Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

He travelled back, uneasy and dissatisfied. In the distance he caught a glint of the river, a thin trickle above the porous sands; alkali dust stung his throat, the blazing, blistering sun beat against the dun earth until the eye wearied of the sight The prairie quivered under shimmering heat waves; southwest the dark folds of the Black Hills reared against the brazen sky. Over there in the heart of the hills men dug yellow metal and a town was in the full tide of a boom.

News came slowly to his section of the territory; he heard that all the Texans along the river were gone, save Wyatt. According to the P.R.N. resident agent Wyatt likewise had sold, but Tom Gillette only half believed the tale. Wyatt had been too anxious to acquire that strip, and Lorena, who swayed her father to some extent, bucked the idea of moving. Why was it she kept away from him? Whatever she thought of Christine Ballard and his relations with the girl was wrong. He wanted to tell her she was wrong.

"What difference does it make?" he muttered. "But couldn't she see for herself there's nothing between Kit and me?"

It left him irritable. He was a man; he didn't understand women, and he knew he never would be able to understand them. They muddied up the current of life, they cut across the established order of things, they acted out of impulse—or if it were not impulse then it was some obscure motive he couldn't grasp. Kit always had been elusive and enigmatic, but he thought Lorena moved more straightforwardly, that she had no contradictions in her nature. He had thought so until the fight. And then, when her cool hand slid over his face and those queer muffled words reached him he knew all women were essentially alike.

The van of the windstorm swept across the prairie, sage stalks rolling along before. "Mosey," said Gillette, and raised his bandana. At the moment of action he saw scuffed hoof prints on the ground, and he checked his horse, bending over to study them. They came out of the northeast and struck directly into his range. Slightly stale hoof prints. In another ten minutes the wind would erase them completely. Tom touched his spurs, and the pony bunched to a gallop. That made the second time he had found strange spoor on his territory; Circle G men didn't often travel in pairs, and they didn't cover this end of the range.

"Mosey!" The wind bore down of a sudden, and the word was whipped out of his mouth. There was a sound like canvas slatting; the perspective of the land changed, the horizon was wiped out. A gray driving pall slanted past him, the spraying sand sheered against his neck. Breathing became more difficult.

"Mosey!"

The horse raced on, pushed by the storm; up and down the rolling prairie. A gray row of skeletons marched through the unnatural dusk, and he was in the heaven of his home buildings. He left the pony in a shed and himself quartered to the house. Christine Ballard stood in the middle of the room, one hand pressed against her breast, white of face. "What is it, Tom?"

He lowered his bandana and shook out the sand. "Dry storm. Nothing to get worried about."

She had been reading a book. One finger marked the page. Stirred by fretfulness, she threw it across the room and sank into a chair. She had a peculiar manner of drawing herself together, of tucking her legs beneath her; and thus she sat, chin cupped, staring at Gillette while the shadows weaved across her expressive eyes. Gillette loaded his pipe and smoked, sitting on the table.

"And this is your country, Tom?" Her slim shoulders rose. "Well, a man can find pleasure in odd places. I was frightened out of my mind until you came in. It's too raw, it's ungenerous. There's no sport to it. It's cruel. Listen to that wind—do you hear what it says, Tom?" Suddenly she threw back her head and the white triangle of her throat gleamed; one fist was clenched. Tom Gillette marked that picture well, for there was beauty in it. And Christine's eyes were sombre, a rare mood for this girl who seldom let herself be touched by too deep an emotion. "It's telling me I'm small, I'm nothing, and that I can be crushed. Hear it?"

Gillette nodded. "It's been in my ears all my life, except the time I spent East. You bet. But what's wrong with knowin' yourself to be a humble thing, walkin' under a canopy that's got no corners and no ceilin'?"

Her answer was almost aggressive. "I hate to be reminded of it. I like to think I amount to something."

"Sho'. In the East folks lose sight of the truth. Inside a house they're little tin gods—but the house makes a servant of 'em. Out here we walk abroad. We know we're small potatoes, but we're free."

"Do you really like it that well?" she asked, bending forward. "Or are you just talking?"

He knocked the ashes from his pipe, the old reticence returning. After all, she was an outlander. She couldn't catch his point of view. No more than Lispenard did. "All I am belongs to it. It made me. It's in my system, and I couldn't get rid of it if I wanted to. If you lived here long enough you'd feel the same way."

She was gay and provocative instantly. "I haven't been invited to stay indefinitely, Tom. Are you meaning to invite me now?"

He met her glance stubbornly. "I'm reachin' for no strings, Kit. That's over."

"Oh, why must you be so stolid, so dense?" she cried. "Look at me!"

He shook his head. The wind ripped at the house savagely, a voice trailed past the eaves, weird and meaningless. It was growing darker.

Christine's laugh was like the touching of crystal pendants. Her question barely carried to him. "Am I, then, so undesirable?"

"It's apt to be the other way around," said Tom, turning. And after a moment he flung a hot phrase at her. "Do you think I'm made of wood, Kit? What have you come here for—under the same roof with me?"

"Oh, I have no pride left. I have come a-begging to make up for a mistake." Then she slipped away, in one of those characteristic changes, to another topic. "Back home at this time I would be going out. And there would be a dance at the Coopers. Do you remember those dances, Tom?"

He nodded. It was quite dark and he lighted the lamp. Christine lay back in her chair, relaxed, studying him. "Do you recall Harry Cooper? He stood for the assembly in the eighth district. My father backed him, and now Harry is at Albany and well on the way to political honours. My father always helps a good man, Tom."

"Every fellow to his liking."

"You could do anything you set your mind to do," was her quick answer. "Anything."

She stopped there. Tom was smiling at her, humour wrinkling around his eyes. She caught her breath, the colour rising to her cheeks. Still, she displayed a courage and a directness he had not suspected she owned. Her tapering fingers spread apart; a diamond flashed in the amber light. "Must I surrender everything, Tommy? Isn't it generous in the winner to allow a little?"

He stood up, tall and rugged against the lamp's glow. "Kit, I have always said you were more beautiful than any woman I knew. I begin to think you are brave as well. But you surrender nothing. Don't do it. You are only tormenting a man meant to be a cowpuncher the rest of his days."

She was out of her chair and before him, one hand striking his chest again and again. "You are a fool, Tom Gillette! You are a fool!"

The door rattled. Christine moved back to her chair as Quagmire let himself inside, coated with sand, red-eyed. "I rode over to where yo' stationed Baldy Laggett, Tom. He met tracks this mo'nin'—two hosses tailin' around the broken top buttes. It's the second time a-running'. Night work, Baldy says."

"I saw those tracks away east of the buttes not more than an hour ago," replied Gillette. "Looked as if the parties were travelling fast. You get the idea, don't you, Quagmire?"

Quagmire nodded; his homely face pinched together. "I comprehend plenty, as the parson would say."