The Moccasin Ranch Part 8

Blanche staggered on her numb feet, which felt like clods. She was weak with cold, and everything grew dark before her.

"Oh, Jim, I can't go on. I'll freeze. I'll die--I know I shall. My feet are frozen solid."

He dragged a chair to the hearth of the stove, in which a coal fire lay.

His action was bold and confident.

"No, you won't. I'll have you all right in a jiffy. Trouble is, you're not half dressed. You need woollen underclothing and a new fur cloak.

We'll make it sealskin to pay for this."

He unlaced her shoes and slipped them off, and, while she sobbed with agony, he rolled her stockings down and took her cold, white feet in his warm, swift hands. In a few minutes the wrinkles of pain on her face smoothed out, and a flush came into her cheeks. The tears stood on her eyelashes. She was like a sorrowing child who forgets its grief in a quick return of happiness.

Suddenly Rivers stopped and listened. His face grew set and dark with apprehension. "Here, put your veil back, quick! It's Bailey! Don't answer him, unless I tell you to."

Outside a clear voice pierced through the wind. It was Bailey speaking to the horses.

Rivers went on, angrily: "If you'd been half dressed, this wouldn't have happened. There'll be h.e.l.l to pay unless I can convince him--"

A hand was laid on the k.n.o.b and Bailey entered.

"h.e.l.lo, Jim! I didn't think you'd come out to-day." He eyed the m.u.f.fled woman sharply. "Who've you got with you--Mrs. Burke?"

"It don't concern you," Rivers replied. He saw his mistake instantly, and changed his tone. "Yes, I'm taking her home. Come, Mrs. Burke, we must be going."

"Wait a minute, Jim," said Bailey. He studied them both carefully.

"Something's wrong here. I feel that. Where are you going, Jim?"

Rivers' wrath flamed out. "None o' your business. Come, Blanche." He turned to her. His tones betrayed him again.

Bailey faced him, with his back to the door.

"Wait a minute, Jim."

"Get out o' my way."

There was a silence, and in that silence the two men faced each other as if under some strange light. They seemed alien to each other, yet familiar, too. Bailey spoke first:

"Jim, I know all about it. You're stealing another man's wife--and, by G.o.d, I won't let you do it!" His voice shook so that he hardly uttered his sentence intelligibly. The sweat of shame broke out on his face, but he did not falter. "I've seen this coming on all summer. I ought to have interfered before--"

Rivers laid a hand on him. "Stand out o' my way, or I'll kill you."

The quiver went out of Bailey's voice. He took his partner's hand down from his shoulder, and when he dropped it there was a bracelet of whitened flesh where his fingers had circled it. "You'll stay right here, Jim, till I say 'go.'"

Rivers reached for a weapon. "Will I?" he asked. "I wonder if I will?"

Blanche burst out: "Oh, Jim, don't! Please don't!"

The men did not hear her. They saw no one, heard no one. They were facing each other in utter disregard of time or place.

Bailey's tone grew sad and tender, but he did not move: "All right, Jim.

If you want to go to h.e.l.l as the murderer of your best friend, as well as for stealing another man's wife, do it. But you sha'n't go out of this door with that woman _while I live_. Now, that's final." His voice was low, and his words came slowly, but not from weakness.

For a moment h.e.l.l looked from the other man's eyes. He was like a tiger intercepted in his leap upon his prey. The laugh had vanished from his hazel eyes--they were gray and cold and savage, but there was something equally forceful in Bailey's gaze.

Rivers could not shoot. He was infuriate, but he was not insane. He turned away, cursing his luck. His face, twitching and white, was terrible to look upon, but the crisis was over.

Bailey's eyes lightened. "Come, old man, you can't afford to do this. Go out and put up the team, and to-morrow we'll take Mrs. Burke home--I'll explain that she came over after the mail and couldn't get back."

Rivers turned on him again with a sneer. "You cussed fool, can't you see that she _can't_ go back to Burke? I've made her mine--you understand?"

Bailey's hands fell slack. He suddenly remembered something. He brushed his hand over his brow as if to clear his vision:

"Jim, Jim, I--good G.o.d!--how could you do such a thing?" He was helpless as a boy, in face of this hideous complication.

Rivers pushed his advantage. He developed a species of swagger:

"Never mind about that. It's done. Now what are you going to do? Can you fix up such a thing as that?" Bailey was still silent. "It simply means that I'm her husband from this time on. Sit down, Blanche--I'm going to put up the team, but to-morrow morning we go. We couldn't make it now, anyway," he added. "There's nothing for it but to stay here all night."

Bailey stood aside to let him go out, then went to the stove and mechanically stirred it up and put some water heating. This finished, he sat down and leaned his head in his hands in confused thought.

To his clear sense his partner's act seemed monstrous. He had been brought up to respect the marriage bond, and to protect and honor women. The illicit was impossible to his candid soul. All the men he had a.s.sociated with had been respecters of marriage, though some of them were obscene--thoughtlessly, he always believed--and now Jim, his chum, had come between a man and his wife! With Estelle in his mind as the type of purity, he could not understand how a wife could be the faithless creature Blanche Burke seemed. Her weakness opened a new world to him. He could not trust himself to speak to her.

The bubbling of the kettle aroused him, and he rose and went about getting supper. After a few moments he felt able to ask, with formal politeness:

"Won't you lay off your things, Mrs. Burke?"

She made no reply, but sat like an old gypsy, crouched low, with brooding face. She, too, was wordless. She had made the curious mistake of looking to Bailey for justification. She had felt that he would understand and pity her, and his accusing eyes hurt her sorely. "If I could only speak? If I could only find words to tell him my thought, he would at least not despise me," she thought. Her face turned toward him piteously, but she dared not lift her eyes to his. He typified the world to her, and, furthermore, he was kindly and just; and yet he was about to condemn her because she could not make him understand.

Trained to laugh when she should weep, how could she plead overmastering desire, the pressure of loneliness and poverty, and, last of all, the power of a man who stood, in her fancy, among the most brilliant of her world. She felt herself in the grasp of forces as vast, as impersonal, and as illimitable as the wind and the sky, but, reduced to words, her poor plea for mercy would have been, "I could not help it."

Her maternity, which should have been her glory and her pride, was at this hour an insupportable shame. She had experienced her moments of emotional exaltation wherein she was lifted above self-abas.e.m.e.nt, but now she crouched in the lowest depths of self-suspicion. The rising storm seemed the approach of the remorseless judgment-day, the howl of the wind, the voice of devils, exulting in her fall.

She did not trouble herself about her husband. At times she flamed out in anger against his weakness, his business failures, his boyish gullibility. Sometimes she pitied him, sometimes she hated him.

She watched Bailey furtively. The firm lines of his face, his st.u.r.dy figure, and his frank, brusque manner were as familiar to her as the face of Rivers, and almost as dear--but she could not speak!

At last she gave up all thought of speaking, and drew her shawl about her with an air of final reserve. She resembled an old crone as she crouched there.

Rivers returned soon and took off his overcoat without looking at Bailey, who bustled about getting the supper, his resolute cheerfulness once more aglow.

Rivers sat down beside Blanche. "It would be death to attempt Wheatland to-night," he said. "I could make it all right, but it would be the end of you."

Bailey could not hear the words she spoke in reply. "Supper's ready,"

said he. "We all have to eat, no matter what comes."

Something in his voice and manner affected Blanche deeply. She buried her face in her hands and wept while Rivers sat helplessly looking at her. She could not rise and walk before him yet. The shame of her sin weighed her down.

Bailey poured some tea and gave it to Rivers.