The Last Straw Part 2

MY ADVICE, MA'AM

He stood on a bearskin rug before the blazing fire, hat in hand, boots polished, tall and trim with his handsome head bowed just a trifle. The blazing logs gave the only light to the place and his bronzed face was burnished by their reflection.

"You sent for me?" he asked as she came into the room.

She advanced from the shadows and for a moment did not reply. She felt that he was taking her in from her crown of light hair, down through the smart, high-collared waist to the short, scant skirt which showed her silken clad ankles and the modish shoes. His eyes rested on those shoes. He was thinking that they were wonderfully plain for a city girl to wear, at least the sort of city girl he had ever known. But they had a simplicity which he thought went well with her manner.

"I had planned on talking to Mr. Hepburn this evening," she said. "I want to get all the information and all the advice I can from the start. Carlotta said he had gone away, so, in spite of the fact that you wouldn't gamble with me this afternoon, I sent for you. I think that you can tell me many things I need to know. You don't mind my asking you, do you? You don't feel that you'd be ... be taking a chance, talking to me?"

She took his hat.

"Sit down," motioning to the davenport before the fire. "Would you like to start with a drink?"

"Why, yes," eyeing her calculatingly.

"There's not much here. I slipped one bottle of Vermouth in a trunk.

I'll have to try to mix a c.o.c.ktail in a tumbler and there isn't any ice. It's likely to be a bad c.o.c.ktail, but maybe it will help us talk."

She walked down the long room toward the dining table and sideboard at the far end and he heard gla.s.s clinking and liquids gurgling as he sat looking about with that small part of a smile on his features. All along the walls were books and above the cases hung trophies of the country: heads of deer and elk, a pelt of a mountain lion and of a bobcat, a pair of magnificent sheep's horns and a stuffed eagle. In the low windows were boxes of geraniums, Carlotta's pride.

"Here you are," she said as she returned, holding one of the two gla.s.ses toward Beck, who rose to accept it. "My uncle left a very small stock of drinks, but as soon as I know what I'm about I'll try to remedy that defect in an otherwise splendid establishment." Her manner was terse, brisk, open and her eyes met another's directly when she talked.

She lifted her gla.s.s to her chin's level and smiled at him.

"To the future!" she said.

His question was adroitly timed for she had just given the gla.s.s a slight toss and was already carrying its rim toward her lips when his words checked the movement.

"I take it, ma'am, that you'll want this liquor to go where it'll do your future the most good?"

He looked from her down to the c.o.c.ktail he held and moved the gla.s.s in a quick little circle to set the yellow liquid swirling. His voice had been quite casual, but when he raised his eyes to meet her inquiring look the last of a twinkle was giving way to gravity.

"You mean?..."

"Just about what I said: that you'd like to have this brace of drinks do your future some good?"

"Why, yes, that was my intention. Why?"

"You called me down here to get a little advice. Let's commence here."

He reached out for her gla.s.s in a manner which was at once gentle and dominating, presumptuous but unoffending, with a measure of certainty; still, by his face, she might have told that he was experimenting with her, not just sure of how she would react, not, perhaps, caring a great deal. His fingers closed on her gla.s.s and she yielded with half laughing, half protesting astonishment. He took both gla.s.ses in one hand, moved deliberately toward the hearth and tossed their contents into the flames. He then set the empty tumblers on the mantel and turned about with a questioning smile on his lips.

The sharp, slowly dwindling hiss of quenched flame which followed completely died out before she spoke. Color had leaped into her cheeks and ebbed as quickly; her lips had shut in a tight line and for a fraction of time it was as though she would angrily demand explanation.

But she said evenly enough: "I don't understand that."

"I'm glad you didn't show how mad it made you," he replied.

"But why.... What made you do it?"

"You said, you know, that you wanted that liquor to go where it'd help your future. I thought the fire was about the best place for it under the circ.u.mstances."

"But why di--"

"And I believed you when you said you had a lot to learn and that you called me down to start the job. You have a way of makin' people think you mean what you say. I'm mighty glad to give you advice; I thought this was a good way to begin."

Jane gave a queer laugh and sat down, looking blankly into the fire.

She turned her face after a moment and found him studying her as he sat at the other end of the davenport.

"I understand your meaning," she said, "but you're as startling in your actions as you must be in your reasoning. You didn't object to the idea of a drink; I didn't think many of you people did out here."

"We don't, ma'am. Most of us drink our share. I do."

"But just now you threw yours away."

"You see, I was bound to throw _yours_ away. It wouldn't have been polite, would it, for me to drink and not let you?" His smile mocked her. "Besides," dryly--"I ain't much on these fancy drinks. You warned me that it wouldn't be so very good anyhow."

She stared at him in perplexity.

"You have no scruples against drinking?"

"Moderate drinking; no."

"Then why did you take this liberty with me?"--suggesting indignation.

"You see, you're a woman. You guessed a minute ago that there wasn't much objection to hard liquor here. I told you you were right; most of us boys drink, but we can afford to and you can't." His manner was light, almost to the degree of banter, as if that which had aroused her was the simplest of matters.

"A man in this country don't build a reputation on many things. So long as he's honest, he gets along pretty well. But a woman: that's different. She has to make people know she's right in everything she does."

"An occasional drink will make her less right?"

"Not a bit less, ma'am, but it won't help other folks to know she's right. And that's all that counts. Everybody, man or woman, who comes into the west has to make or break by what he does here; nothin' that has been, good or bad, matters. They commence from the bottom again and by what they do people judge them.

"Reputation is the first thing you've got to make for yourself.

Everybody is watchin' you: the boys here on the ranch, the neighbors down creek, the people in town. You've got to show that you're honest, that you've got courage; if you were a man it could stop there, but you're a woman an' that makes it....

"Well, men out here expect things from a woman that I guess men in cities don't think so much about and you might as well know now as any time that men in this country don't like to see a woman do some of the things they do. We ain't as polite as some; we ain't as gentle, when it's necessary to act quick and for sure, but maybe we make up for some of our roughness in the idea we have of women. We think a good woman is about as fine a thing as G.o.d has made, ma'am, and we have our ideas of goodness.

"You see, you've got to handle men; you've got to have their respect and you won't have their respect if you don't understand how they think, and then act accordingly.

"Besides, you're on a job that's going to take all the brains and grit and strength you've got. Booze never helped anybody on a job like that.

If you was a man and your job was just ridin' after cattle it'd be different. But neither one is the case....

"My advice, ma'am!"

She watched his face a moment before saying:

"As long as I can remember, women about me have been drinking. Ever since I grew up I've been drinking. I've never taken too much; I've never needed it; I've done it because ... because it was being done."