Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Let me finish. What have I said? That I wanted you until the very moment I saw you sitting there. But, Kit, you come just as I've finished the battle. You bring all that—that damnable misery with you. Misery! Well, you must not torture me any more. I've put myself beyond it. I've licked the wounds dry. They're still in here, understand, my dear. But they're dry. And I won't have 'em opened again."

Her smile was brilliant, a little as if the light of her eyes passed through a film. "You are blunt, Tommy!"

"I've gone back to the blanket," he muttered, lowering his head once more.

"What does that mean?"

"It means when an Indian has gotten his white man education he goes back to the reservation, throws away all his civilized clothes, and takes up the old ways."

"You are no Indian, Tommy."

"No? They called me the barbarian once. It still sticks. I'm in my own land. I've thrown away every blessed thing the East gave me. Chucked it overboard. The old gods are mine. And, by the Lord, Kit, I'm beginning to live once more."

"Have you chucked away everything, Tommy?" she asked quite softly. "Everything?"

He looked up to her; his eyes betrayed the uncertainty in him, and the girl, at this unconscious revelation, let her whole body go limp; laughter tinkled in her throat. She bent forward, hands making little motions in her lap, and the laughter died. "Tommy, supposing I haven't come to torture you? Supposing..."

"You gave me my answer once," said he stubbornly. "You've had your sport."

"Oh, why did you have to be so deadly serious about it all the while? My dear, did you think to pursue and win in a day? Don't you suppose a woman has to be shown—to be convinced?"

"And to be amused," he added. "Remember, Kit, I'm not open to torture any longer."

But she was wise with Eve's wisdom; she had seen him falter. So she turned the conversation in her own inimitable way. "Tom, I heard about your father. Did they ever catch the man?"

"Not yet."

"But they will," she reassured him. "The law will get him." There was something so grimly sardonic on his face that she asked, "What is it?"

"The law out here expects a man to take care of his own troubles. I shall get him—I shall kill him."

"Why, Tom, isn't that—isn't it murder?"

"I told you I had gone back to the old gods, didn't I?"

She bit into her lip; a tinge of colour stood against the soft whiteness of her flesh. "I thought it was only woman's privilege to be unfathomable, Tommy. I'm sorry I mentioned it."

The colored cook's shadow fell athwart the door again, and Tom nodded at him. Presently the grub pans and the dishes were on the table. One by one the men of the outfit came dismally, sheepishly in. Tom put Christine at the head of the table and amid a dead silence introduced her.

"Boys, this is Christine Ballard of New York. She has come on a visit. Now, behave yourselves. I have already pointed out to her which of you are the lady killers. So beware."

The charge was so manifestly outrageous that the agitation only increased; not a man raised his eyes from the dead centre of his plate. Lispenard came in and took his seat. Tom, quite cheerful, began to relate the salient points of the more outstanding members. "That's Quagmire. Yes, the one with the extremely guilty look. Oh, they all look guilty, but he seems to look guiltier than the rest. He has a wife in each state and territory between here and Texas, Montana excepted. The reason he has no wife in Montana is because he has never been to Montana. Whitey Almo, the one with the bad sunburn—or is that sunburn, Whitey?—collects interiors. Jail interiors. I have never known Whitey to pass a new jail without entering to see the wall decorations. Usually he doesn't pay much attention to these walls until the next morning, when his eyes begin to function again. Why did they cease to function, did you ask? Well, it has been rumoured that Whitey drinks water with his whisky. I'd shoot him like a dog if I thought it were the truth."

There was the sound of somebody strangling in his coffee. Thirteen heads bent nearer the table; a knife dropped, and thirteen bodies started. Tom grinned affectionately. "I have probably the most completely assorted bunch of liars and scoundrels ever gathered under one roof. Quite possibly I shall be neatly shot in the back before break of day. Slim, it you stoop any lower you'll dye your moustache in that coffee cup. Oh, don't mention it. You're quite obliged."

The proximity of a woman utterly ruined the meal; Tom Gillette's frank lies and pointing finger served to reduce them to a state from which air and solitude only could effect a recovery. The first to finish eating slunk out of the cabin with the countenance of one who hoped he wasn't watched but was sure the spotlight played upon him. Thus they departed; and presently from the corral came a high skirling of words from a man whose soul was in labour. Lispenard, who had been wrapped in his own thoughts throughout the affair, quietly left.

Tom grinned. "It has taken me a long time to get even."

"But what have they done to you?"

"Nothing," he answered, rolling a cigarette. "No finer outfit ever rode. I love 'em like brothers. That's why I'm abusing 'em."

The old cook slipped away with his pans; the lamplight strayed against the girl's soft face, accenting her utter femininity; she sat quite still, hands folded and seemingly placid. Yet beneath the surface a hundred cross-currents of thought ran free. The puzzle of this familiar yet so startling unfamiliar man was being attacked from a dozen different angles. She loved a conventional world, as all women do; even so, she could on occasion be both reckless and daring. Daring enough to tell Tom she had come west to plead her case—and then to hide the stark truth of it beneath those quick and subtle changes of spirit that were so much a part of her. It didn't matter what had changed her mind regarding him. She wasn't sure she knew why, or if she did know she refused to be truthful with herself. It didn't matter. What mattered was that, once having changed her mind, she meant to see the affair to the very end; to play the game with all the skill, all the shrewdness and impetuousness she owned. The shrewdness had always been a part of her, but the impetuousness was new, and born, perhaps, of the knowledge that she had made a mistake concerning Tom Gillette and that she grew no younger. It was even new enough to disturb her whole outlook upon life and to set her off on a trip half across the continent unchaperoned. And it was disturbing enough to have created in her one irrevocable decision: she would win back Tom Gillette if she could, surrendering as little as she must, but if parsimony failed then she was willing to throw every last coin and possession upon the table and say, "There it is, I will not haggle. Take it." That was the story of Christine Ballard, as much as it was given anyone, even herself, to know.

The room grew cold with the coming of night. Gillette touched the kindling with a match, and she relaxed to the heat, one hand idly trailing over the chair arm. "That one—Quagmire—I thought was quaint."

He shook his head. "Wrong word, Kit. Quagmire's been hurt so bad he couldn't cry. He's loyal down to the last drop of blood. A more scorching pessimism never came from the lips of a mortal, but that's only a false front to cover a heart as soft as a woman's."

Silence a moment; the girl made another long detour and came to rest on a distant topic. "Tom, I remember once something you told me about what your father had said. When you left for the East. I've often wondered, often thought—something about a man's word."

Gillette dropped the cigarette. Fine lines sprang along his face—a rugged face and handsome in a purely masculine fashion. There was a flash down in the deep wells of his eyes. And it took just such a shrewd observer as Christine Ballard to detect how he held back the upthrust of feeling; held it back so rigidly that his words were dry, almost bleak.