Bruce of the Circle A Part 5

She hesitated, staring absently, and Bayard waited in silence for her to go on.

"It seemed quite natural to hear those men talking about him the way they did, swearing at him and laughing.... And then to hear someone protecting him because he is weak,"--with a brave effort at a smile.

"That's what people in the East, his own people, even, have done; and I ... I had to stand up for him when everything, even he, was against me....

"I'd hoped that out here, at the mine, he'd be different, that he'd behave, that people would come to respect and like him. I'd hoped for that right up to the time I saw you coming across the street with him. I felt it must be he. I hadn't heard from him in months, not a line.

That's why I came out here. And I guess that in my heart I'd expected to find him like that. The uncertainty, that was the worst....

"Peculiar, isn't it, why I should have been uncertain? I should have admitted what I felt intuitively, but I always have hoped, I always will hope that he'll come through it sometime. That hope has kept me from telling myself that it must be the same with him out here as it was back there; that's why I fooled myself until I saw you ... with him.

"And I'm so glad it happened to be you who picked him up. You understand, you--"

Emotion choked off her words.

Bayard walked from her, returned to the bedside and stared down at the inert figure there. He was in a tumult. The contrast between this man and wife was too dreadful to be comprehended in calm. Lytton was the lowest human being he had ever known, degenerated to an organism that lived solely to satiate its most unworthy appet.i.tes. Ann, the woman crying yonder, was quite the most beautiful creature on whom he had ever looked and, though he had seen her for the first time no more than an hour before, her charm had touched every masculine instinct, had gripped him with that urge which draws the s.e.xes one to another ... yet, he was not conscious of it. She was, in his eyes, so wonderful, so removed from his world, that he could not presume to recognize her attraction as for himself. She was a distant, unattainable creature, one to serve, to admire; perhaps, sometime, to wors.h.i.+p reverently and that was the fact which set the blood congesting in his head when he looked down at the waster for whom she had traveled across a continent that she might suffer like this. Lytton was attainable, was comprehensible, and Bayard was urged to make him suffer in atonement for the wretchedness he had brought to this woman who loved him.... Who.... _loved_ him?

The man turned to look at Ann again, his lower lip caught speculatively between his thumb and forefinger.

"Now, I suppose the thing to do is to plan, to make some sort of arrangements ... now that I have found him," she said in a strained voice, bracing her shoulders, lifting a hand to brush a lock of hair back from her white, blue-veined temple.

She smiled courageously at the cowboy who approached her diffidently.

"I came out here to find out what was going on, to help him if he were succeeding, to ... help him if ... as I have found him."

Her directness had returned and, as she spoke, she looked Bayard in the eye, steadily.

"Well, whatever I can do, ma'am, I'm anxious to do," he said, repressing himself that he might not give ground to the suspicion that he was forcing himself on her, though his first impulse was to take her affairs in hand and s.h.i.+eld her from the trying circ.u.mstances which were bound to follow. "I can't do much to help you, but all I can do--"

"I don't think I could do anything without you," she said, simply, letting her gaze travel over his big frame. "It's so far away, out here, from anyone I know or the things I am accustomed to. It's ... it's too wonderful, finding someone out here who understands Ned, when even his own people back home didn't. I wonder ... is it asking too much to ask you to help me plan? You know people and conditions. I don't."

She made the request almost timidly, but he leaped at the opportunity and cried:

"If I can help you, if I could be of use to you, I'd think it was th'

finest thing that ever happened to me, ma'am. I've never been of much use to anybody but myself. I ... I'd like to help you!" His manner was so wholly boyish that she impulsively put out her hand to him.

"You're kind to me, so...."

She lost the rest of the sentence because of the fierceness with which he grasped her proffered hand and for a moment his gray eyes burned into hers with confusing intensity. Then he straightened and looked away with an inarticulate word.

"Well, what do you want to do?" he asked, stepping to one side to bring a chair for her.

"I don't know; he's in a frightful ... I've never seen him as bad as this,"--her voice threatening to break.

"An' he'll be that way so long as he's near that!"

He held his hand up in a gesture that impelled her to listen as the notes from the saloon piano drifted into the little room.

"He's pretty far gone, ma'am, your husband. He ain't got a whole lot of strength, an' it takes strength to show will power. We might keep him away from drinkin' by watching him all the time, but that wouldn't do much good; that wouldn't be a cure; it would only be delay, and wasting our time and foolin' ourselves. He'd ought to be took away from it, a long ways away from it."

"That's what I've thought. Couldn't I take him out to the mine--"

"His mine is most forty miles from here, ma'am."

"So much the better, isn't it? We'd be away from all this. I could keep him there, I know."

Bayard regarded her critically until her eyes fell before his.

"You might keep him there, and you might not. I judge you didn't have much control over him in th' East. You didn't seem to have a great deal of influence with him by letter,"--gently, very kindly, yet impressively. "If you got out in camp all alone with him, livin' a life that's new to you, you might not make good there. See what I mean? You'd be all alone, cause the mine's abandoned." She started at that. "There'd be n.o.body to help you if he got crazy wild like he'll sure get before he comes through. You--"

"You don't think I'm up to it? Is that it?" she interrupted.

He looked closely at her before he answered.

"Ma'am, if a woman like you can't keep a man straight by just lovin'

him,"--with a curious flatness in his voice--"you can't do it no way, can you?"

She sat silent, and he continued to question her with his gaze.

"I judge you've tried that way, from what you've told me. You've been pretty faithful on the job. You ... you _do_ love him yet, don't you?"

he asked, and she looked up with a catch of her breath.

"I do,"--dropping her eyes quickly.

The man paced the length of the room and back again as though this confession had altered the case and presented another factor for his consideration. But, when he stopped before her, he only said:

"You can't leave him in town; you can't take him to his mine. There ain't any place away from town I know of where they'd want to be bothered with a sick man," he explained, gravely, evading an expression of the community's att.i.tude toward Lytton. "I might take him to my place. I'm only eight miles out west. I could look after him there, cause there ain't much press of work right now an'--"

"But I would go with him, too, of course," she said. "It's awfully kind of you to offer...."

In a flash the picture of this woman and that ruin of manhood together in his house came before Bayard and, again, he realized the tragedy in their contrast. He saw himself watching them, hearing their talk, seeing the woman make love to her debauched husband, perhaps, in an effort to strengthen him; he felt his wrath warm at thought of that girl's devotion and loyalty wasting itself so, and a sudden, alarming distrust of his own patience, his ability to remain a disinterested neutral, arose.

"Do you think he better know you're here?" he asked, inspired, and turned on her quickly.

"Why, why not?"--in surprise.

"It would sure stir him up, ma'am. He ain't even wrote to you, you say, so it would be a surprise for him to see you here. He's goin' to need all the nerve he's got left, ma'am, 'specially right at first,"--his mind working swiftly to invent an excuse--"Your husband's goin' to have the hardest fight he's ever had to make when he comes out of this. He's on the ragged edge of goin' _loco_ from booze now; if he had somethin'

more to worry him, he might....

"Besides, my outfit ain't a place for a woman. He can get along because he's lived like we do, but you couldn't. All I got is one room,"--hesitating as if he were embarra.s.sed--"and no comforts for ... a lady like you, ma'am."

"But my place is with him! That's why I've come here."

"Would your bein' with him help? Could you do anything but stir him up?"

"Why of--"

"Have you ever been able to, ma'am?"

She stopped, unable to get beyond that fact.