CHAPTER XIX
SIBYL AND CLAYTON
Returning that afternoon from a long and somewhat wearing journey, andbeing distressed and troubled, Clayton encountered Sibyl, as he turnedinto the Paradise trail.
She was mounted on a spirited bay horse, which she had obtained in thetown, and was riding out to make a call on Mary Jasper. She drew herhorse in, when she beheld Clayton, and sat awaiting him. He would havefled, when he saw her there, but that such an act savored ofungallantry and cowardice. So he continued on until he reached herside. She looked into his troubled face with a smile, pushing back herveil with a jeweled white hand from which she had drawn the glove. Hehad always admired the beauty of her hands.
"I thought it was you," she said in her sweetest manner. "So I waitedfor you to come up."
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, hoarsely.
"I have friends in the town, you know, and I came down to visit them;just now I am on my way to call on Mary. But it's such a pleasure tosee you, Curtis, that if you don't object I'll ride with you a shortdistance."
The blood came into his face under that winning smile. He knew heought to hate this woman, and he had a sense of self-contempt when hecould not.
"I thought yesterday of calling on you," she went on.
"I'm glad you didn't," he contrived to say.
"Now, don't be foolish and unreasonable, Curtis. I know what you'vethought, and all the horrid things that have been said about me sinceBen Davison's death, but they weren't true. It isn't any pleasanterfor me to be lied about and misunderstood than it is for you andJustin. Mary's mind has been poisoned against me, but I'll make hersee even yet that I'm not the woman she thinks I am."
He sat looking at her in hesitation, the strange light which Justinhad noticed again in his eyes; he hardly heard her words, but he couldnot fail to hear the music of her voice. It had not lost its charm.
"Good God, Sibyl," he burst out, "if you could only have been true tome, and we could have lived happily together!"
There was agony and yearning in his tone.
"You have thought many foolish things, which you had no right tothink, just like other people. Shall we ride along? There is a goodpath leading by those bushes."
"Yes, the trail past the Black Canon."
The fence hedging the mesa from the valley had been lately removed. Heturned his horse toward the path, and they rode along together. Atfirst he did not speak, but listened to her, with a glance at her nowand then as she sat, firmly erect and beautiful, on that handsome bay.Her gray veil fluttered above her face. It was an attractive face,even a beautiful one, after all the years, and the strain and turmoilof them. There were a few fine hair-like wrinkles about the dark eyes,but she knew how to conceal them. The rouge which Lemuel Fogg hadnoticed in Denver was absent, or, having been deftly applied, wasunnoticed by Clayton. Her blue close-fitting riding habit, with a dashof bright color at the throat, became her and heightened her charm.And it was her beauty, unchanged, it seemed to him, which Claytondevoured when he glanced at her; it was her beauty which had won hisboyish heart, and it had not lost its power.
"Good God, Sibyl, if you could only have been true to me!" heexclaimed again.
She showed no irritation.
"You have thought many things that weren't true; for you were neverwilling to believe anything but the worst. This is a lovely countryhere, isn't it? And that canon; it's a horrid-looking hole, butfascinating."
"As fascinating as sin, or a beautiful woman."
She laughed lightly.
"You always had a way of saying startling things. If you had set yourmind to it you might have been a great and successful flatterer."
"I might have been many things, if other things had been different."
"I suppose that is true of all of us. The trouble is that there seemsto be no forgiveness for mistakes."
"What do you mean by that?"
Her dark eyes looked into his. As they were withdrawn they took inevery detail of his face and figure.
"I really didn't know you were so good looking, Curtis! You're reallystunning on a horse, in that dark suit and those tan riding boots. Ithink you must have prospered down here?"
"I have lived."
"What I meant was that you never have been able to forgive any of mymistakes."
"Your sins, you mean."
"Believing evil of me, you say sins. But I have been lied about,Curtis, cruelly lied about; I'm not perfect, any more than you are,but I'm not as bad as you think. You said a while ago, in one of yourdramatic ways, that if I could only have been true to you, and wecould have lived happily together! If I went wrong once, is that anyreason why I couldn't be true to you now?"
His hand shook on the rein.
"I don't believe you could be true to any man or any thing."
"Now is that quite fair?"
"Perhaps it is not quite fair, but you know I have had good cause forsaying it."
"Judge me by the present, not by the past. Do as you would be done by.That's been one of the tenets of your creed, I believe."
"Judge you by the present?"
"Yes; give me a chance to show that I can be true to you."
"You mean live with me again as my wife?"
"Why not?"
Again her dark eyes were scanning his face and figure. Plimpton wasgone, Ben Davison was dead, and the years were passing. Even Mary haddeserted her. She had no money, and soon might not have even so muchas a shelter to which she could turn. Mary's desertion and loss offaith in her had been the heaviest blow of all. It uprooted violentlya genuine affection.
Sibyl Dudley, in spite of a brave outward show, was beginning to feelthe terrifying loneliness of isolation; the protection of even thatbroken arm of Curtis Clayton, which she had scorned in other days,would be a comfort now. She knew that he had never ceased to love her,and she might win and hold him again. That would at least forefend theterrors of poverty and loneliness which threatened her in the shadowsof the gathering years.
Clayton did not reply to her question instantly. He looked off intospace with dark eyes that were troubled. Sibyl, glancing at him, sawthe stiff left arm swinging heavily, and thought of the flower in thatcanon long ago and of the foolish girl who stood on the canon wall andcalled to her devoted lover to get it for her. Afterward, that foolishgirl had trampled in the dust even the beautiful flower of his perfectlove. It began to seem that she would live to regret it, if she werenot regretting it already. The mills of the gods are still turned bythe river of Time, and they still grind exceeding fine.
"If I could but trust you!" he said, after a while, with a sigh.
They went on, past the granite wall of the canon, and out upon thehigh mesa beyond. Behind them lay Paradise Valley, smiling in thesunshine of the warm afternoon. Before them was a dust of movingcattle. Harkness, having received his instructions from Justin, wasbunching the mesa herd, with the assistance of cowboys, preparatory tocutting out the cattle that had been sold and driving them to thestation for shipment.
"If I could but trust you!" Clayton repeated, when she made furtherprotest. "Perfect love casteth out fear, but I haven't that perfectlove any longer."
He turned on her an anguished face.
"Yet, even while I say that, I know that I have never stopped lovingyou a single minute in all these years. Such love should have had abetter reward."
"I was foolish, Curtis. And I have paid for my foolishness."
The dark eyes turned to his were half veiled by the dark lashes, inthe old fascinating way. Cleopatra must have looked thus upon Antony.
"For all the heart-ache I have caused you I beg forgiveness. Kindnesshas always been your hobby, kindness to everything, even the dumbbrutes; and now I think you ought to be a little bit kind to me, whenI come to you and tell you that I am sorry for everything, for allthat has been and all that you have believed."
"I forgive you," he said, breathing hard. "I forgave you from thefirst."
"But I want yo
ur love again. It isn't often that a woman comes to aman begging in this way."
"You have always had my love, and you have it now; I never loved anyone else. I have never looked on any woman with thought of love sinceI left you and came to this valley."
The dust cloud had thickened, and from the mesa before them cameshouts and confused cries. Then from the right, out of the deeptrough-like depression which the cowboys called "the draw," thereheaved suddenly a line of moving backs and clicking horns.
Sibyl was putting on the glove she had carried in her jeweled hand andwas arranging her veil. She had kept the hand ungloved that its beautymight be displayed, but had begun to feel that both face and handneeded protection from the hot sunshine. Clayton drew rein, when thatheaving line rose before him, apparently out of the earth. Until thenhe had forgotten where he was, had forgotten everything but the womanbeside him.
Sibyl's face whitened when she saw those tossing horns; and the veil,escaping in her agitation, was blown toward the cattle. Startled byhaving come so suddenly on these riders, the cattle were halting inconfusion. The fluttering veil, whirled into their midst by the wind,completed the work of fear.
The rustle of a leaf as it scrapes and bobs over the ground, a flashof sunlight from a bit of broken glass, the scampering of a coyote tohis covert, or the tumbling to earth of an unhorsed cowboy, willsometimes throw a moving herd into a panic of fright and bring on awild stampede, though at other times all these things combined wouldnot have the slightest effect. The reason must be sought in thepsychology of fear.
The cattle in front whirled to race away from that fluttering objectof terror, while those behind crowded them on. In the midst of theconfusion, the larger herd plunged into view out of the dust cloud,hurried along by the cowboys. A quiver of fright ran through theentire heaving mass, and in an instant the stampede madness was born.
"We must get out of this!" Clayton shifted the reins to his stiff lefthand and turned her horse about. "You used to be a good horsewoman,and we may have to do some sharp riding."
Justin Wingate, Ranchman Page 35