“It ought not to be allowed.” The blue eyes were purpling with anger. “Mr. Marshall ought to be told. It is demoralizing in a camp like this. I thought you said the governor of Lower California had sent a commandant here.”
“To suppress liquor-selling and gambling.” Hardin did not say that the request had come from Rickard.
“And persons without visible means of support,” quoted his wife with triumph.
“That does not apply to the Mexican,” frowned Hardin. He did not want to be dragged into this.
“You ought to tell Mr. Marshall,” persisted Gerty.
“I tell Marshall anything against his pet clerk?” The Hardin lip shot out. “He’d throw me out of the company.”
The pretty scene was spoiled. To his dismay, she burst into a storm of tears, tears of self-pity. Her life lay in tatters at her feet, the pretty fabric rent, torn between the rude handling of those two men. She could not have reasoned out her injury, made it convincing, built out of dreams as it was, heartless, scheming dreams. Because she could not tell it, her sobbing was the more violent, her complaints incoherent. Tom gathered enough fragments to piece the old story. “Ashamed of him. He had dragged her down into his humiliation.” His sweet moment had passed.
He spent a few futile moments trying to comfort her.
“Don’t come near me.” It burst from her; a cry of revulsion. He stared at her, the woman meeting his eyes in flushed defiance. The hatred which he saw, her bitterness, corroded his pride, scorched his self-love. Nothing would kill his love for her; he knew that in that blackest of moments. His affection for her was part of his life. It went cringing to her feet, puppy-like, but he called it back, whipped it to its place. That was all over now. No woman could dread him twice like that. He shivered at what he had seen. The man breathed deep as he got up and looked about him. It was over. He would not elaborate his awakening with words. He would never forget that look of dread, of hate. He left her tent.
That night, the cot under the stars had no tenant. Hardin had it out with himself down the levee. Strange that this bitter man could have the same hopeful blood in him which had whipped his pulse at Lawrence! He was still a young man, and God! How tired he was! He was in a net of bitter circumstance. What was he to do, where to go? He was too old, too tired and sore to begin over again, and the bitter irony of it! He only wanted what he had lost, the love of the woman who hated him, the respect of the valley into which his life had been sucked. God! He was tired.