The Last Straw Part 30

The simple declaration, voiced with that same defiance, confused Jane; then she met the other on her own ground.

"No, we don't want you here unless you will work with us as we all try to work together. I think you will do that because it is the wiser--"

"So you start out workin' with us by lookin' up our claim, the way we filed it, before you come to talk!"

"Yes, I did that,"--frankly. "I wanted to be sure just what your rights were before I came to talk business."

"Well, you know now. You know no lawyers can run us off. Ain't that enough? If you know we've got rights, what do you come here for?" She stopped, but before Jane could reply went on, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng sudden heat: "You don't want us here but we've come to stay an' from the way you've started in to talk your business I guess that's all you'll find out."

Jane eyed her for an interval then said:

"You and I are the only women for miles about in this country. We are near neighbors as neighbors go in the mountains; do you think this is the best way to start in being friends?"

"Who said anything about bein' friends?"

"I want to be your friend." The sincerity of this balked the girl and her eyes became puzzled. "I want to be your friend and want you for my friend. We can help each other in a good many ways."

"I don't recollect askin' for your help."

"No, but I want to give it to you and I want to ask yours in return. We are here in a big country. We are all dependent to an extent on those about us. None of us can get along so well alone as we can by working together."

"Like turnin' folks out in the rain at night, for instance?"

Jane's cheeks flamed.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Think it over an' maybe you will!"

The girl's eyes blazed uncovered hate, but as they took Jane in again from hat to boots a curious envy showed in them.

"I've seen how much you big outfits want to help poor folks before,"

she said. "I know all about that,"--bitterly. "Maybe it's a good thing you come here today so you'll get to understand, first hand, instead of sendin' your men around to learn things for you.

"We've come a long ways. We've been on th' move ever since I can recollect. Folks have offered to help us before, an' they have helped us ... to decide to move. We've come to stay here; we can take care of ourselves; we don't ask nothin' but to be let alone, an' we're goin' to be let alone if we have to make it stick with gun play."

She had advanced and, hands on her hips, weight on one foot, spoke the last with her face close to Jane's, her head nodding in slow emphasis.

"I trust it won't come to that," Jane said evenly. She had not flinched, but studied the girl carefully, impersonally, though the color in her cheeks had died; her face was in repose, her bearing dignified and a.s.sured, yet without suggestion of any superficial superiority. "If it does come to that it will not be because I am unwilling to do all that is reasonable. I have come down here to talk to you, which should be evidence of my good faith; I have been frank.

You meet me as though I had come to cheat you or drive you out. I don't think that is fair."

The other drew back a step, clearly puzzled again. Her face, in spite of its forbidding expression, was very beautiful.

"That sounds all right," she said at length, "but I've heard it before and I know how much it's worth. You ain't my kind. You don't belong here and I do. You don't want to be my friend ... you wouldn't know how.

"All we want is to be let alone. Our business ain't yours an' we won't try to make yours ours. Have you said all you wanted to say?"

"No, not quite all, but if you won't listen to me, if you won't believe me, there is only one more thing I can say: You will know where to find me any time you want to talk to me. I will be ready to work with you, to do my share, and maybe a little more. I hope there will be no trouble, for it would force me to make my share of that."

She turned abruptly and walked toward Beck.

The man had purposely held aloof to watch the encounter between the two women. He had been certain that the meeting would be anything but amicable and it was like other situations into which he had let Jane Hunter walk, needlessly and only to see how she would handle herself.

Usually the result only amused him but today he had watched Jane bear up admirably under difficult circ.u.mstances, refusing to be angered or confused, refusing to plead yet, while retaining dignity, leaving the door to friends.h.i.+p open.

As Jane mounted Bobby Cole stepped back into the cabin with no word and the riders turned back on the way they had come.

"I've been wonderin'," Beck said after a time, "how this old codger rakes up the dust to buy cattle and wire."

Jane did not reply. She wondered at that, too, but there was another wonder in her mind about another, more human mystery, going back to a night of storm in the heavens and storm in hearts. How did Bobby Cole know she had turned d.i.c.k Hilton out?

As they went silently each thinking of significant things which had been revealed the girl threw back the curtain in the doorway and watched them.

"I hate you!" she whispered at Jane Hunter. "I hate you!... Because you turned him out ... because you're ... you're _you_."

She stood a long time watching them and with the darkness in her face another quality finally mingled: that envy again.

After a time Jane said:

"A queer creature, that girl."

"On the peck from the start!" Beck replied.

"And beautiful!"

"Ain't she, though?... Poor kid! I've seen 'em before, kids of movers like that, not so good lookin', not so smart as she is, but like her because they was always suspicious, always ready to sc.r.a.p....

"That's because they've never had a chance to be decent, brought up in a wagon that way."

"A shame!" Jane whispered.

"I like kids," he said later, as though his mind had been on nothing else. "I like all kids, but I feel sorry for a lot of 'em ... for most of 'em.... Every kid that's born ought to have a chance, a fair show against the world, because the old world don't seem to like kids any too much.

"That girl didn't have a chance, never will have it. She was marked from the day she was born.

"Why, ma'am, one winter I worked for a cow man down in the Salt River valley which is in Arizona. He didn't have a big outfit, he didn't have much luck; trouble with his water, his cattle got sick and his horses didn't do well and he had just one dose of trouble after another.

"But he had three kids, all in a row they seemed,"--indicating progressive heights with his hand. "I think they was the happiest kids I've ever seen. I always think of 'em when I see kids that've had to grow up like that girl. I remember those mornin's when we used to start out for a day's ride, looking back and seeing those kids playing in the dirt beside the rose bushes. Their clothes was dirty the minute they stepped outside and their hands an' faces was a sight from the 'dobe, but there was roses in their cheeks as bright as th' roses on the bushes and they laughed loud and their eyes always smiled ... like that Arizona sky, which ain't got a match anywhere....

"This man and his wife just buckled down an' bucked old Mister Hard Luck from the word Go, for them kids! They sure thought the world of 'em. I guess that was what put the roses in their cheeks an' the smiles in their eyes....

"I'll never forget those kids by the rose bushes with somebody to care for 'em, an' work their hearts out for 'em. That's the way kids ought to grow up; not like that catamount grew up."

He smiled in reminiscence and his smile was tender.

"Roses and kids," he repeated after a while. "They ought to go together."

He looked at Jane and saw that her eyes were filmed.