Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  “Straight ter your house?” asked Reynolds.

  “No,” replied Katharine. “Mrs. Newton’s house please. Then on your way back to the post office please drop our baggage over the gate.”

  “I’ll see it safe to the porch, Ma’am. No bother at all.”

  They came then to Mary’s house. Katharine pressed some money into Reynolds’ hand, requesting him to keep the change. Then with Alice following, she hurried up the walk that led to Mary’s porch. A moment later Mary appeared in response to her knock.

  CHAPTER XI

  “YOU! OH, KATHARINE!” This salutation, voiced with a hungry cry, was sweet reward to Katharine for coming at once to her friend’s side. Mary swayed ever so slightly when Alice stepped beside her sister in the doorway.

  “You both gave up your visit for me?” Mary went on. “How good of you! It’s selfish of me to be glad! Come in. I’m all alone.”

  Her last words sounded a bit forlorn and her voice was sad as she spoke them. Yet her serenity was as gallant as ever. Mary could meet life stanchly. Her eyes said so, and so did her bearing.

  Alice broke through Katharine’s meditation with a call from the door through which Katharine had already passed.

  “I’m not coming in, thank you, Mary. Just wanted to say hello. Tomorrow I will. You and Katharine ought to talk alone. Give me the key, Sis, I’ll run over to the house.”

  Katharine blessed her sister silently.

  “But you must both have supper with me,” Mary protested.

  “Indeed not! You’ll have your supper with us. While you and Katharine chat I’ll get busy. Come over in about an hour.”

  Katharine squeezed Alice’s hand as she slipped the key into it.

  “We’ll be over promptly,” she said. “Mary loves a Spanish omelet, remember?”

  “I do remember a few things,” Alice shot back in retort.

  The screen door closed with a click. The two girls faced each other, and Alice was forgotten.

  “So my letter brought you!” said Mary, as seating herself before Katharine she contemplated her with a look that was almost adoring.

  Then the Eastern girl knew that under her friend’s calm exterior there was a desire to relieve her heart.

  “Got it and came just as quickly as I could. I knew the sooner you could talk to someone who understands, the better for you. I am here to help if I can. Pour it out, old dear.”

  The merest shadow of a smile passed over Mary’s face.

  “Well, he’s gone,” she said. “It’s not a bluff this time. He won’t come back. He’s taken everything. At first I was so dazed I didn’t think of his trunk. That’s gone too. I found it missing after I wrote you. Billy Horton, one of the cowboys, came in yesterday to apologize because he let Wilbur transfer the trunk to his shanty. Wilbur had told him to send it to Flaggerston with the first car out, and to express it collect to his mother’s home in Texas. Billy said he wasn’t smart enough to see there was something irregular about Wilbur’s request. That came to him after Wilbur left. He said he’d turn the trunk over to me. But what do I want with it? Why should I hold it?”

  “That would be very foolish,” agreed Katharine.

  “So I thought. Billy was very good to tell me about the trunk. Indirectly he was informing me where Wilbur had gone.”

  “You think then he has gone to Texas?” Katharine inquired.

  “Perhaps not straightway. But that’s the only place that seems ever to have been home to him. They understand him there.”

  To Katharine’s way of thinking, only blind affection would prevent anyone from seeing Wilbur as he really was. Great pity for Mary consumed her.

  “Understand him?” she said. “I wonder! How can they when they are cut from the same cloth, a very drab-looking cloth at that! What depth of real understanding could Lenora have?”

  For a moment Mary said nothing. Then she leaned forward, swept by a gust of passion that flashed in her eyes.

  “Oh, Katharine! Do you see what a failure I have been? How, why, where I’ve been remiss is so hard for me to discover. I only know sort of helplessly that I have failed. God knows I tried to make Wilbur happy. Yet circumstances were against me right from the start. I’m trying hard to be fair. It can’t be all Wilbur’s fault that our lives were without accord. Am I one of those people who can’t see herself as she really is? Can’t hold a mirror to my soul? I married Wilbur. I was sure that I loved him then. But our period of adjustment covered years instead of months, and never did we truly adapt ourselves. Is it too late, Katharine? Is there something I can still do to make good?”

  “Do you love Wilbur now?” asked Katharine.

  “There! It’s a relief to have you ask that. I’ve tried so hard to be honest with myself about it. I think I do. But it is a love that is largely pity. And Katharine, I never wanted to love a man that way. It’s like the love of the strong for the weak. Maybe it’s altogether maternal. I don’t know. I only know there is something. Surely, though, not the thing most women crave. Instead of being protected and cared for, when I married Wilbur, I had to become his protector against the world — the people who recognized him as a man whose future was behind him, who saw his monstrous vanity. It was I who had to do all the nurturing of what little love there was. I had even to think for him without making him aware that I was doing so, letting him accept my ideas as originally his own. I had to steer him from mistakes — meet his debts. I was the one to take all the responsibility. I was forced against my nature to be independent. My dependence upon Wilbur had only the substance of his blind reasoning.... What will happen to him now?”

  Katharine struggled against the provocation to tell poor wretched Mary the truth about Wilbur and to hurt her beyond the point of a woman’s ability to bear suffering, in the hope that the truth would forever purge her heart of any feeling for the man; but John Curry seemed present to stay her, as indeed he must have been, knowing her first hours in Taho would be with Mary; and her conscience, reminding her of her promise to him, likewise silenced her.

  “Rest assured, he will act independent of you,” Katharine said. “And may what he does break him! Breaking a man, Mary, is often the best way for him and the world to discover of what stuff he is made. And who knows? You may prosper if Wilbur does launch into some mad thing. As far as you are concerned it might prove a good investment rather than a loss.”

  Plainly, Mary was puzzled. “Aren’t you speaking rather vaguely?” she asked.

  Katharine smiled. “I speak conditionally. Perhaps that is why I seem vague. While you are facing so uncertain a future, there is little to do but make conjectures. I call leaving you Wilbur’s first big misstep as concerns his own well-being. You were the one good influence he had to cling to. Aren’t you willing to admit to yourself that your marriage was a misalliance?”

  Despite Katharine’s tenderness of voice, Mary flinched under her words.

  “It was a misalliance,” she admitted. “But I backed it with a vow sacred in the eyes of God.”

  “Yes, of course.” It was so easy to agree to the sacredness of marriage, yet hypocritical to pretend faith in the letter of the law, so Katharine could not drop the matter there. “Mary, why was marriage instituted?” she went on.

  “To propagate the race, I suppose. And as a protection for children, the family and the state.... As a protection for love perhaps.”

  “Propagate the race! Did Wilbur want children? Protect the family! Whose family? The husband’s? Protection for love! Why, Mary, the only protection for love is love itself. As for Wilbur, I think he is incapable of loving anyone except himself.”

  “Still, I’m sure he must have loved me once. I’m reminded of the old adage about love going out of the window when poverty comes in the door. That was the trouble with Wilbur.... If only I had had money!”

  Katharine frowned upon this. “Had you some money, then perhaps Wilbur would have found more binding the vow that is sacred in the eyes of God! Is that the idea? I d
on’t mean to be sacrilegious, but I think God would rather not be connected with so materialistic a proposition as that.”

  Tears welled in Mary’s eyes and one fell on her hands which in their tight clasp gave evidence of her distress. Then she looked up with a gesture of self-command, manifestly summoning the will to dry her tears.

  “Dear ever-logical Katharine,” she said, “can’t you see that I am fighting these all too evident truths — that the more I am convinced, the harder I must fight? I married Wilbur. I am one-half of the contract. I am trying to keep my end.”

  “You mean there is no condition under which you would break it?”

  “I think that usually chickens come home to roost, so I must wait.”

  “And that’s final,” said Katharine more to herself than to Mary.

  Mary made no comment. Her silence was her affirmation.

  “Then you have not thought of securing your freedom?” Katharine asked. “In Arizona if a man deserts his wife and does not return within a year the wife on presentment of appeal will be granted a decree of divorce almost at once and without any sensational publicity. I learned this when Mother was studying up on a speech in favor of more liberal national divorce laws that she was to deliver to the Women’s Federation, and I am glad Arizona is fearless in this regard.”

  “I will wait for Wilbur.”

  Mary’s voice lost all its softness. Such hard, cool tones did not spring from pain or passion. Calm, resolute in her intention, she gave her answer not as a challenge but as an immutable verdict. Only through pretense could Katharine re-open the subject now.

  “If you can speak so surely, then you must love Wilbur more than you admit. You want to believe that he will come back.”

  “I do. But it is not because I can’t live without him. It’s because there is protection against myself in having Wilbur. There is a self that I can govern only by a sense of duty as his wife. That self is the unsatisfied woman in me. That self is to blame for my interest in John Curry. I didn’t want to be interested in him! Oh, you do understand me, don’t you, Katharine? There was no intentional disloyalty. Taking my interest on its surface value, it is absurd. There can be no genuine depth of feeling. Why, you could count on one hand the times I have seen Mr. Curry!”

  For a moment Katharine hung back from a bog of thought on which to venture was perilous indeed. But she plunged through, because Mary was waiting there on the other side, and she might be able to help her.

  “How often you have seen Mr. Curry has nothing to do with your feeling for him. You can’t measure it that way. I always have maintained that I would recognize the man I could love the very first time I should see him. And it happened that way. He seemed the composite of all the finest men I ever knew. I had recognized him, though the truth about love dawned slowly.”

  “You — love — someone?” Mary faltered.

  “Someone who does not love me — who cares for someone else.”

  Mary spoke. “I am sorry, Katharine. I wonder why you are denied him? I wonder if there is a reason for such things? You with your bravery make me feel like a coward.”

  Katharine smiled down the pain that assailed her. “I can look across the boundaries of the Elysian fields and find a good measure of content. I can find happiness in other people’s happiness. I mentioned this because you begged the authority of time to support your argument. Truth is, there is no argument. You like John Curry very much. I like him myself. So does Alice like him. We should see more of him.”

  At the moment Mary’s face was a study. “We?” she blurted out.

  “You — I — Alice. Yes! Don’t look at me as if I were the tempter himself. Satisfy yourself about John Curry. Find out if you do care. If you don’t — there’s Alice. It would not take much association with Curry for Alice to find a genuine attachment there. He seemed to find her attractive.”

  Mary reddened. “He would, naturally. She is so beautiful — a gentle flower of gold — and he is so strong and tall. They would make a handsome couple. I hope for Alice’s sake that you two, at least, see more of him. Like you I’ve looked over forbidden fields so long I’d almost be afraid to enter even had I the right.”

  “I hope he comes this way soon,” added Katharine.

  She hated such subterfuge. Mary was too guileless to suspect her, so guileless that the shot had gone home straight and sure, making her wound evident. Now was the way clear for Curry’s visit. Now would the planned event betray no malice of design.

  “You gave Mr. Curry my message?”

  “I did. Also I gave him your letter to read. I wanted to make him feel murderous.”

  Mary leaned close. Her eyes glistened. “And did he?”

  “Yes. But he contemplated only half-murder. He wanted to drag Wilbur back to you.”

  “Back to me!”

  Katharine replied with a quiet yes which disguised her elated feeling of triumph. To outgeneral Mary in the aggressive maneuvers she was waging for Curry was particularly gratifying; to strip away Mary’s defenses was to reach the truth. Mary did care, deeply, dearly, though she would not admit it now, even to herself.

  CHAPTER XII

  BECAUSE JOHN WAS on his way to Mary, it made little difference that the sky was overcast with gray clouds threatening unseasonable rain. The sky of his mind was aflood with sunshine. The wheel that trembled under his fingers as the car sped along obeyed an unconscious guidance. Restless High-Lo, who swayed in the seat beside him, was burdened with speech of which, bit by bit, he relieved himself, much to John’s discomfort.

  “Say, are you takin’ me to jail or just to Taho? An’ what’s the rush an’ silence about?” he asked. “Ain’t you got a few words for a condemned man?”

  “Just not feeling talkative,” replied John.

  “Thanks for the information. If there’s any more such unexpected news, you better shock me now while I’m strong enough to stand it. I thought you’d swallered your tongue. There’s things I’d like to know about. For instance — what’s the idea of sellin’ your car? When do you expect I’ll ever get to ride another, less it’s a truck?”

  “Got to have cash. Want to bank it till its working time is due. Have a friend who may need it anytime. Get the most you can for me in Flaggerston. I’ll give you a percentage.”

  “Keep your percentage!” blazed High-Lo. “What interests me is that you’re tryin’ to keep some other cuss like me out of trouble an’ you’ve not been tellin’ me anything about him. Call that square? What gets me is who would you sell this car for? What have I been missin’? You know, John, anytime you want me to keep right on hittin’ a trail, you tell me.”

  “Jealous! That was what he was!” thought John. Aloud, he continued: “The day will never come when our trails part, son, unless you tie me at some crossroads in order to escape. This won’t affect you any, High-Lo. It’s something that your friendship has helped me to do. I’ll tell you about it when the time’s right.”

  “Riddles!” ejaculated High-Lo in fine scorn. “Well, I’m trustin’ you. If I wasn’t I’d run away with your damn car to make you follow me.”

  Dust, like smoke, curled past them. The last time at the wheel of the old car that had given such faithful service! Under other circumstances, John might have suffered regret. As it was, the prospect of service gave him the courage to part with it. “All for Mary!” the whirring motor seemed to say.

  “Then you’re shakin’ me in Taho, shore? Not thinkin’ of comin’ on?” High-Lo cut in.

  “Right. And you’re to go straight off. I want you back in Taho soon. No stalling in Flaggerston. Quick business and business only.”

  “Ye-ah!” drawled High-Lo.

  They reached Taho trading post at a time of late afternoon when inactivity marked a waning day. A lone burro stood in the road sleepily observing the car. The pendulum-like wagging of this lop-eared creature’s tail ticked off the dead moments outside the quiet post.

  There John and High-Lo parted. The car left
as it had come, unheralded by the natives, and John to all appearances had dropped from the blue void above him.

  Strange that there should be only a matter of hours now between him and Mary when, unknowing, Mary moved in the little white house that gleamed through the trees up the road. “Call at eight,” Miss Winfield had written. Three hours to wait! No, two hours and fifty minutes. He would give himself ten minutes to walk leisurely up the road. Two hours among the Indians down at the farms. A half-hour coming and going. Twenty minutes to clean up at MacDonald’s house. He’d shave again. Maybe he’d gather some information about Hanley among the Hopis. Hopi John was so proud of his English that he’d tell anything just to use it.

  Hopi John did have things to tell. Hanley had recently passed through Taho on his way to Flaggerston and, rumor was current, to Phoenix later. Sheep business again! Always sheep business! Following some deals at the farms intoxicated Indians came to blows in the village. Excellent sheep business! John cursed the man roundly. Hanley came alone and left alone, according to Hopi John’s report. Winter would drive a man such as he south. His insidious operations would be renewed in the spring. Would he meet Newton in Phoenix? The Blakely girls lived in Phoenix. Nice party!

  While climbing the long road back to the mesa in the twilight, John considered these things, yet came to no decision as to a plan for himself regarding Hanley. The girl who lived up the road in the house that gleamed through the trees would be the one to decide all things for him now.