Well, water had flowed under the bridge since. That sturdy slip of a girl on the vague border of girlhood had risen to be a woman.
"By Godfrey this man's world has bruised her! And after all that does she think I'll let her go? It's got to be the other way!"
Nothing mattered with a man. He was supposed to stand up and be licked and stand up again. Else he wasn't a man. No crying for the breaks of luck. But it did matter with a woman—and Lorena, at the very worst of it, still had smiled at him out of her dark eyes while she kept telling him nothing could hurt her. He never observed that his fists were clenched about his plate, nor that the food on it grew cold. Somebody was beside him, muttering. He looked up to find Quagmire.
"Say—well, Judas, what's happened to you, Tom?"
"Nothing."
"Say, I haven't ever horned in on yore business now, have I?" demanded Quagmire. "No, you bet not. Only yo' got a chore to do yet, an' I figgered mebbe you'd ease yo'se'f an' lemme take care of it while yo' et. That all right?"
"What chore?"
"Jus' a fragment of unfinished business," said Quagmire evasively. "That's all right, ain't it? Yeh. See yo' later, then."
"No, come back here. Come back here, you confounded fool! I'm not delegating anything I don't know about. Spread it."
Quagmire swung around, his pale eyes squinting. There was a hot personal anger in them—Quagmire was roused against his own boss. "Listen, Gillette, if yo' don't know enough to come in outen the rain I'll take my spurs and go!"
"You've got that privilege any day," snapped Gillette, and thereupon cursed himself for the tag-end collection of nerves he had become. "Oh, swallow it. What's on your mind?"
Quagmire moved his arm sheepishly. "If yo' got to know—San Saba's in town. He's down by the stable, standin' in the middle o' the street."
"Then I reckon he wants to see me." Tom got up from the table, laid down his half dollar, and walked through the lobby. At the door he stopped and turned again to Quagmire. "Old-timer, let that last remark wash down the creek."
"It goes twice," muttered Quagmire. "I'm a galoot for tryin' to butt my mug in another gent's personal affairs."
"Well, here's the end of the train ride," said Tom. There was something the matter with his ears, for he heard himself as from a distance; and his arms were heavy.
"I know the gent's habits." Quagmire broke in. "In a pinch he don't use that belt gun. It's another under his arm yo' got to watch."
Gillette nodded, not hearing the words. The street was half shade and half sunlight. Over in the shade he observed men standing near to the walls and moving not at all. A spotted dog padded across his vision leaving a trail of dust behind. "I wish I knew her answer now," murmured Gillette and walked out into the sunlight. San Saba's lank frame was in the shade, fifty yards along. There were a great many men against the building walls; Gillette saw the blur of their faces, and he heard some faint voice calling his name. And then all this died out of his attention; he swung and walked to meet the renegade ex- foreman.
He thought at first the man meant to wait for him; but a moment later San Saba stepped sidewise into the sun and came forward. Gillette marked how the man's long legs buckled at each step and how the dragging spurs fluffed the dust San Saba's arms swung with his tread, in a short arc, and the palm of his gun hand seemed to brush holster leather at each passing. He was marked by hard travel, his clothes were an alkali gray, his butternut shirt was open at the neck, and Gillette saw the two front cords of his neck taut against the sunburned skin.
Nothing was said between them; that time had come when there were no words to carry any meaning either would understand. They were, the both of them, thrown back on instinct, back to the stark and ancient promptings. So they closed the interval, and for all the emotion they displayed they were as men coming up to shake hands. San Saba's body swayed a little forward of his feet, and his little nut-round head nodded. Gillette advanced erect, watching bow the ex-foreman's eyes grew narrower at each pace. Time dissolved into space and, save for the sound of his own boots striking, he would never have known himself to be moving. Somewhere a spectator coughed, the sunlight grew dim, the spotted dog ran between them. And then all his range of vision was cut off and he saw only San Saba. San Saba had stopped. His arm rose slowly away from his belt; a bull whip snapped twice, sounding to Gillette strangely like guns exploding. The spotted dog raced back, barking, and men ran out into the street and made a circle around a San Saba who had disappeared. Gillette stood alone, wondering. His arm felt unusually heavy, and he looked down to find a gun swinging from his fist; the taste of powder smoke was in his throat.
"Yo' got him. Come away an' let Nelson bury its own carrion."
Quagmire stood at his elbow, face seamed with great wrinkles. Gillette drew a breath and bolstered his gun. He said something to Quagmire, whereat the puncher stared queerly. The marshal came along at an unhurried gait, still smoking; and the marshal threw out a warning as he walked. "Better lower your belt two inches, Gillette. It's too high."
Gillette headed for the hotel. The last idea in his head was that he hadn't finished his meal and that he'd better go back and drink the coffee even if he wasn't hungry. Directly at that point the whole significance of the scene broke across his mind. "Then it wasn't a bull whip after all, but the guns. The man's dead. Another chore done. I can see the end of the trail."
He was at the hotel door, facing Lorena Wyatt. Where she came from he didn't know. But she was there, supporting herself against the wall, eyes aflood with strange mists.
"Settled?" he asked. The memory of the gun play was wiped out; all else for the moment ceased to matter. He drove directly at the thing he wanted to know. "Settled? I'll follow, no matter where you go. It can't be any other way."
"She's gone, Tom. One of the men brought us to town in the buckboard. I'm going back with you."
His head dropped. "Well—"
"Never ask me any questions about it. There is the one thing I'll hide from you. The rest of me is yours."
He took her by the arm, throwing a swift glance at Quagmire. "Go get a preacher."
A half hour later they were travelling away from Nelson and back to the ranch, while from a second-story window of the hotel Christine Ballard watched them fade into the dusk of the prairie; she was dry-eyed, her training wouldn't let her cry now. But when the last vague outline of Gillette drooped into the swirling shadows and was lost it was to her as if the light of the world had been extinguished. She crouched down, her head resting on the window ledge. And long after Nelson had sunk to rest she was still in that same position.
Quagmire rode through the night with the silhouette of the buckboard ahead of him. The stars were scattered in the sky, shimmering like diamond dust; the wind bore up the cry of a coyote on some distant ridge. The loneliness of the ages was in that solitary chant, and Quagmire, hearing it, drooped a little lower in the saddle, cigarette tip making a criss-cross pattern in the velvet shadows. "Yestiday I was a kid an' my mammy sung songs to me soundin' like that. To-morrow I'm dead. It's jes' a day between sleeps. There's a couple which neither asked nothin' from the universe an' accidental they busted through the crooked game for a win—temporary. Well, somebody's got to win temporary. A minute to smile and an hour to cry—then we sleeps, an' them stars keep on shinin' like that an' some other ki-ote howls out on the same old ridge. Man is mortal. Go along, pony. Wish I had as little to think about as yo' did. Yeah, man is mortal."
THE OCTOPUS OF PILGRIM VALLEY