by Short, Luke;
Martha put the coins in her dress pocket and smiled and shook her head. “I’ll go back, Tom, I’ve dinner to get.”
Riordan said nothing. He turned on his heel and tramped back toward his companions, his back ramrod straight, his long legs scuffing up tiny moils of dust in the heat; and his black, stubborn pride was worn like a flag.
Martha stepped back into the shade and traveled its coolness for a moment, and then headed back toward the laundry. She had won a victory of sorts, she supposed, for she had a part of his pay, a pittance which would gain a stay of execution for her shaky credit at Hance’s. The dress she could not pay for would have to wait, but she was used to that and accepted it philosophically.
At the laundry again, she worked with determined haste to finish her washing before the fire in the stove died and left her only tepid water.
Afterwards, her clothes hung, she tramped back toward the row of enlisted men’s houses to the one-room adobe house which was home. Passing the Ringgolds, she heard the nagging of Private Ringgold’s slatternly wife, and she increased her pace.
At her house, she stepped inside and paused a moment just inside the door. It was cool here, and she glanced about the plain clean room with the warm feeling of possession. Crossing to the bed in the far corner, she sank down on it, and lay back, resting a moment. Tom, she knew, would not be home for dinner. Sometime in the afternoon, with his pay drunk up, he would return, quarrelsome and ugly and sodden with Hance’s cheap whiskey. If she timed it right, she could be ironing then, or, better yet, delivering the laundry on the post, and when she returned, he would be sleeping.
She remembered then, with a feeling of poignant tenderness, Linus’ anger yesterday at sight of her bruised face. It was not like the pity of other men’s wives; it was the hot outrage of a lover, or a brother, or any decent man, she thought. For a moment, the bitterness of her bleak, loveless life was overwhelming, and she shook her head and sat up, her pretty face set in stubborn anger at herself. Anything was bearable, she knew, as long as there was no self-pity. Moving across to the cupboard, she opened it, and at the same time heard footsteps on the hard-packed adobe yard. A knock came on the door frame and she called, “Come in,” and then turned.
Lieutenant Linus Delaney, a bundle of laundry wrapped in a faded blue shirt under his arm, stepped in the doorway, doffed his hat, and said, “Morning, Martha.”
Martha Riordan stood utterly still, her hand upraised to the cupboard. Then her arm slowly fell and, ignoring his greeting, she said, “You shouldn’t have come here, Linus.”
“And why not?” Linus demanded. “I’m leaving tonight, and I’d like to return to a clean shirt.”
Martha didn’t smile; she crossed to him and took the laundry from his arm and placed it on the table.
“May I sit down?” Linus asked.
“I’d—rather you wouldn’t.”
Linus looked at her searchingly and then moved over toward the bed, threw his hat upon it, and sat down. Lacing his fingers together, he leaned elbows on knees and said gently, “It’s got to come, Martha. Why do you fight it?”
“Because it won’t do any good,” Martha said in a low level voice. “We can talk for a year, Linus, but nothing’s changed. We’ve said all we can say.”
“Have you thought over my offer?”
“No, I never said I would.”
“He’s drunk now, isn’t he?”
Martha smiled wryly. “Not yet, I should say. He’s developed quite a capacity.”
Linus’ lean face broke in a slow smile. “As an Irishman, I resent that. We were all born with quite a capacity.”
Martha smiled only faintly, and Linus said soberly, “You were made to laugh and have fun, but all I ever see is that half-smile.”
“That’s more than anyone else sees, Linus.”
A look of misery touched Linus’ face, and he said in a low and bitter voice, “For God’s sake. Martha, don’t go on! You weren’t meant for this. I don’t care so much about myself. I can understand why you won’t divorce him and marry me, and I respect it. But what I can’t understand is why you stay with him. Is there anything in the marriage contract that demands that?”
“All of it demands it, Linus.”
Linus groaned and came to his feet, hesitated only a moment, then strode across the room and took her in his arms. He kissed her roughly, and she submitted to it, not responding. Linus drew away from her then, holding her by the shoulders, and he looked deeply and hungrily into her eyes.
“I promised I wouldn’t do that again, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Martha whispered.
An irrepressible merriment edged into Linus’ soberness then, and he said, “But you liked it?”
“Ah, Linus, don’t torment me,” Martha cried in a low voice.
Instantly, Linus was sober again. “I’m a damned dog,” he said miserably, “but what do you do when you love a woman?”
“That,” Martha whispered, watching him.
It was Linus who first heard the footsteps. Instantly, his hands dropped from Martha’s shoulders, and he wheeled swiftly and stepped to the bed and scooped up his hat. He was saying in a normal voice, “Oh, Doc Horton doesn’t think it’s anything serious. Shallet had a long diet of horsemeat on that last scout, and I guess it was too rich for him after the regular Army diet.”
He ceased talking as a form appeared in the doorway. It was Riordan, and he put both hands on the door frame to steady himself and came in. He squinted a moment at Martha, and then shifted his glance to Linus; it took him a moment to focus his eyes, and Linus said quietly, “Hullo, Riordan.”
Riordan straightened up, as if to come to attention, and then thought better of it. He said, “Lieutenant Delaney. How are you, sir?” in a voice thick with whiskey and freighted with irony.
“I should be several days, Mrs. Riordan, so there’s no hurry,” Linus said matter-of-factly. “Shallet will be up and around by then. Give it to him.”
He bowed slightly, and turned toward the door. Looking Riordan full in the face, he said gravely, “Hot day, isn’t it?” and stepped past him, saying cheerfully, “Afternoon.”
Riordan didn’t answer. He watched him put on his hat and stride jauntily out of sight. Then Riordan wheeled slowly, bracing himself against the door frame.
“So you’ve got officers calling on you, now?”
Martha said indifferently, “There’s one who isn’t ashamed to be seen with laundry under his arm.”
“What’s he doing here?” Riordan demanded.
Martha gestured carelessly to the bundle on the table. “The orderly is in hospital.”
Riordan thought that over with a careful, alcoholic concentration, and then said, “Is an orderly the only enlisted man to carry laundry?”
“I don’t know, Tom.” Martha answered wearily.
“What was he doing here?” Riordan reiterated.
“I told you!” Martha said angrily.
Riordan shoved away from the door, lurching for her. Martha dodged swiftly around the table, and Riordan came up against it with such force that the legs gouged furrows in the hard-packed dirt floor. “So I have to put up with officers at home, even.”
Martha backed up to the stove and reached for an iron skillet that lay atop it. Once she had it in her hand, she said quietly, “You won’t hit me any more, Tom. I won’t stand it any more, you hear?”
Riordan, both hands on the table, studied her carefully, and he was unable to keep the surprise at her rebellion from his face. For a full half-minute, they regarded each other, and Martha’s gaze was unflinching.
Slowly, then, Riordan straightened up, and teetered back on his heels. He thrust a big hand into his pocket and drew out some gold coins. Opening his palm, he shoved the coins to Martha. “A little luck in poker,” he said thickly. “Enough for the dress, and to spare. I come home to give it to you, and I find you all cozy with an officer.”
“That’s not true, Tom!” Martha said hotly. Her face was deeply flus
hed, and she tried to hold her husband’s gaze and surprisingly could not.
“You high-toned liar!” Riordan said bitterly. And then, with a savage heave, he overturned the table to one side and lunged for Martha, hands outstretched.
Martha swung the skillet blindly, bringing it down angling across Riordan’s hands. The blow caught Riordan off-balance forward, and it beat him to his knees. In that moment, Martha dodged past him and ran for the door.
Out in the bright sunshine, midway between her house and the one facing theirs across the hard-packed adobe, she halted and waited, turned toward the house. She was aware, suddenly, that she still held the skillet in her hands, and a wild embarrassment engulfed her.
Presently Tom appeared at the door. He was holding his right wrist, and now he halted in the open doorway, his eyes stupid and unseeing. His exertion, and Martha’s blow and his fall, combined with the whiskey to push him further into befuddlement. Bracing himself against the door frame, he looked about him now, finally saw Martha, regarded her a moment, and then cursed her in a slack, thick voice.
That done, he stepped out the door, staggered, fell, rose again, and turned up the street toward the sutler’s.
Martha watched him a moment in bitter humiliation, and then slowly returned to the house. She set the skillet on the stove so gently that it might have been made of glass, and then she slowly turned to regard the room. The shame was still in her, a searing, sickening feeling of abasement. This, she thought, was the depth of degradation. Always before, she had contrived to maintain a surface self-respect and to present a decent front to the world. Even that’s gone now, she thought bitterly, I’m no better than the trash I married.
She set about righting the room, but the memory of this quarrel remained achingly alive. If she hadn’t defied him, it might have passed off with only a cuff from him. It was his suspicion of her that had made docility intolerable—and it was a suspicion that had some foundation. She had let another man kiss her, had even enjoyed it, and yet had turned on her husband like a trollop when he suspected her of it. The whole affair was sordid, shabby, and cheap, and it was her fault.
And then another memory, unwanted and hateful, came to her—remembrance of the reason for Tom’s return. Drunk as he was, he had returned to give her the money for the dress, while she was in the arms of another man. Her feeling of guilt was almost intolerable then, and she crossed over to the bed and sat woodenly on its edge. Maybe this could have been the day that changed their lives; maybe Tom, showing by his present that he loved her, would have drawn some deep strength from her appreciation of his gift. Seeing her happy and content and uncomplaining, he might have rejected the old life and strived toward a new one. But that’s gone too, now.
She sat there motionless, appalled by the guilt that was hers.
The dinner at the officers’ mess held both in honor of Captain Harcourt, the paymaster, and in celebration of what his Daugherty wagon had brought in its ironbound chest, had subsided a little. Ward stepped out onto the veranda and found Doctor Horton and Lieutenant Storrow there. Horton, a fat, graying, and cheerful man, grunted at sight of Ward. “Another man who’ll take his smoke at first hand, and not breathe it out of a room.”
“It’s thick, all right,” Ward said.
“It’s not cigar smoke, it’s what this heat does to a whiskey-drinking man,” Storrow complained. “I’ve got roll call tonight, Lord help me. Suppose if I took my own count and divided it by three, I’d come out right?”
Ward smiled, looking off across the dark parade. There were lamps ablaze in the barracks opposite, and a trio of troopers drifted off toward the stables. There had been too much whiskey and too much wine tonight, and he needed to clear his head. Since it was some minutes until tattoo, the signal for departure of the escort to Craig, he stepped out onto the gravel walk and turned for a slow circle of the parade ground. Through his boot soles, he could feel the fading ground heat of the day. From the sutler’s post far away, the sustained racket that proclaimed the enlisted men’s celebrations came to him.
He wheeled at the lower corner of the parade and pulled abreast the veranda of the commanding officer’s quarters. A handkerchief-sized lawn, smelling of watered grass, set it off from the other adobe buildings. Glancing at the veranda, Ward saw a woman seated there, and only belatedly realized that it must be Ann Dunnifon. His hand was rising to touch his hat, when he remembered he was hatless.
She had seen him, however, and said a pleasant “Good evening, Mr. Kinsman.”
Ward halted and said, “It is good, isn’t it?”
“I’m at the old game of counting stars,” Ann Dunnifon said. “What comes after a trillion?”
“Fifteen, I believe,” Ward said gravely, and heard her low laugh. He turned into the walk and came up the steps and seated himself on the top one. Ann Dunnifon sat in a rocker, her legs crossed; now she uncrossed them and smoothed her skirt, and said quietly, “It sounded as if Captain Harcourt brought some new stories with him. Funny ones.”
“He did, and all unrepeatable,” Ward answered. He was silent a moment. “I should think a paymaster’s lot would be a hard one. On his digestion, I mean.”
Ann laughed. “It’s a convivial time.”
“It was. And he’s riding out tonight.”
“And you with him, I hear.”
Ward nodded and glanced curiously over at her. She was watching him, but it was too dark to see the expression in her face.
She sensed what he was thinking and said, “Oh, I’m not going to beg.”
“I didn’t judge you would.” Ward was quiet a moment. “I would like to have you look at it this way—that it won’t make any difference in the end whether I am here or not. I couldn’t change it.”
“Why do these men think you could, then?”
Ward only shrugged, a faint irritation stirring within him.
Ann said quietly, “There’s always a penalty on success, isn’t there? People always expect the impossible. Maybe that’s why the impossible is often accomplished.”
“The reverse of that is that a man who takes a dare is a fool.”
“You’re a man of opinion, anyway,” Ann said dryly.
Ward glanced up at her. “Aren’t you a woman of opinion?”
Ann was silent a moment. “I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t be here. My opinion of Mary was that she was a fool for marrying Bob Carlyle. My opinion of him was that he was over-reckless and a little light in the head—a bad combination. My further opinion is that they never should have started west together, should never have tried to trick the Government, and should never have traveled without escort. If I were a woman of opinion, I should have already decided that they got what they deserved, and that it’s simply unfortunate.” She paused. “Still, I’m here.”
Ward said uncomfortably, “Not the same thing, is it?”
“Not unless you want it to be,” Ann said quietly.
There was the sound of voices up the walk, and Ward glanced up to see a knot of officers on the veranda and the walk. The dinner had broken up, the signal for the paymaster’s departure, and his own. He was oddly reluctant to leave, and he studied Ann Dunnifon’s face in the darkness. She was a strange girl, and a clever one, and the vague feeling of guilt that had flared with his decision to leave this morning now returned. He wished their parting might end on something other than this faint note of discord, or antagonism, and yet the thought, stubborn and persistent, was still with him, Even if I stayed I couldn’t change anything.
He rose now, and Ann did too, and he faced her. “I won’t be seeing you again.”
“Probably not.” She put out her hand and he took it. “Good luck, wherever you go.”
“I hope it turns out well with your sister,” Ward said.
“You hope, but don’t believe. Thank you.”
He gave her one searching look, and found her composure complete, and since there was no more to say, he went down the steps to the walk. Captain Loring, leav
ing the group, passed him on the way to bid Ann goodbye, and said briskly, “You’ve only got about fifteen minutes to collect your gear, Kinsman.”
Ward said with a faint irritability, “It’s in my pocket, Captain,” and joined the group of officers. Linus handed him his hat and dropped in beside him as they all turned toward the stables. “Now I know how Harcourt can do this every trip,” he said. “He just lies down on the seat of his wagon and sleeps these dinners off.”
At the stables, fifteen men of G Troop, by the light of stable lanterns, were formed in line beside their mounts, and the paymaster’s wagon was hitched and waiting. Sergeant Mack was cruising the line, a hard look in his eye. Pay was pay, and whiskey was made to be drunk, but every trooper in the escort would hit the saddle squarely, his attitude proclaimed. A knot of troopers idled in the stable doorway.
At the breaking corral, Ward saw that his horse was not there, and remembering his promise to Riordan this morning, he looked down the line of troopers. Frank Holly, who was the guide this trip, rode up now. Ward spoke to him, and then looked at the troopers in the stable door. Riordan was not there, either. It was Lieutenant Delaney who first remembered that Ward had come in on a wounded Apache horse, and he called now. “Ennis, saddle up my chestnut for Kinsman. On the double, now.”
Major Brierly and Loring were in conversation with Captain Harcourt at the corner of A Stable. Harcourt’s corporal driver stood boredly by the wagon.
Linus moved up beside Ward now and said, “I haven’t seen that horse you rode in since—”
Back in the half-light of the stable door behind the lounging troopers, Ward saw a figure he recognized, and he moved toward the door while Linus was still talking.
“Riordan,” he called.
There was an immediate, abrupt movement among the troopers and Riordan lunged through them into the stable doorway. He was, Ward saw immediately, so profoundly drunk that he could barely keep his balance. Ward was silent, knowing that to question him would be useless. Riordan stood swaying in the shadows, peering balefully around him, and Ward heard Linus come up beside him. “You wanted him?” Linus asked. “The fellow’s drunk.”