by Zane Grey
“But that doesn’t get me over havin’ to be asked. I’d like to do somethin’ on my own, somethin’ that would square me.... Say, if Newton comes back, an’ you don’t want him, I’ll beat him up for you.”
If the boy were not so valiantly serious, Mary would have been amused. As it was, her breath left her and her thoughts whirled dizzily. When words were again at her command she said, “I don’t think it will be necessary to beat Mr. Newton up. He won’t come back.”
Her last remark she uttered with conviction and she repeated it to herself, “He won’t come back!”
For John Curry, who loved her hopelessly and had to go away at her request, she was suddenly lonely, terribly overwhelmingly lonely. Long hours this loneliness persisted.
She would have conquered in the end if Miss Hills that evening had not come in upon her while she was occupied with Joy and said, “You ought to have a child of your own, Mrs. Newton. You’d make a wonderful mother. I hope you’ll marry again, once you get your divorce from that husband of yours.”
“I — I haven’t planned to divorce Mr. Newton,” Mary returned, on the defensive at once.
“But you must! Heavens! Don’t you suppose he wants it? Men don’t leave a girl like you unless there’s another woman in view.”
The words struck Mary with the sting of a lash. The very unexpectedness of the remark made its import seem more monstrous to her. Wilbur’s wanting a divorce.... Another woman in view! Was the moral view of marriage so completely lost that a young girl of good character viewed her situation so lightly? Was there no longer any sacred regard for the marriage relation? Was it all hypocrisy?
“Perhaps to some men marriage is a loss of independence, and they marry without taking that into consideration,” Mary said, suddenly reminded of Wilbur’s own words.
“And loss of their independence merely means a bridle to check them from having affairs with other women. Independence? Nonsense! Who is really truly independent in this world? Independence stopped when man quit supplying all his needs by his own labors. The poor word is rather sadly hackneyed these days.”
“I guess you’re right there,” Mary concluded, then fled from further discussion.
But she could not flee from anxiety so easily. Hadn’t Wilbur intimated that the photographer in Flaggerston whom she had never seen could take his place? He had not mentioned love. Freedom, to have affairs with other men as Miss Hills would put it, he had basely insinuated was a thing she desired. She was married to him then, and divorce had never been mentioned between them. And why should she want a divorce unless to marry again? She shuddered as the thought came to her that she did not want Wilbur to return. Was she not part of the same great hypocrisy? Was that not proof that her own ideals were false, that she was struggling for a belief in the traditions of her fathers rather than receiving intolerantly anything that threatened to destroy them? And there was her love for John. As he had said of himself, she could not change it. All the defenses that she had built around her with evasions and arguments were threatened now. She had a baffled feeling that constancy to a single ideal was being demanded of her, and that fate was leading her blindfolded to make the choice.
Through the days that followed, Mary fostered all her reserve energy to meet the demands on her strength that the long hours at the hospital called for. She had little leisure to think of other things.
The influenza epidemic spread through Taho like fire down a sage plain. It raged in the Indian village, too. Contagion was most prevalent among the men. The schools were closed. Fewer and fewer were the people who attended government mess. All the inhabitants of Taho were numbered either among the sick or the nursing. Mary faced the day when Billy Horton, too, succumbed to the pestilence. That created a grave situation. Billy had taken the place of the cook at the government mess which supplied food for the hospital patients. Someone had to take charge there, and with no one else ready to assume the responsibility, Mary stepped in. She had no idea of the demands it entailed. When she struggled with knife and saw against a resisting quarter of beef, when with the aid of a stout stick she had to enforce her request that an Indian lad kill chickens for her, she was astounded by the proofs of her efficacy.
In spite of the added duties she found time each evening to rub with liniment forty and more chests and backs. Through this faithful service to the children she earned from them the title, “Grease-mother.”
After the epidemic began to wane, there came a morning when Mary did not report at the hospital. While trying to dress at the usual hour dizziness overcame her. She rested a while trying to recover, but the bed seemed to turn round beneath her, and even when she closed her eyes it did not cease circling. She felt deathly sick. Three hours she lay with limbs as stiff as if they had been clamped in irons, and with a strange buzzing in her ears. Mrs. Gordon called. In high alarm she went for the doctor who came at once.
“Exhaustion!” he declared.
Mary, looking at him, thought hazily that he might have been judging his own malady. Yet with a feeling of relief she gave herself over to the tired man’s care.
A week later Mary was about again. The doctor, more wan than ever, was still at his duties with machine-like constancy.
“Two deaths in all,” he told her. “And no more malignant cases.”
“Then Joy has really recovered? No relapse?” asked Mary. She had feared all along that kindness had colored truth in the answers she had received to her inquiries about Joy.
“She recovered. But she shouldn’t go back to school this year. Live outdoors. Sleep outdoors. I’m afraid of her lungs, and she has a slight gland infection.”
“Why can’t she come to live with me?” asked Mary, suddenly impressed with the idea. “I’m off all day Saturday and Sunday, and away only six hours on other days. My neighbor would gladly keep an eye on her during my absence. And Joy’s such a good little thing, perfectly reliable, Miss Hills tells me.”
“That would be the best thing in the world for her!” Dr. Kellogg exclaimed. “Lord! You certainly ought to be able to take care of one after what you’ve done with forty!”
The government agent’s approval of the plan was promptly received, and Joy’s well-loved grease-mother became her foster mother.
News of Mary’s gift to the hospital had long since circulated about Taho. Mary gathered that it had been received incredulously by some, who accepted it later only on the strength of a belief that she had sacrificed an inheritance; but whatever misgivings had arisen, all opinions tended finally to canonize her and to consign Wilbur to a greater depth of degradation for having left a woman so virtuous as she. Mary had not foreseen such a result of her generosity, nor yet the word that went abroad when she adopted Joy.... “Poor girl! You see, she’s wanted children all the time!”
CHAPTER XIV
PATCHES OF GREEN showing through the melting snows of the Colorado uplands began to attract cattle from the valleys where they had grazed during the winter months, and to scatter them hither and yon over the vast area of their summer range. The lowing of cattle, so intimate during the tedious season of snows, now carrying from afar on a breeze laden with the scent of spring, seemed to hold a note of farewell for John. He had had enough of Colorado. He had come here against his own desire. There was a hunger in his heart and a restlessness in his soul that nothing could appease. His eyes turned longingly toward Arizona. He wanted to turn his horse’s head that way and give him free rein. He was riding home from Cleland with the mail, with the realization that he would have to repeat the journey several times before he could conscientiously leave his brother’s ranch. He saw in the distance High-Lo coming to meet him, accompanied by a rider on a mount that seemed somewhat familiar. He tortured his memory until he recognized the horse as one Beany rode in Arizona and then he knew that the slim, straight figure in the saddle was none other than Beany himself.
“Yea, Cowboy!” yelled the rider in a voice that cleared all shadow of doubt. “How are you ridin�
� these days?”
“Managing to stick on!” John called in response.
They came up then, wheeling their horses about, one on each side of John.
“Just back from Black Mesa?” asked John.
“Yep,” returned Beany. “And it shore was lonely holdin’ that post alone for the winter.”
“Folks away long?” John followed.
“You’re talkin’! Went to Phoenix for Christmas and come back only a week ago. Guess they was scared of the flu. It shore hit the reservation awful hard — particular down around Taho. Three deaths down there.”
John’s heart began to thump. “Deaths? Who?”
“Lord! I ain’t the local undertaker. How d’you expect me to know?” asked Beany.
“Didn’t any word get through to Black Mesa?”
High-Lo chuckled and intercepted Beany’s answer by saying, “He wants you to tell him that them that died with the flu was Texans.”
“Wal, I can’t give names,” said Beany. “If what I got was true there was a baby, an Indian kid and a kind of youngish woman.”
“White woman?” asked John, legs and arms gone suddenly numb.
Beany slid over hard in one stirrup and peered into John’s face. “Say, are you takin’ the census?”
A hideous fear made John vehement. “Answer me, you fool.”
Beany took offense. “Someone’s been feedin’ you pepper or bad liquor! ... Yes, it’s a white woman. Not been there long. Tuberculosis case and took the flu quick. Wife of one of the government men.”
John gave a great expulsion of breath. A burning heat within him suddenly lost its fire. He felt the reins slipping through his fingers and retrieved them.
“By golly, John!” High-Lo ejaculated. “Bet you were thinkin’ of Miss Alice Winfield. But they were to leave late November. Good they got out.”
“Say! That reminds me!” Beany broke in. “Mrs. Weston saw them Winfield girls pretty much in Phoenix, an’ she run into the Blakely girls there, too, goin’ it pretty strong with Hanley. They say Hanley’s part Mormon. He’s like to want ’em both.”
“Anybody seen anythin’ of Handsome?” asked High-Lo.
“Handsome?”
“Sure. That splinter of a would-be cow-rider called Willy Newton.”
“Oh! Wilbur Newton! Hain’t seen him, but I’ve heard some. He’s opened a small post in that deserted adobe buildin’ at Sage Springs.”
John caught a significant wink and nod from High-Lo.
“On what, I’d like to know?” queried High-Lo.
“Borrowed funds, I’m guessin’. And if he can go any other way but broke, I’ll give him my horse, and the saddle thrown in.”
“Any idea where he gets his supplies from?” asked John.
“Gallup, I guess. Over the Luckachuca Mountains. Some thinks that’s easier than through Flaggerston. Course I don’t know, never bein’ over that way. I’m just figurin’ cause nothin’ comes through by way of Black Mesa.”
Again High-Lo winked and nodded.
“I heard Hanley would be in Colorado some time this winter,” lied John in an attempt to lure Beany into telling some more that he might know and yet appear not too interested. “Did Pop Weston mention his leaving Phoenix early?”
Beany screwed his face into a reflective knot, then untwined it. “Come to think of it, yes. Seems though, speakin’ of Gallup, that it was there Pop Weston said he’d went.”
John did not dare look at High-Lo, for the lad had burst into a whistling of the long-neglected refrain written to immortalize the old sow.
“Gettin’ back to Newton,” said Beany, riding closer to John as their suddenly obsessed companion led off the road onto the sage flat, “ain’t he got a wife? I thought so. Leastways I heard some fellers talkin’ about how she was downright pretty.”
“She’s red-headed and freckle-faced,” announced High-Lo between the last and first phrase of his endless tune.
“She’s not,” said John, off guard at the moment. And re-covering: “You never saw her. You don’t know what she looks like.”
“Oh, don’t I! You’re the one who never saw her. She’s as red-headed an’ freckled as a woman can be. Newton did it. Made her change color like that. She was dark afore she married him. Then one time she come home late, an’ he bein’ such a mean cuss locked her out for the night not carin’ that it was rainin’. An’ bein’ left out in the rain like that she rusted. An’ she ain’t been the same girl since.... O-h-h-h-h—”
John knew what was coming. He heard the first word and note before it fell.
“The old sow woke up in the mornin’, and one of her pigs was dead,” wailed High-Lo.
Beany grinned from ear to ear. “The damn fool!” he drawled. “But say, what d’you make of it? Newton livin’ at Sage Springs alone?”
* * * * *
A night shared with Beany kept John and High-Lo apart. However, early the next morning after Beany had left for Cleland they strolled toward the corral together and relieved their minds of a number of thoughts they shared.
“Of course, you got it,” High-Lo remarked. “Newton’s post is financed by Hanley, the post bein’ a cover for their real business.”
John nodded.
“An’ they’re dumb fools if they think they can get by with that. I reckon when we’re on our way to Black Mesa I can use that roll of bobwire I toted along. It’s hangin’ in the barn.”
John anticipated this reaction from High-Lo and knew he would be hard to handle.
“Don’t be too anxious. Give them plenty of rope to hang themselves with.”
“Hang themselves, nothin’! I’m goin’ to be there for the dance. Why the delay? You wouldn’t go through Sage Springs an’ tip yer hat to that feller!”
“No. I’d tip a gun if I gave in to myself.”
“Wal? Doesn’t that settle things?”
“No. We’re going to Black Mesa by way of Taho.”
High-Lo looked at John in mild contempt. “Taho? A hundred and twenty miles out of our way? Are you gettin’ awful fond of ridin’?”
“No, but that’s the way we’re going,” John replied.
High-Lo halted, thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked gently on his heels. “That’s the way you’re goin’, John. I’m goin’ by way of Sage Springs. I’m so sick of nothin’ happenin’ that I could bust an’ run. You ain’t goin’ to spoil my party. Of course, if you’ve turned yellow—”
John swung around, his right hand itching. “Take that back, High-Lo.”
“Mebbe I will!”
“No! Take it back now.”
“Wal, then I’ll say, ‘if you’ve turned sick,’ instead. You’ve shore turned suthin’! Did you think I wasn’t wonderin’ none why you didn’t foller this up last fall, why you didn’t try follerin’ up Newton like you said we would when we quit Pop Weston, why you’ve cut me short every time I’ve mentioned Hanley to you? What d’you expect me to be thinkin’?”
The time had come when John could no longer deceive High-Lo. The boy was asking for the truth and he ought to have it. “If I mix in this affair I can’t do it without betraying the woman I love,” he said unsteadily.
High-Lo’s jaw fell and his eyes widened to their limit. Then his lips met in a thin line and his eyes narrowed. He studied John a minute. Presently he said, “The woman you love?”
“Yes. She’s Wilbur Newton’s wife.”
High-Lo blinked as if in anticipation of a blow he stood to take.
“Don’t look at me that way, pal,” begged John. “My love’s honest — as honest as heaven. You’ve got to believe me. Let me tell you about it. Not here. We can’t stand here. Come on over to the corral.”
He walked away without looking back, and it was a full minute before he heard High-Lo plodding behind him. He observed that the boy took care not to catch up. When they reached the corral High-Lo still kept his distance, squatting on his heels about twenty feet from where John stood. He snapped a piece of brush a
nd started drawing designs with it in the sand. John moved closer, and though High-Lo’s silence disturbed him, he ignored it, and began his confession starting with the day he first saw Mary. Soon the stick with which High-Lo played ceased moving, and shortly it fell to the ground. John perceived him capitulating slowly to the thrill and romance of the narrative. He was listening intently for all that his head was averted. So John went on, becoming lost in his own recital. Suddenly it was over. He had explained how Mary had sent him away. There was nothing more to tell.
High-Lo looked up. He stared at John in frank amazement. “An’ this has been happenin’ to you,” he muttered, “an’ you not tellin’ me till now?”
“But you understand that, don’t you?” John pleaded.
“Mebbe. You see, I ain’t never been in love. Sure, I’ve been mixed up with women when I was drunk, but I never had the thing that’s hurtin’ you so hard. What you’ve told me makes me see red an’ hate it all. Hate it all! Do you hear me?”
High-Lo’s face moved convulsively as he brought his long speech to its passionate close. John was grieved to see the boy so shaken.
“There’s nothing come between us. Don’t feel that way. I need you more than ever. You’ve saved my life — my self-respect. I’m sure if you hadn’t come to Colorado I’d have gone back to Taho like a weak fool. You’ve been my backbone. God! How I needed you!”
“You’ve got me wrong,” returned High-Lo. “I’d hate anythin’ that hurt you. That’s the trouble. It is hurtin’ you — you who’d give your guts for anyone else. No. Don’t get the idee I’m jealous. Not of any woman.”
John fell prey to emotions that made speech difficult. “And you’ll stick by me?”
A scoffing snort was High-Lo’s only response. There was fire in his eye. He sat deep in thought for a long moment. Then he cried, “I got it!”
“What?”
“All your strange cuttin’ up. Sellin’ the car, talkin’ about stayin’ over in Taho an’ then not stayin’ ... lots of things! An’ you thought it was her died in Taho.... Here’s a bit of advice. Hang on to that five hundred. She’ll be needin’ it. An hombre like him will have to have a fancy funeral.”