AN EXPLANATION
AS Tim Flanders had predicted, the establishment of government forest reserves changed the equation that faced the cattleman. The open range was doomed, but federal supervision brought with it compensations. One of these was that the man who ran cattle on the reserve need not fear overstocking nor the competition of “Mary’s Little Lamb.” The market was in a better condition than it had been for years. The price of beef was high, and was still on the rise. Nor was there any prospect of a slump, since the supply in the country was not equal to the demand.
Ruth had every reason to feel satisfied. Her shipment of beef steers had brought a top price at the Denver stockyards. The opportune sale of a house from her aunt’s estate made it possible for her to pay the debts that had accumulated from Rowan’s trial and to reduce a little the mortgage on the Circle Diamond. The hay-cutting in the meadow had run to a fair average, and already she had in one hundred acres of winter wheat.
She had worked hard and steadily, so that when one afternoon Jennings brought back from the post office a letter from Rowan his young mistress decided to ride up into the hills and read it where she could be alone among the pines. An earned holiday is a double delight. As the pinto—one that Rowan himself had gentled for his bride—picked his way into the cañon mouth through blue-spiked larkspur and rabbit bush in golden splashes the girl in the saddle was nearer happy than she had been for many a day. Her lover’s letter lay warm against her breast, all the joy of reading it still before her. The sky was blue as babies’ eyes except where a shoal of mackerel clouds floated lazily westward. A meadow-lark throbbed out its full-throated bliss. Robins and bluebirds exulted in the sunshine. Already the quivering leaves of a grove of young, quaking asps that marched up from the trail to the rock wall were golden with the touch of autumn.
In a pine grove on a sunny slope Ruth read his letter, the tessellated light all about her in warm, irregular patterns. To read what he had written was to see the face of love. It filled her with deep joy, brought with it a peace that was infinitely comforting. She wept a little over it thankfully, though every word carried good cheer.
He was allowed to write only once a week, and everything he sent out was censored. But each letter told her a little more than she had known before of the man she had married. When she had vowed to cleave to him through good and ill fortune he had been a stranger to her. In some ways he still was, just as no doubt she was to him. For underneath the tricks of manner that had charmed him and captured his imagination, what had he discerned of the real woman sleeping in her? As for Ruth, she had married Rowan because of her keenness for the great adventure, Life, of which she supposed love to be a large part.
It had been a little cross to her that he was uneducated in the schools, that he could not parrot the literary patter to which she was accustomed. He spoke and he wrote fairly correctly. Once he had surprised her by a reference which showed her he knew his Scott intimately. But the moderns were closed books to him.
In the last paragraphs of his letter was a reference that showed her his mind went straight to the relation that lies between literature and life. His letter concluded:
You must not worry about me, dear. Whatever happens, it is all right. From the night that we rode on the raid until I said good-bye to you, I was tied hand and foot in a web of lies. That is all past. I can’t explain it, but somehow all the kinks have straightened out. I would give anything to be back home, so as to look after you. But except for that, I am at peace.
From the prison library I got some poems by a man called Browning. It’s queer, mixed-up stuff. I couldn’t make head or tail of some of it, but every once in a while he whangs out a verse that grades ’way up. Take this:
“The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made;
Our times are in His hand
Who said: ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid.’ ”
Ever since I came here I had been thinking that myself, but I didn’t know how to say it like he does. Most poets spill a heap of language, looks like to me, but this fellow throws a straight rope. Our times are in His Hands! I’m banking a heap on that, honey. No need to fear—just trust and wait. Some day our waiting will be over.
Dusk had fallen before Ruth rode down the trail to the ranch, her spirit still with Rowan up in the pines.
Mrs. Stovall was on the porch speeding a parting guest, a dark-eyed, trim young woman of unobtrusive manners.
“Mrs. McCoy, I want you should meet an old friend of mine—Mrs. Tait,” said the housekeeper by way of introduction.
It was like a blow in the face to Ruth. She drew herself up straight and stiff. A flush of indignation swept into her face. With the slightest of bows she acknowledged the presentation, then marched into the house and to her bedroom.
All the sweet gladness of the day was blotted out for her. Just as she and Rowan were coming together again the woman who had separated them must intrude herself as a hateful reminder of the past. She had forgiven her husband—yes; but her forgiveness did not extend to the woman who had led him into temptation. And even if she had pardoned him, she had not forgotten. It would be impossible ever quite to forget the sting of that memory with its sense of outrage at a wrong so flagrant.
She did not deny that she was jealous. All of Rowan she could hold fast would not be too much to carry her through their years of separation. Except for this one deadening memory, she had nothing to recall but good of him. Why must this come up now to torment her?
A knock sounded on the door. “Supper’s ready,” announced Mrs. Stovall tartly.
“I don’t want any to-night.”
After a moment’s silence Ruth heard retreating footsteps. A few minutes later there came a second knock.
“I’ve brought you supper.”
The housekeeper did not wait for an invitation, but opened the door and walked in. Never before had she done this.
Ruth jumped to her feet from the chair where she was sitting in the dusk. “I told you I didn’t want any supper,” she said, annoyed.
Mrs. Stovall had promised Rowan to look after Ruth while he was away. In her tight-lipped, sardonic fashion she had come to be very fond of this girl who was the victim of the frontier tragedy that had so stirred Shoshone County. Silently she had watched the flirtation with Larry Silcott and the division between husband and wife. It was her firm opinion that Ruth needed a lesson to save her from her own foolishness. But what had occurred on the porch a half hour since had given her a new slant on the situation. Martha Stovall prided herself on her plain speaking. She had a reputation for it far and wide. She proposed to do some of it now.
“Why don’t you want any supper?”
The housekeeper set the tray down on a little table and faced her mistress. Every angular inch of her declared that she intended to settle this matter on the spot.
Ruth was too astonished for words. Mrs. Stovall did not miss the opportunity.
“What ails you at the supper? Are you sick?” The thin lips of the woman were pressed together in a straight line of determination.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Fiddlededee! It’s Norma Tait that’s spoiled your appetite. What call have you to be so highty-tighty? Isn’t she good enough for you?”
“I would rather not discuss Mrs. Tait,” answered Ruth stiffly. “I don’t quite see why you should come into my room and talk to me like this, Mrs. Stovall.”
“Don’t you? Well, maybe I’m not very polite, but what I’ve got to say is for your good—and I’m going to say it, even if you order me off the place when I get through.”
The answer of Ruth was rather disconcerting. She said nothing.
“When I introduced you to Norma Tait you ’most insulted her. I’d like to know why,” demanded the housekeeper.
“I think I won’t talk about that,” replied the young woman with icy gentleness.
“Then I’ll do the talking. You’ve heard that fool story about Norma and Mac. I’ll bet a cooky that’s what is the matter with you.” The shrewd little eyes of Martha Stovall gimleted the girl. “It’s all a pack of lies. I ought to know, for it was me that asked Mac to drive Norma down to Wagon Wheel in his car.”
“You!” The astonishment of the girl leaped from her in the word.
The housekeeper nodded. “Want I should tell you all about it?” The acidity in her voice was less pronounced.
“Please.”
“You know that Mac used to be engaged to her and that after a quarrel Norma ran away with Tait and married him?”
“Yes.”
“Joe Tait was a brute. He bullied Norma and abused her. When she couldn’t stand it any longer she ran away and ’phoned me to get a rig to have her taken to Wagon Wheel, so’s she could go to Laramie, where her sister lives.”
It was as though a weight were lifting from Ruth’s heart. She waited, her big eyes fixed on those of Mrs. Stovall.
“But folks didn’t want to mad Joe Tait,” went on the housekeeper. “He was always raising a rookus with someone. Folks knew he’d beat the head off’n any man that helped Norma get away from him. So they all had excuses. When I was at my wit’s end Mac came along in his car, headed for Wagon Wheel. I asked him to take Norma along with him. Well, you know Mac. He said, ‘Where is she?’ And I told him. And he took her.”
Ruth nodded urgently, impatiently. She could not hear the rest too soon.
“Mac stands up on his own hind legs. He didn’t need to ask Joe Tait’s permission to help a woman when she was in trouble,” explained Mrs. Stovall. “So he took Norma down and fixed it with Moody so’s he lent her the money for her ticket. Mac had ’phoned down to the depot agent and got the last vacant berth to Cheyenne. He gave it up to Norma and went into the day coach. That’s exactly what he did. There’s been a lot of stuff told by them that ought to ’a’ known Mac and Norma better, and o’ course Tait spread a heap of scandal, but Bart Mason, the Pullman conductor, told me this his own self. Mac never even sat down beside Norma. He talked with her a minute, and then walked right through to the chair car.”
Not for an instant did Ruth doubt that this was the true version of the story she had heard. It was like Rowan to do just that, quietly and without any fuss. How lacking in faith she had been ever to doubt him!
Her heart sang. She caught Mrs. Stovall in her arms and kissed the wrinkled face.
“I’ve been such a little fool,” she confided. “And I’ve been so dreadfully unhappy—and it’s all been my own fault. I got to hating Rowan, and I was awfully mean to him. Before he went away we made it all up, but I wasn’t any help to him at all during the trial. I’m so glad you told me this.” She laughed a little hysterically. “I’m the happiest girl that ever had a lover shut up in prison for life. And it’s all because of you. Oh, I’ve acted hatefully, but I’ll never do it again.”
Mrs. Stovall, comforting the young wife after the fashion of her sex, forgot that she was the cynic of the settlement, and mingled her glad tears with those of Ruth.