Chapter 20. The Fork Of The Road

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_ CHAPTER XX. THE FORK OF THE ROAD

It would have looked, to any casual passerby, a pleasant family group that occupied the front porch at the Scissor Ranch house one breezy morning.

There was Mrs. Rathburn in a wide-brimmed hat, plying her embroidery needle and looking, from afar, the picture of contentment. Equally serene, to all outward appearances, was her daughter, with her head swathed in veiling against the complexion-destroying wind as she rocked to and fro while bringing her already perfect nails to the highest degree of polish with a chamois-skin buffer. Hugh Disston sat on the top step cleaning and oiling his shotgun with the loving care of the man who is fond of firearms.

But if the Casual Passerby had ridden closer he might have observed that Mrs. Rathburn was thrusting her needle back and forth through the taut linen inside the embroidery hoop with a vigor which amounted to viciousness; that Miss Rathburn drew the buffer so briskly across her nails that the encircling flesh was all but blistered with the friction; and that Disston as he oiled and rubbed let his gaze wander frequently to the distant mountains and rest there wistfully.

Furthermore, the Casual Passerby--a blood relative of the Innocent Bystander--would have been apt to notice that this act of Disston's seemed automatically to accelerate the movements of the embroidery needle and the chamois buffer, and speed up the rocking chairs.

Propinquity was not doing all that Mrs. Rathburn had anticipated. There were moments like the present when, with real pleasure, she could have run her needle to the hilt, as it were, in any convenient portion of Disston's anatomy. She seethed with resentment, and took it out upon the climate, the inhabitants, the customs of the country, and Teeters--who gave her the careful but unenthusiastic attention he would have given to a belligerent porcupine.

Pique and disappointment smouldered also in the bosom of her fair daughter, who, if she had been less fair, might have been called sullen, since these emotions evidenced themselves in a scornful silence, which was not alleviated by the fact that Disston did not appear to notice it.

While the ladies attributed their occasional temperamental outbursts to the altitude, which was "getting on their nerves," it was no secret between them that their irritability was due to exasperation with Disston. With scientific skill and thoroughness they dissected him privately until he was hash, working their scalpels far into the watches of the night with unflagging interest. His words, his actions, his thoughts, as indicated by his changing expressions, were analyzed, yet, to the present, Mrs. Rathburn, trained specialist that she was in this branch of psychology, was obliged to confess herself baffled to discover his real feelings and intentions toward her daughter.

From the first, Mrs. Rathburn had suspected the "sheep person," and had cultivated Mrs. Emmeline Taylor who called for the purpose of obtaining supplementary details to the brief history that she had been able to extract from Disston and Teeters. What Mrs. Rathburn learned from that source was, temporarily, eminently satisfactory and soothing. It was too much to believe that Disston could be seriously interested in a woman of Kate Prentice's reputation and antecedents. Her daughter's account of her visit was equally gratifying, for Hugh Disston certainly was too fastidious to be attracted by a woman so uncouth of appearance and manner as portrayed in the vivid description the lady had received of her from Beth.

Yet as she looked back it seemed to her that some subtle change had come over Hugh from the very first day in Prouty, when he had seen the Prentice person and colored. He had been eager to go and see her, and had not been too keen for Beth's company upon the occasion, she had imagined.

It was all a mystery, and, thoroughly discouraged, she was about convinced that they were wasting precious time and ruining their complexions.

Disston continued to polish vigorously, using the gun grease and cleaner until the barrels through which he squinted were spotless and shining. When it was to his satisfaction, Disston put the gun together and sat with it across his knees, staring absently at the spur of mountains which Beth Rathburn had come to feel she detested. She tingled with irritation. She wanted to say something mean, something to make him feel sorry and apologetic.

She did not quite dare to speak sneeringly of Kate with no apparent provocation, but a violent gust of wind that snatched off her veil and disarranged her carefully dressed hair furnished an excuse to rail against the country.

"Goodness!" she cried explosively, as she lifted the short ends of hair out of her eyes and replaced them. "Will this everlasting wind never stop blowing!"

The fact that Disston did not even hear added to her exasperation. The soft voice, which was one of her many charms, was distinctly shrill as she reiterated:

"I say, will this everlasting wind never stop blowing?"

"It is disagreeable," he murmured, without looking at her.

"Disagreeable? It's horrible! I detest the country and everybody in it!"

Mrs. Rathburn shook her head reprovingly, but at the same moment another violent gust swept around the corner and lifted not only that lady's broad-brimmed hat, but her expensive "transformation."

Mrs. Rathburn replaced it with guilty haste, and declared furiously:

"I must say I agree with my daughter--the country and its people are equally impossible."

"I'm sorry," Disston replied contritely. "I shouldn't have urged you to come, but I was hoping you would like it--its picturesqueness, the unconventionality, and the dozen-and-one other things which appeal to me so strongly. In my enthusiasm, perhaps I exaggerated."

"I can't see anything picturesque in discomfort," Miss Rathburn retorted. "There's nothing picturesque in trying to bathe in water that curdles when you put soap in it, and makes your hands like nutmeg graters; or in servants who call you by your first name; or in trying to ride scraggly horses that have no gaits and shake you to pieces; or anything even moderately interesting about a country where there are no trees to sit under and nothing to look at but sagebrush, and rocks, and prairie dogs, and mountains, and not a soul that one can know socially!"

"I had no notion you disliked it out here so much, Beth," he replied gravely.

But he was not sufficiently apologetic, not sufficiently humble. She went on in a tone in which spite was uppermost:

"And furthermore, if unconventionality could ever make me look and act like that 'Sheep Queen' over there," she nodded towards the mountain, "I hope to leave before it happens."

"Hush, Beth!" Her mother's expostulation was lost upon her for, looking at Disston, she was a little dismayed by the expression upon his face when he turned and, leaning his back against the porch post, faced her, saying with a sternness which was foreign to him:

"It's quite impossible for you to understand or appreciate a woman like Kate Prentice, and you will oblige me, Beth, by refraining from criticising her, at least in my presence."

Hugh would as well have slapped her. She scattered the manicure articles in her lap as she sprang up and stamped a tiny foot at him:

"She is impossible! Unspeakable! And I believe you are in love with her!"

For an instant Disston looked at her with an expression which was at once angry and startled, but before he had framed an answer Teeters appeared in the doorway behind them and said soberly:

"Looks like somethin' serious is startin' over yonder." He nodded toward the mountains.

"What do you mean?" Disston asked quickly.

"One of Kate's sheep wagons was blowed up a few nights ago, and there's a story circulatin' that somebody's goin' to shoot up the Outfit."

Disston's face wore a frown of concentration.

"Teeters," in sudden decision, "I'm going up to see her. She may need us."

"But isn't it dangerous?" Mrs. Rathburn protested.

"Not unless he's mistook for one of the Outfit, then they might try a chunk of lead on him," Teeters reassured her.

Miss Rathburn, having recovered her poise together with her drawl, was regarding the high luster on her nails when Disston came up on the porch before leaving.

"I am sorry I was rude, Beth," he said earnestly.

"Were you?" indifferently. "I hadn't noticed it."

"I did a contemptible thing to that girl once," he continued, "and I feel that the least I can do to make amends is to refuse to allow her to be spoken of slightingly in my presence."

"Quite right, Hughie. You are a credit to our southern chivalry." Miss Rathburn suppressed a yawn with the tips of her pink tapering fingers.

"When I come back," he spoke propitiatingly, "the day after to-morrow, probably we'll go and see that petrified tree of which Teeters told us."

"A lovely bribe," languidly, "but don't hurry, for mother and I are leaving to-morrow."

"You mean that?"

"Certainly."

"I won't believe it."

"You always were incredulous, Hughie."

"I don't suppose I can convince you that I am very fond of you, and that I shall feel badly if you leave like this?"

This was more like it:--Miss Rathburn lowered her beautiful lashes.

"You haven't tried, have you?" she asked softly.

She looked very desirable at the moment--pink and white and soft and fluffy--all that the traditions of his family demanded in a woman. He knew perfectly what was expected of him, and there was every reason why he should ask her to marry him, and none at all why he should not, yet somehow when he opened his lips to ask, "Will you let me?" the words choked him. He said, instead, with the utmost cordiality:

"Don't you dare do anything so unfriendly as to leave without saying good-bye to me. Will you promise to wait until I return?"

If she had obeyed her impulse she would have shrieked at him:

"No! no! no! Not a minute, if you go to see that woman!" She would have liked to make him choose between them, but she dared not put him to the test for fear that she would place herself in a position from which her pride would not allow her to recede.

Beth wept in chagrin and rage while Disston rode away buoyantly, marvelling at his own light-heartedness, tingling with the old-time eagerness which used to come to him the moment he was in the saddle with his horse's head turned toward Bitter Creek.

He had stubbornly fought his desire to visit Kate again. What was the use, he demanded of himself sternly. She did not want to see him and virtually had said so. She had changed radically; she cared only for her sheep--even Teeters admitted that much. Anything beyond a warm friendship between them was, of course, impossible. She was not of his world, she did not "belong," and had no desire to. She could no more preside at a dinner table or pour tea gracefully, as would be expected of his wife, than Beth could shear a sheep or earmark one.

These things and many others he had told himself a thousand times to stop the longing he had to saddle his horse and go to her. What a weakling he was, he thought contemptuously, that he could not put her out of his mind and do the obviously right and proper thing by asking Beth to marry him, and so end forever this disquieting conflict within him--a conflict that had not been in his calculations when he had planned a happy summer.

It was physical attraction, he argued, together with the interest aroused by her unusual personality, which drew him to Kate--a passing fancy, a curious, inexplicable infatuation; but, he assured himself stoutly, not at all the foundation upon which to build for permanency. Yet as he rode towards the mountains with his eyes fixed upon the low pass to which Teeters had directed him, he experienced the first real thrill of carefree happiness that had come to him since his arrival.

The trail was a long and a hard one. His horse lost a shoe and limped badly, so, as the day waned, he walked frequently to spare the animal. He was tired, but too eager to be conscious of it. He wondered what she would be doing when he found her, and whether he could surprise something like the old-time welcome from her. How her eyes used to sparkle when he rode up to her! He smiled to himself as he recalled her smile--frank, beaming, her face radiant with undisguised pleasure.

Kate was sitting on a rock on the backbone of a ridge when he drew in sight of her--a dark picturesque silhouette against the sky. The sheep fed below, and her horse, with a bedroll across its back, nibbled not far away.

Hugh stopped and looked at the lonely figure sitting motionless in the opaline-tinted light of the sunset, her chin sunk in her palm, her shoulders drooping. The tears rose to the man's eyes unexpectedly. It was not right, such solitude for a woman, he told himself vehemently.

It was singular, too, he reflected, how the mere sight of her revitalized him. Life took on a sudden interest, a zest that it never had elsewhere. He supposed it was because she was herself so vital. A feeling of exultation now swept over him--he forgot his fatigue, that he was hungry, and was conscious only of the fact that he was going to be near her, to talk to her uninterruptedly--for hours, maybe. After that he would go back content, ask Beth to marry him, and recover from this fever, this unreasoning, uncontrollable longing to see Kate again, which made him weak to imbecility.

Thinking her own thoughts, Kate stared at the ground, or at the sheep feeding quietly below her. Her rifle leaned against the rock upon which she was sitting. Occasionally she searched the juniper-covered sides of an adjacent mountain where an enemy could find convenient hiding, but mostly she sat looking at the ground at her feet.

She had taken over the valuable buck herd in the face of Bowers's protest, and was the first to graze on the top of the mountain, though the other bands were now also close to the summit. If more trouble was coming, it would very likely come quickly. They were fighters, these Rambouillets, she was thinking as she looked at them absently, and recalled an instance where a herd of them had battered a full-grown coyote to a jelly. They had surrounded him and by bunting him in the ribs, back and forth between them like a football, had stopped only when there was not a whole bone left in his carcass. However, she reflected, the coyotes were mostly puppies yapping at the entrance of their den at this time of year, and the last wolf had been cleaned out of the mountains, so there really was not much danger from any source save these human enemies.

But even a fighting Rambouillet was not proof against a 30-30. Instinctively her eyes swept the surrounding country for some unfamiliar moving object. Well, that was what she was there for--to protect them. She did not expect any quarter because she was a woman--or intend to give any. She meant to shoot to kill, if she had the opportunity.

It was in this survey that Kate saw Disston and recognized him instantly. She had a notion that even if her eyesight had failed her, her heart would have told her, for it jumped as if she had been badly frightened. She felt dizzy for a moment after she verified her first look--the world swam, as though she had been blinded. If she had followed her impulse, she would have held out her arms and ran to meet him crying, "Hughie! Hughie!" But her impulses, she remembered in time, always came back like boomerangs to hurt her, if she followed them, so, instead, she endeavored to pull herself together by recalling that he had been six weeks at Teeters' without coming to see her but the one time when he had brought that girl to laugh at her. Why had he come now, she wondered.

Kate's pride had come to be her strongest ally and she summoned it all in this emergency, so when Disston climbed to her, finally, leading his limping horse, she was awaiting him calmly, her enigmatic smile upon her face, which was but a shade paler than usual. Her composure chilled and disappointed him; he could not know that she had clasped her hands tightly about her knee to hide their trembling.

"I wanted to surprise you," he said regretfully.

"You have."

"You don't show it."

"Then I'm improving."

"I liked you as you were, Kate--warm-hearted, impulsive." He dropped the bridle reins and sat down beside her.

"That got me nothing," she replied curtly.

A shadow crossed his face.

"And you don't care for anything that doesn't get you something?"

"Absolutely not."

"That doesn't sound like you," he said after a silence.

"I'm not 'me' any longer," she responded. "I made myself over to suit my environment. I get along better."

"What has changed you so much, Kate--what in particular?"

She hesitated a moment, then answered coldly:

"Nothing in particular--everything."

"You mean you don't want to tell me?"

"What's the use?" indifferently.

"I might help you."

"How?"

"In ways that friends can help each other."

"I've tried that," she answered dryly.

"You've grown so self-sufficient that you make me feel superfluous and helpless."

"A clinging vine that has nothing to cling to sprawls on the ground, doesn't it?"

Since he did not answer immediately, she reminded him:

"Better loosen your horse's cinch; he'll feed better."

He glanced at her oddly as he obeyed her. How practical she was! What she said was the right and sensible thing, of course, but was she, as she seemed, quite without sentiment?

He returned to his place beside her and they sat without speaking, watching the colors change on a bank of sudslike clouds and the shadows deepen in the gulches. It never occurred to the new Kate to make conversation, so she was unembarrassed by the silence. Save for an occasional whimsical soliloquy, she seldom spoke without a definite purpose nowadays. To Disston, who remembered her faculty for finding something interesting or amusing in everything about which to chatter, the difference was noticeable.

It saddened him, the change in her, yet he was conscious that she still retained her strong attraction for him. With nerves relaxed, content, he had an absurd notion that he could sit beside her on that rock indefinitely, without speaking, and be happy.

Kate did not ask him the purpose of his visit, for her etiquette was the etiquette of the ranges, which does not countenance questions, and Disston, absorbed in the beauty of the sunset and his own thoughts, was in no mood to introduce the unpleasant subject of the dynamiting of the sheep wagon.

The pink deepened on gypsum cliffs and sandstone buttes of the distant Bad Lands, while purple shadows crept over the green foothills and blackened the canyons.

"Isn't it wonderful?" he said, finally, in a half whisper.

"Yes," she replied, huskily, wondering if Heaven itself had anything like this to offer.

It seemed as though without his volition his hand sought hers and covered it.

She left it so for a moment, then took hers away and got up abruptly.

"They are working up to the bed-ground and will lie down pretty soon. When they're settled, I'll go to camp and get you something to eat." Her tone was matter-of-fact, casual. She stooped, and, picking up a pebble, tossed it at two bucks that were butting each other violently:

"Here--you! Stop it! You give me a headache to look at you."

He did not even interest her, that was evident. Disston tried to assure himself that he would not have it otherwise, that anything else would be a misfortune in the circumstances; but self-deception was useless--his feelings were not a matter for argument or logic, they were of the heart, not the head, when he was near her, and his mind had nothing to do with them.

She walked away a little and stood apart with her face to the sunset, a lonely figure, silent, aloof, fitting perfectly into the picture. Disston tried to analyze his feelings, the emotions she inspired in him as he looked at her, but his lines of thought with their many ramifications always came back to the starting point--to the sure knowledge that he wanted her tremendously, that he yearned and hungered for her with every fiber of his nature.

She was the last woman in the world who would seem to need protection, yet he had a savage primitive desire to protect her, to put his arm about her and defy the world, if need be.

Beth's helpless femininity inspired no such passionate chivalry. He saved her annoyances, shielded her, helped her over the rough places, from habit--but this was different. And it had been so, he reflected, from that night at the Prouty House when he would gladly have fought those who had slighted and hurt her, when he would have shed blood, had his judgment not restrained him. Ever since then the least insinuation or slur against Kate had set his blood tingling, and Beth's ridicule had been one of the hardest things he had found to overlook in her. And, too, the curious serenity, the sense of completeness which came to him when she sat quietly beside him, puzzled him. He wondered if it was only a temporary state of mind, or would it last forever if he were with her. He would conquer himself--of course, he must; and he had proved by his life thus far that he was strong enough to do anything he had to.

Suddenly Hugh felt a keen desire to know what she was thinking, that she was so long silent, and he asked her. He was not sure that she answered his question when she said prosaically:

"You had better go on down to camp and feed your horse--it's over the ridge there; make a fire and put on the tea kettle. I'll be down in half an hour or three-quarters."

Disston lingered to watch her as she pulled the bedroll from her horse; and, clearing a space with her foot, freeing it of sticks and pebbles, spread out the canvas, pulling the "tarp" over a pillow beneath which he noticed a box of cartridges and a six-shooter.

"For close work," she said, with a short laugh, observing his interest.

He did not join her; instead his brows contracted.

"I can't bear to think of you going through such hardships."

"This isn't hardship--I'm used to it--I like it. I like to get awake in the night and look at the stars and to feel the wind in my face. When it rains, I pull the tarp over my head, and I love to listen to the patter on it. The sheep 'bed' all around me, and some of them lie on the corners, so it's not lonely." She said it with a touch of defiance, as though she resented his pity and wished him to believe there was no room for it.

"You see," she added, "I'm a typical sheepherder, even to mumbling to myself occasionally."

The sheep in the meantime had grazed to the top of the ridge and had spread out over the flat backbone for a few final mouthfuls before pawing their little hollows. Soon they would sink down singly and in pairs, by the dozen and half dozen, with a crackling of joints, their jaws waggling, sniffing, coughing, grunting from overladen stomachs, raising in their restless stirrings a little cloud of dust above the bed-ground.

As he stood to go, Disston pictured her night after night waiting in patient silence for the sheep to grow quiet and then creeping between her blankets to sleep among them.

He left her reluctantly at length, for he had a feeling that, since his time with her was short, each minute that he was away from her was wasted; but as it was her wish, he could do nothing less than comply and, obviously, she did not share his regret. So he followed her directions and was soon at the summer camp, established near a spring one lower ridge over.

A half hour passed--three-quarters. He smoked and looked at his watch frequently. The stars came out and the moon rose full. The fire burned down and the water cooled in the kettle. Whatever was detaining her? Impatient at first, Disston finally grew worried. He ate a little cold food that he found, and started to walk back to her.

He was well up the first ridge when a sharp report broke the night-stillness and brought him to an abrupt standstill. It was followed by another, then three, four--a number of shots in succession. It was not loud enough for a 30-30. It was the six-shooter! "For close work!" she had told him tersely.

If he had been in doubt before as to the exact word to apply to his feelings for Kate, there was no need to hesitate longer. What did it matter that she did not know how to pour tea gracefully and preside at a dinner table? By God--he wanted her, and that was all there was to it!

He was breathless when he reached the top of the ridge and his heart was pounding with the exertion in the high altitude, but he gave a gasp of relief when he saw her standing in the moonlight with dead and dying sheep around her.

"What's the matter?" he called, when his breath came back to him sufficiently.

"Poison. Somebody has scattered little piles of saltpeter all over the summit. There's no cure for it, so I shot some of them to put them out of their agony."

In his relief at finding her unharmed, the loss of the sheep seemed of no moment and he did not realize what it meant to her until she said with a choke in her voice:

"They knew just where to hit me. I've scrimped and saved and sacrificed to buy those sheep--"

Her grief sent a flood of tenderness over him. He went to her swiftly, and taking the six-shooter gently from her hand laid it upon the ground.

"Come here," he said authoritatively, and drew her to him.

She did not resist, and her head dropped to his shoulder in a movement of disheartened weariness.

"Oh, Hughie--I'm so tired of fighting--so tired--of everything."

He smoothed her hair as he would have soothed a child, and said decisively--yet with a big tenderness:

"And you shan't do any more of it!"

He felt his heart breaking with the love he felt for her.

"Kiss me--Honey!" he said softly.

She winced at the old sweet term of endearment, then with a sharp intake of breath she raised her lips to his. He was sure that no other woman's kiss could so draw the soul out of him. Beth seemed only a shadow--like someone long dead whose personality is recalled with an effort.

This was love--this was the sort of feeling the Creator intended men and women to have for each other--mysterious, inexplicable, yet real as Nature. It was as it should be. These thoughts passed through Disston's mind swiftly. Up there on top of the world, in the moonlight, any consideration which interfered seemed trifling and indefensible.

"You do love me?" He held her off a little and looked at her. He did not doubt it--he merely wanted to hear her say it.

She replied simply:

"Yes, Hughie. I have always."

"You're so unexpectedly sweet!" he cried, as he again drew her close to him. "I've never forgotten that about you." He laughed softly as he added, "I can't understand why everyone that knows you isn't in love with you."

"There's no one else who has ever seen this side of me. I am not even likable to most people."

"It isn't so! But if it were, it doesn't make any difference, for you're going to marry me--you're going home with me and live a woman's life--the kind for which you were intended."

The radiance that illuminated her face transformed and glorified it.

She was woman--all woman, at heart--he had not been mistaken, he thought rapturously as he looked at her.

She stared at him wide-eyed, dazzled by the picture as she breathed rather than whispered:

"To be with you always--never to be lonely again--to have some one that cared really when I was sick or tired or heavy-hearted--never to be savage and bitter and vindictive, but to be glad every morning just to be living, and to know that each day would be a little nicer than the last one! It would be that way, wouldn't it, Hughie?"

"How could it be otherwise when just being together is happiness?" he answered.

"It's like peeking into Paradise," she said, wistfully.

"But you will--you'll promise me? You'll give up this?" There was a faint note of anxiety in his earnestness as he laid a hand upon her shoulder and looked at her steadily.

In the long space of time that she took to answer, the radiance died out of her face like a light that is extinguished slowly:

"I'll tell you in the morning, Hughie. I must think. I make mistakes when I do what my heart impels me to. My impulses have been wrong always. I rely upon my head nowadays. I am weak to-night, and I've just judgment enough left to know it."

"But, Kate!" he expostulated in a kind of terror. "There isn't anything to argue about--to consider. This isn't business."

She shook her head.

"I must think, Hughie. I'll tell you in the morning. You'd better go down to camp now," she urged gently. "There isn't anything to be done up here, for every sheep will die that got enough poison."

"I can't bear to think of leaving you alone up here," he protested vehemently. "Why not let me stay and you go down to the wagons?"

She shook her head.

"There's not the slightest danger. He's done his work for the present, and it may be a long time before I'm again molested."

"Whom do you mean?" he asked quickly.

"A 'breed' named Mullendore that hates me."

"Do you mean to say," incredulously, "that since you know who did it, he'll ever have another opportunity?"

"I can't prove it; and, besides," bitterly, "you don't know Prouty."

With a swift transition of mood she crept into his arms voluntarily, crying chokingly:

"Hold me close, Hughie! I feel so safe with your arms about me, as though nothing or nobody could hurt me ever!"

In the morning Kate drove down to the camp at daylight the few sheep that had not eaten enough of the saltpeter to kill them, or had missed it altogether--only a small percentage of the valuable herd that had started up the mountain.

Brusque, businesslike, she was as different from the girl who had clung to Hugh for love and sympathy as could well be imagined.

They had breakfast together in the cook tent, which in the summer camp was used as a dining tent also. It was while she was standing by the stove that she turned suddenly and said impulsively:

"Do you know, Hughie, I love to cook, this morning, and ordinarily I hate it! It's because it's for you--isn't it curious?" Her eyes were shining with a look of love that was warm and generous; then the tears filled them and she turned her back quickly.

"If I hadn't the same feeling about you, I might think so," he responded. "I'm simply aching to do something for you--to help you in some way--that's what I came for."

"Did you--really?" She looked at him gratefully.

"That--and because I couldn't stay away any longer. All the way up the trail I had a feeling that you had hold of my heartstrings pulling me to you, and as if they would break if I didn't get to you faster. I can't describe it exactly, but it was as real as an actual physical sensation."

She looked her understanding, though she made no response.

When breakfast was over and they had washed the dishes together in a silence which each felt momentous, Kate said finally:

"You'd better tack a shoe on your horse before you go. If you don't know how, I'll show you." He took her hand and looked at her searchingly:

"Is that my answer?"

As she stood with her back against the table she gripped the edge of it tightly.

"I guess it is, Hughie. I've thought it all out and it seems best."

"I can't--I won't believe you mean that!" he exclaimed, passionately.

"But I do. There are many reasons why I can't leave here and do as you ask."

"And," incredulously, "the fact that we love each other doesn't count?" He shook his head. "I must say I don't understand. I didn't know that you were so happy here--"

"Happy!" The color flooded her face as she cried fiercely, "Mostly it's--hell!"

"I don't comprehend at all."

"In the first place, your world and mine are far apart--that girl you brought to the corrals made me see that clearer than ever before. I might, in time, adapt myself--I don't know. I'm not ignorant of the things one can learn from books, and I'm not dull, but it would be an experiment, and if it failed it might be like that experience at the Prouty House on a larger scale. I would humiliate you and make you ashamed." Then, looking at him searchingly, she added: "Tell me the truth, Hughie--haven't you thought something of this yourself?"

"I realize, of course," he admitted candidly, "that naturally there would be situations which would be difficult for you at first; but what of that? You'll learn. You are more than intelligent--you have brains, and your instincts are right from first to last. I tell you I love you, and nothing else counts. I'm so sure of the result that I'm willing to risk the experiment."

Her eyes, fixed upon him, shone with pride, and there was a note of exultation in her voice as she cried:

"I hoped you would say that!"

He smiled back:

"You're tricky, Kate. You set traps for me. But," impatiently, "go on; if your other reasons are not more serious than this--"

She looked at him speculatively and doubtfully:

"I wonder, if I can make you see things from my point of view--if it's possible for you to understand how I feel. Our lives and experiences have been so different. I'm afraid I shall fail. It's just this--" an expression of grim purpose which he saw was not new to it settled upon her face--"I've set myself a goal; it's in sight now and I've got to reach it. If I stopped, I know that the feeling that I had been a quitter when a real temptation came to me would gnaw inside of me until I was restless and discontented, and I would have a contempt for myself that I don't believe ever would leave me.

"When people live alone a lot they get to know themselves--the way their minds work, their moods and the causes, their dispositions; and I know that whether my judgment is right or wrong I've got to follow the trail stretching away before me until I've reached my destination."

"What is it you want to do, Kate? Why can't I help you?"

"I want success--money! It's the only weapon for a woman in my position. Without it she's as helpless as though her hands were shackled and left a target for every one who chooses to throw a stone at her. It's an obsession with me. I've sworn to win out here, by myself, single-handed; it's a vow as sacred as an oath to me! It means time, patience, hardships and more hardships; and after this I'm going to suffer because you've shown me what I'm turning my back on. But no matter," fiercely, "I can crucify myself, if necessary!"

"It isn't yet clear to me why success means so much to you," he said, bewildered.

"Because," she cried, "soon after you left I went through purgatory for that want of money, and because I was nobody--because I was 'Mormon Joe's Kate,' accused of murder, and the daughter of 'Jezebel of the Sand Coulee,' and have nobody for a father!"

"Why didn't you ask me to come when I telegraphed you!"

"I didn't dare--I was afraid to test you. If you, too, had failed me, it would have crushed me. Perhaps all this sounds absurd and melodramatic, but I can't help it.

"You know, everybody has some little quirk in his brain that makes him different--some trait that isn't quite normal. I've come to watch for it, and it's always there, even in the most commonplace people. It's the quirk which, when accentuated, makes religious fanatics, screaming suffragists and anarchists. My 'twist' takes the form of an uncontrollable desire to retaliate upon those who have deliberately, through sheer cruelty and without any personal reason for their animosity, gone out of their way to hurt me."

That was it, then--she had been hurt--terribly!

Her eyes were like steel, her voice trembled with the intensity of the passion that shook her as she continued:

"I hate them in Prouty! I can't conceive of any other feeling towards the town or its inhabitants. I don't suppose it will ever come in my way to pay in full the debt I owe them, but I can at least by my own efforts rise above them and force their grudging recognition!"

"I understand now," Disston said slowly. "But, Kate, is it worth the price you'll pay for it?"

"I'm used to paying well for everything, whether it's success or experience," she replied bitterly. "As I feel now, it's worth the sacrifice demanded, and I'm willing to make it."

"It's like seeing a great musician concentrate his energies upon the banjo--he may dignify the instrument, but he belittles himself in doing it. Kate," he pleaded, "don't throw away any years of happiness! Don't hurt your own character for a handful of nonentities whose importance you exaggerate! I'm right, believe me."

"I am as I am, and I have to learn all my lessons by experience."

"It may be too late when you've learned this one," he said sadly.

"Too late!" She shivered. A specter rose before her that she had seen before--hard-featured, domineering, unloved, unloving, chafing in ghastly solitude, alone with her sheep and her money, and the best years of her life behind her. She saw herself as her work and her thoughts would make her. For an instant she wavered. If Disston had known, he might have swayed her then, but, since he could not, he only said with an effort:

"If your love for me isn't big enough to make you abandon this purpose, I shan't urge you. I know it would be useless. You have a strange nature, Kate--a mixture of steel and velvet, of wormwood and honey."

Absorbed in the swiftly moving panorama that was passing before her, she scarcely heard him. She was gazing at a bizarre figure in a wreath of paper roses trip down a staircase, radiant and eager--to be greeted by mocking eyes and unsuppressed titters; at a crowded courtroom, staring mercilessly, tense, with unfriendly curiosity; at Neifkins with his insolent stare, his skin, red, shiny, stretched to cracking across his broad, square-jawed face; at Wentz, listening in cold amusement to a frightened, tremulous voice pleading for leniency; at a sallow face with dead brown eyes leering through a cloud of smoke, suggesting in contemptuous familiarity, "Why don't you fade away--open a dance hall in some live burg and get a liquor license?"; at Mrs. Toomey, pinched with worry and malnutrition, a look of craven cowardice in her blue eyes, blurting out in the candor of desperation, "Your friendship might hurt us in our business!"

She saw it all--figures and episodes passed in review before her, even to irrelevant details, and each contributed its weight to turn the scales in this crisis.

"It's the fork of the road," she said in curt decision, "and I've chosen."

There was something so implacable in her face and voice and manner that Disston felt like one shut out behind a door that is closed and bolted; he had a sensation as though his heart while warm and beating had been laid upon the unresponsive surface of cold marble. The chill of it went all through him. With another woman than Kate he might still have argued. But he could only look at her sorrowfully:

"When you are older, and have grown more tolerant and forgiving, I'm afraid you will find that you have chosen wrongly."

"If ever I should grow tolerant and forgiving," she cried fiercely, "then I will have failed miserably." _

Read next: Chapter 21. "Heart And Hand"

Read previous: Chapter 19. An Old, Old Friend

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