Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (life changing books to read .TXT) 📗

she added forlornly, “he's my husband. I couldn't—I had to do what I could to shield him—just for sake of the past, I suppose. Much as I despise him, I can't forget that—that I cared once. It's because I wanted your advice that I—”

“It's a pity you didn't get it sooner, then! Can't you see what you've done? Why, think a minute! A VP calf running with a Wishbone cow—why, it's—you couldn't advertise Man as a rustler any better if you tried. The first fellow that runs onto that cow and calf—well, he won't need to do any guessing—he'll know. It's a ticket to Deer Lodge—that VP calf. Now do you see?” He turned away to the window and stood looking absently at the brown hillside, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

“And there's Fred De Garmo, with his new job, ranging around the country just aching to cinch somebody and show his authority. It's a matter of days almost. He'd like nothing better than to get a whack at Man, even if the Wishbone—”

Outside, they could hear Polycarp throwing the wood off the wagon; knowing him as they did, they knew, it would not be long before he found an excuse for coming into the house. He had more than once evinced a good deal of interest in Kent's visits there, and shown an unmistakable desire to know what they were talking about. They had never paid much attention to him; but now even Val felt a vague uneasiness lest he overhear. She had been sitting, her face buried in her arms, crushed beneath the knowledge of what she had done.

“Don't worry, little woman.” Kent went over and passed his hand lightly over her hair. “You did what looked to you to be the right thing—the honest thing. And the chances are he'd get caught before long, anyhow. I don't reckon this is the first time he's done it.”

“Oh-h—but to think—to think that I should do it—when I wanted to save him! He—Kent, I despise him—he has killed all the love I ever felt for him—killed it over and over—but if anybody finds that calf, and—and if they—Kent, I shall go crazy if I have to feel that I sent him—to—prison. To think of him—shut up there—and to know that I did it—I can't bear it!” She caught his arm. She pressed her forehead against it. “Kent, isn't there some way to get it back? If I should find it—and—and shoot it—and pay the Wishbone what it's worth—oh, any amount—or shoot the cow—or—” she raised her face imploringly to his—“tell me, pal—or I shall go stark, raving mad!”

Polycarp came into the kitchen, and, from the sound, he was trying to enter as unobtrusively as possible, even to the extent of walking on his toes.

“Go see what that darned old sneak wants,” Kent commanded in an undertone. “Act as if nothing happened—if you can.” He watched anxiously, while she drew a long breath, pressed her hands hard against her cheeks, closed her lips tightly, and then, with something like composure, went quietly to the door and threw it open. Polycarp was standing very close to it, on the other side. He drew back a step.

“I wondered if I better git another load, now I've got the team hooked up,” he began in his rasping, nasal voice, his slitlike eyes peering inquisitively into the room. “Hello, Kenneth—I thought that was your horse standin' outside. Or would you rather I cut up a pile? I dunno but what I'll have to go t'town t'-morrerr or next day—mebby I better cut you some wood, hey? If Man ain't likely to be home, mebby—”

“I think, Polycarp, well have a storm soon. So it would be good policy to haul another load, don't you think? I can manage very well with what there is cut until Manley returns; and there are always small branches that I can break easily with the axe. I really think it would be safer to have another load hauled now while we can. Don't you think so?” Val even managed to smile at him. “If my head wasn't so bad,” she added deceitfully, “I should be tempted to go along, just for a dose sight of the river. Mr. Burnett is going directly—perhaps I may walk down later on. But you had better not wait—I shouldn't want to keep you working till dark.”

Polycarp, eying her and Kent, and the room in all its details, forced his hand into his trousers pocket, brought up his battered plug of tobacco and pried off a piece, which he rolled into his left cheek with his tongue.

“Jest as you say,” he surrendered, though it was perfectly plain that he would much prefer to cut wood and so be able to see all that went on, even though he was denied the gratification of hearing what they said. He waited a moment, but Val turned away, and even had the audacity to close the door upon his unfinished reply. He listened for a moment, his head craned forward.

“Purty kinda goings-on!” he mumbled. “Time Man had a flea put in 'is ear, by granny, if he don't want to lose that yeller-eyed wife of hisn.” To Polycarp, a closed door—when a man and woman were alone upon the other side—could mean nothing but surreptitious kisses and the like. He went stumbling out and drove away down the coulee, his head turning automatically so that his eyes were constantly upon the house; from his attitude, as Kent saw him through the window Polycarp expected an explosion, at the very least. His outraged virtue vested itself in one more sentence; “Purty blamed nervy, by granny—to go 'n' shut the door right in m' face!”

Inside the room, Val stood for a minute with her back against the door, as if she half feared Polycarp would break in and drag her secret from her. When she heard him leave the kitchen she drew a long breath, eloquent in itself: when the rattle of the wagon came to them there, she left the door and went slowly across the room until she stood close to Kent. The interruption had steadied them both. Her voice was a constrained calm when she spoke.

{Illustration: To draw the red hot spur across the fresh VP did not take long}

“Well—is there anything I can do? Because I suppose every minute is dangerous.”

Kent kept his eyes upon the departing Polycarp.

“There's nothing you can do, no. Maybe I can do something; soon as that granny gossip is outa sight, I'll go and round up that cow and calf—if somebody hasn't beaten me to it.”

Val looked at him with a certain timid helplessness.

“Oh! Will you—won't it be against the law if you—if you kill it?” She grew slightly excited again. “Kent, you shall not get into any trouble for—for his sake! If it comes to a choice, why—let him suffer for his crime. You shall not!”

Kent turned his head slowly and gazed down at her. “Don't run away with the idea I'm doing it for him,” he told her distinctly. “I love Man Fleetwood like I love a wolf. But if that VP calf catches him up, you'd fight your head over it, God only knows how long. I know you! You'd think so much about the part you played that you'd wind up by forgetting everything else. You'd get to thinking of him as a martyr, maybe! No—it's for you. I kinda got you into this, you recollect? If I'd let you see Man