The Last Straw Part 63

"Look at how she treated Cole. Why, anybody else 'd run him off! 'Stead of that she gets Bobby Cole to file on that claim an' helps 'em to build a good house an' wants 'em to stay. You can bet your life that H C cattle'll get water there now. That catamount ... h.e.l.l, she'd _carry_ it for 'em if there wasn't any other way to get it to 'em!"

"Yes, Bobby's changed."

"Should say she is changed! She's got a different look to her, not so hard an' horstile as she used to be; she's plumb doe-cyle now!

"I expect she's glad she didn't kill Hilton. If she hadn't changed she'd been glad to do it. But, bein' like she is now, she wouldn't want to hurt n.o.body.... Unless that somebody wanted to hurt Miss Hunter."

His eyes roved off down the road and settled on a swiftly moving horse, the great sorrel who was bringing Jane Hunter back to the ranch after a ride far down the creek.

"Speakin' of h.e.l.l, Tommy: there mebby ain't any like the Reverend claims there is, but there's a Heaven! I'll bet two bits there is! I'll gamble on it because I know an angel that stepped right down that there, now, solid gold ladder....

"She's comin' up th' road.... An' Mister Two-Bits Beal, _esquire_, is goin' to drift out of here!"

With a broad wink, which set a suggestion of a flush into Beck's cheeks, he took his hat and departed.

Jane entered, drawing the pin from her hat; then stopped on the threshold with a cry.

"Oh, the doctor's been here!"

"Yes, and he's rolled the old carca.s.s over," Beck answered.

She stood looking down at him for a moment and then dropped quickly to her knees.

"It's so good to look into your eyes again," she whispered, and though her own eyes were bright there were tears in her voice.

Beck's gaze wavered and he slowly withdrew the hand that she had taken.

"You mustn't look like that!" he said, turning his face from her. "It's more than I've deserved, it's more than I have a right to!"

She put her hands on his shoulders, gently, bearing no weight upon them, and said soberly:

"Look at me, Tom Beck!"

He obeyed, rather reluctantly.

"I have waited, oh, so long, to talk to you! I promised the doctor that nothing should disturb you until you were well. That's one reason why I brought you into the house, instead of leaving you with the men: so you could be quiet.

"But there was another reason, a greater: I wanted you here, in this room, in my house, near me, where I could see and feel and help you, because seeing and touching and helping you helped me!

"I needed your help, Tom! I shall always need you near me!"

"n.o.body would agree with you," he protested. "You're the most capable man in the country. You sure can look out for yourself."

"But looking out for myself isn't all. That's just a tiny part of life,"--indicating how small it was with a thumb and fore-finger. "It belongs to the side of me which owns this ranch, which is a cattle woman, which wants to fatten steers and raise calves and prosper....

"There's the other part, the big part, the part that is really worth while: It's my heart, Tom. It's my heart that needs you!"

His brows puckered.

"I wish you wouldn't!" he said huskily. "I can't help that part, I had my chance ... an' I threw it away."

"And I picked it up! Tom, that morning when you were crawling back from Cathedral Tank, across the desert, I was at the round-up camp. I went there to tell you, to make you understand--"

"That's what hurts: that you had to ride thirty miles to tell me, to make me understand. Why, ma'am, I hadn't any right to have you do that for me. It was me who should have come crawlin' to you!"

She took his hand again.

"Look at me!"

"Yes, ma'am," striving to lighten his manner.

"Yes, _Jane!_" she insisted.

"Jane," very softly.

"You are very foolish, sticking to an abstract idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me.

"Don't you see what a wrong that would be! Don't you see that?"

She leaned forward, hands clasped at her chin, and tears swam upward into her eyes.

"I am saying the things I've waited so long to say.

"You have lain here ever since that black night when they carried you in and I had to feel your heart to know whether you lived. I've tried to say nothing that would disturb you, tried to keep your mind off the thing that has occupied mine. But I know you've been thinking; I know you've been uneasy. I have seen that in the looks, the words, the way you've laughed, rather forced and weakly at times. I have known what you thought....

"You are very foolish to be concerned with an idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me.

"I am not forgiving you because there is nothing to forgive. My pride was hurt and by yielding to it I shook your faith in me. It was weak for me to yield to pride; it was foolish for you to give way to suspicion. It was not I who yielded, Tom; it was that other girl, the girl who came to you to be hurt and ridiculed and made strong! And it was not the Tom Beck who loved me that suspected; it was that other man, the one who held himself back, who did not take chances, who, perhaps, would have denied himself the finest thing in life if he had always walked on ground with which he was familiar....

"And now to carry this breach from the past into the future.... Don't you see what a wrong that would be? Don't you see how you would be harming yourself? You, who wanted to die for me, would be refusing to live for me! And I who need you would walk alone.... Don't you see what a horrible thing that would be to both of us ... my lover?"

She leaned forward, hands clasped at her breast, and the tears swam into her eyes. She was very beautiful, very gentle and tender, but as he looked he felt rather than saw the strength that was in her: the character that had stood alone, that had been herself in the face of the loss of love and position, and that, by so standing, had triumphed.

For a breathless instant she poised so, with unsteady lips, and she saw the want come into his face, saw the old reserve, the old resolution to punish himself melt away.

"I want you, Jane!" he whispered.

The evening shadows had come before she rose from her knees and drew up a chair to sit stroking his hand.

His eyes rested on her hungrily and after a time they concentrated on the locket at her throat.

"Say! Now that you've done me the honor to give me a second chance at lovin' you, there's somethin' I want to ask."

"Ask it."