Lin McLean Part 29

"Course it is," said Billy. "Father and mother are living in Laramie."

"It's all straight," said the cow-puncher. "I never saw her till three years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come easy to tell."

I rose. "Miss Buckner," said I, "he will tell you. But he will not tell you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.

It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten."

But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on Lin, and her face remained white.

I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith, ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow, seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the water-tank, a dull ma.s.s in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.

"She's a-crying," said he.

I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: "I'm sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just sat, and when she started crying he made me go away."

"I don't believe she's mad," I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket, he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.

But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened, and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.

"What?" I said at length.

I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him gently. "Wake, son," said he. "You and I must get to our camp now."

"Now?" said Billy. "Can't we wait till morning?"

"No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the saddles on." As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. "She is in there," he said. "She's in there. So near." He looked, and turned to the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on.

"I understand her words," he continued. "Her words, the meaning of them.

But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't blame me!" he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.

"Lin," I answered, "she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile."

"That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long--and I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she says I have a wife livin'."

"That is nonsense," I declared.

"Yu' mustn't say that," said he. "She don't claim she's a wife, either.

She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and that she's honest, and loves me true--" His voice broke for a moment.

"She said she'd wait."

"You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied," I said. "But perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--"

"No," said the cow-puncher. "Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and the chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and waked Billy to clear out and quit."

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

"Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.

Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!"

"Man, man!" said I, "go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll wait too--always!"

"Would yu'?"

"Look!" I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.

I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.

"Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!" she sobbed. She could not withhold this last good-bye.

I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone, flying, rus.h.i.+ng away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing over Separ.

DESTINY AT DRYBONE

PART I

Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.

Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.

McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and "yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'" Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.

"I can write a lot quicker than Lin," said Billy, upon arriving. "He was fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to the cabin for my clothes."

"You don't say!" said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him again.

When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.

But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.

Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. "Honey Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls," he remarked. "He says you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times."

"Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right," said Jessamine, buoyantly.

"And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it clears, and then we'll go for our ride."

"Yes," said Billy. "When does a man get too old to marry?"

"I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know."

"Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he must be thirty."

"Old!" exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her table.

"But Lin ain't been married very much," pursued Billy. "Mother's the only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?"

"It's better to," said Jessamine.

"Ah, I don't think so," said Billy, with disparagement. "You ought to see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,"

said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. "Why won't you if he don't mind?"