“Well, you can’t!” snapped Irwin. “He’ll stay right here till I think it safe to move him. It’s my say-so, Aleck.”
“Sure. And while he’s at the Circle Diamond I’ll leave a couple of men to help nurse him. He might hurt himself trying to move before he’s really fit to travel,” the sheriff announced with a grim little smile.
Ruth was head nurse herself. For years she had held a bitter resentment against Falkner, but it could not stand against the thing that had happened. Put to the acid test, the man had sacrificed his chances of escape to save her and the baby. Alone, he could have reached the Yerby ranch and gone through one of the passes before Matson had closed it. With her and the baby as encumbrances he had not dared try the deeper snow of the upper hills. Because of his choice he lay in Rowan’s room, wounded, condemned to a return to Rawlins.
Never in his rough and turbulent life had the man been treated with such gentle consideration. The clean linen and dainty food were external effects of an atmosphere wholly alien to his experience. Here were kindness and friendly smiles and an unimaginable tenderness. All three of the women were good to him in their own way, but it was for Ruth that his hungry eyes watched the door. She brought the baby with her one day, after the fever had left him, and set the youngster on the bed, where the invalid could watch him play.
Falkner did not talk much. He lay quiet for hours, scarce moving, unless little Rowan was in the room. Ruth, coming in silently one afternoon, caught the brooding despair in his eyes.
He turned to her gently. “What makes you so good to me? You know you hate me.”
Her frank, friendly smile denied the charge. “No, I don’t hate you at all. I did, but I don’t now.”
“I’m keeping Rowan away from you. It was my fault he went there in the first place.”
“Yes, but you saved Baby’s life—and mine, too. If you had looked out only for yourself, you wouldn’t be lying here wounded, and perhaps you would have got away.” She flashed deep, tender eyes on him. “I’ll tell you a secret, Mr. Falkner. You’re not half so bad as you think you are. Can’t I see how you love Baby and how fond he is of you? You’re just like the rest of us, but you haven’t had a fair chance. So we’re going to be good to you while we can, and after you come back from prison we’re going to be friends.”
The ice that had gathered at his heart for years was melting fast. He turned his face to the wall and lay still there till dusk. Perhaps it was then that he fought out the final battle of his fight with himself.