Jean of the Lazy A Part 24

"Now, here's this wire Rossman sent me. You don't want to get the wrong idea, Jean, and feel too bad about this. You don't want to think you had anything to do with it. Carl was gradually building up to something of this kind,--has been for a long time. His coming over to the ranch nights, looking for that letter that he had hunted all over for at first, shows he wasn't right in his mind on the subject. But--"

"Well, heavens and earth, Lite!" Jean's tone was exasperated more than it was worried. "Why don't you say what you want to say? What's it all about? Let me read that telegram and be done with it. I--I should think you'd know I can stand things, by this time. I haven't shown any weak knees, have I?"

"Well, I hate to pile on any more," Lite muttered defensively. "But you've got to know this. I wish you didn't, but--"

Jean did not say any more. She reached over and with her free hand took the telegram from him. She did not pull away the hand Lite was holding, however, and the heart of him gave an exultant bound because she let it lie there quiet under his own. She pinched her brows together over the message, and let it drop into her lap. Her head went back against the towel covered head-rest, and for a minute her eyes closed as if she could not look any longer upon trouble.

Lite waited a second, pulled her head over against his shoulder, and picked up the telegram and read it through slowly, though he could have repeated it word for word with his eyes shut.

L Avery,

En Route Train 23, S. L. & D. R. R.

Carl Douglas suicided yesterday, leaving letter confessing murder of Croft. Had just completed transfer of land and cattle to your name.

Am taking steps placing matter before governor immediately expect him to act at once upon pardon. Bring your man my office at once deposition may be required.

J. W. ROSSMAN.

"Now, I told you not to worry about this," Lite reminded the girl firmly. "Looks to me like it takes a load off our hands,--Carl's doing what he done. Saves us dragging it all through court again; and, Jean, it'll let your dad out a whole lot quicker. Sounds kinda cold-blooded, maybe, but if you could look at it as good news,--that's the way it strikes me."

Jean did not say a word, just then. She did what you might not expect Jean to do, after all her strong-mindedness and her independence: She made an uncertain movement toward sitting up and facing things calmly, man-fas.h.i.+on; then she leaned and dropped her very independent brown head back upon Lite's shoulder, and behind her handkerchief she cried quietly while Lite held her close.

"Now, that's long enough to cry," he whispered to her, after a season of mental intoxication such as he had never before experienced. "I started out three years ago to be the boss. I ain't been working at it regular, as you might say, all the time. But I'm going to wind up that way. I hate to turn you over to your dad without some little show of making good at the job."

Jean gave a little gurgle that may have been related to laughter, and Lite's lips quirked with humorous embarra.s.sment as he went on.

"I don't guess," he said slowly, "that I'm going to turn you over at all, Jean. Not altogether. I guess I've just about got to keep you.

It--takes two to make a home, and--I've got my heart set on us making a home outa the Lazy A again; you and me, making a home for us and your dad. How--how does that sound to you, Jean?"

Jean was wiping her eyes as un.o.btrusively as she might. She did not answer.

"How does it sound, you and me making a home together?" Lite was growing pale, and his hands trembled. "Tell me."

"It sounds--good," said Jean unsteadily.

For several minutes Lite did not say a word. They sat there holding hands quite foolishly, and stared out at the drenched desert.

"Soon as your dad comes," he said at last, very simply, "we'll be married." He was silent another minute, and added under his breath like a prayer, "And we'll all go--home."

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW HAPPINESS RETURNED TO THE LAZY A

When Lite rapped with his knuckles on the door of the room where she was waiting, Jean stood with her hands pressed tightly over her face, every muscle rigid with the restraint she was putting upon herself.

For Lite this three-day interval had been too full of going here and there, attending to the manifold details of untangling the various threads of their broken life-pattern, for him to feel the suspense which Jean had suffered. She had not done much. She had waited. And now, with Lite and her dad standing outside the door, she almost dreaded the meeting. But she took a deep breath and walked to the door and opened it.

"h.e.l.lo, dad," she cried with a nervous gaiety. "Give your dear daughter a kiss!" She had not meant to say that at all.

Tall and gaunt and gray and old; lines etched deep ground his bitter mouth; pale with the tragic prison pallor; looking out at the world with the somber eyes of one who has suffered most cruelly,--Aleck Douglas put out his thin, shaking arms and held her close. He did not say anything at all; and the kiss she asked for he laid softly upon her hair.

Lite stood in the doorway and looked at the two of them for a moment.

"I'm going down to see about--things. I'll be back in a little while.

And, Jean, will you be ready?"

Jean looked up at him understandingly, and with a certain shyness in her eyes. "If it's all right with dad," she told him, "I'll be ready."

"Lite's a man!" Aleck stated unsmilingly, with a trace of that apathy which had hurt Jean so in the warden's office. "I'm glad you'll have him to take care of you, Jean."

So Lite closed the door softly and went away and left those two alone.

In a very few words I can tell you the rest. There were a few things to adjust, and a few arrangements to make. The greatest adjustment, perhaps, was when Jean begged off from that contract with the Great Western Company. Dewitt did not want to let her go, but he had read a marked article in a Montana paper that Lite mailed to him in advance of their return, and he realized that some things are greater even than the needs of a motion-picture company. He was very nice, therefore, to Jean. He told her by all means to consider herself free to give her time wholly to her father--and her husband. He also congratulated Lite in terms that made Jean blush and beat a hurried retreat from his office, and that made Lite grin all the way to the hotel. So the public lost Jean of the Lazy A almost as soon as it had learned to welcome her.

Then there was Pard, that had to leave the little buckskin and take that nerve-racking trip back to the Lazy A. Lite attended to that with perfect calm and a good deal of inner elation. So that detail was soon adjusted.

At the Lazy A there was a great deal to do before the traces of its tragedy were wiped out. We'll have to leave them doing that work, which was only a matter of time, after all, and not nearly so hard to accomplish as their attempts to wipe out from Aleck's soul the black scar of those three years. I think, on the whole, we shall leave them doing that work, too. As much as human love and happiness could do toward wiping out the bitterness they would accomplish, you may be sure,--give them time enough.