Bruce of the Circle A Part 19

"He's been good to me," she said slowly. "He's good to everybody, as I guess you know. The' ain't much to know about him. His name ain't Bayard; n.o.body knows what it is. He was picked up out of a railroad wreck a long time ago an' old Tim Bayard took him an' raised him. They never got track of his folks; th' wreck burnt.

"Tim died four years ago an' Bruce's runnin' th' outfit. He's got a fine ranch!"--voice rising in unconscious enthusiasm. "He ain't rich, but he'll be well fixed some day. He don't care much about gettin' rich; says it takes too much time. He'd rather read an' fuss with horses an'

things."

"Isn't it unusual to find a man out here or anywhere who feels like that? Are there more like him in this country, Nora?"

"G.o.d, no!"--with a roughness that startled her companion. "None of 'em are like him. He was born different; you can tell that by lookin' at him. He ain't their kind, but they all like him, you bet! _He's_ smarter'n they are. Feller from th' East, a perfesser, come out here with th' consumption once when Tim was alive an' stayed there; he taught Bruce lots. My!"--with a sigh of mingled pride and hopelessness--"he sure knows a lot. Just as if he was raised an' educated in th' East, only with none of th' frills you folks get."

Then she was silent and refused to respond readily to Ann's advances, but rode looking at her pony's ears, her lips in a straight line.

That was the beginning. Each day the two women rode together, Nora teaching Ann all she knew of horses and showing her, in her own way, the mighty beauty of that country.

After the first time, they said little about Bruce; with a better acquaintance, more matters could be talked about and for that each was thankful.

Removed as they were from one another by birth and training, each of these two women, strangers until within a few days, found that a great part of her life was identical with that of the other. Yet, at the very point where they came closest to one another, divergence began again.

Their common interest was their feeling for Bruce Bayard, and their greatest difference was the manner in which each reacted to the emotion.

The waitress, more elemental, more direct and child-like, wanted the man with an unequivocal desire. She would have gone through any ordeal, subjected herself to any ignominious circ.u.mstances, for his pleasure.

But she did not want him as a possession, as something which belonged to her; she wanted him for a master, longed with every fiber of her sensory system to belong to him. She would have slaved for him, drudged for him, received any brutal outburst he might have turned on her, gratefully, just so long as she knew she was his.

Ann Lytton, complicated in her manner of thought by the life she had lived, hampered by conventions, by preconceived standards of conduct, would not let herself be whiffed about so wholly by emotion. It was as though she braced backward and moved reluctantly before a high wind, urged to flight, resisting the tugging by all the strength of her limbs, yet losing control with every reluctant step. For her, also, Bruce Bayard was the most wonderful human being that she had ever experienced.

His roughness, his little uncouth touches, did not jar on her highly sensitized appreciation of proprieties. With another individual of a weaker or less cleanly type, the slips in grammar, even, would have been annoying; but his virility and his unsmirched manner of thought, his robust, clean body, overbalanced those shortcomings and, deep in her heart, she idolized him. And yet she would not go further, would not willingly let that emotion come into the light where it could thrive and grow with the days; she tried to repress it, keeping it from its natural sources of nourishment and thereby its growth--for it would grow in spite of her--became a disrupting progress. One part of her, the real, natural, unhampered Ann, told her that for his embraces, for his companions.h.i.+p, she would sell her chances of eternity; she had no desire to own him, no urge to subject herself to him; the status she wanted was equal footing, a shoulder-to-shoulder relations.h.i.+p that would be a joyous thing. And yet that other part, that Puritanical Ann, resisted, fought down this urge, told her that she must not, could not want Bayard because, at the Circle A ranch, waited another man who, in the eyes of the law, of other people, of her G.o.d, even, was the one who owned her loyalty and devotion even though he could not claim her love. Strange the ways of women who will guard so zealously their bodies but who will struggle against every natural, holy influence to give so recklessly, so uselessly, so hopelessly, of their souls!

Nora was the quicker to a.n.a.lyze her companion-rival. Her subjection to Bayard's every whim was so complete that, when he told her to be kind to this other woman, she obeyed with all the heart she could muster, in spite of what she read in his face and in Ann's blue eyes when that latter-day part of the eastern woman dreamed through them. She went about her task doggedly, methodically, forcing herself to nurse the bond between these two, thinking not of the future, of what it meant to her own relations.h.i.+ps with the cattleman, of nothing but the fact that Bayard, the lover of her dreams, had willed it. The girl was a religious fanatic; her religion was that of service to Bayard and she tortured herself in the name of that belief.

And in that she was only reflecting the spirit of the man she loved.

Back at the ranch, Bayard underwent the same ordeal of repressing his natural desires, only, in his case, he could not at all times control his revulsion for Lytton, while Nora kept her jealousy well in hand. As at first, he centered his whole activity about bringing Lytton back to some semblance of manhood. He nursed him, humored him as much as he could, watched him constantly to see that the man did not slip away, go to Yavapai and there, in an hour, undo all that Bruce had accomplished.

Lytton regained strength slowly. His nervous system, racked and torn by his relentless dissipation, would not allow his body to mend rapidly. He had been on the verge of acute alcoholism; another day or two of continued debauchery would have left him a bundle of uncontrollable nerves, and remedying the condition was no one day task. A fortnight pa.s.sed before Lytton was able to sit up through the entire day and, even then, a walk of a hundred yards would bring him back pale and panting.

Meager as his daily improvement was, nevertheless it was progress, and the rehabilitation of his strength meant only one thing for Bruce Bayard. It meant that Lytton, within a short time, must know of Ann's presence, must go to her, and that, thereafter, Bayard would be excluded from the woman's presence, for he still felt that to see them together would strip him of self-restraint, would make him a primitive man, battling blindly for the woman he desired.

As the days pa.s.sed and Bruce saw Lytton steadying, gaining physical and mental force, his composure, already disturbed, was badly shaken. He tried to tell himself that what must be, must be; that brooding would help matters not at all, that he must keep up his courage and surrender gracefully for the sake of the woman he loved, keeping her peace of mind sacred. At other times, he went over the doctrine of unimpeachable motive, of individual duty that the clergyman had expounded, but some inherent reluctance to adopt the new, some latent conservatism in him rebelled at thought of man's crossing man where a woman was at stake. He did not know, but he formed the third being who was held to a rigid course by conscience! Of the four entangled by this situation, Ned Lytton alone was without scruples, without a code of ethics.

Between the two men was the same att.i.tude that had prevailed from the first. Bayard kept Lytton in restraint by his physical and mental dominance. He gave up attempting to persuade, attempting to appeal to the spark of manhood left in his patient, after that day when Lytton stole and drank the whiskey. He relied entirely on his superiority and frankly kept his charge in subjection. When strength came back to the debauched body, Bayard told himself, he could begin to plead, to argue for his results; not before.

For the greater portion of the time Lytton was morose, quarrelsome. Now and again came flashes of a better nature, but invariably they were followed by spiteful, reasonless outbursts and remonstrances. To these Bayard listened with tolerance, accepting the other man's curses and insults as he would the reasonless pet of a child, and each time that Ned showed a desire to act as a normal human being, to interest himself in life or the things about him, the big rancher was on the alert to give information, to encourage thought that would take the sick man's mind from his own difficulties.

One factor of the life at the ranch evidently worried Lytton, but of it he did not speak. This was the manner with which Bayard kept one room, the room in which he slept, to himself. The door through which he entered never stood open, Lytton was never asked to cross the sill.

Bayard never referred to it in conversation. A secret chamber, it was, rendered mysterious by the fact that its occupant took pains that it should never be mentioned. Lytton instinctively respected this att.i.tude and never asked a question touching on it, though at times his annoyance at being so completely excluded from a portion of the house was evident.

Once Lytton, sitting in the shade of the ash tree, watched Bayard riding in from the valley on his sorrel horse. The animal nickered as his master let him head for the well beside the house.

"He likes to drink here," Bruce laughed, dropping off and wiping the dust from his face. "He thinks that because this well's beside the house, it's better than drinkin' out yonder in th' corral. Kind of a stuck up old pup, ain't you, Abe?" slapping the horse's belly until he lifted one hind foot high in a meaningless threat of destruction. "Put down that foot you four-flusher!" setting his boot over the hoof and forcing it back to earth.

He pulled off the saddle, dropped it, drew the bridle over the sleek, finely proportioned ears and let the big beast shake himself mightily, roll in the dooryard dust and drink again.

"Where'd he come from?" Lytton asked, after staring at the splendid lines of the animal for several minutes.

"Oh, Abe run hog-wild out on th' valley," Bayard answered, with a laugh, waving his hand out toward the expanse of country, now a fine lilac tinted with green under the brilliant sunlight, purple and uncertain away out where the heat waves distorted the horizon. "He was a h.e.l.l bender of a horse for a while....

"You see, he come from some stock that wasn't intended to get out.

Probably, an army stallion got away from some officer at Whipple Barracks and fell in with a range mare. That kind of a sire accounts for his weight and that head and neck, an' his mammy must have been a leather-lunged, steel-legged little cuss--'cause he's that, too. He's got the lines of a fine bred horse, with the insides of a first cla.s.s bronc."

"He attracted attention when he was a two year old and some of th' boys tried to get him, but couldn't. They kept after him until he was four and then sort of give up. He was a good horse gone bad. He drove off gentle mares and caused all kind of trouble and would 'a been shot, if he hadn't been so well put up. He was no use at all that way; he was a peace disturber an' he was fast an' wise. That's a bad combination to beat in a country like ours,"--with another gesture toward the valley.

"But his fifth summer was th' dry year--no rain--creeks dryin' up--h.e.l.l on horses; Tim and I went to get him.

"There was just three waterin' places left on that range. One on Lynch Creek, one under Bald Mountain, other way over by Sugar Block. We fenced the first two in tight so nothin' but birds could get to 'em, built a corral around th' third, that was clean across th' valley there,"--indicating as he talked-"an' left th' gate open."

"Well, first day all th' horses on th' valley collected over other side by those fenced holes, wonderin' what was up,"--he scratched his head and grinned at the memory, "an' Tim and I set out by Sugar Block in th'

sun waitin'.... Lord, it was hot, an' there wasn't no shade to be had.

That night, some of the old mares come trailin' across th' valley leadin' their colts, whinnerin' when they smelled water. We was sleepin'

nearby and could kind 'a' see 'em by th' starlight. They nosed around th' corral and finally went in and drunk. Next day, th' others was hangin' in sight, suspicious, an' too thirsty to graze. All of 'em stood head toward th' water, lookin' an' lookin' hours at a time. 'Long toward night in they come, one at a time, finally, with a rush; unbranded mares, a few big young colts, all drove to it by thirst.

"Old Abe, though, he stood up on th' far rim of a wash an' watched an'

hollered an' trotted back an' forth. He wouldn't come; not much! We had a gla.s.s an' could see him switch his tail an' run back a little ways with his ears flat down. Then, he'd stop an' turn his head an' stick up his ears stiff as starch; then he'd turn 'round an' walk towards us, slow for a few steps. Never got within pistol shot, though. All next day he hung there alone, watchin' us, dryin' up to his bones under that sun. Antelope come up, a dozen in a bunch, an' hung near him all afternoon. Next mornin' come th' sun an' there was Mr. Abe, standin'

with his neck straight in th' air, ears peekin' at our camp to see if we was there yet. Gosh, how hot it got that day!" He rose, drew a bucket of water from the well and lifting it in his big hands, drank deeply from the rim at the memory.

"I thought it was goin' to burn th' valley up.

"'This'll bring him,' says Tim.

"'Not him,' I says! 'He'll die first.'

"'He's too d.a.m.n good a sport to die,' Tim said. 'He'll quit when he's licked.'

"An' he did."

The man walked to the sorrel, who stood still idly switching at flies.

He threw his arm about the great head and the horse, swaying forward, pushed against his body with playful affection until Bayard was shoved from his footing.

"You did, didn't you, Abe? He didn't wait for dark. It was still light an' after waitin' all that time on us, you'd thought he'd stuck it out until we couldn't see so well. But it seemed as if Tim was right, as if he quit when he saw he was licked, like a good sport. He just disappeared into that wash an' come up on th' near side an' walked slow toward us, stoppin' now an' then, sidesteppin' like he was goin' to turn back, but always comin' on an' on. He made a big circle toward the corral an', when he got close, 'bout fifty yards off, he started to trot an' he went through that gate on a high lope, comin' to stop plumb in th' middle of that hole, spatterin' water an' mud all over himself an' half th' country.

"'Twasn't much then. We made it to th' gate on our horses. He could see us, but we knew after bein' dried out that long he'd just naturally have to fill up. When I reached for th' gate, he made one move like he tried to get away but 'twas too late. We had him trapped. He was licked. He looked us over an' then went to lay down in th' water."

He stroked the long, fine neck slowly.

"After that 'twas easy. I knew he was more or less man even if he was horse. We put th' first rope on him he'd ever felt next mornin'. Of course, 'twas kind of a tournament for a while, but, finally we both tied on an' started home with him between us. He played around some, but finally let up; not licked, not discouraged, understand, but just as if he admitted we had one on him an' he was goin' to see our game through for curiosity.

"We put him in th' round corral an' left him there for a straight month, foolin' with him every day, of course. Then I got up an' rode him.

That's all there is to it.

"He was my best friend th' minute I tied on to him; he is yet. We never had no trouble. I treat him square an' white. He's never tried to pitch with me, never has quit runnin' until I told him to, an', for my part, I've never abused him or asked him to go th' limit."

He walked out to the corral then, horse following at his heels like a dog, nosing the big brown hand that swung against Bayard's thigh.

"That's always been a lesson to me," Bruce said, on his return as he prepared to wash in the tin basin beside the wall. "Runnin' hog-wild never got him nothin' but enemies, never did him no good. He found out that it didn't pay, that men was too much for him, an' he's a lot happier, lot better off, lot more comfortable than he was when he was h.e.l.lin' round with no restraint on him. He knows that. I can tell.