THE LAST STRAW
It was the first day that Tom Beck could lie on his back. For weeks he had lain on his face there in the living room of the ranch house, nursed back to health by Jane Hunter's gentle hands. Now the doctor had turned him over, with the promise that he would not only be sitting up but walking before long, and the Veterans' Society had been in session.
That was what Two-Bits called it: The Veterans' Society. Every afternoon they had gathered there, Two-Bits with his slowly healing back, Jimmy Oliver, after his leg had mended and he could hobble with a cane, Joe Black, whose arm was just out of its sling and, occasionally, Riley, who rode up the creek holding gingerly his one shoulder, to fight the battle over again.
Summer was ripening and the golden sunlight spilled down onto peaceful mountains from a mighty sweep of sky. A gentle breeze bent the tall cottonwoods, making them whisper, making the birds in their branches sing in lazy contentment. Unmolested cattle ranged in prospering hundreds. The work was up, fall and beef ride were coming ... and other years to bring their toll of happiness and well being, for after its one paroxysm of strife the country had settled back to easier ways, to a better, more wholesome manner of living.
There were memories, true, kept fresh by such things as this Veterans' Society, and the three graves in Devil's Hole where rested the bodies of Sam McKee, Dad Hepburn and Dick Hilton, for there was none to claim what remained of them. Under the cottonwoods slept Baldy Bowen, his grave surrounded by white pickets and his head marked by a stone.
But even now those memories were less poignant than they had been weeks before. Interest in the range war was waning and though it would be talked about across bar and bunk house stove for many winters the thrill of it was gone ... as the horror of it was largely gone for those who had suffered most.
Two-Bits had lingered after the departure of the rest and sat in a chair beside Tom's cot. Beck's face was pale, but his eyes were alive and as of old, evidence of satisfactory convalescence.
"So you think there is a hell, Tommy?" he asked.
Beck grunted assent.
"Yeah. I know there's a hell, Two-Bits."
"My brother always said there was. He said it was an awful place, Tommy. I'll bet two bits th' old Devil was sorry to see Hepburn an' Hilton an' Sam McKee comin' in that mornin'! I'll bet he says to hisself: 'Here's some right smart competition for me!'"
Beck laughed silently.
"Sometimes I get feelin' mighty sorry for 'em," the lanky cow-boy continued. "I use to hate Webb somethin' awful an' I sure did think Hepburn was about th' lowest critter that walked.... God ought to 've made him crawl! Sam McKee never was no good. He was th' meanest man I ever saw....
"But, shucks, Tommy, I hate to think of 'em bein' blistered all th' time!"
"That ain't the kind of hell I referred to, Two-Bits. I don't know much about that kind, with brimstone and fire and all the rest....
"There's a hell, though, Tommy. It's when a man lets the weakness in him run off with what strength he has, when he don't trust those who deserve to be trusted, when he's suspicious of those his heart tells him are above suspicion."
Two-Bits swallowed, setting his Adam's apple leaping. His eyes widened.
"Gosh, you talk just like th' Reverend!" he said, and Beck laughed until his wound hurt him.
"Well, if they ain't in hell, they're under an awful lot of rocks," he added. "That's all I care, to have 'em out of her way."
"Yes, it makes it smoother. Real folks, men who deserve the name, won't do anything but trust her and help her."
"Not after the way she made 'em come out of their holes! That trial must've been grand, Tommy! I'd 've give two bits to seen it an' heard it!
"She won't have no trouble no more. Everybody knows she's got more head than most men on this here creek. But she's got somethin' else! She's got a ... a gentle way with her that makes everybody want to do things for her.
"Look at how she treated Cole. Why, anybody else 'd run him off! 'Stead of that she gets Bobby Cole to file on that claim an' helps 'em to build a good house an' wants 'em to stay. You can bet your life that HC cattle'll get water there now. That catamount ... hell, she'd carry it for 'em if there wasn't any other way to get it to 'em!"
"Yes, Bobby's changed."
"Should say she is changed! She's got a different look to her, not so hard an' horstile as she used to be; she's plumb doe-cyle now!
"I expect she's glad she didn't kill Hilton. If she hadn't changed she'd been glad to do it. But, bein' like she is now, she wouldn't want to hurt nobody.... Unless that somebody wanted to hurt Miss Hunter."
His eyes roved off down the road and settled on a swiftly moving horse, the great sorrel who was bringing Jane Hunter back to the ranch after a ride far down the creek.
"Speakin' of Hell, Tommy: there mebby ain't any like the Reverend claims there is, but there's a Heaven! I'll bet two bits there is! I'll gamble on it because I know an angel that stepped right down that there, now, solid gold ladder....
"She's comin' up th' road.... An' Mister Two-Bits Beal, esquire, is goin' to drift out of here!"
With a broad wink, which set a suggestion of a flush into Beck's cheeks, he took his hat and departed.
Jane entered, drawing the pin from her hat; then stopped on the threshold with a cry.
"Oh, the doctor's been here!"
"Yes, and he's rolled the old carcass over," Beck answered.
She stood looking down at him for a moment and then dropped quickly to her knees.
"It's so good to look into your eyes again," she whispered, and though her own eyes were bright there were tears in her voice.
Beck's gaze wavered and he slowly withdrew the hand that she had taken.
"You mustn't look like that!" he said, turning his face from her. "It's more than I've deserved, it's more than I have a right to!"
She put her hands on his shoulders, gently, bearing no weight upon them, and said soberly:
"Look at me, Tom Beck!"
He obeyed, rather reluctantly.
"I have waited, oh, so long, to talk to you! I promised the doctor that nothing should disturb you until you were well. That's one reason why I brought you into the house, instead of leaving you with the men: so you could be quiet.
"But there was another reason, a greater: I wanted you here, in this room, in my house, near me, where I could see and feel and help you, because seeing and touching and helping you helped me!
"I needed your help, Tom! I shall always need you near me!"
"Nobody would agree with you," he protested. "You're the most capable man in the country. You sure can look out for yourself."
"But looking out for myself isn't all. That's just a tiny part of life,"—indicating how small it was with a thumb and fore-finger. "It belongs to the side of me which owns this ranch, which is a cattle woman, which wants to fatten steers and raise calves and prosper....
"There's the other part, the big part, the part that is really worth while: It's my heart, Tom. It's my heart that needs you!"
His brows puckered.
"I wish you wouldn't!" he said huskily. "I can't help that part, I had my chance ... an' I threw it away."
"And I picked it up! Tom, that morning when you were crawling back from Cathedral Tank, across the desert, I was at the round-up camp. I went there to tell you, to make you understand—"
"That's what hurts: that you had to ride thirty miles to tell me, to make me understand. Why, ma'am, I hadn't any right to have you do that for me. It was me who should have come crawlin' to you!"
She took his hand again.
"Look at me!"
"Yes, ma'am," striving to lighten his manner.
"Yes, Jane!" she insisted.
"Jane," very softly.
"You are very foolish, sticking to an abstract idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me.
"Don't you see what a wrong that would be! Don't you see that?"
She leaned forward, hands clasped at her chin, and tears swam upward into her eyes.
"I am saying the things I've waited so long to say.
"You have lain here ever since that black night when they carried you in and I had to feel your heart to know whether you lived. I've tried to say nothing that would disturb you, tried to keep your mind off the thing that has occupied mine. But I know you've been thinking; I know you've been uneasy. I have seen that in the looks, the words, the way you've laughed, rather forced and weakly at times. I have known what you thought....
"You are very foolish to be concerned with an idea of how you should have conducted yourself. You wanted to die for me once; you want to put me off now because you think you wronged me.
"I am not forgiving you because there is nothing to forgive. My pride was hurt and by yielding to it I shook your faith in me. It was weak for me to yield to pride; it was foolish for you to give way to suspicion. It was not I who yielded, Tom; it was that other girl, the girl who came to you to be hurt and ridiculed and made strong! And it was not the Tom Beck who loved me that suspected; it was that other man, the one who held himself back, who did not take chances, who, perhaps, would have denied himself the finest thing in life if he had always walked on ground with which he was familiar....
"And now to carry this breach from the past into the future.... Don't you see what a wrong that would be? Don't you see how you would be harming yourself? You, who wanted to die for me, would be refusing to live for me! And I who need you would walk alone.... Don't you see what a horrible thing that would be to both of us ... my lover?"
She leaned forward, hands clasped at her breast, and the tears swam into her eyes. She was very beautiful, very gentle and tender, but as he looked he felt rather than saw the strength that was in her: the character that had stood alone, that had been herself in the face of the loss of love and position, and that, by so standing, had triumphed.
For a breathless instant she poised so, with unsteady lips, and she saw the want come into his face, saw the old reserve, the old resolution to punish himself melt away.
"I want you, Jane!" he whispered.
The evening shadows had come before she rose from her knees and drew up a chair to sit stroking his hand.
His eyes rested on her hungrily and after a time they concentrated on the locket at her throat.
"Say! Now that you've done me the honor to give me a second chance at lovin' you, there's somethin' I want to ask."
"Ask it."
"What's in that locket?"
She laughed as she caught it in her fingers.
"My luck!"
"I understand that. It brought me luck, too, but there's something else. Won't you tell me?"
She unclasped the trinket and held it in her hand, turning it over slowly. Then she sprung the catch and held it so he could see.
Behind the disc of mica lay a piece of oat straw.
"That is the last straw," she said simply.
He did not understand.
"The one you would not draw that day, which seems so long ago!"
His face brightened.
"You kept it?"
"I clung to it as though it were ... the last straw!
"Why, Tom, can't you see what it has meant? If you had drawn you would have been my foreman. You would have protected me, fought for me, taken care of me. I'd never have been forced to stand alone, never been forced to try to do something for myself, by myself. Your refusal put on me the responsibility of being a woman or a leech....
"I drew the last straw that day. I drew the responsibility of keeping the HC on its feet. I feel that I have helped to do that...."
"You have."
"Through sickness and through death, through dark days and storms. I have done something! I have walked alone, unaided....
"And I have made you love me, Tom.... That is the biggest thing I have done. To be worthy of your love was my greatest undertaking. By being worthy, by winning you, I have justified my being here, my walking the earth, my breathing the air...."
"Sho!" he cried in embarrassment, and took the locket and fingered it.
His hand dropped to the blanket and he stared upward as though a fresh idea had occurred to him.
"Say, I wonder if the Reverend was a regular preacher?" he asked.
"Why? He was a doer of good works. Why consider his actual standing?"
"Yeah. But I mean, could he marry folks, do you s'pose?"
He looked at her again and in his eyes was that amused twinkle, the laugh of a man assured, content, self sufficient ... and behind it was the tenderness that comes to a strong man's eyes only when he looks upon the woman who has given him love for love.
"If he could he'd be glad to," he said, "and I suspect that he'd throw a little variety into the ceremony ... something, likely, about your fightin' a good fight!"
THE END