The Forfeit Part 50

"Jeff comin' up?" he inquired.

The girl shook her head. For a moment the smiling eyes were hidden beneath their lids.

"Not for supper. He's gone on to the branding 'pinch.'"

She was gone before her father could reply, and he was left to his own reflections, which were still further inspired by impatience.

Well enough he knew the arduous nature of the work. Had he not been at it himself since the first streak of dawn? But he felt that Jeff was going beyond the bounds of necessity. Even beyond the bounds of reason.

However, he was not given much time to nurse any imaginary grievance.

For Nan reappeared after a surprisingly short interval, and the transformation she had achieved was not a little startling. Her dusty riding suit had given place to a pretty house frock of some softly clinging material which restored to her at once the charm of her essential femininity. The pretty brown of her eyes, and the wavy softness of her hair became indescribably charming in such a setting.

Bud regarded her with warm approval, and his spirits rose.

"Jeff's coming right up after he's eaten," she said, as they look their places at the table. "He's getting the food he needs at the bunkhouse.

He guesses he hasn't time to get supper right."

"Ah."

The announcement gave Bud more pleasure than his monosyllable admitted.

His eyes once more took in the picture Nan made as she sat behind the steaming coffee urn at the head of the table. And somehow the change she had made became less startling.

The meal was the customary ranch supper. The table was simply loaded with cold meats, and sweets, and cakes of varied description. The fare was homely but plentiful, and, to these simple-living people, it was all that was required. Bud helped himself liberally, while Nan poured out the fragrant coffee.

"We ought to be through in a week now," Nan said, pa.s.sing a heavy china cup of coffee across to her father. "Jeff figures we're well up on average in spite of the stock we lost last summer. It's pretty good to think--after that time. Say, Daddy, we owe Jeff a pretty big thing."

The old man looked up with a smile.

"Guess the owin' ain't all with us," he said, with his mouth full.

Nan paused in the act of sipping her coffee. Her eyes were full of incredulity.

"I don't understand, Daddy," she said frankly. "We owe more to Jeff than ever. Much more. He came pretty near handing over his poor life so the Obar might prosper. He cleared out that gang who would have done the Obar to death. A man can't give more to--his friends."

Bud remained unconvinced. He shook his great head and his smile deepened to a twinkle of real amus.e.m.e.nt.

"That's so," he said. "But he didn't just give that poor life of his.

I allow he was ready to because--because, wal, I guess he's built in a right fas.h.i.+on. We owed him for that sure. But I 'low he's been paid in a way it don't fall to every feller's lot to git paid. You paid that score for us both, an' if ther's any debt left over to be paid, why I guess I'm ready to pay it." He chuckled. "You know, Nan, woman's a ticklish proposition. Ther's wise highbrows guess they handed out all ther' is to say 'bout women-folk, an' I figger some has used elegant langwidge, an' made pretty talk. But they ain't said it all, an' ain't never likely to ef they was to yarn the whole way from here to h.e.l.l an' back. I'm gettin' older most every day, an' maybe I oughter git wiser. But ef I was to live till the great round-up I don't guess I'd ever learn the limits of a woman's self-sacrifice fer them she takes the notion to mother. An' it don't matter if it's her own folk, or her beau, or her man, or some pestilential kid she's rescued from drownin' in a churn of cream she's jest fixed ready fer b.u.t.ter makin'. Wot Jeff don't owe you fer haulin' him right back into the midst of life, why I guess you couldn't find with one of them things crazy highbrows wastes otherwise valuable lives in lookin' at bugs with."

Nan laughed, but her denial came swiftly.

"Jeff doesn't owe me a thing," she declared. "The wasn't a soul else around to nurse him. I'd have hated handing him on to you." Then she sighed, but her eyes shone with a light which her father well enough understood. "I--I needed to nurse him. If I hadn't been able to, why, I think I'd have just died. But he don't owe me a thing--not a thing."

Bud took a great gulp of coffee and set his cup down with a clatter.

His deep gurgling laugh was good to hear.

"That ain't no argyment," he cried, his deep eyes twinkling. "You've jest said the things I hadn't savvee to put into words right. Woman's jest a sort of angel come right down from Heaven on a snowflake. She sure is. Ther' ain't no reason to her. Set her around a sick bed with physic she ken hand on to the feller lyin' there, an' ther' ain't no limit to wot she can do. It's a pa.s.sion. You can't blame her. She's fixed that way. She'll just nurse that feller in a way that makes him feel he wants to start right in trundlin' a wooden hoop, or blowin' a painted trumpet, hanging on to her hand, same as he did before he quit actin' foolish on his mother's lap. It kind o' seems to me a mortal wonder women don't set their men-folk actin' queer settin' aside a railroad track guessin' they're advertis.e.m.e.nts fer a new hair-wash, or some other fancy dope. I guess women is the greatest proposition ever step out o' the Garden of Eden--someways."

Nan laughed happily.

"That's spoiled it, Daddy," she cried. "Why not leave it at the Garden of Eden?"

Bud laughingly shook his head.

"Why for should I?" he retorted. "If they're angels they ain't all halo an' wings. Anyway, she did step out o' the Garden. An' though the committee ast her to vacate, I allow it was a mighty good thing fer the human race, or we'd all be eatin' gra.s.s still, or some other perfectly ridiculous cattle feed. No siree! She ain't all halo an'

wings, or us men 'ud be settin' around all the time shoutin' hymns doleful instead of enjoyin' ourselves lyin' awake at nights figgerin'

to beat the other feller's play. Woman's jest woman, an' the diff'rences in her is just what a mighty tough world makes of her.

Maybe she's foolish. Maybe she ain't. Anyway, she's got most things agin her to make her that way, an' it seems to me a yeller dawg don't have much the worst of the game. No. I guess woman's jest woman, an'

us men needs to git right on our knees and thank Providence that is so."

Bud reattacked his supper. There had been impatience as well as amiability in his denial. For all his regard for his partner he could not allow Nan her absurd self-effacement without protest. None knew better than he the extent of his debt to Jeff for ridding the Obar of the rustlers. But Jeff, he also knew, owed his life to the devotion, the skill, the love of this girl upon whom he had no claim.

He remained silent now, lost in thoughts he dared not impart to Nan, and the girl herself had nothing to say. She, too, was thinking. But there was no impatience in her thoughts.

She was thinking of a moment which had occurred down at the pastures.

A moment just before her return home to supper. To her it had been a moment of compensation for everything which she had ever suffered, a moment when the whole aspect of her life had been suddenly changed to a radiant vision of happiness.

She had been standing beside Jeff watching the work of the boys within the pastures. Their talk had all been of the business of the day.

There had been no other sign between them. The old comrades.h.i.+p alone seemed to prevail. Then they had turned away, with their talk silenced. They had moved toward their horses which were standing in the shadow of a small bluff.

Just as they came up Jeff had paused, and turned, and looked down at her from his superior height. She would never forget that look. It was the look she had seen in his eyes when he first gazed on the beauty of the woman he had married. Her heart was set thumping in her bosom as she thought of it now. A deep flush surged to her cheeks, and she kept her head studiously bent over her plate.

Then had followed a great impulsive abandoning of his usual reserve.

It had been so unusual in him, but to Nan so natural. It seemed as though of a sudden some great barrier between them had been thrust aside by emotions beyond the man's control. He had flung out his hands toward her, and, before she knew what was happening, she felt their pa.s.sionate pressure under the buckskin gauntlets she was wearing. Then had come words, rapid, even disjointed; again to her so natural, yet strange, awkward on the lips of this man.

"Say, little Nan," he cried, "we've won out. Look at 'em. The pastures. They're full. Fuller than we ever guessed they'd be after last year. Things are running same as we've dreamed. The Obar's going up--up. And--it's all too late."

On the warm impulse of the moment she had answered him without a second thought.

"Why--why is it too late?"

Her hands were still held in his pa.s.sionate grasp. He laughed a bitter, mirthless laugh.

"Why, because--because I've wakened out of a pa.s.sionate nightmare to realize all I've--lost."

She had abruptly withdrawn her hands. She remembered the curious chill which suddenly seemed to pa.s.s through her body. But she answered him simply, earnestly.

"You mustn't blame yourself for all you've lost, Jeff," she said.

"Maybe Evie loved you better than you knew. But she--she, too, was to blame. You must try to forget."

Then had happened something so startling that even now she could hardly credit it. Jeff had turned away. His face was toward the hills where the setting sun still lit the fastnesses in which lay the fateful Spruce Crossing. His words came shortly, simply.

"I wasn't thinking of--Evie," he said. "The memory of her, of all that, has gone--forever."

Oh, the bewilderment of that moment. Nan remembered the absurdity of her reply now with something very like panic:

"Who--what--were you thinking of then?"

"Who--what?" The man's eyes lit with a deep, pa.s.sionate yearning.

"Why, little Nan, the only person who is ever in my thoughts now--you."