Weary considered, the while he struck another match and relighted his cigarette. He had not expected to lay bare any romance in the somewhat tumultuous past of Irish. Irish had not seemed the sort of fellow who had an unhappy love affair to dream of nights; he had seemed a particularly whole-hearted young man.
“Well, yuh see,” he said vaguely, “Maybe I’ve got over it.”
The bartender regarded him fixedly and unbelievingly. “You’ll have quite a contract making Spikes swallow that,” he remarked drily.
“Oh, damn Spikes,” murmured Weary, with the fine recklessness of Irish in his tone.
At that moment a cowboy jangled in, caught sight of Weary’s back and fell upon him joyously, hailing him as Irish. Weary was very glad to see him, and listened assiduously for something that would give him a clue to the fellow’s identity. In the meantime he called him “Say, Old-timer,” and “Cully.” It had come to be a self-instituted point of honor to play the game through without blundering. He waved his hand hospitably toward the ribbed bottle, and told the stranger to “Throw into yuh, Old-timer—it’s on me.” And when Old-timer straightway began doing so, Weary leaned against the bar and wiped his forehead, and wondered who the dickens the fellow could be. In Dry Lake, Irish had been—well, hilarious—and not accountable for any little peculiarities. In Sleepy Trail Weary was, perhaps he considered unfortunately, sober and therefore obliged to feel his way carefully.
“Say! yuh want to keep your eyes peeled for Spikes Weber, Irish,” remarked the unknown, after two drinks. “He’s pawing up the earth whenever he hears your name called. He’s sure anxious to see the sod packed down nice on top uh yuh.”
“So I heard; his nibs here,” indicating the bartender, “has been wising me up, a lot. When’s the stage due, tomorrow, Oldtimer?” Weary was getting a bit ashamed of addressing them both impartially in that manner, but it was the best he could do, not knowing the names men called them. In this instance he spoke to the bartender.
“Why, yuh going to pull out while your hide’s whole?” bantered the cowboy, with the freedom which long acquaintance breeds.
“I’ve got business out uh town, and I want to be back time the stage pulls in.”
“Well, Limpy’s still holding the ribbons over them buckskins uh his, and he ain’t varied five minutes in five years,” responded the bartender. “So I guess yuh can look for him same old time.”
Weary’s eyes opened a bit wider, then drooped humorously. “Oh, all right,” he murmured, as though thoroughly enlightened rather than being rather more in the dark than before. In the name of Irish he found it expedient to take another modest drink, and then excused himself with a “See yuh later, boys,” and went out and mounted Glory.
Ten miles nearer the railroad—which at that was not what even a Montanan would call close—he had that day established headquarters and was holding a bunch of saddle horses pending the arrival of help. He rode out on the trail thoughtfully, a bit surprised that he had not found the situation more amusing. To be taken for Irish was a joke, and to learn thereby of Irish’s little romance should be funny. But it wasn’t.
Weary wondered how Irish got mixed up in a deal like that, which somehow did not seem to be in line with his character. And he wished, a bit vindictively, that this Spikes Weber could meet Irish. He rather thought that Spikes needed the chastening effects of such a meeting. Weary, while not in the least quarrelsome on his own account, was ever the staunch defender of a friend.
Just where another brown trail branched off and wandered away over a hill to the east, a woman rode out and met him face to face. She pulled up and gave a little cry that brought Weary involuntarily to a halt.
“You!” she exclaimed, in a tone that Weary felt he had no right to hear from any but his little schoolma’am. “But I knew you’d come back when you heard I—Have—have you seen Spikes, Ira?”
Weary flushed embarrassment; this was no joke. “No,” he stammered, in some doubt just how to proceed. “The fact is, you’ve made a little mistake. I’m not—”
“Oh, you needn’t go on,” she interrupted, and her voice, had Weary known it better, heralded the pouring out of a woman’s heart. “I know I’ve made a mistake, all right; you don’t need to tell me that. And I suppose you want to tell me that you’ve got over—things; that you don’t care, any more. Maybe you don’t, but it’ll take a lot to make me believe it. Because you did care, Ira. You cared, all right enough!” She laughed in the way that makes one very uncomfortable.
“And maybe you’ll tell me that I didn’t. But I did, and I do yet. I ain’t ashamed to say it, if I did marry Spikes Weber just to spite you. That’s all it was, and you’d have found it out if you hadn’t gone off the way you did. I hate Spikes Weber; and he knows it, Ira. He knows I—care—for you, and he’s making my life a hell. Oh, maybe I deserve it—but you won’t— Now you’ve come back, you can have it out with him; and I—I almost hope you’ll kill him! I do, and I don’t care if it is wicked. I—I don’t care for anything much, but—you.” She had big, soft brown eyes, and a sweet, weak mouth, and she stopped and looked at Weary in a way that he could easily imagine would be irresistible—to a man who cared.
Weary felt that he was quite helpless. She had hurried out sentences that sealed his lips. He could not tell her now that she had made a mistake; that he was not Ira Mallory, but a perfect stranger. The only thing to do now was to carry the thing through as tactfully as possible, and get away as soon as he could. Playing he was Irish, he found, was not without its disadvantages.
“What particular brand of hell has he been making for you?” he asked her sympathetically.
“I wouldn’t think, knowing Spikes as you do, you’d need to ask,” she said impatiently. “The same old brand, I guess. He gets drunk, and then—I told him, right out, just after we were married, that I liked you the best, and he don’t forget it; and he don’t let me. He swears he’ll shoot you on sight—as if that would do any good! He hates you, Ira.” She laughed again unpleasantly.
Weary, sitting uneasily in the saddle looking at her, wondered if Irish really cared; or if, in Weary’s place, he would have sat there so calmly and just looked at her. She was rather pretty, in a pink and white, weak way. He could easily imagine her marrying Spikes Weber for mere spite; what he could not imagine, was Irish in love with her.
It seemed almost as if she caught a glimmer of his thoughts, for she reined closer, and her teeth were digging into her lower lip. “Well, aren’t you going to do anything?” she demanded desperately. “You’re here, and I’ve told you I—care. Are you going to leave me to bear Spikes’ abuse always?”
“You married him,” Weary remarked mildly and a bit defensively. It seemed to him that loyalty to Irish impelled him.
She tossed her head contemptuously. “It’s nice to throw that at me. I might get back at you and say you loved me. You did, you know.”
“And you married Spikes; what can I do about it?”
“What—can—you—do—about it? Did you come back to ask me that?” There was a well defined, white line around her mouth, and her eyes were growing ominously bright.
Weary did not like the look of her, nor her tone. He felt, somehow, glad that it was not Irish, but himself; Irish might have felt the thrall of old times—whatever they were—and have been tempted. His eyes, also, grew ominous, but his voice was very smooth. (Irish, too, had that trait of being quietest when he was most roused.)
“I came back on business; I will confess I didn’t come to see you,” he said. “I’m only a bone-headed cowpuncher, but even cowpunchers can play square. They don’t, as a rule step in between a man and his wife. You married Spikes, and according to your own tell, you did it to spite me. So I say again, what can I do about it?”
She looked at him dazedly.