“Shore. Thet’s what I said. Any woman’s dress without top or bottom is onnatural. It’s not right. Why, you looked like—like”—here he floundered for adequate expression—“like one of the devil’s angels. An’ I want to hear why you wore it.”
“For the same reason I’d wear any dress,” she felt forced to reply.
“Pretty Eyes, thet’s a lie. An’ you know it’s a lie. You wore thet white dress to knock the daylights out of men. Only you ain’t honest enough to say so.... Even me or my kind! Even us, who’re dirt under your little feet. But all the same we’re men, an’ mebbe better men than you think. If you had to put that dress on, why didn’t you stay in your room? Naw, you had to come down an’ strut around an’ show off your beauty. An’ I ask you—if you’re a nice girl like Flo Hutter—what’d you wear it fer?”
Carley not only was mute; she felt rise and burn in her a singular shame and surprise.
“I’m only a sheep dipper,” went on Ruff, “but I ain’t no fool. A fellar doesn’t have to live East an’ wear swell clothes to have sense. Mebbe you’ll learn thet the West is bigger’n you think. A man’s a man East or West. But if your Eastern men stand for such dresses as thet white one they’d do well to come out West awhile, like your lover, Glenn Kilbourne. I’ve been rustlin’ round here ten years, an’ I never before seen a dress like yours—an’ I never heerd of a girl bein’ insulted, either. Mebbe you think I insulted you. Wal, I didn’t. Fer I reckon nothin’ could insult you in thet dress.... An’ my last hunch is this, Pretty Eyes. You’re not what a hombre like me calls either square or game. Adios.”
His bulky figure darkened the doorway, passed out, and the light of the sky streamed into the cabin again. Carley sat staring. She heard Ruff’s spurs tinkle, then the ring of steel on stirrup, a sodden leathery sound as he mounted, and after that a rapid pound of hoofs, quickly dying away.
He was gone. She had escaped something raw and violent. Dazedly she realized it, with unutterable relief. And she sat there slowly gathering the nervous force that had been shattered. Every word that he had uttered was stamped in startling characters upon her consciousness. But she was still under the deadening influence of shock. This raw experience was the worst the West had yet dealt her. It brought back former states of revulsion and formed them in one whole irrefutable and damning judgment that seemed to blot out the vaguely dawning and growing happy susceptibilities. It was, perhaps, just as well to have her mind reverted to realistic fact. The presence of Haze Ruff, the astounding truth of the contact with his huge sheep-defiled hands, had been profanation and degradation under which she sickened with fear and shame. Yet hovering back of her shame and rising anger seemed to be a pale, monstrous, and indefinable thought, insistent and accusing, with which she must sooner or later reckon. It might have been the voice of the new side of her nature, but at that moment of outraged womanhood, and of revolt against the West, she would not listen. It might, too, have been the still small voice of conscience. But decision of mind and energy coming to her then, she threw off the burden of emotion and perplexity, and forced herself into composure before the arrival of Glenn.
The dust had ceased to blow, although the wind had by no means died away. Sunset marked the west in old rose and gold, a vast flare. Carley espied a horseman far down the road, and presently recognized both rider and steed. He was coming fast. She went out and, mounting her mustang, she rode out to meet Glenn. It did not appeal to her to wait for him at the cabin; besides hoof tracks other than those made by her mustang might have been noticed by Glenn. Presently he came up to her and pulled his loping horse.
“Hello! I sure was worried,” was his greeting, as his gloved hand went out to her. “Did you run into that sandstorm?”
“It ran into me, Glenn, and buried me,” she laughed.