The Last Straw Part 34

"I know, ma'am; you did it because you need me here, on the ranch."

His chest swelled with a great breath and he released her hands, stepping back and putting a hand slowly to his head.

For an instant she made no sound. Then she laughed strangely.

"Because I need you here.... Yes, that was it. That was why I lied for you." She spoke with nervous rapidity, rather breathlessly, and one hand went again to that locket, clutching it in a cold clasp. "I knew it was not like you to try to shoot a man unfairly. I didn't think there was much chance in lying. All I saw was them taking you away and leaving me here alone to face all this, without anyone I can trust, without anyone to help me. That was why I lied to them.

"You promised me once that you would stay. I knew then that I needed you; every hour since that promise was made I've had a greater realization of my need for you until it ... it ..." Her breath caught in a sob and she pressed knuckles to her lips.

Beck stood silently watching her, a cold moisture forming on his brow, hands clenched as if he were holding himself against the urge of some great impulse.

"I felt when I stepped in there and learned what it all was, that the last thing I have to depend on was slipping away ... and I reached out and grasped you like I'd grasp a straw in a sea. It ... I can't tell you,"--her voice trembled, "what it meant, what it means to me...."

Words, words! They spilled from her lips with a rapidity that approached hysteria. She was talking without thought, without reason, letting her voice run on while her consciousness, divorced entirely from it, fell into chaos.

"Everything seems to be working against me and now, because you have been my help, my strength, they are trying to take you away. Oh, I need all the help there is, and that is you!"--with a stamp of the foot as she drove tears back.

"There are influences which I can't see, which I can only feel, all about me, within me,"--beating her breast--"and outside."

"It may be interestin' to you to know that I didn't shoot at any coyote."

She gasped lightly and for a moment did not speak.

"Then you did shoot at Hepburn?"--in a whisper.

"No, I didn't. I'd never shoot from cover."

"I knew that," she said quickly, knowing that by her question she had hurt him.

"It appears that I ain't very welcome with your foreman. It was a frame-up, a good way to get rid of me. They planted that evidence in my gun while I was eating. It was one of those influences at work, the kind you've only felt. You can see some of 'em now, ma'am....

"It's lucky you thought to lie," he said, with a weak laugh that was unlike him. "I guess you're going to need all your luck....

"But you better go in now. It's late and cold."

He wanted her to be away from him, to be rid of her presence, for it pulled him, drew him, and he fought against it, fought against the strongest impulse that has been born to man, fought blindly, his old, deeply rooted caution, dragging him back ... dragging him....

"I don't want to go in; I don't want to leave you," she said. "I want--"

"But you must go. Have I got to pick you up an' carry you into your house, ma'am?"

"I want you to take this," she went on where he had interrupted, fumbling at the catch of the chain which held the locket against her throat. "Take it," she said, holding it swinging toward him, spattered with moonlight. "It's brought me all the luck I've ever had; it will help you, it will protect you. You need luck as much as I do ... and you need it for me. Wear it, a foolish little trinket but it means ...

oh, more than you can know! I'd like to think of you as wearing it...."

"I don't think I need that, ma'am. What's in it?"

"Don't ask that! Don't even open it, please. Just take it and wear it, for me."

He made no move to take the ornament, just stood looking at it skeptically.

"Take it ... and then I will go in, without being carried."

She reached up to place the chain about his neck with her own hands; her unsteady fingers, fumbling with the catch, slipped and her cool, bared arms, touched his flesh. At the contact she swayed against him.

"Oh, carry me in," she pleaded gently, "carry me in ... not into my house, but into your life!"

All the caution, all the reason he had summoned to hold back that urge was swept aside. The touch of her skin against his skin sent seething blood to the ends of his limbs. It did not need her plea to break him down; the touch accomplished it, and fiercely, roughly, he caught her to him.

"It's all been a lie, another lie, all this you've said!" he cried lowly. "You didn't lie tonight because you need me; you lied because you love me, ma'am! You love me, like a good woman can love, and I love you.... I love you, ma'am, like I never thought I could love. It's bigger than I am, bigger than all the rest of my life....

"From that first night you talked to me I've been afraid I was goin' to love you. That was why I planned to go away because I didn't want to take a chance with my love. It's the only sacred thing I've ever owned and I've kept it back, savin' it for the time when I could turn it loose....

"When you told me you'd made up your mind to stay here, that you wanted to do something that was real and worth-while, I felt that I couldn't hold it back....

"But I didn't know you. I got to love you so much I was afraid of you, afraid of myself. That was why I bullied you, that was why I picked on you. I tried to drive you away from me, I tried, even, to keep from bein' your friend, but somethin' told me all the time that this had to come.

"I've watched you grow strong and big. I've hurt you on purpose. I've made some things hard for you to do, but you've done 'em. You're like a man, in the way you stand up to things ... and the gentlest, the sweetest woman down in your heart!"

"Not that!" she pleaded. "Not all that. I'm not what you think, I'm only what you can make me. I'm weak and need it. I want to be carried ... along and upward by it!"

Chin drawn in, he looked down into her face as she lay in his arms, her breath quick and fast and warm on his cheek. He could feel his limbs vibrate as his pulse leaped and his whole body trembled as he read the look in her eyes, revealed by the moonlight.

Up on the hills a little owl hooted and again the coyote yapped. A vagrant night wind touched the trees above them and the leaves whispered sleepily, as if roused by a pleasant dream. The murmur of the creek sounded almost as a blessing. None of these they heard. They were lost in a vague, limitless world, alone, swayed by the most powerful, the most beautiful forces in life.

"You lied because you love me," he whispered.

And at that she stirred and her breath slipped out in a long sob. He lowered his face to hers as scalding tears brimmed from her eyes. He felt them on his cheek, mingled with her breath and he felt her arms tighten about his neck, her body draw closer to his.

"It wasn't any chance!" he whispered fiercely. "It wasn't any chance, and I've been holdin' back, fighting it off, denying it to myself for weeks ... afraid to risk it, afraid to let it come out ... afraid of what is _so!_"

"Isn't it a chance?" she asked almost in a gasp. "Isn't it? Are you sure, Tom?"

"As sure as I am that the moon is up there, Jane."

He lowered his lips to hers and for a long kiss they clung.

"But you don't know--you don't know!" she cried, suddenly struggling to be free. "You don't know me," pressing her palms against his chest as he held her. "It's big, it's fine ... the biggest, the finest thing that has ever come into my life.

"Tom! What if it should be a chance?"

"But, Jane it can't--"

With a faint little cry, almost as though she were hurt, she broke from him and fled toward the house through the moonlight.

He stood alone, the feel of her lips still on his, heart leaping, mind swirling. And, looking down, he saw that in his hand he held the little gold locket.