by Zane Grey
“Oh, Phil! No!”
“Yes, by thunder! If it didn’t hurt so, I could laugh till I cried.”
“She called me all that? Phil, I just loved her, too. But she’s justified. . . . And what did you say?”
“I said I couldn’t go back on you now . . . that you loved me . . . that I alone could keep you from the streets and dance halls. Oh, a lot of bunk like that. She wept. She said . . . ‘I’ll send for your dad. He’ll fix this bad woman!’ Aw, it’s just too rich. If Dad comes and gets one look at you . . . the fire will be out.”
“Phil, Mother, too, is collapsing. When Vic gets through with her, then the fire will be out there, too. Oh, Phil, to the victor belong the spoils!”
“I don’t get you, lady,” replied Phil dubiously. “Brelsford’s name is Victor.”
“Your head isn’t clear, darling. You’d better sleep or rest a while. If you are very decorous and gentle about it, you may collect one . . . or more . . . of those kisses you raved about.”
That night at dinner Phil was not proof against the portent of the hour, the glamour of Kay’s star-like eyes and lovely person, of later assurance of his mother’s poignant capitulation. He drank far too much champagne. He hugged Kay so shamelessly that she forgot her rôle, for once, and refused to dance again with him. It amused Brelsford, yet gave him a pang. For Kay divined that he thought there would be a tragic end to this farce. “Get that boy home,” he advised while they were having their last dance. “He’s true blue . . . too fine a lad for your sophisticated and decadent little comedy-drama. Cut the rest of your notoriety stunt. You can’t undo the wrong you’ve done Cameron. But square it somehow. I’ll go up to your mother. I predict unqualified retrenchment for her.”
On the way out Phil bore himself well and appeared to be none the worse for his excess drinking. But the cold desert air, after the warm languorous atmosphere of the hotel, affected him so powerfully that he was drunk before they got back to their cottage. It was well that Kay had taken the wheel.
Phil stumbled indoors at her heels, breathing heavily, flushed efface. In the living room, where Kay let fall her furs, Phil made at her with a boyish ardor that yet had more heat and violence in it than he had ever exhibited. Kay let him take her in his arms, grief knocking at her heart.
“Phil, dear, you’re drunk.”
“Whosh drunk? Sweetie, I’m jus’ gonna muss you all up.”
“Not this gown, Phil. It won’t stand pawing. . . . Kiss me and go to your room.”
“Shore, I’ll kiss you . . . all right . . . but I ain’t gonna go Swell dress, Kay, but you jus’s well might have nothun on. B’gosh, I’ll take it off. . . . Wash you pushin’ me for? Say, lady, I’ll show you how I used to break . . . wild filly.”
There was good-natured humor about him that seemed to be succumbing to something raw and elemental. But he lost co-ordination between mind and muscle. He lost his violence, and his hands dragged at her, while he panted heavily and sleepily closed his eyes. Then he slumped down on the couch, nearly carrying Kay with him. To her intense relief his collapse obviated any further concern for herself, although in spite of his being drunk she did not believe she had anything to fear from him. She blamed herself for his condition. While she removed his coat, and collar and tie, and then his shoes, her mind worked swiftly. She recalled what Brelsford had advised. She must begin to undo the mischief, if that were humanly possible. How terrible it would have been for his mother to have seen him there! Then she put a pillow under his head. When he awakened, she thought, he would have some faint recollection of his condition. She would use that, exaggerate it, in order to make it a lesson. Then an inspiration seized her that, outrageous as it seemed, irresistibly took hold of her.
Dead asleep as he was, she had no trouble in stripping him to his underclothes. Then she scattered her furs, her purse and handkerchief, her slippers, on the floor before the couch, quietly overturned the table with its several objects, disarranged the rug, and otherwise made that side of the room suggestive of a considerable struggle. That done, she stared at her work, at her insensible victim, conscious of an inward burning vibration. Then without turning off the light, she went into her bedroom and locked the door.
VI
At intervals during the night Kay awoke, and late in the morning her last restless nap was disrupted by heavy sounds in the kitchen.
Phil was knocking about out there. His footfalls had not their usual light quickness. She heard the splashing of water and blowing expulsions of breath. Presently Phil growled to himself and then went out, his steps crunching the gravel path.
Sunlight, bright and golden, streamed in Kay’s window, throwing shadows of moving leaves upon her bed. A mockingbird, the second Kay had ever heard, sang from the hedge. Kay’s oppression and the misgivings of the black night vanished like mist before the sun. A presentiment of what she knew not, vague and boding, did not hold in her consciousness.
Kay reached for her make-up box and mirror, which she had placed near at hand. Then propped up by pillows, she began a careful and elaborate preparation that must preserve her beauty and at the same time give her face and eyes the counterfeit of terrible havoc. “Not such a task at that,” she mused ruefully. “I show my troubles.” She pulled the blind down a little, to shade the sunlight somewhat, and composed herself to wait for Phil. And now that the hour was at hand—what would she say to Phil? Dare she go through with such a monstrous deceit? The injustice, the devilishness of her plan, the creed of noblesse oblige—all these shook her but did not change her. A stronger instinct, not wholly clear at the moment, held her tinglingly to her purpose.
Presently Phil’s step, quick now, grated on the walk, and Kay sat up with her heart pounding in her breast.
He entered through the kitchen and came into the living room, where he halted with a sudden hard breath, like a gasp. What construction had he put upon the disarray of Kay’s belongings, of the disorder of the room? Kay’s courage almost failed her. But it was too late now. When Phil stamped to her bedroom door and knocked, she did not have the voice to answer. He tried the door, to find it locked. He knocked louder and called fearfully: “Kay!”
“Oh . . . who’s . . . there?” she replied weakly.
“Who’n hell would it be?” he said impatiently. “Open this door.”
“What for?”
“I want to see you.”
“You think you do . . . but you don’t, Phil Cameron.”
This occasioned a long silence, dining which, no doubt, poor Phil’s fears were confounding him.
“Kay . . . damn it! I must see you.”
“Promise not . . . to . . . to touch me.”
“Yes, I promise,” he replied harshly.
Kay slid out of bed and, unlocking her door, quickly ran back again.
Phil did not move for a moment. Then with violence he turned the knob and swept the door wide. As if the threshold had been an insurmountable wall, he halted there, stricken by his first sight of her.
“Aw . . . Kay!” he cried huskily, as if imagined fears had become realities.
Kay gazed back at him with all that was true in her feeling for him, mingled with all the reproach and anguish she could muster.
“I . . . I was drunk . . . last night,” he went on brokenly.
She nodded her head in slow and sad affirmation.
“Did I . . . mistreat you?”
She turned her face away from his entreating look. “Phil, it was all my fault.”
“My . . . God!” he gasped, and stumbled across the threshold to fall on his knees beside her bed, his head bowed, his hands clenching the coverlet. “I remember . . . something. . . . I wanted to undress you . . . meant to . . . but I didn’t think anything . . . lowdown. . . . It was that champagne . . . made a beast of me I didn’t know . . . what I was about. . . . Aw!” And he writhed in his shame.
“Phil, I am to blame,” she said softly, checking her arms from folding around his neck.
“Shore you are. But that doesn’t excuse me,” he said, and, without any move to touch her, he slowly arose to his feet and stood staring down at her. “I’m sorry, Kay. That’ll be about all for us. I cain’t be trusted. I’m a . . . a . . . low-down dog! There’s nothing for me to do but get out of here pronto.”
“Phil . . . hush! You mustn’t talk that way,” she cried, swiftly realizing her mistake. He was a grim man now, despising himself, and capable of any rash deed. It was the West in him, the desert breed of him, that lacked materialism and loathed sensuality. In one instant more Kay realized how unselfishly and purely she was loved. It seemed to exalt her—to lift her above her morbid phantasms, her inexplicable exactions.
“This game we played was crazy,” he declared, his eyes like pale flames. “You should have known better . . . unless you . . . aw, hell, I cain’t think that . . . . But I wasn’t man enough to resist you. I gave in. We played the game. Look at you . . . and heah I am, sickened to death. All for what?”
“For our mothers, Phil.”
“Aw, to hell with your mother! She wasn’t worth it, nor mine either . . . the bull-haided old woman!”
“Come here, Phil!” cried Kay imperiously, and she held out her arms.
At that juncture there came a solid knock on the living room door, which was at the front of the cottage. The disruption brought Phil and Kay back to time and place, and the uncertainties of their position. Kay stared up at him, while Phil slowly turned toward the door. A second knock followed, heavier than the first, carrying an aggressive note.
Phil crossed the room. “Who’s out there?” he called.
“Hello. Is this where Kay Hempstead stays?” called a resonant masculine voice.
Kay heard it, recognized it, and sprang up with a startled cry.
“Yes,” replied Cameron.
“Is she in?”
“Yes, but not to reporters.”
“Mister cowboy, I’m no reporter,” came the militant retort. “You’ll find that out quick.”
“Hell you say,” muttered Phil, his cold visage reddening, and he checked a sudden move to open the door. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Tell Kay that Jack Morse from New York is here to see her.”
Phil did not need to inform Kay what she had heard as well as he. She arose, donned a dressing gown, and hastened to the front door.
“Is it really you, Jack Morse?” she asked in surprise.
“Kay! Yes, it’s Jack in the flesh. You’ll see when you open this door.”
“But Jack . . . please excuse me. . . . I’ll meet you at the Reno in half an hour.”
“You’ll see me right now, Kay Hempstead, if I have to smash open this door.”
At that Kay’s color receded to leave her white, and she stood undecided, her brow puckered, and with anger apparently overcoming her amazement. Phil laid a powerful hand on the doorknob.
“Well, I’ll see who the hell this hombre is,” he declared, and he flung open the door.
Kay had Morse vividly in mind before he brushed into the room, so that his virile presence, his great bulk, and dark visage added little. But his somber and questioning mien gave her a shock. Morse, in his champion athlete days, not long ago, had been Kay’s hero, so far as football went. She had coquetted with him, then had kept up the friendship afterward. He, like Brelsford, was a friend of her family, and he had pressed his suit with all the rush and vim for which he had been famous in his university. But he had no claim whatever on Kay, and she resented this intrusion, the source of which she divined was her mother’s frantic call for help.
Morse’s contemptuous glance flashed over Phil to alight upon Kay, and there it changed markedly. Phil quietly shut the door behind him, and stood back, his eyes narrowed to piercing slits.
“Jack, now that you have forced yourself in here, kindly explain your uncalled for action,” said Kay coldly, omitting any greeting.
“Your mother wired me. I came by plane,” replied Morse.
“That could be your only excuse, of course. But you should have sent me a message and arranged to meet me at Mother’s hotel.”
“I just came from her. I couldn’t wait. It was impossible to believe her. I had to see for myself.”
“What?”
“If it is true that you are living openly with a cowboy?”
“Quite true,” returned Kay, without a flicker of an eyelash.
“Are you . . . married?” went on Morse hoarsely.
“That is none of your business. But I’ll tell you. No.”
“It’s true, then, what she told me? You’ve disgraced her . . . brought the name of Hempstead to disrepute . . . become a gambler, an adventuress, lost to common decency, the companion of a cheap cowboy?”
Phil sprang forward, furious at Morse’s insulting words, but Kay laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Wait, Phil,” she commanded in no uncertain tone. Then, turning again to Morse, she said: “All true, Jack, except the cheap applied to my lover.”
Those cool words, almost flippant, acted like a lash upon Morse.
“You do not introduce me?” he queried insolently.
“No. That isn’t necessary or desirable, since you insult me.”
“Insult you? For the love of. . . . The more I see of women, the less I understand . . . and respect them.”
“I am not interested in your opinions. And I must request of you, now that I have frankly clarified any doubts in your mind as to my status, to please take yourself back to my mother. Tell her that I said the honor of the Hempsteads was her concern before it was mine, and, as she chose to disregard it, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do as I please. She knows what kind of a man Leroyd is, and that she’s making a fool of herself over him. He’s after her money. He’s gambling some of it away here in Reno.”
“Well . . . who is decent these days? I shall dispense with any further interview.”
“Jack, a graceful final gesture on your part would be to pan mother unmercifully.”
“OK. If I have any stuff left after I get through with you . . . and this Western pup. . . . Final gesture, you say? Well, it won’t be graceful.”
“Don’t try to bully me. Mister Morse. You always tried it, and you never succeeded. Nor do I care to hear any of your bombast, for which you are famous.”
“Kay, you’re going to hear some of it straight,” he said angrily.
“Oh, am I? Well, first let me tell you your motive. You’re a jealous man, and you want to vent your jealousy on me, before Cameron, because I preferred him as a lover to you as a husband.”
Kay’s taunt found an immediate main, showing that she had gauged Morse with unerring and merciless precision.
“He’s welcome to you, by God,” rasped the Easterner stridently. “You, who were once Kay Hempstead, now a strumpet. Why, you look like a . . . like a streetwalker. . . .”
Cameron leaped forward and whirled Morse so savagely that he staggered.
“Turn ‘round, yuh!” he shouted, and his tawny hair stood up like the mane of a lion. “Western men don’t talk that way to women. Out heah we’d call you a low-down dirty skunk!”
Then Phil lunged out, to strike Morse a terrific blow on his sneering mouth. The Easterner, staggering, took the table crashing down with him. His sudden fall shook the cottage.
Kay did not cry out, although she ran to the door of her bedroom, meaning to shut herself in. But she did not. Morse bounded up nimbly for so big a man. Blood gushed from his split lip, over his chin, and down his white collar. Passion had dominated him, but the smash in the face eased and cooled him off. His training had been to fight. Physical violence was a stimulant, not a deterrent.
“Cowboy, I’ll beat you half to death for that,” he ground out, and made at Phil.
Kay could not take her fascinated gaze from the ensuing fight. At first, as the contestants began to swing and slug, she welcomed the rawness of these two animals fighting over her. The age-old combat. It liberated something hot and
vicious in her, feelings she had never experienced. She was a barbarian and gloried in this lithe powerful stripling in unequal conflict with a giant. Phil was the nimbler on his feet. He landed oftener with his fists. But his blows did not tell upon his adversary as had the first one. He beat Morse about the face, but could not floor him again. On the contrary, Morse knocked Phil down repeatedly. The former began to whistle for his breath while the latter panted. Both began to sweat, which added to the flow of blood. They fought all over the living room, demolishing the furniture.
Kay’s fierce sensorial perceptions yielded to the intelligence of a woman who had seen many contests of strength and endurance, some of which had been real prize fights. She grasped that the combatants were unequally matched. Phil was being terribly beaten. Yet he fought back with all his might and main.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried frantically, “that’s enough. It’s not fair. You’re twice his size. . . . You’ll kill him!”
But Morse, deaf to her entreaty, if he heard it, rushed Phil, beat him back with right and left, then swung a sodden blow that propelled him into a corner. Phil rolled over with a sucking intake of breath and rose, leaning on one hand. Between the hard breathing of the fighters, Kay heard the blood dripping from Phil’s lowered face.
“Cowboy . . . you can . . . take . . . it . . . I’ll tell the world,” panted Morse, and he kicked his fallen rival. “But, by God . . . you’re whipped too bad . . . to lie in your sweetie’s arms . . . again very soon.”
“I’m whipped plenty . . . your way,” replied Phil thickly. “But wait a minute.”
Morse righted a chair to sag into it. He mopped his lip that still bled. Kay stood in the door of her bedroom, staring at the prostrate Phil. She felt bursting to cry out, to run to him, yet she remained immovable and mute. She divined that this fight was not ended.
Phil got up, quickly it appeared, for one so battered, and staggered into the kitchen. Before Kay could unclamp her faculties, Phil came back with a gun in each hand. He confronted Morse to toss the left-hand gun into his lap.