"Not on your life! It was the first time I ever did understand Myrt.
When I left there I wasn"t doing any guessing."
"You shouldn"t have left," she told him suddenly; gripping her courage at this bold mention of his flight. How she wished she knew why he left.
"Oh, I don"t know. It was about the only thing I could do, at the time--the only thing, that is, that I wanted to do. It seemed like I couldn"t get away fast enough." It was brazen of him, she thought, to treat it all so coolly. "And out here," he added thoughtfully, "I could get the proper focus on Myrt--which I couldn"t do back there."
"Distance lends--"
"Not in this case," he interrupted. "It"s when you"re right with Myrt that she kinda hypnotizes yuh into thinking what she wants yuh to think." He was remembering resentfully the dance.
"But to sneak away--"
"That"s a word I don"t remember was ever shot at me before," said Weary, the blood showing through the skin on his cheeks. "If that d.a.m.ned Myrt has been telling yuh--"
"I didn"t think you would speak like that about a woman, Mr. Davidson,"
said the schoolma"am with disapproval in her tone; and the disapproval not going very deep, there was the more of it upon the surface.
"I suppose it gives evidence of a low, brutal trait in my nature, that you hoped I couldn"t harbor," acceded Weary meekly.
"It does," snapped the schoolma"am, her cheeks hot. If she had repented her flare of temper over the gopher, she certainly did not intend letting him know it too soon. She seemed inclined to discipline him a bit.
Weary smoked silently and raked up the sun-baked soil with his spurs.
"How long is Myrt going to stay?" he ventured at last.
"I never asked her," she retorted. "You ought to know--you probably have seen her last." The schoolma"am blundered, there.
Weary drew a sigh of relief; if she were jealous, it must mean that she cared. "That"s right. I saw her last night," he stated calmly.
Miss Satterly sat more erect, if that were possible. She had not known of this last meeting, and she had merely shot at random, anyway.
"At least," he amended, watching her from the corner of his eye, "I saw a woman and a man ride over the hill back of Denson"s, last night. The man was Bert, and the woman had red hair; I took it to be Myrt."
"You surely should be a good judge," remarked Miss Satterly, irritated because she knew he was teasing.
Weary was quick to read the signs. "What did you mean, a while back, about me sneaking away from Chadville? And how did yuh happen to have your dances booked forty-in-advance, the other night? And what makes yuh so mean to me, lately? And will yuh take a jaunt over Eagle b.u.t.te way with me next Sunday--if I can get off?"
The schoolma"am, again feeling herself mistress of the situation, proceeded with her disciplining. She smiled, raised one hand and checked off the questions upon her fingers. You never would guess how oddly her heart was behaving--she looked such a self-possessed young woman.
"I"ll begin at the last one and work backward," she said, calmly. "And I must hurry, for aunt Meeker hates to keep supper waiting. No, I will _not_ go for a jaunt over Eagle b.u.t.te way next Sunday. I have other plans; if I _hadn"t_ other plans I still would not go. I hope this is quite plain to you?"
"Oh, it"s good and plain," responded Weary. "But for the Lord"s sake don"t take up that talking in italics like Myrt does. I can"t stand this bearing down hard on every other word. It sets my teeth all on edge."
The schoolma"am opened her eyes wider. Was it possible Weary was acquiring an irritable temper? "_Second_," she went on deliberately, "I do not _consider_ that I have been _mean_ to you; and if I _have_ it is because I _choose_ to be so."
Weary, observing a most flagrant accent, shut his lips rather tightly together.
"Third--let me see. Oh, that about the _dances_; I can only say that we _women_, as a means of _self-defence_, claim the privilege of _effacing_ undesirable, would-be partners by a certain _form_ of rejection, which _eliminates_ the necessity of going into unpleasant _details_, and--er--lets the fellow down easy." The schoolma"am"s emphasis and English seemed to collapse together, but Weary did not notice that.
"I"m sure grateful to be let down easy," he said softly, without looking up; his head was bent so that his hat quite concealed from the schoolma"am his face, but if she had known him longer, perhaps she would have gone carefully after that.
"As to your sneaking away from--wherever it was--surely, you ought to know about that better than I do. One must go far to outdistance dishonor, for a man"s misdeeds are sure to follow him, soon or late. I will not go into details--but you understand what I mean."
"No," said Weary, still with bent head, "I"ll be darned if I do. And if I did, I know about where to locate the source of all the information you"ve loaded up on. Things were going smooth as silk till Myrt Forsyth drifted out here--the red-headed little devil!"
"Mr. Davidson!" cried the schoolma"am, truly shocked.
"Oh, I"m revealing some more low, brutal instincts, I expect I"m liable to reveal a lot more if I hang around much longer." He stopped, as if there was more he wanted to say, and was doubtful of the wisdom of saying it.
"I came over to say something--something particular--but I"ve changed my mind. I guess yuh haven"t much time to listen, and I don"t believe it would interest yuh as much as I thought it would--a while back. You just go ahead and make a bosom friend uh Myrt Forsyth, Schoolma"am, and believe every blamed lie she tells yuh. I won"t be here to argue the point. Looks to me like I"m about due to drift."
Miss Satterly, dumb with fear of what his words might mean, sat stiffly while Weary got up and mounted Glory in a business like manner that was extremely disquieting.
"I wish you could a cared, Girlie," he said with a droop of his unsmiling mouth and a gloom in his eyes when he looked at her. "I was a chump, I reckon, to ever imagine yuh could. Good-bye--and be good to--yourself." He leaned to one side, swung backward his feet and Glory, obeying the signal, wheeled and bounded away.
Miss Satterly watched him gallop up the long slope and the pluckety pluckety of Glory"s fleeing feet struck heavy, numbing blows upon her heart. She wondered why she had refused to ride with him, when she did want to go--she did. And why had she been so utterly hateful, after waiting and watching, night after night, for him to come?
And just how much did he mean by being due to drift? He couldn"t be really angry--and what was he going to say--the thing he changed his mind about. Was it--Well, he would come again in a few days, and then--
PART FIVE
Weary did not go back. When the hurry of shipping was over he went to Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman"s astonishment and disgust. The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and argument trying to make him give up the crazy notion of quitting.
It seemed to Weary that he warded off their curiosity and answered their arguments very adroitly. He was sick of punching cows, he said, and he wasn"t hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an ungrateful bunch of bawling calves. He was going to drift, for a change--but he didn"t know where. It didn"t much matter, so long as he got a change uh scenery. He just merely wanted to knock around and get the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides calves and cactus. His eyes plumb ached for sight of an apple tree with real, live apples on it--that weren"t wrapped up in a paper napkin.
When was he coming back? Well, now, that was a question; he hadn"t got started yet, man. What he was figuring on wasn"t the coming back part, but the getting started.
The schoolma"am? Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all right. Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her h.e.l.lo for him--and so long?
This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see him off. Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces, eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.
Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretch the long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot to smoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; till something went wrong with his eyes. It was just four o"clock, and school was out. The schoolma"am was looking down the trail, maybe-- At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now--so many that even if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot of the way, he could not possibly get to her--and the way the train was galloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off, and-- What a d.a.m.n fool a man can make of himself, rushing off like that when, maybe--
After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoke to him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and was himself again.
For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out, one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was in Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a north-bound train the night before.
People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even after two months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place where every man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.
There was little that he could do--or would do. He tried digging ditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of all nations but his, seemingly.
The first day be blistered both hands and got a "crick" in his back.
The second day, he quit.
On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable. A man with a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in the doorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energetically punctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler.
Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary, listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directed at himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and in Portland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to "pack" a gun.