Max Brand (15 page)

There was a tumult in the brain of the cowpuncher. The stars and the
sky and the mountains and wind went out. They were nothing in the
electric presence of this new Jig. His mind flashed back to one
picture—Cold Feet with her hands tied behind her back, praying under
the cottonwood.

Shame turned the cowpuncher hot and then cold. He allowed his mind to
drift back over his thousand insults, his brutal language, his cursing,
his mockery, his open contempt. There was a tingle in his ears, and a
chill running up and down his spine.

After all that brutality, what mysterious sense had told her to trust
to him rather than to Sour Creek and its men?

Other mysteries flocked into his mind. Why had she come to the very
verge of death, with the rope around her neck rather than reveal her
identity, knowing, as she must know, that in the mountain desert men
feel some touch of holiness in every woman?

He remembered Cartwright, tall, handsome, and narrow of eye, and the
fear of the girl. Suddenly he wished with all his soul that he had
fought with guns that day, and not with fists.

At length the continued silence of the girl made him turn. Perhaps she
had slipped away. His heart was chilled at the thought; turning, he
sighed with relief to find her still there.

Without a word he went back and rekindled the fire, placed new venison
steaks over it, and broiled them with silent care. Not a sound from
Jig, not a sound from the cowpuncher, while the meat hissed, blackened,
and at length was done to a turn. He laid portions of it on broad,
white, clean chips which he had already prepared, and served her. Still
in silence she ate. Shame held Sinclair. He dared not look at her, and
he was glad when the fire lost some of its brightness.

Now and then he looked with wonder across the mountains. All his life
they had been faces to him, and the wind had been a voice. Now all this
was nothing but dead stuff. There was no purpose in the march of the
mountains except that they led to the place where Jig sat.

He twisted together a cup of bark and brought her water from the
spring. She thanked him with words that he did not hear, he was so
intent in watching her face, as the firelight played on it. Now that he
held the clue, everything was as plain as day. New light played on the
past.

Turning away, he put new fuel on the fire, and when he looked to her
again, she had unbelted the revolver and was putting it away, as if she
realized that this would not help her if she were in danger.

When at length she spoke it was the same voice, and yet how new! The
quality in it made Sinclair sit a little straighter.

"You have a right to know everything that I can tell you. Do you wish
to hear?"

For another moment he smoked in solemn silence. He found that he was
wishing for the story not so much because of its strangeness, but
because he wanted that voice to run on indefinitely. Yet he weighed the
question pro and con.

"Here's the point, Jig," he said at last. "I got a good deal to make up
to you. In the first place I pretty near let you get strung up for a
killing I done myself. Then I been treating you pretty hard, take it
all in all. You got a story, and I don't deny that I'd like to hear it;
but it don't seem a story that you're fond of telling, and I ain't got
no right to ask for it. All I ask to know is one thing: When you stood
there under that cotton wood tree, with a rope around your neck, did
you know that all you had to do was to tell us that you was a woman to
get off free?"

"Of course."

"And you'd sooner have hung than tell us?"

"Yes."

Sinclair sighed. "Maybe I've said this before, but I got to say it
ag'in: Jig, you plumb beat me!" He brushed his hand across his
forehead. "S'pose it'd been done! S'pose I had let 'em go ahead and
string you up! They'd have been a terrible bad time ahead for them
seven men. We'd all have been grabbed and lynched. A woman!"

He put the word off by itself. Then he was surprised to hear her
laughing softly. Now that he knew, it was all woman, that voice.

"It wasn't really courage, Riley. After you'd said half a dozen words I
knew you were square, and that you knew I was innocent. So I didn't
worry very much—except just after you'd sentenced me to hang!"

"Don't go back to that! I sure been a plumb fool. But why would you
have gone ahead and let that hanging happen?"

"Because I had rather die than be known, except to you."

"You leave me out."

"I'd trust you to the end of everything, Riley."

"I b'lieve you would, Jig—I honest believe you would! Heaven knows
why."

"Because."

"That ain't a reason."

"A very good woman's reason. For one thing you've let me come along
when you know that I'm a weight, and you're in danger. But you don't
know what it means if I go back. You can't know. I know it's wrong and
cowardly for me to stay and imperil you, but I
am
a coward, and I'm
afraid to go back!"

"Hush up," murmured Sinclair. "Hush up, girl. Is they anybody asking
you to go back? But you don't really figure on hanging out here with me
in the mountains, me having most of the gents in these parts out
looking for my scalp?"

"If you think I won't be such an encumbrance that I'll greatly endanger
you, Riley."

"H'm," muttered Sinclair. "I'll take that chance, but they's another
thing."

"Well?"

"It ain't exactly nacheral and reasonable for a girl to go around in
the mountains with a man."

She fired up at that, sitting straight, with the fire flaring suddenly
in her face through the change of position.

"I've told you that I trust you, Riley. What do I care about the
opinion of the world? Haven't they hounded me? Oh, I despise them!"

"H'm," said the cowpuncher again.

He was, indeed, so abashed by this outbreak that he merely stole a
glance at her face and then studied the fire again.

"Does this gent Cartwright tie up with your story?"

All the fire left her. "Yes," she whispered.

He felt that she was searching his face, as if suddenly in doubt of
him.

"Will you let me tell you—everything?"

"Shoot ahead."

"Some parts will be hard to believe."

"Lady, they won't be nothing as hard to believe as what I've seen you
do with my own eyes."

Then she began to tell her story, and she found a vast comfort in
seeing the ugly, stern face of Sinclair lighted by the burning end of
his cigarette. He never looked at her, but always fixed his stare on
the sea of blackness which was the lower valley.

"All the trouble began with a theory. My father felt that the thing for
a girl was to be educated in the East and marry in the West. He was
full of maxims, you see. 'They turn out knowledge in cities; they turn
out men in mountains,' was one of his maxims. He thought and argued and
lived along those lines. So as soon as I was half grown—oh, I was a
wild tomboy!"

"Eh?" cut in Sinclair.

"I could really do the things then that you'd like to have a woman do,"
she said. "I could ride anything, swim like a fish in snow water,
climb, run, and do anything a boy could do. I suppose that's the sort
of a woman you admire?"

"Me!" exclaimed Riley with violence. "It ain't so, Jig. I been revising
my ideas on women lately. Besides, I never give 'em much thought
before."

He said all this without glancing at her, so that she was able to
indulge in a smile before she went on.

"Just at that point, when I was about to become a true daughter of the
West, Dad snapped me off to school in the East, and then for years and
years there was no West at all for me except a little trip here and
there in vacation time. The rest of it was just study and play, all in
the East. I still liked the West—in theory, you know."

"H'm," muttered Riley.

"And then, I think it was a year ago, I had a letter from Dad with
important news in it. He had just come back from a hunting trip with a
young fellow who he thought represented everything fine in the West. He
was big, good-looking, steady, had a large estate. Dad set his mind on
having me marry him, and he told me so in the letter. Of course I was
upset at the idea of marrying a man I did not know, but Dad always had
a very controlling way with him. I had lost any habit of thinking for
myself in important matters.

"Besides, there was a consolation. Dad sent the picture of his man
along with his letter. The picture was in profile, and it showed me a
fine-looking fellow, with a glorious carriage, a high head, and oceans
of strength and manliness.

"I really fell in love with that picture. To begin with, I thought that
it was destiny for me, and that I had to love that man whether I wished
to or not. I admitted that picture into my inmost life, dreamed about
it, kept it near me in my room.

"And just about that time came news that my father was seriously ill,
and then that he had died, and that his last wish was for me to come
West at once and marry my chosen husband.

"Of course I came at once. I was too sick and sad for Dad to think much
about my own future, and when I stepped off the train I met the first
shock. My husband to be was waiting for me. He was enough like the
picture for me to recognize him, and that was all. He was tall and
strong enough and manly enough. But in full face I thought he was
narrow between the eyes. And—"

"It was Cartwright!"

"Yes, yes. How did you guess that?"

"I dunno," said Sinclair softly, "but when that gent rode off today,
something told me that I was going to tangle with him later on. Go on!"

"He was very kind to me. After the first moment of disappointment—you
see, I had been dreaming about him for a good many weeks—I grew to
like him and accept him again. He did all that he could to make the
trip home agreeable. He didn't press himself on me. He did nothing to
make me feel that he understood Dad's wishes about our marriage and
expected me to live up to them.

"After the funeral it was the same way. He came to see me only now and
then. He was courteous and attentive, and he seemed to be fond of me."

"A fox," snarled Sinclair, growing more and more excited, as this
narrative continued. "That's the way with one of them kind. They play a
game. Never out in the open. Waiting till they win, and then acting the
devil. Go on!"

"Perhaps you're right. His visits became more and more frequent.
Finally he asked me to marry him. That brought the truth of my position
home to me, and I found all at once that, though I had rather liked him
as a friend, I had to quake at the idea of him as a husband."

Sinclair snapped his cigarette into the coals of the fire and set his
jaw. She liked him in his anger.

"But what could I do? All of the last part of Dad's life had been
pointed toward this one thing. I felt that he would come out of his
grave and haunt me. I asked for one more day to think it over. He told
me to take a month or a year, as I pleased, and that made me ashamed. I
told him on the spot that I would marry him, but that I didn't love
him."

"I'll tell you what he answered—curse him!" exclaimed Sinclair.

"What?"

"Through the years that was comin', he'd teach you to love him."

"That was exactly what he said in those very words! How did you guess
that?"

"I'll tell you I got a sort of a second sight for the ways of a snake,
or an ornery hoss, or a sneak of a man. Go on!"

"I think you have. At any rate, after I had told him I'd marry him, he
pressed me to set the date as early as possible, and I agreed. There
was only a ten-day interval.

"Those ten days were filled. I kept myself busy so that I wouldn't have
a chance to think about the future, though of course I didn't really
know how I dreaded it. I talked to the only girl who was near enough to
me to be called a friend.

"'Find a man you can respect. That's the main thing,' she always said.
'You'll learn to love him later on.'

"It was a great comfort to me. I kept thinking back to that advice all
the time."

"They's nothing worse than a talky woman," declared Sinclair hotly. "Go
on!"

"Then, all at once, the day came. I'll never forget how I wakened that
morning and looked out at the sun. I had a queer feeling that even the
sunshine would never seem the same after that day. It was like going to
a death."

"So you went to this gent and told him just how you felt, and he let
your promise slide?"

"No."

Sinclair groaned.

"I couldn't go to him. I didn't dare. I don't imagine that I ever
thought of such a thing. Then there were crowds of people around all
day, giving me good wishes. And all the time I felt like death.

"Somehow I got to the church. Everything was hazy to me, and my heart
was thundering all the time. In the church there was a blur of faces.
All at once the blur cleared. I saw Jude Cartwright, and I knew I
couldn't marry him!"

"Brave girl!" cried Sinclair, his relief coming out in almost a shout.
"You stopped there at the last minute?"

"Ah, if I had! No, I didn't stop. I went on to the altar and met him
there, and—"

"You weren't married to him?"

"I was!"

"Go on," Sinclair said huskily.

"The end of it came somehow. I found a flood of people calling to me
and pressing around me, and all the time I was thinking of nothing but
the new ring on my finger and the weight—the horrible weight of it!

"We went back to my father's house. I managed to get away from all the
merrymaking and go to my room. The minute the door closed behind me and
shut away their voices and singing into the distance, I felt that I had
saved one last minute of freedom. I went to the window and looked out
at the mountains. The stars were coming out.