Lin McLean Page 7

  PART II

  Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a smallbright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and inhis whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals werethere to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows movedtogether upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loiteredin the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley andgolden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of thegreater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves enteredthe mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadelof shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of thetrees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into thecool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here byhis cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimneyinto the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and theafternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-punchersat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it werenot already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front ofhim--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed withbullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presentlyhe lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word "Neighbor"engraved upon it.

  "I wonder," said he, aloud, "if she keeps the rust off mine?" Then helifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word "Neighbor."

  The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quicklydown. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, butno one had seen him. The clanking was still among the trees a littledistance up Box Elder. It approached deliberately, while he watched forthe vehicle to emerge upon the open where his cabin stood; and then theycame, a man and a woman. At sight of her Mr. McLean half rose, but satdown again. Neither of them had noticed him, sitting as they were insilence and the drowsiness of a long drive. The man was weak-faced, withgood looks sallowed by dissipation, and a vanquished glance of theeye. As the woman had stood on the platform at Separ, so she sat now,upright, bold, and massive. The brag of past beauty was a habit settledupon her stolid features. Both sat inattentive to each other and toeverything around them. The wheels turned slowly and with a dry, deadnoise, the reins bellied loosely to the shafts, the horse's head hunglow. So they drew close. Then the man saw McLean, and color came intohis face and went away.

  "Good-evening," said he, clearing his throat. "We heard you was incow-camp."

  The cow-puncher noted how he tried to smile, and a freakish changecrossed his own countenance. He nodded slightly, and stretched his legsout as he sat.

  "You look natural," said the woman, familiarly.

  "Seem to be fixed nice here," continued the man. "Hadn't heard of it.Well, we'll be going along. Glad to have seen you."

  "Your wheel wants greasing," said McLean, briefly, his eye upon the man.

  "Can't stop. I expect she'll last to Drybone. Good-evening."

  "Stay to supper," said McLean, always seated on his chair.

  "Can't stop, thank you. I expect we can last to Drybone." He twitchedthe reins.

  McLean levelled a pistol at a chicken, and knocked off its head. "Betterstay to supper," he suggested, very distinctly.

  "It's business, I tell you. I've got to catch Governor Barker beforehe--"

  The pistol cracked, and a second chicken shuffled in the dust. "Betterstay to supper," drawled McLean.

  The man looked up at his wife.

  "So yus need me!" she broke out. "Ain't got heart enough in yerplayed-out body to stand up to a man. We'll eat here. Get down."

  The husband stepped to the ground. "I didn't suppose you'd want--"

  "Ho! want? What's Lin, or you, or anything to me? Help me out."

  Both men came forward. She descended, leaning heavily upon each, herblue staring eyes fixed upon the cow-puncher.

  "No, yus ain't changed," she said. "Same in your looks and same in youractions. Was you expecting you could scare me, you, Lin McLean?"

  "I just wanted chickens for supper," said he.

  Mrs. Lusk gave a hard high laugh. "I'll eat 'em. It's not I that cares.As for--" She stopped. Her eye had fallen upon the pistol and the name"Neighbor." "As for you," she continued to Mr. Lusk, "don't you bestanding dumb same as the horse."

  "Better take him to the stable, Lusk," said McLean.

  He picked the chickens up, showed the woman to the best chair in hisroom, and went into his kitchen to cook supper for three. He gave hisguests no further attention, nor did either of them come in where hewas, nor did the husband rejoin the wife. He walked slowly up and downin the air, and she sat by herself in the room. Lin's steps as hemade ready round the stove and table, and Lusk's slow tread out in thesetting sunlight, were the only sounds about the cabin. When the hostlooked into the door of the next room to announce that his meal wasserved, the woman sat in her chair no longer, but stood with her backto him by a shelf. She gave a slight start at his summons, and replacedsomething. He saw that she had been examining "Neighbor," and his facehardened suddenly to fierceness as he looked at her; but he repeatedquietly that she had better come in. Thus did the three sit down totheir meal. Occasionally a word about handing some dish fell from oneor other of them, but nothing more, until Lusk took out his watch andmentioned the hour.

  "Yu've not ate especially hearty," said Lin, resting his arms upon thetable.

  "I'm going," asserted Lusk. "Governor Barker may start out. I've got myinterests to look after."

  "Why, sure," said Lin. "I can't hope you'll waste all your time on justme."

  Lusk rose and looked at his wife. "It'll be ten now before we get toDrybone," said he. And he went down to the stable.

  The woman sat still, pressing the crumbs of her bread. "I know you seenme," she said, without looking at him.

  "Saw you when?"

  "I knowed it. And I seen how you looked at me." She sat twisting andpressing the crumb. Sometimes it was round, sometimes it was a cube, nowand then she flattened it to a disk. Mr. McLean seemed to have nothingthat he wished to reply.

  "If you claim that pistol is yourn," she said next, "I'll tell you Iknow better. If you ask me whose should it be if not yourn, I would nothave to guess the name. She has talked to me, and me to her."

  She was still looking away from him at the bread-crumb, or she couldhave seen that McLean's hand was trembling as he watched her leaning onhis arms.

  "Oh yes, she was willing to talk to me!" The woman uttered anothersudden laugh. "I knowed about her--all. Things get heard of in thisworld. Did not all about you and me come to her knowledge in its owngood time, and it done and gone how many years? My, my, my!" Her voicegrew slow and absent. She stopped for a moment, and then more rapidlyresumed: "It had travelled around about you and her like it always willtravel. It was known how you had asked her, and how she had told you shewould have you, and then told you she would not when she learned aboutyou and me. Folks that knowed yus and folks that never seen yus in theirlives had to have their word about her facing you down you had anotherwife, though she knowed the truth about me being married to Lusk and himlivin' the day you married me, and ten and twenty marriages couldnot have tied you and me up, no matter how honest you swore to nohinderance. Folks said it was plain she did not want yus. It give mea queer feelin' to see that girl. It give me a wish to tell her to herface that she did not love yus and did not know love. Wait--wait, Lin!Yu' never hit me yet."

  "No," said the cow-puncher. "Nor now. I'm not Lusk."

  "Yu' looked so--so bad, Lin. I never seen yu' look so bad in old days.Wait, now, and I must tell it. I wished to laugh in her face and say,'What do you know about love?' So I walked in. Lin, she does love yus!"

  "Yes," breathed McLean.

  "She was sittin' back in her room at Separ. Not the
ticket-office,but--"

  "I know," the cow-puncher said. His eyes were burning.

  "It's snug, the way she has it. 'Good-afternoon,' I says. 'Is this MissJessamine Buckner?'"

  At his sweetheart's name the glow in Lin's eyes seemed to quiver to aflash.

  "And she spoke pleasant to me--pleasant and gay-like. But a woman cantell sorrow in a woman's eyes. And she asked me would I rest in her roomthere, and what was my name. 'They tell me you claim to know it betterthan I do,' I says. 'They tell me you say it is Mrs. McLean.' Sheput her hand on her breast, and she keeps lookin' at me without neverspeaking. 'Maybe I am not so welcome now,' I says. 'One minute,' saysshe. 'Let me get used to it.' And she sat down.

  "Lin, she is a square-lookin' girl. I'll say that for her.

  "I never thought to sit down onced myself; I don't know why, but I kep'a-standing, and I took in that room of hers. She had flowers and thingsaround there, and I seen your picture standing on the table, and I seenyour six-shooter right by it--and, oh, Lin, hadn't I knowed your facebefore ever she did, and that gun you used to let me shoot on BearCreek? It took me that sudden! Why, it rushed over me so I spoke rightout different from what I'd meant and what I had ready fixed up to say.

  "'Why did you do it?' I says to her, while she was a-sitting. 'How couldyou act so, and you a woman?' She just sat, and her sad eyes made memadder at the idea of her. 'You have had real sorrow,' says I, 'if theyreport correct. You have knowed your share of death, and misery, andhard work, and all. Great God! ain't there things enough that come toyus uncalled for and natural, but you must run around huntin' up morethat was leavin' yus alone and givin' yus a chance? I knowed him onced.I knowed your Lin McLean. And when that was over, I knowed for the firsttime how men can be different.' I'm started, Lin, I'm started. Leave mego on, and when I'm through I'll quit. 'Some of 'em, anyway,' I says toher, 'has hearts and self-respect, and ain't hogs clean through.'

  "'I know," she says, thoughtful-like.

  "And at her whispering that way I gets madder.

  "'You know!' I says then. 'What is it that you know? Do you know thatyou have hurt a good man's heart? For onced I hurt it myself, thoughdifferent. And hurts in them kind of hearts stays. Some hearts is thatluscious and pasty you can stab 'em and it closes up so yu'd neversuspicion the place--but Lin McLean! Nor yet don't yus believe his isthe kind that breaks--if any kind does that. You may sit till the grayhairs, and you may wall up your womanhood, but if a man has got manhoodlike him, he will never sit till the gray hairs. Grief over losin' thebest will not stop him from searchin' for a second best after awhile. He wants a home, and he has got a right to one,' says I to MissJessamine. 'You have not walled up Lin McLean,' I says to her. Wait,Lin, wait. Yus needn't to tell me that's a lie. I know a man thinks he'swalled up for a while."

  "She could have told you it was a lie," said the cow-puncher.

  "She did not. 'Let him get a home,' says she. 'I want him to be happy.''That flash in your eyes talks different,' says I. 'Sure enough yuswants him to be happy. Sure enough. But not happy along with Miss SecondBest.'

  "Lin, she looked at me that piercin'!

  "And I goes on, for I was wound away up. 'And he will be happy, too,' Isays. 'Miss Second Best will have a talk with him about your picture andlittle "Neighbor," which he'll not send back to yus, because the hurt inhis heart is there. And he will keep 'em out of sight somewheres afterhis talk with Miss Second Best.' Lin, Lin, I laughed at them words ofmine, but I was that wound up I was strange to myself. And she watchin'me that way! And I says to her: 'Miss Second Best will not be the crazything to think I am any wife of his standing in her way. He will tellher about me. He will tell how onced he thought he was solid married tome till Lusk came back; and she will drop me out of sight along with therest that went nameless. They was not uncomprehensible to you, was they?You have learned something by livin', I guess! And Lin--your Lin, notmine, nor never mine in heart for a day so deep as he's yourn rightnow--he has been gay--gay as any I've knowed. Why, look at that face ofhis! Could a boy with a face like that help bein' gay? But that don'ttouch what's the true Lin deep down. Nor will his deep-down love foryou hinder him like it will hinder you. Don't you know men and us isdifferent when it comes to passion? We're all one thing then, but theyain't simple. They keep along with lots of other things. I can't makeyus know, and I guess it takes a woman like I have been to learn theirnature. But you did know he loved you, and you sent him away, and you'llbe homeless in yer house when he has done the right thing by himself andfound another girl.'

  "Lin, all the while I was talkin' all I knowed to her, without knowin'what I'd be sayin' next, for it come that unexpected, she was lookin'at me with them steady eyes. And all she says when I quit was, 'If I sawhim I would tell him to find a home.'"

  "Didn't she tell yu' she'd made me promise to keep away from seeingher?" asked the cow-puncher.

  Mrs. Lusk laughed. "Oh, you innocent!" said she.

  "She said if I came she would leave Separ," muttered McLean, brooding.

  Again the large woman laughed out, but more harshly.

  "I have kept my promise," Lin continued.

  "Keep it some more. Sit here rotting in your chair till she goes away.Maybe she's gone."

  "What's that?" said Lin. But still she only laughed harshly. "I couldbe there by to-morrow night," he murmured. Then his face softened. "Shewould never do such a thing!" he said, to himself.

  He had forgotten the woman at the table. While she had told him mattersthat concerned him he had listened eagerly. Now she was of no moreinterest than she had been before her story was begun. She looked at hiseyes as he sat thinking and dwelling upon his sweetheart. She looked athim, and a longing welled up into her face. A certain youth and heavybeauty relighted the features.

  "You are the same, same Lin everyways," she said. "A woman is too manyfor you still, Lin!" she whispered.

  At her summons he looked up from his revery.

  "Lin, I would not have treated you so."

  The caress that filled her voice was plain. His look met hers as he satquite still, his arms on the table. Then he took his turn at laughing.

  "You!" he said. "At least I've had plenty of education in you."

  "Lin, Lin, don't talk that brutal to me to-day. If yus knowed how near Icome shooting myself with 'Neighbor.' That would have been funny!

  "I knowed yus wanted to tear that pistol out of my hand because it washern. But yus never did such things to me, fer there's a gentleman inyou somewheres, Lin. And yus didn't never hit me, not even when you cometo know me well. And when I seen you so unexpected again to-night, andyou just the same old Lin, scaring Lusk with shooting them chickens, socomic and splendid, I could 'a' just killed Lusk sittin' in the wagon.Say, Lin, what made yus do that, anyway?"

  "I can't hardly say," said the cow-puncher. "Only noticing him soturruble anxious to quit me--well, a man acts without thinking."

  "You always did, Lin. You was always a comical genius. Lin, them weregood times."

  "Which times?"

  "You know. You can't tell me you have forgot."

  "I have not forgot much. What's the sense in this?"

  "Yus never loved me!" she exclaimed.

  "Shucks!"

  "Lin, Lin, is it all over? You know yus loved me on Bear Creek. Say youdid. Only say it was once that way." And as he sat, she came and put herarms round his neck. For a moment he did not move, letting himself beheld; and then she kissed him. The plates crashed as he beat and struckher down upon the table. He was on his feet, cursing himself. As he wentout of the door, she lay where she had fallen beneath his fist, lookingafter him and smiling.

  McLean walked down Box Elder Creek through the trees toward the stable,where Lusk had gone to put the horse in the wagon. Once he leaned hishand against a big cotton-wood, and stood still with half-closed eyes.Then he continued on his way. "Lusk!" he called, presently, and in a fewsteps more, "Lusk!" Then, as he came slowly out of the trees to meet thehusband he began, with
quiet evenness, "Your wife wants to know--" Buthe stopped. No husband was there. Wagon and horse were not there. Thedoor was shut. The bewildered cow-puncher looked up the stream where theroad went, and he looked down. Out of the sky where daylight and starswere faintly shining together sounded the long cries of the night hawksas they sped and swooped to their hunting in the dusk. From among thetrees by the stream floated a cooler air, and distant and close bysounded the splashing water. About the meadow where Lin stood his horsesfed, quietly crunching. He went to the door, looked in, and shut itagain. He walked to his shed and stood contemplating his own wagon alonethere. Then he lifted away a piece of trailing vine from the gate ofthe corral, while the turkeys moved their heads and watched him from theroof. A rope was hanging from the corral, and seeing it, he dropped thevine. He opened the corral gate, and walked quickly back into the middleof the field, where the horses saw him and his rope, and scattered. Buthe ran and herded them, whirling the rope, and so drove them into thecorral, and flung his noose over two. He dragged two saddles--men'ssaddles--from the stable, and next he was again at his cabin door withthe horses saddled. She was sitting quite still by the table where shehad sat during the meal, nor did she speak or move when she saw him lookin at the door.

  "Lusk has gone," said he. "I don't know what he expected you would do,or I would do. But we will catch him before he gets to Drybone."

  She looked at him with her dumb stare. "Gone?" she said.

  "Get up and ride," said McLean. "You are going to Drybone."

  "Drybone?" she echoed. Her voice was toneless and dull.

  He made no more explanations to her, but went quickly about the cabin.Soon he had set it in order, the dishes on their shelves, the tableclean, the fire in the stove arranged; and all these movements shefollowed with a sort of blank mechanical patience. He made a smallbundle for his own journey, tied it behind his saddle, brought her horsebeside a stump. When at his sharp order she came out, he locked hiscabin and hung the key by a window, where travellers could find it andbe at home.

  She stood looking where her husband had slunk off. Then she laughed."It's about his size," she murmured.

  Her old lover helped her in silence to mount into the man's saddle--thisthey had often done together in former years--and so they took their waydown the silent road. They had not many miles to go, and after the firsttwo lay behind them, when the horses were limbered and had been put toa canter, they made time quickly. They had soon passed out of the treesand pastures of Box Elder and came among the vast low stretches of thegreater valley. Not even by day was the river's course often discerniblethrough the ridges and cheating sameness of this wilderness; and beneaththis half-darkness of stars and a quarter moon the sage spread shapelessto the looming mountains, or to nothing.

  "I will ask you one thing," said Lin, after ten miles.

  The woman made no sign of attention as she rode beside him.

  "Did I understand that she--Miss Buckner, I mean--mentioned she might begoing away from Separ?"

  "How do I know what you understood?"

  "I thought you said--"

  "Don't you bother me, Lin McLean." Her laugh rang out, loud andforlorn--one brief burst that startled the horses and that must havesounded far across the sage-brush. "You men are rich," she said.

  They rode on, side by side, and saying nothing after that. The Dryboneroad was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward overthe endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; andpresently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, theymade out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it.

  "Put your carbine down," said McLean to Lusk. "It's not robbers. It'syour wife I'm bringing you." He spoke very quietly.

  The husband addressed no word to the cow-puncher "Get in, then," he saidto his wife.

  "Town's not far now," said Lin. "Maybe you would prefer riding thebalance of the way?"

  "I'd--" But the note of pity that she felt in McLean's question overcameher, and her utterance choked. She nodded her head, and the threecontinued slowly climbing the hill together.

  From the narrows of the steep, sandy, weather-beaten banks that theroad slanted upward through for a while, they came out again upon theimmensity of the table-land. Here, abruptly like an ambush, was thewhole unsuspected river close below to their right, as if it had emergedfrom the earth. With a circling sweep from somewhere out in the gloomit cut in close to the lofty mesa beneath tall clean-graded descents ofsand, smooth as a railroad embankment. As they paused on the level tobreathe their horses, the wet gulp of its eddies rose to them throughthe stillness. Upstream they could make out the light of the Drybonebridge, but not the bridge itself; and two lights on the farther bankshowed where stood the hog-ranch opposite Drybone. They went on overthe table-land and reached the next herald of the town, Drybone'schief historian, the graveyard. Beneath its slanting headboards andwind-shifted sand lay many more people than lived in Drybone. Theypassed by the fence of this shelterless acre on the hill, and shoutingsand high music began to reach them. At the foot of the hill they saw thesparse lights and shapes of the town where ended the gray strip of road.The many sounds--feet, voices, and music--grew clearer, unravelling fromtheir muffled confusion, and the fiddling became a tune that could beknown.

  "There's a dance to-night," said the wife to the husband. "Hurry."

  He drove as he had been driving. Perhaps he had not heard her.

  "I'm telling you to hurry," she repeated. "My new dress is in thatwagon. There'll be folks to welcome me here that's older friends thanyou."

  She put her horse to a gallop down the broad road toward the music andthe older friends. The husband spoke to his horse, cleared his throatand spoke louder, cleared his throat again and this time his sullenvoice carried, and the animal started. So Lusk went ahead of Lin McLean,following his wife with the new dress at as good a pace as he might. Ifhe did not want her company, perhaps to be alone with the cow-puncherwas still less to his mind.

  "It ain't only her he's stopped caring for," mused Lin, as he rodeslowly along. "He don't care for himself any more."