She said, "That's what you want, isn't it?"
"Yes," he said, "yes, it is. The ranch is pretty big. It has plenty of enemies. Size always brings parasites. I can make friends, but a man's wife can do a good deal—as you did with Medary. It has been a rather lonely house. I'd like people to drop in—and feel welcome. That's what you can do. The bigger the place gets the more I'd like people to come in."
"Is it going to be a bigger place, Will?"
"Much bigger," he said. "It grew ten thousand acres tonight. Pay Lankershim sold out to me. I've been after the man a long while."
The distance of the room lay between them, and the odd constraint lay between them, hard to fathom and yet quite definite. He crossed over until he stood before her, not altogether as composed as he seemed to be. She was a shapely, beautiful girl, she had a dignity that placed her apart from all the women he knew. It was a quality he had noticed long before; it was the thing that had drawn him so strongly to her. Standing against the room's side-lamps her shoulders showed him a lifted silhouette. Her hair was deeply and richly auburn and her features—so smooth and gently colored—were very grave. He was thinking that a man and a woman at a time like this should be compelled to warmer words, that an intimacy and a gladness ought to be touching them now. But he could not seem to break through that strange, quiet distance.
He said, as near impulsiveness as was possible to him, "I watched you tonight. You belong here, Sally. You belong in the best of surroundings. You've got a manner. You can handle anybody. I think I'm pretty lucky. I want you to know that."
"You're very ambitious, aren't you?"
"Why, yes," he said, really surprised. "I didn't think you knew me that well."
She drew a long breath. She turned, more squarely facing him. "Maybe you don't know me very well, Will. I'm ambitious, too. Perhaps that's why I see it in you."
He considered it, and spoke with a dry restraint. "What is it you want?"
She answered quickly, as though he had misunderstood. "Nothing more than I'm getting now. We've got to be honest, Will. You know my family. You know what my father and brother are. That's what I come from and that's what I'm getting away from. I'm grateful to you. I really am. I won't let down on my part of the bargain, not ever. Remember that—I'll play the part you want me to play."
A small tone of regret lay in his words. "Is it nothing more than a bargain with you, Sally? Nothing else?"
Silence came. She continued grave and serene; she was a slim, erect shape against the light, and as he watched her, hoping for an answer he knew he wouldn't get, he recalled the scene at the buggy and the way she had turned and placed her hand on Owen Merritt. The memory dug into him, it threw him out of his calm, and the narrows of his eyes showed her a flicker of distrust and anger. She saw that, but she said evenly, "It's a bargain, Will. Did I ever give you another impression?"
"No," he told her, short and hard. "No, you never did. I'll give you credit."
"Sometimes," she went on, gentler than before, "ambition can be bad for people. It can hurt them so much. Sometimes it makes them pretty hard." Then she thought of something else. "My father won't trouble you again very soon."
He shrugged his shoulders. "I'll put up with him. That's part of the bargain, too, isn't it?" He brought a cigar from his coat and held it in an open palm, looking at it a long time, meanwhile trying to find the words he wanted. Presently he looked up to her and she saw him then as few people ever saw him—openly disturbed and embarrassed by the things he felt. "Sally, I had hoped for more. I'll still hope for it, as time goes on."
She gave him a small smile and turned to the stairs. But afterward she swung around, waiting for him to come to her if he wished it that way. He recognized the gesture and said, "Good night," and didn't move.
She went on up to the room and crossed to the window again. The thin quiet of the desert lay about Skull, and the stars were all aglitter in a thorough-black sky. This was the end of the wedding, and weariness was real in her, made heavier by an uncertainty like fear. Will Isham was steel-strong in so many things and she knew he expected much of her. It would be hard, sometimes, to know what he wanted, and it would be hard to change her ways to meet his will, though she would do it. In one thing lay danger. The memory of Owen Merritt unsettled him, and would always bring that quick distrust into his eyes. She had to watch for that. These were the things of which she thought now, these and so many others. And always, as a picture that would never leave, the shape of Owen Merritt was before her, his turned-down face hungry and hurt and reckless.
Isham poured himself a drink and settled before the empty fireplace, nursing his cigar with a keen relish. He was like this when Fay Dutcher came in from the yard, deep-eyed from want of sleep and a steely stubble blackening his square face. Isham said, "Thought you'd be in the blankets."
"Night's gone—it's three-thirty. I'm on my way up to Corral Flats. The boys will be starting out for Winnemucca in another hour."
"Help yourself to the whisky."
Dutcher found himself a glass and poured a good drink into it. He jiggled the glass at Isham and said, "How," and downed the whisky at a swallow, afterward standing before Isham with his lips well drawn back, braced against the liquor's jolt.
Isham said, "We'll talk this over, Fay," and considered his foreman more carefully than before. This man was huge and surly and had his weaknesses, all on the side of violence. But whatever his faults, he was loyal. Skull was Fay Dutcher's passion. He was jealous of it before the country, he would stand no abuse of it, and he had taught all Skull's hands to be the same way.
Dutcher said, "About this Love Bidwell. He came to me and said he wanted a horse. What do I say to that fellow?" He didn't like Bidwell and took no pains to conceal it, which made Isham smile slightly.
"Give him the horse."
"If you do he'll be around here moochin' all the time."
"That's all right, Fay."
"Damn bum."
Isham slid a hand through the air, which was a signal Dutcher knew. It meant the subject was closed. "Fay," said Isham, "Pay Lankershim's sold out. So our south side extends to the head of Christmas Creek now."
Dutcher nodded. "Pressure got a little strong for him, I guess. He was a stubborn son-of-a-gun." He watched Isham carefully, and Isham looked at him with that characteristic quietness which meant so much. The short silence which followed contained its own understanding, for these two knew each other very well. Isham was not a man to change his ideas. Once fixed they stayed fixed, and the foreman never was at loss to know what his own duties were.
Isham said, "Mark Medary made a complaint tonight about our shootin' at trespassers. Who's been on our land lately?"
"Couple of homesteaders."
"Use your judgment, Fay."
The foreman considered this. "We didn't hit 'em—just scared 'em. But you want I should ease off on them fellows?"
"No. You keep right on being rough. I want everybody to know it's a damned dangerous business coming across Skull's fences. People always figure a big outfit is fair game. They figure that what Skull loses it won't miss. So we got to throw the fear of God into these easy riders. Skull keeps what it owns, and never mind how the little outfits or the homesteaders yell. Only, use your head. Be sure you've got a good reason for everything you do. I can handle Medary, so long as you furnish me with a decent reason every time you rough up a trespasser."
"I'll rough 'em up," stated Dutcher, and showed a surly pleasure in his eyes. He moved around the room, turned back. "Well, that puts our line up against Owen Merritt."
"Yes," said Isham.
And silence came again, very thoughtful, until Dutcher murmured, "Maybe we put the pressure against him now, huh?"
"There's a horse of another kind, Fay."
Dutcher