The Westerners

by Stewart Edward White

JACK GRAHAM SPEAKS OUT

The morning when the hunting party had so unhappily terminated on the slope of Tom Custer, proved to be the turning point in Molly's relations with the camp.

The Kid forgave her in two hours, but her troubled conscience would not let her forgive herself. Therefore she was irritated with the Kid. Therefore her old innocent joyful trips into the hills in his company suddenly came to an end. That is good psychology; not good sense.

With the first realization of evil, slight though it was, her moral nature began the inevitable two-sided argument. She was no longer naïve, but responsible. As a consequence her old careless, thoughtless manner of life completely changed. In the beginning she had come full of confidence to subdue a camp. Speedily she had discovered that it was not worth the trouble, and that she infinitely preferred to play out in the open with the winds and sunshine and the diverse influences of nature. Now a subtle, quite unrealized sense of unworthiness, drove her back to a desire for human sympathy, the personal relation. This personal relation took the outward form of an entanglement with Cheyenne Harry, complicated by her intellectual admiration of Graham.

From the first, Cheyenne Harry had possessed for her a certain fascination which had distinguished him from the rest of the men by whom she was surrounded. It had dated from the evening when he had kissed her. At the time he had been shown his place swiftly and decisively enough, but it was a forceful deed, such as women like, and its impression had remained. Besides this, Molly's spirit was independent; she respected independence in others; and he, with the exception of Graham, was now the only man in camp who was to some slight extent indifferent. He showed frankly enough, with the rest, that he liked her company and her good opinion; and yet he showed, too, that if her presence and regard were not freely offered as he demanded them, he could wait, secure in their ultimate possession.

At first this fascination had been weak and unimportant. Now, however, it rapidly took the ascendancy over everything else. The mere chance that its influence had been the one first to touch the girl's moral nature counted for much; as did, curiously enough, the fact that, in her relations with Cheyenne Harry, Molly always felt a little guilty. She resented her imperceptible retrogression, and the resentment took the reckless form of a desire to go a step further. This was mainly because she did not understand herself. She had done nothing wrong, as she saw it; and yet They had put this heavy uneasy feeling into her heart. Very well! If They, the mysterious unthoughtout They, were bound to make her unhappy without her fault, she would enjoy the sweets as well as the bitter of it!

Harry had such a way of forcing her to act against her conscience.

"But I can't do that!" she would object to some proposition of his. "I'd like to. I think it would be great fun. But you know very well I've promised Dave Kelly to go up with him this afternoon to look at his claim."

"That doesn't matter," replied Harry cavalierly.

"But it does matter," she persisted. "I've promised."

"Oh, shake him. Tell him some yarn. Do something. It isn't every day I get an afternoon off this way." Though why he did not, it would be difficult to say.

"I know, but I've promised."

"Oh, very well," said Cheyenne Harry, with cold finality, and began to whistle as if the question were quite disposed of. This did not suit Molly at all.

"There isn't anything I can do, is there?" she asked after a moment.

"You know best."

"Oh, dear, I don't want you to feel like that."

"Why shouldn't I feel like that?" cried Harry in sudden heat. "Here I look forward to a whole afternoon with you, and I'm thrown down just because of a kid. I suppose you'd rather trot around with him than with me. All right. Go ahead."

He began to whistle again. He never said what the result would be if she did "go ahead," and this very mysterious indifference had its effect. Molly, genuinely distressed, knit her brows, not knowing what to do.

"Now look here!" commanded Harry, after a minute, with great decision; "you go find that Kid, and send him up to Kelly's claim to say you can't come this afternoon. You can fix it to suit yourself next time you see him," and then he would himself find the Kid and despatch him.

Molly always acquiesced, but with inward misgivings. She must now do her best to conceal from Dave Kelly the real state of affairs; he must not by any chance see her with Harry; he must not hear from outside sources of her afternoon's excursion with that individual. An element of the clandestine had crept into it. The idea oppressed her, for, in spite of her store of spirits and her independent temper, she was not of a combative nature when she felt herself at all in the wrong. The necessity saddened her, brought to her that guilty feeling against which she so sullenly rebelled. She was uneasy during all the afternoon, and yet she was conscious of an added delicious thrill in her relations with Harry—a thrill that first tingled pleasantly through all her veins, then struck her heart numb with vague culpability. In due course, she came to transfer the emotion from the circumstances to the man. She experienced the same thrill, the same numb culpability, at the sight of his figure approaching her on the street.

This tendency was emphasized, perhaps, by the fact that their walks together—projected so suddenly, undertaken with so strong a feeling of blame on her part—consisted always of continual skirmishes as to whether or not Cheyenne Harry should kiss her. The interest of the argument was heightened by the fact that the girl wanted him to do so. This he was never allowed for a moment to suspect—in fact, by all means in her power she gave him to understand quite the contrary—but he could not help feeling subtly the subconscious encouragement, and so grew always the more insistent. She held him off because her instincts had told her the act would cheapen her. Molly always obeyed her instincts. They were strong, insistent, not to be denied. They came to her suddenly with a great conviction of truth, which she never dreamed of questioning. Among other things they taught her that without love each kiss adds to the woman's regard for the man, but takes away from his desire for her.

Cheyenne Harry used all his arts. He tried force only once, for he found it unsatisfactory and productive of most disagreeable results. Diplomacy and argument in themselves, as eclectics, contained much of the joy of debate. The arguments in such cases were always deliciously ingenuous.

"Now, what harm is there in my just putting my arm around you?" he urged.

"There just is, that's all."

"I'll have it around you when we dance."

"That's different; there's people about then."

"It's just a question of people, then?"

"I s'pose so."

"Will you let me put my arm around you to-night in the Little Nugget?"

"Of course not."

"But there's people there," triumphantly. "Now what's the harm? It's different with us. Of course you ought not to let anyone else, but we're different."

They were sitting near together, and all this time the Westerner's arm was moving inch by inch along the rock behind Molly. As he talked he clasped her waist, gingerly, in order not to alarm. She shivered as she became conscious of the touch, and for one instant gave herself up. Then she sternly ordered Cheyenne Harry to take his distance. The latter tried to temporize by opening an argument. The half-playful struggle always ended in Molly's gaining her point, but the victory was laughing, and so Cheyenne Harry was encouraged to reopen the attack on new grounds.

As one of the inevitable results, the emotion which Molly experienced in at once denying herself and combating Harry was gradually translated into a fascinated sort of passion for him. Then, too, since naturally the interest of these indecisive encounters increased with each, the two came to see each other oftener and oftener, until the habit of companionship was well established. This habit is very real. The approach of the accustomed hour for meeting causes the heart to beat faster, the breath to come quicker, the imagination to kindle; while the foregoing of a single appointment is a dull loss difficult to bear with patience. It counterfeits well many of the symptoms of love, and for a short time is nearly as burning a passion.

Sometimes the attack would be more direct. Cheyenne Harry's stock of sophistry would give out, as well as his stock of patience.

"Oh, come on, Molly," he would cry, "just one! I've been real good, now haven't I? Oh, come on!"

"You've been nothing but a great big brute, Mr. Cheyenne Harry!" she cried in a tone that implied he had not.

Harry advanced a little, holding out his hands, much as one would approach a timid setter dog. She put one finger on her lips, and watched him, bright-eyed. When he was near enough, she boxed his ears, and twisted her slender young body out of reach, laughing mockingly, and wrinkling her nose at him.

But then when they had returned to camp, and once more she found herself alone, the delicious questions always came up; how far did he intend to go? Did he see through such and such a stratagem? Was he really vexed at such and such a speech, or was he merely feigning? In what manner would he dare accost her when next they met? And so another meeting became necessary soon—at once. They saw more and more of each other, to the neglect of many real duties.

For a time the influence of Jack Graham did something to stem the drift of this affair, but that lasted only until he himself fell in love with her.

With him her first emotion had been of eager intellectual awakening; her second, that of piqued curiosity; her third, of reactionary dulness. As time went on she came to pass and repass through those three phases with ever increased rapidity, until at the last their constant reiteration might almost have relegated them to the category of whims. She liked to be with him, because he made her aware of new possibilities in herself. She could not understand him, because his attitude toward her was never that of the lover. She experienced moments of revolt, when she cried out passionately but ineffectually against an influence which would compel her to elevations rarer than the atmosphere of her everyday, easy-going pleasure-taking life. Ineffectually, I say, for something always forced her back.

Not that Graham ever preached. Preaching would have presented something tangible against which to revolt, something orthodox to be cried down. In fact, reformation of Molly Lafond's manners of mind or body was the farthest from Graham's thought. He merely represented to her a state of being to which she must rise. The rise was slight, but it was real. It meant the difference between thinking in the abstract or in the concrete. It meant that she was compelled to feel that to men like him, or to women like her, this animal existence, with its finer pleasures of riding, climbing, flirting and sitting on bars, while well enough in its way, was after all but a small and incidental part of life. If the girl had been requested to formulate it, she would not have been able to do so. She apprehended it more in its result; which was to make her just a little ashamed of her everyday manner of existence, without, however, furnishing her with a strong enough motive to rise permanently above it. This, in turn, translated itself into a certain impotent mental discomfort.

As long as Jack Graham preserved the personally indifferent standpoint, the mere fact that he caused her momentary disquiet did not antagonize Molly Lafond against him. Rather it added a certain piquancy to their interviews. He threw out his observations on men and manners lazily, with the true philosopher's delight in rolling a good thing under his tongue. None of them possessed an easily fitted personal application. And his utter indifference as to whether she talked or listened, went or tarried, always secretly pleased her. She liked his way of looking at her through half-closed lids, in the manner of one examining a strange variety of tree or fern; the utter lack of enthusiasm in the fashion of his greetings when she came, or his farewell when she departed; his quite impersonal manner of pointing truths which might only too easily have been given a personal application. And this was the very reason of it, although again she might not have been able to formulate the idea; that although his methods of thought, his mental stand-points, his ways of life constantly accused hers of inertia, carelessness and moral turpiture, nevertheless his personally indifferent attitude toward her relieved them of too direct an application. She enjoyed the advantages of a mental cold shower, with the added satisfaction that no one saw her bedraggled locks.

But when in time the young man went the way of the rest of the camp and began to show a more intimate interest in her, the conditions were quite altered. We may rejoice in anathema against the sins of humanity, in which we may acknowledge a share; we always resent being personally blamed.

Graham indeed went the way of the rest of the camp. His progress from indifference to love he could not have traced himself, although he might with tolerable accuracy have indicated the landmarks—a look, a gesture, a flash of spirit, revealing by a little more the woman whom he finally came to idealize. That her's was a rich nature he had early discovered. That it was not inherently a frivolous or vicious nature, he saw only gradually, and after many days. Then his self-disguise of philosophic indifference fell. He realized fully that he loved her, not for what she did or said, but for herself; and with the knowledge came an acuter consciousness that, whatever her possibilities, her tendency was now to pervert rather than develop them. For the first time he opened his eyes and examined her environment as well as herself.

She spent half of her day alone with Cheyenne Harry. The other half she was restless. The evening she passed in the Little Nugget saloon, where the men, convinced that she was now the mistress of Cheyenne Harry, took even less pains than formerly to restrain the accustomed freedom of their words and actions. Graham viewed her indifference to all this, and her growing absorption by Cheyenne Harry, with some alarm. He conceived that the state of affairs came about more because of a dormant moral nature than because of moral perversity; and as to this he was partly right. But he could not fail to perceive the inevitable trend of it all, no matter what the permitting motive. He would have been less—or more—than human, if he had let it pass without a protest.

At first the protest took the form of action. He tried to persuade the girl to spend the evening in other ways. While the novelty lasted, this was all very well. He epitomized and peptonized his knowledge on all subjects to suit her intellectual digestion. They called it their "lesson time," and he made the mistake of taking it too seriously. He was very much in earnest himself, so he thought she should be so. They talked of nothing but the matter in hand. After a little, there came an evening when she was a trifle tired. The matter in hand did not interest her as much as it should. She leaned the back of her head against her two clasped hands, and sighed.

"I'm stupid to-night," she confessed. "Let's talk. Tell me a story."

Graham was much in love, and so incapable of readjustments. He had thought out carefully several new and interesting things to say.

"I thought you said you were really in earnest about this," he reproached her. "If you are going to improve yourself, you must work; and work cannot depend on one's mood."

All of which was very true, but Jack Graham could not see that there inheres in truth no imperative demand for its expression.

But when another night came, her enthusiasm was less marked, for she saw no escape. After a time she skipped an evening. Then at last she gave it up altogether.

"I'm afraid I'm not intellectual," she confessed, smiling doubtfully. "I told you I'd be a disappointment. It is all interesting and very improving, but—well, I don't know—it seems to make us both cross. I guess we'd better quit."

Jack Graham seemed to indicate by his manner that he was disappointed. A good deal of his disapproval was because he saw that her renunciation of these "improving" evenings meant not only the loss of the improvement, but her exposure to worse influences; but of course Molly Lafond did not know that. She took the young man's condemnation entirely to herself, and consequently, when in his presence, felt just a little inferior. She concealed the feeling with an extra assumption of flippancy.

Because of these things, as time went on, she came to see more and more of Cheyenne Harry and less and less of Jack Graham. The latter's mere presence made her ashamed of her lack of earnest purpose. He, for his part, viewed with growing uneasiness the augmenting influence of the dashing Westerner; for he knew the man thoroughly, and believed that his attentions meant no good. In that, at least for the present, he did him a wrong. Cheyenne Harry merely amused himself with a new experience—that of entering into relations of intimacy with a woman intrinsically pure. The other sort was not far to seek, should his fancy turn that way. But to Graham these marked attentions could mean but one thing.

His resolve to speak openly was not carried into effect for a number of days. Finally, quite unexpectedly, he found his chance.

Toward evening, as he was returning from a day's exploitation on his three claims in Teepee, he came across her sitting on a fallen log near the lower ford. The shadows of the hills were lying across the landscape, even out on the brown prairie. A bird or so sang in the thicket. A light wind breathed up the gulch. Altogether it was so peaceful; and the girl sitting there idly, her hands clasped over her knees, gazing abstractedly into the waters of the brook, was so pensive and contemplative and sad, that Graham had to spur his resolution hard to induce it to take the leap. But he succeeded in making himself angry by thinking of Cheyenne Harry.

She saw him coming and shrank vaguely. She felt herself in some subtle way, which she could not define, quite in the wrong. What wrong she could not have told. When, however, she saw that plainly his intention was to speak to her, she smiled at him brilliantly with no trace of embarrassment.

They exchanged the commonplaces of such a meeting.

"Why are you so solemn?" she broke in finally. "You look as if you'd lost your last friend."

He looked at her. "That is the way I feel."

"Oh," said she.

They fell silent. She did not like at all the gloomy fashion of his scrutiny. It made her nervous. She felt creeping on her heart that mysterious heaviness, the weight of something unknowable, which she had lately been at such pains to forget. She did not like it. With an effort, she shook it off and laughed.

"What's the matter?" she cried with forced gayety. "Didn't he sleep well? Don't he like my looks, or the freckle on my nose, or the way I wear my cap?"—she tossed the latter rakishly on her curls, and tilted her head sideways.

"What is the matter?" she asked with a sudden return to gravity.

"You are the matter," he answered briefly.

"Oh dear!" she cried with petulance; "has it come to that?"

"No, it has not come to that, not what you mean. But it has come to this: that your conduct has made every true friend of yours feel just as I do."

She stared at him a moment, gasping.

"Heavens! you frighten me! What have I done? Come over here on this log and tell me about it."

Graham's vehement little speech had vented the more explosive portion of his emotion. Whatever he should say now would be inspired rather by conviction than impulse; and the lover's natural unwillingness deliberately to antagonize his mistress made it exceedingly difficult to continue. He hesitated.

"You must tell me now," she commanded; "I insist. Now, what have I done?"

"It isn't so much what you have done," began Graham lamely, "as what you might do. You see you are very young, and you don't know the world; and so you might walk right into something very wrong without realizing in the least what you are doing, and without meaning to do wrong at all. Everybody owes it to himself to make the best out of himself, and you must know that you have great possibilities. But it isn't that so much. I wish I knew how to tell you exactly. You ought to have a mother. But if you'd only let us advise you, because we know more about it than you——"

The girl had watched him with gleaming eyes. "That doesn't mean anything," she interrupted. "What is it, now? Out with it!"

"It's Cheyenne Harry," blurted Graham desperately; "you oughtn't to go around with him so much."

"Now we have it," said the girl with dangerous calm; "I'm not to go around with Harry. Will you tell me why?"

"Well," replied Graham, floundering this side of the main fact; "it isn't a healthy thing for anybody to see any one person to the exclusion of others."

"Yourself, for instance," stabbed the girl wickedly. "Go on."

Graham flushed. "No, it isn't that," he asserted earnestly. "It isn't for the benefit of the others that I speak, but because of the effect on yourself. It isn't healthy. You are wasting time that might be very much better employed; you get into an abnormal attitude toward other people; you are laying stress on a means to which there is no end, and that is abnormal. I don't know that you understand what I mean; it's philosophy," he concluded, smiling in an attempt to end lightly.

"No, I do not understand in the least. All I understand is that you object to my seeing a certain man, without giving any particular reason for your objections."

"It isn't especially elevating for you to sit every evening in a bar room crowded with swearing and drinking men who are not at all of your class," suggested Graham. "The language they use ought to teach you that."

"They are my people," cried Molly with a sudden flash of indignation, "and they are honest and brave and true-hearted. They do not speak as grammatically as you or I; but you have been to college, and I have been blessed with a chance to read. And whatever language they speak, they do not use it to talk of other people behind their backs!" She reflected a moment. "But that isn't the question," she went on, with a touch of her native shrewdness. "I understood you to make a request of me."

Graham had not so understood himself, but he had a request ready, nevertheless. "That you be a little more careful in the way you go about with Mortimer, then," he begged.

"And why?" she asked again.

"Because—because he means to do you harm!" cried Jack Graham, driven to the point at last.

She rose from the log. "Ah, that is what I wanted to hear!" she returned in level tones—"the accusation. You will tell him this to his face?"

Graham paused. His anxiety was a tangle of suspicions born of his knowledge of men, his intuitions, and his fears. Looking at it dispassionately from the outside, what right had he to interfere? Graham was much in love, brave enough to carry through the inevitable row, and quite willing as far as himself was concerned, to do so; but he could not fail to see that, however the affair came out, it would irretrievably injure the girl's reputation. No one would believe that he would go to such lengths on suspicion of merely future harm. To the camp it would mean his proved knowledge of present facts. So he hesitated.

"You will not, I see," concluded the girl, moving away; "rest easy, I shall say nothing to Harry about it. I don't know what he would do if he heard of it."

She began to walk toward the ford, every motion expressing contempt. She believed she had proved Graham a coward, and this had rehabilitated her self-respect. She was no longer ashamed before him. At the water's brink she turned back.

"And remember this, Mr. Jack Graham!" she cried, her repressed anger suddenly blazing out; "I may be young, and I may not know much of the world, but I know enough to take care of myself without any of your help."

She picked her way across the stepping-stones and disappeared, without once looking back.