He stopped and gazed at the barren land despondently, waiting to see if his partner would offer any protests.
“Rufe,” he said, at last, his voice tremulous with reproach, “if you’d only helped me out a little on that letter––if you’d only told me a few things––well, she might have let me down easy, and I could’ve took it. As it was, she soaked me.”
Then it was that Hardy realized the burden under which his partner was laboring, the grief that clutched at his heart, the fire that burned in his brain, and he could have wept, now that it was too late.
“Jeff,” he said honestly, “it don’t do any good now, but I’m sorry. I’m more than sorry––I’m ashamed. But that don’t do you any good either, does it?”
He stepped over and laid his hand affectionately upon his partner’s shoulder, but Creede hunched it off impatiently.
“No,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “not a dam’ bit.” There was no bitterness in his words, only an acknowledgment of the truth. “They was only one thing for me to do after I received that letter,” he continued, “and I done it. I went on a hell-roarin’ drunk. That’s right. I filled up on that forty-rod whiskey until I was crazy drunk, an’ then I picked out the biggest man in town and fought him to a whisper.”
He sighed and glanced at his swollen knuckles, which still showed the marks of combat.
“That feller was a jim-dandy scrapper,” he said, smiling magnanimously, “but I downed ’im, all right. I couldn’t quite lick the whole town, but I tried; and I certainly gave ’em a run for their money, while it lasted. If Bender don’t date time from Jeff Creede’s big drunk I miss my guess a mile. And you know, after I got over bein’ fightin’ drunk, I got cryin’ drunk––but I never did get drunk enough to tell my troubles, thank God! The fellers think I’m sore over bein’ sheeped out. Well, after I’d punished enough booze to start an Injun uprisin’, and played the faro bank for my wad, I went to sleep; and when I woke up it seemed a lo-ong time ago and I could look back and see jest how foolish I’d been. I could see how she’d jollied me up and got me comin’, playin’ me off against Bill Lightfoot; and then I could see how she’d tantalized me, like that mouse the cat had when you was down in Bender; and then I could see where I had got the big-head bad, thinkin’ I was the only one––and all the time she was laughin’ at me! Oh, it’s nothin’ now––I kin laugh at it myself in a month; but I’m so dam’ ’shamed I could cry.” He lopped down in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and shook his head gloomily.