could do nothing less than comply and, obviously, she did not share his regret. So he followed her directions and was soon at the summer camp, established near a spring one lower ridge over.

A half hour pa.s.sed--three-quarters. He smoked and looked at his watch frequently. The stars came out and the moon rose full. The fire burned down and the water cooled in the kettle. Whatever was detaining her?

Impatient at first, Disston finally grew worried. He ate a little cold food that he found, and started to walk back to her.

He was well up the first ridge when a sharp report broke the night-stillness and brought him to an abrupt standstill. It was followed by another, then three, four--a number of shots in succession. It was not loud enough for a 30-30. It was the six-shooter! "For close work!"

she had told him tersely.

If he had been in doubt before as to the exact word to apply to his feelings for Kate, there was no need to hesitate longer. What did it matter that she did not know how to pour tea gracefully and preside at a dinner table? By G.o.d--he wanted her, and that was all there was to it!

He was breathless when he reached the top of the ridge and his heart was pounding with the exertion in the high alt.i.tude, but he gave a gasp of relief when he saw her standing in the moonlight with dead and dying sheep around her.

"What's the matter?" he called, when his breath came back to him sufficiently.

"Poison. Somebody has scattered little piles of saltpeter all over the summit. There's no cure for it, so I shot some of them to put them out of their agony."

In his relief at finding her unharmed, the loss of the sheep seemed of no moment and he did not realize what it meant to her until she said with a choke in her voice:

"They knew just where to hit me. I've scrimped and saved and sacrificed to buy those sheep--"

Her grief sent a flood of tenderness over him. He went to her swiftly, and taking the six-shooter gently from her hand laid it upon the ground.

"Come here," he said authoritatively, and drew her to him.

She did not resist, and her head dropped to his shoulder in a movement of disheartened weariness.

"Oh, Hughie--I'm so tired of fighting--so tired--of everything."

He smoothed her hair as he would have soothed a child, and said decisively--yet with a big tenderness: