by Zane Grey
He realized beyond further doubt that he was caught in the toils of her charm for better or worse, surely the latter. He had watched her for hours on end, when she had not even been aware of his presence. She had improved during her sojourn in Wyoming. Her face now had a clear golden glow, her eyes a wondrous luster, her cheeks a wild-rose flush, her lips an alluring sweetness. But her physical loveliness was only a small part of her charm. It was intangible, impossible to define. He thought of her smile, of her whimsical laugh, of her quaint gestures, and the little graces peculiar only to her. He thought of her sincere interest in all her uncle’s troubles; and her voice, her words, the touch of her hands. He thought of her friendliness. He could not deny the evidence of his eyes and ears. She liked everybody. People, just so long as they did not oppose or criticize her, were tremendously interesting to her. Martha Ann gave unstintingly of her time, her self, her friendliness, her liking to anybody who happened along. She could not go on an errand in town, to the post office, anywhere, without scraping acquaintance with someone. She was attracted by anything and everybody that she saw. She was quick to take the side of anyone maligned, especially if that person was not present.
This gracious side of Martha Ann proved itself to Andrew without her knowledge. But when she knew that he was present, then it seemed that she went out of her way to show the other side of her nature. If possible, she added something to the coquetry with which she had subjugated the youth back at the hotel in Nebraska. At the last dance in town she had been the gayest, wildest creature of a madcap group of girls whom she had inspired. She had verged dangerously close upon the immodest. He had been the miserable witness of her gay, roguish, seductive and resisting struggle with Texas, during which, in the end, she had been soundly kissed on cheek and neck. She ran to be pursued. She denied only to be more desired. She played a game, with that side of her nature, which to Andrew could have only one interpretation.
And it was beginning to interfere with Andrew’s work, peace of mind, happiness, hope for the future and his waking and sleeping hours. This he confessed to the dying embers of his fire, as the autumn wind moaned under the eaves of his cabin. It did not make any difference what Martha Dixon was, how many good and bad sides she had, what she did — he was lost, his future as well as his past. His failures in the East had only been stepping-stones, but a failure here would be the end of Andrew Bonning. And without Martha Ann, life would not be worth living. That was the decision he made during his lonely vigil that cold, windy autumn night.
The next day Jim took Andrew off on a long ride to the headwaters of a creek, where in deep, dark pools under golden-leaved trees they fished for trout. Fishing was a passion with the old Arizonian, all the more so because of the little opportunity to indulge in it. They found few signs of N.B. cattle, but they had a day that gave the younger man a chance to forget his troubles. The streams, the silence of the lonely hills, the hard ride and the hard fare, the contact with nature that had awakened in him an endurance he had never suspected — these all contributed to a peace of mind which he had not felt for days.
On the way home Jim Fenner rode beside Andrew a long while in silence.
“Son, what’s most important jest now?” he queried, at last.
“With whom?”
“Wal, with Bligh, me an’ Sue, an’ you?”
“I hardly know, Jim. The cattle problem, I should say, because it’s our living.”
“No, it’s thet girl.”
“Girl!” echoed Andrew in surprise.
“Shore. Martha. She’s upset us plumb bad. Thet ain’t nothin’ agin Martha. She’s jest like a young filly, feelin’ her oats. I reckon Gawd Almighty is to blame fer it. It gits me, Andy. You know what the Bible says about a woman: ‘Turrible as an army approachin’ with banners!’...Wal, it is plumb so. I can remember the feelin’s I had when I courted Sue over forty years ago. She was only eighteen. An’ had a flock of beaus...But to git back to Martha—”
“What are you driving at?” demanded Andrew gruffly.
“Wal, I want to give you a hunch.”
“Thanks, old-timer. But judging what it might be from your eloquent preamble, I don’t believe I want it.”
“Son, thet girl really cares fer you,” replied Fenner imperturbably.
“What girl?”
“Martha Ann!”
“Nonsense!”
“She does. I’m shore of it.”
“You’re loco.”
“She watches you when you don’t know it. I’ve seen her. Sue’s seen her. We’ve seen her turn away from the window with the wistfulest look in her eyes.”
“Yes. She’s got the eyes, old-timer,” interposed Andrew. “They’d fool any man, even more — er — an old jackass of a romancer like you.”
“All right. I ain’t tellin’ you any more thet I seen. But take my hunch. She cares for you some way or other.”
“You’re crazy as a hyena. She hates me because I saw through her from the very first. Because I wouldn’t fall for her.”
“You was an idgit fer not fallin’. You had a chance to win thet girl. You have one yet, if you don’t stay bull haided. What do you care how many fellers air after her — or what she’s let them do?”
“What do I care?” repeated Andrew thoughtfully.
“She’s wuth carin’ fer, an’ she needs carin’ fer,” replied Jim. “If you was half the man I thought you was, you’d take the bull by the horns, an’ when you get back to the ranch tonight, you’d go right up to her and tell her how you feel.”
It was dark when they reached the ranch. Andrew built a fire on his hearth before he washed up for supper. Then as a man plunging toward a precipice, he made for the house. Jim was eating alone in the kitchen, waited upon by Sue. Andrew did not do justice to the good supper, and did not respond to Jim’s or Sue’s efforts at conversation. Just when he was ready to rise from the table, Martha’s fresh, young voice could be heard singing in another room, and Jim kicked him in the leg. Andrew got up, stamped out, and going round to Martha’s door, he rapped.
“That you, Uncle?” she replied.
“No.”
“Jim?”
“No.”
“Oh, it’s Texas,” cried a tantalizing, laughing voice. “Come in.”
“It’s Andrew.”
“Excuse me. What do you want?”
“You.”
“Indeed. How amazing!”
“Come out here,” ordered Andrew.
After an interval the door opened, sending a broad beam of lamplight into the darkness, and exposing Martha, dressed in a pair of brightly flowered pajamas.
“Where are you?” she called.
“Shut the door.”
She did so, leaving the step in darkness.
“Say, who was your personal slave this time last—”
He cut her short with one of his swift moves. As he caught her up in his arms, she cried out in protest. He set out for his cabin, carrying her as if she were an infant in his arms.
“Oh-h! Andrew! Put me down!”
He gazed down at the disheveled head in the crook of his elbow, at the big staring eyes, black in the starlight.
“Let me go!” she cried, suddenly beginning to struggle frantically. But when he tightened his arms about her she could scarcely move. Suddenly she ceased and relaxed, limp as an empty sack. “Andrew — what do — you mean?” she faltered.
He made no reply and when he looked down at her again her eyelids hid her eyes. He felt her warm body quivering in his arms. The softness of her, the warmth and fragrance, the appalling sweetness of her worked upon him so powerfully that when he entered, his cabin, he dropped his burden on his bunk, and breathing heavily, backed away.
She lay there while he went to the grate to kick the smoldering sticks and put on some fresh ones. After a moment he got his breath back. The blaze brightened, lighting up the room. Martha sat up in a daze, her face white, her eyes large and strange in the firelight.
&nb
sp; “Andrew!...What in the world has got into you? What are you doing with me?”
He stepped over to look down upon her.
“What do you think?” he demanded, leaning down. “You look so — so terrible...I know I deserve...but you wouldn’t—”
“No, I wouldn’t — whatever it is you fear,” he interrupted her. “I suppose you think I might treat you as you deserve. I wish to God I were beast enough to maul you good and plenty. To teach you that at last you had fallen into the hands of one guy who wasn’t nothing but wax in your hands!...But I’m not. I’m—”
Then he stopped, unable to continue. The sight of her white, frightened face robbed him of his anger; checked him with the sudden thought that he might have completely misjudged this girl. He stepped back to the fire, kicked the sticks again, then paced to and fro with long, nervous strides, until he had recovered the stern purpose which had driven him to fetch her to his cabin.
“Martha, will you marry me?” he asked.
“Marry you?” she repeated incredulously, staring at him as if she were dreaming.
“Yes. That is why I so unceremoniously packed you over here...to ask you to be my wife!”
“Your — wife!” She seemed to undergo a sudden transformation. “Why are you asking me to — to — ?”
“I don’t blame you for asking that question. It does seem absurd, after my attitude toward you...but listen, Martha. I have just lately found myself. I think I must have fallen in love with you that very first night on the road, when I rescued you from the tramps. But I didn’t know it. All I thought I knew was what a beautiful, unforgettable, wayward child you were. And because I had been hurt back east, by my own people, by life, by a woman I fancied I loved, I was intolerant and suspicious of your hitchhiking. And out here that feeling increased all the time, while I have grown so jealous that I was about ready to commit murder. While you were slaying these cowboys with your eyes — and your wiles — well, I fell too. And I have fallen for good and all, Martha. My rudeness to you, my indifference, have been simply because I was so desperately hurt by your flirtations that I could not be myself. Jealousy is a terrible thing. But it brought me to a realization of what was wrong. I have known for some time, dear, that I loved you. And it has taken such possession of me that I can think of nothing but that I adore you, I know now what a wonderful person you really are, and I want to marry you.”
“Andrew Bonning! You love me like that?” she whispered.
“Yes, But words are futile. Won’t you marry me, my darling?...Let me prove—”
She moved as if to lift her arms up to him. But then something like a sudden shadow chased the glory from her eyes. Andrew felt all love and hope and bliss trembling in the balance. He saw the quickening of intelligence over emotion — the cold reasoning that inhibited her.
“You ask me to marry you, believing me a hitchhiking, wild girl, tramping the roads in order to meet men — to have adventures — to get kicks?” she queried, low and tense, her anger gathering like a sudden summer storm.
“Please don’t think of that any more,” entreated Andrew hastily, feeling the ground slip from under him. “Forget what I thought. I will forget it, too.”
“Never. And if you are on the level, Andrew Bonning, you will tell me the truth. No man could change so completely or so suddenly.”
“I would not lie to you,” he said.
“You had nothing but contempt for that hitchhiking venture of mine, didn’t you?” she demanded passionately.
“Yes.”
“You believed I made it only to get out alone — away from home — from parents and friends — out where I could answer to some wild instinct to be free, to meet strange boys and men — who would never see me again and with whom I could be natural — to flirt, to get a kick out of life, and all the rest of the modern stuff you hate so strangely?”
“Yes, I am afraid I did,” he replied, huskily.
“You think it still?”
“Martha, there has not been anything to change it.”
“You thought I was a liar, a cheat, a rotten little hussy?”
“Not the last, Martha, I swear it. Just a crazy unthinking kid. You don’t know yourself. You’ve two sides, dear.”
“Don’t hedge, Andrew...I know what you thought. You made it perfectly plain to me. But I’m going to make you confess it...to face me with it. You believed me just no good, didn’t you?”
“On the contrary I believed there was a great deal of good in you,” he parried.
“Well, then — a bad girl?”
“Hardly bad. Wayward, perhaps heedless—”
“I know what you thought then, and what you think still,” she interrupted, rising with white face from the bunk.
Andrew reached for her hands, but she put them behind her back.
“You’re making it damned hard,” he said. “Since you force me — I confess that I thought you had been pretty wild — and yet I hoped you hadn’t. You’ll have to allow for the thoughts of a man who had been an idler and a failure, which I was when you met me first, an Easterner, fresh from the disillusionment of my sister and my fiancée, who have a free and easy view on life. That side of me took you for the necking, lap-sitting type. But deep in me, at variance with all I had known and experienced, there was a conflicting still small voice, weak enough and pitiful, God knows, that tried to convince me that you were the innocent and gallant girl I love.”
“Andrew Bonning, I — I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth,” she blazed.
“If you really mean that, then you might have said so at once and spared me this.”
“Did you ever spare me? Have you ever spared me any of your scorn and contempt?” she demanded, standing closer to him, with white, angry face uplifted to meet his gaze. “Andrew Bonning, I ran away from home to escape the very things of which you have accused me. I had been driven to sheer disgust by young men who wanted me, by marriage or otherwise. And college men like you had fed me up so sickeningly on love — their kind of love. What did they care for my fears, my needs?...So I ran away. Do you imagine if I had wanted that kind of kick, I would have had to hitchhike the highways with farmer boys, garage mechanics, traveling men, tourists and what not? No, I wanted to get away from all such rottenness, and with one single exception, I did escape it. I liked most all the boys and men who gave me lifts. I liked you, first off, until you froze me with your damned superiority. And that night at the hotel I flirted with a perfectly nice boy just to show you, to play up to your idea of me. To satisfy your morbid distrust of modern girls! And out here I have done that — and more — and worse, for the same and identical reason. Do you imagine I had no pride? I would have died before letting you see my shame, my humiliation. I let those boys hold my hand and clasp my waist — I even let Texas Jack kiss me — I endured contacts repugnant to me for no reason but to foster your vile suspicions. Did I get a kick out of that? I’ll say I did! But you would never have known if you had not proposed to me tonight. Your offer of marriage squares you with me. It is the best any man can do for a woman. I suspect that you hoped, perhaps, to reform me. But there is nothing to reform, as you shall see from now on. I thank you, Andrew, but I must decline the honor.”
“Martha! You’re being rather hard on me! How could I...don’t go! Please!”
“No!” she almost screamed, running across the floor. “You must care a little — or you—”
“No!” she cried from the doorway.
“Darling!” he beseeched.
“No!” came mockingly from the blackness outside. She was gone. Andrew sank down on the bunk she had so shortly vacated. The lovely scent of her still was in the room. The wind moaned under the eaves. The dead leaves on the cottonwood rustled on the roof. And the shadows deepened in the cabin. A familiar specter stalked out of the gloom. It was the stark, gaunt, ghost of another failure. Only this time it was life itself that had failed him.
CHAPTER XII
WITH THE
COMING of morning, after a few hours of sleep, the new savage spirit that had been lately born in Andrew reasserted itself. This spirit was based on pride. He had humbled himself to tell Martha of his love for her. Now he would put that love forever aside and he would give himself wholly to saving the fortunes of Bligh.
In order to forget he had to have ceaseless, exhausting action in the open, privation to undergo and problems to solve, something to fight physically and alone. With horse and meager fare, Andrew took to the hills.
Boldly he rode into cow camps at the eastern end of the hills where no N.B. stock had yet ranged, and made known his errand.
“You ridin’ fer this newcomer, Bligh?” asked an old cattleman.
“Yes.”
“I don’t see no runnin’ iron on your saddle.
“We haven’t branded a calf this summer.”
“How come?”
“My partner is a cripple and I’m a tenderfoot. There are riders who get to our stock first.”
“Ahuh. I see you air packin’ guns,” returned the other, with a speculative glint in his eye, taking Andrew in from head to foot.
“Yes. And if I catch any cowman burning brands on Bligh’s cattle, I’m going to use a gun.”
“You the feller who licked Cal Brice an’ his outfit at the rodeo?”
“I’m that fellow.”
“Is it true that you blamed Reed fer shootin’ at you an’ licked him fer thet?”
“It is. And here’s his trademark on my scalp,” returned Andrew, exposing the long red welt.
“Close shave, youngster. What makes you think Reed shot you?”
“I don’t think it. I know.”
“Wal, thet’s short an’ sweet. Git down an’ come in. Grub is aboot cooked.”
Half a dozen cowboys stood and sat around the campfire. A chuck wagon stood nearby. Horses grazed along the grassy flat.
“Boys, this hyar is Bligh’s one rider — no old-timer as you can see,” announced the cattleman. “Wyomin’ hasn’t done so well by him, an’ some of us ought to be ashamed. He’s the feller who busted Cal Brice’s outfit, Partic’lar sore at Smoky Reed fer shootin’ at him. He’s lookin’ fer Smoky or any other rider who’s appropriatin’ N.B. cattle.”