He dropped this last as a bait, but Hardy did not respond.
“I told her you was the best bronco-buster in the Four Peaks country,” continued Creede deliberately, “and that you could drift Chapuli over the rocks like a sand lizard; but I’m too heavy for anything like that now, and Bill Lightfoot has been puttin’ up the fancy work, so far. You know how I like Bill.”
Once more he waited for an answer, but Hardy was wrestling with those elementary passions which have been making trouble since Helen of Troy left home, and he received the remark in silence.
“I’ll tell you, Rufe,” said Creede, lowering his voice confidentially. “Of course I see how it is with you and Miss Ware, and I’m glad of it; but things ain’t goin’ so lovely for me. It ain’t my fault if Miss Bonnair happens to like my company, but Bill and some of the other boys have got their backs up over it, and they’ve practically gone on a strike. Leastwise we ain’t gittin’ the cattle, and God knows the range won’t more ’n carry what’s left. I’ve got to git out and do some ridin’, and at the same time I want to do the right thing by Miss Bonnair, so if you could jest kindly come along with us to-morrow I’ll be much obliged.”
The elemental passions –– man-love, jealousy, the lust for possession –– are ugly things at best, even when locked in the bosom of a poet. In their simplest terms they make for treachery and stealth; but when complicated with the higher call of friendship and duty they gall a man like the chains of Prometheus and send the dragon-clawed eagles of Jove to tear at his vitals. Never until this naive confession had Hardy suspected the sanity of his friend nor the constancy of Kitty Bonnair. That she was capable of such an adventure he had never dreamed –– and yet –– and yet –– where was there a more masterful man than Jeff? Anything can happen in love; and who was there more capable of winning a romantic woman’s regard than good-natured, impulsive, domineering Jeff?
The thoughts flashed through his brain with the rapidity of lightning, and only his instinct of reserve protected him from his blundering tongue.
“I –– I was –– ” he began, and stopped short. The idea of loyalty had ruled his mind so long that it had become a habit, ill suited to the cause of a jealous lover; and Jeff had confided to him as a child might run to its mother. Should a man take advantage of his friend’s innocence to deprive him of that for which they both strove? Hardy fought the devil away and spoke again, quietly.
“I was going up the river to-morrow, Jeff,” he said. “Seemed to me I saw a kind of smoke, or dust, over south of Hell’s Hip Pocket this afternoon –– and we can’t take any chances now. That would take all day, you know.”
He lay still after that, his brain whirling with contending emotions. Each evening as he listened to the music of her laughter he had resolved to quit his lonely watch and snatch from life the pleasure of a single day with Kitty, such days as they used to have when he was her unacknowledged lover and all the world was young. Then he could always please her. He could bend to her moods like a willow, braving the storms of her displeasure, which only drew them closer in the end, secure in the hope of her ultimate yielding. But now the two barren years lay between; years which had stiffened his jaw and left him rough in his ways; years which had wrought some change in her, he knew not what. A single day might solve the crux –– nay, it might bring the great happiness of which he dreamed. But each morning as he woke with the dawn he saw that mighty army without banners, the sheep, marching upon their stronghold, the broad mesa which fed the last of Jeff’s cows, and Judge Ware’s, and Lucy’s –– and sprang from his blankets. And when the sun rose and Kitty came forth he was far away. But now ––
He was awakened from his dreams by the voice of Creede, low, vibrant, full of brotherly love.
“Rufe,” he was saying, “Miss Bonnair has told me a lot about you –– a lot I didn’t know. She likes you, boy, and she’s a good woman. I never knowed but one like her, and that was Sallie Winship. You mustn’t let anything that’s happened stand between you. Of course she never said anything –– never said a word –– but I’m wise that way; I can tell by their voice, and all that. You want to let them dam’ sheep go for a day or two and git this thing patched up.”
He paused, and Hardy’s mind whirled backward, upsetting his fears, unmaking his conclusions. It was Jeff the friend who spoke, Jeff the peacemaker, who had stampeded him by the equivocation of his words. But now the voice broke in again, apologetic, solicitous, self-seeking.
“Besides, that son-of-a-gun, Bill Lightfoot, has been tryin’ to cut me out.”
God! There it hit him hard. Kitty, the immaculate, the exquisite, the friend of poets and artists, the woman he had loved and cherished in his dreams –– striven for by Jeff and Bill, revelling in the homage of Mexicans and hard-drinking round-up hands, whose natural language was astench with uncleanliness. It was like beholding a dainty flower in the grime and brutality of the branding pen.
“I’m sorry, Jeff,” he said, in a far-away voice. “I –– I’d do anything I could for you –– but I’m afraid of those sheep.”
He dragged miserably through the remnant of their conversation and then lay staring at the stars while his hulk of a partner, this great bear who in his awkward good nature had trampled upon holy ground, slept peacefully by his side. The Pleiades fled away before Orion, the Scorpion rose up in the south and sank again, the Morning Star blinked and blazed like a distant fire, such as shepherds kindle upon the ridges, and still Hardy lay in his blankets, fighting with himself. The great blackness which precedes the first glow of dawn found him haggard and weary of the struggle. He rose and threw wood on the coals of last night’s fire, cooked and ate in silence, and rode away. There was a great burden upon his soul, a great fire and anger in his heart, and he questioned the verities of life. He rode up the river gloomily, searching the southern wilderness with frowning, bloodshot eyes, and once more, far to the east where the jagged cliffs of the Superstitions sweep down to the gorge of the Salagua and Hell’s Hip Pocket bars the river’s sweep, he saw that vague, impalpable haze –– a smoke, a dust, a veil of the lightest skein, stirred idly by some wandering wind, perhaps, or marking the trail of sheep. And as he looked upon it his melancholy gaze changed to a staring, hawk-like intentness; he leaned forward in the saddle and Chapuli stepped eagerly down the slope, head up, as if he sniffed the battle.
CHAPTER XV
THE CATASTROPHE
A demon of unrest, twin devil to that which had so clutched and torn at the sensitive spirit of Rufus Hardy, seemed to rise up with the dawn of that ill-omened day and seize upon the camp at Hidden Water. It was like a touch of the north wind, which rumples the cat’s back, sets the horses to fighting in the corrals, and makes men mean and generally contrary. Bill Johnson’s hounds were the first to feel the madness. They left before sun-up, heading for the wooded heights of the Juate, and led him a weary chase. At the last moment Creede abandoned the unprofitable working of The Rolls and ordered the rodéo up onto Bronco Mesa; and Kitty Bonnair, taking advantage of his preoccupation, quietly gave him the slip at the end of their long eastern detour, and turned her pinto’s head toward the river.
As for Kitty, her will was the wind’s will, which changes with the times and seasons but is accountable to no universal law. Never in her life had she met a man who could quarrel like Rufus Hardy. Beneath her eye he was as clay in the hands of the potter; every glance spoke love, and for her alone. And yet it was something more than a smouldering resentment which made him avoid her, riding out before the dawn; more than the tremulous bashfulness which had stayed his hand when at times he might have taken hers. There was something deep, hidden, mysterious, lurking in those fawnlike eyes, and it made him insurgent against her will. It was a secret, hidden from all the world, which he must yield to