The Branding Iron

by Katharine Newlin Burt

She went out to look. In five minutes—he had gone back to his work at the desk—he heard her laugh, and, still laughing, she opened the door again.

“Oh, Mr. Gael, were you really thinking that I could wear these? Look.”

He turned and looked at her. She had crowded her strong, lithe frame into a brown tweed suit, a world too narrow for her, and she was laughing heartily at herself and had come in to show him the misfit.

“These things, Mr. Gael,” she said,—“they must have been made for a tall child.”

Prosper had too far tempted his pain, and in her vivid phrase it came to life before him. She had painted a startling picture and he had seen that suit, so small and trim, before.

Joan saw his face grow white, his eyes stared through her. He drew a quick breath and winced away from her, hiding his face in his hands. A moment later he was weeping convulsively, with violence, his head down between his hands. Joan started toward him, but he made a wicked and repellent gesture. She fled into her room and sat, bewildered, on her bed.

All at once the question came to her: for whom had the delicate fabrics been bought, for whom had this suit been made? “It was his wife and she is dead,” thought Joan, and very pitifully she took off the suit, laid it and the other things away, and sitting by her window rested her chin in her hands and stared out through the blue pines. Tears ran down her face because she was so sorry for Prosper’s pain. And again, thought Joan, she had caused it, she who owed him everything. Yes, she was deeply sorry for Prosper, deeply; her whole heart was stirred. For the first time she had a longing to comfort him with her hands.

For all that day Prosper fled the house and went across the country, now fording a flood of melted snow, now floundering through a drift, now walking on springy sod, unaware of the soft spring, conscious only of a sort of fire in his breast. He suffered and he resented his suffering, and he would have killed his heart if, by so doing, he could have given it peace. And all day he did not once think of Joan, but only of the “tall child” for whom the gay cañon refuge had been built, but who had never set her slim foot upon its threshold. Sunset found him miles away in the foothills of a low, many-folded range across the plain. He was dog tired, so that for very exhaustion his brain had stopped its tormenting work. He lit a fire and sat by it, huddled in his coat, smoking, dozing, not able really to sleep for cold and hunger. The bright stars, flung all about the sky, mildly regarded hum. Coyotes mourned their loneliness and hunger near and far, and once, in the broken woods above him, a mountain lion gave its blood-curdling scream. Prosper hated the night and its beautiful desolation, he hated the God that had made this land. He cursed the dawn when it came delicately, spreading a green arc of radiance across the east. And then, as he arose stiffly, stamped out his fire, and started slowly on his way back, he was conscious of a passionate homesickness, not for the old life he had lost, but for his cabin, his bright hearth, his shut-in solitude, his Joan. Very dear and real and human she was, and her laughter had been sweet. He had shocked it to silence, he had repulsed her comforting hands. She had been so innocent of any desire to hurt him. He could not imagine her ever hurting any one, this broad-browed Joan. She was so kind. And now she must be anxious about him. She would have sat up by the fire all night.... His eagerness for her slighted comfort gave his lagging steps a certain vigor, the long walk back seemed very long, indeed. Noon was hot, but he found water and by sundown he came to the cañon trail. He wanted Joan as badly now as a hurt child wants its mother. He came, haggard and breathless, to the door, called “Joan,” came into the warm little room and found it empty. Wen Ho, to be sure, pattered to meet him.

“Mister Gael been gone a long time, velly long, all night. Wen Ho, he fix bed, fix breakfast—oh, the lady? She gone out yestiddy, not come back. She leave a letter for him, there on the table.”

Prosper took it, waved Wen Ho out, and, dropping into the big chair, opened the paper. There was Joan’s big handwriting, that he himself had taught her. Before she could only sign her name.