and I can see now he was lotting on my doing as well or better –– but hell, that only made matters worse.”
He slid down in his chair and gazed into the fire gloomily. It was the first time Creede had heard his partner use even the mildest of the range expletives, for in that particular he was still a tenderfoot, and the word suddenly conveyed to him the depths of the little man’s abandonment and despair.
“Why –– what was the matter?” he inquired sympathetically. “Couldn’t you git no appointment?”
“Huh!” growled Hardy. “I guess you know, all right. Look at me!” he exclaimed, in a sudden gust of passion and resentment. “Why, damn it, man, I’m an inch too short!”
“Well –– I’ll –– be –– dogged!” breathed Creede. “I never thought of that!”
“No,” rejoined Hardy bitterly, “nor the Old Man, either –– not until I stopped growing! Well, he hasn’t had a bit of use for me since. That’s the size of it. And he didn’t take any pains to conceal the fact –– most army men don’t. There’s only one man in the world to them, and that’s a soldier; and if you’re not a soldier, you’re nothing.”
He waved a hand as if dismissing himself from the universe, and sank moodily into his seat, while Creede looked him over in silence.
“Rufe,” he said quietly, “d’ye remember that time when I picked you to be boss sheep-wrangler, down at Bender? Well, I might as well tell you about that now –– ’t won’t do no harm. The old judge couldn’t figure out what it was I see in you to recommend you for the job. Like’s not you don’t know yourself. He thought I was pickin’ you because you was a peaceful guy, and wouldn’t fight Black Tex; but that’s where he got fooled, and fooled bad! I picked you because I knew dam’ well you would fight!”
He leaned far over across the table and his eyes glowed with a fierce light.
“D’ye think I want some little suckin’ mamma’s-joy of a diplomat on my hands when it comes to a show-down with them sheepmen?” he cried. “No, by God, I want a man, and you’re the boy, Rufe; so shake!”
He rose and held out his hand. Hardy took it.
“I wouldn’t have sprung this on you, pardner,” he continued apologetically, “if I didn’t see you so kinder down in the mouth about your old man. But I jest want you to know that they’s one man that appreciates you for a plain scrapper. And I’ll tell you another thing; when the time comes you’ll look jest as big over the top of a six-shooter as I do, and stand only half the chanst to git hit. W’y, shucks!” he exclaimed magnanimously, “my size is agin’ me at every turn; my horse can’t hardly pack me, I eat such a hell of a lot, and, well, I never can git a pair of pants to fit me. What’s this here letter?”
He picked one up at random, and Hardy ascertained that his tailor some six months previously had moved to a new and more central location, where he would be pleased to welcome all his old customers. But the subject of diminutive size was effectually dismissed and, having cheered up his little friend as best he could, Creede seized the occasion to retire. Lying upon his broad back in his blankets, with Tommy purring comfortably in the hollow of his arm, he smoked out his cigarette in speculative silence, gazing up at the familiar stars whose wheelings mark off the cowboy’s night, and then dropped quietly to sleep, leaving his partner to brood over his letters alone.
For a long time he sat there, opening them one by one –– the vague and indifferent letters which drift in while one is gone; and at last he stole silently across the dirt floor and brought out the three letters from his bed. There in a moment, if he had been present, Creede might have read him like a book; his lips drawn tight, his eyes big and staring, as he tore open one of the pale blue envelopes with trembling hands. The fragments of a violet, shattered by the long journey, fell before him as he plucked out the note, and its delicate fragrance rose up like incense as he read. He hurried through the missive, as if seeking something which was not there, then his hungry eyes left the unprofitable page and wandered about the empty room, only to come back to those last words: “Always your Friend, Kitty Bonnair.”
“Always your friend,” he repeated bitterly –– “always your friend. Ah, God!” He sighed wearily and shook his head. For a moment he lapsed into dreams; then, reaching out, he picked up the second letter, postmarked over a year before, and examined it idly. The very hour of its collection was recorded –– “Ferry Sta. 1.30 A. M.” –– and the date he could never forget. Written on that very same day, and yet its message had never reached him!
He could see as in a vision the shrouded form of Kitty Bonnair slipping from her door at midnight to fling a final word after him, not knowing how far he would flee; he could see the lonely mail collector, half obscured in the San Francisco fog, as he scooped the letter from the box with many others and boarded the car for the ferry. It was a last retort, and likely bitter, for he had spoken in anger himself, and Kitty was not a woman to be denied. There was an exaggerated quirk to the square corners of her letters, a brusque shading of the down strokes –– undoubtedly Kitty was angry. But for once he had disarmed her –– it was a year after, now, and he had read her forgiveness first! Yet it was with a strange sinking of the heart that he opened the blue envelope and stared at the scribbled words:
Dear Friend That Was: My heart is very sore to-night –– I had trusted you so –– I had depended upon you so –– and now you have deliberately broken all your faith and promises. Rufus, I had thought you different from other men –– more gentle, more considerate, more capable of a true friendship which I fondly hoped would last forever –– but now, oh, I can never forgive you! Just when life was heaviest with disappointments, just when I was leaning upon you most as a true friend and comrade –– then you must needs spoil it all. And after I had told you I could never love any one! Have you forgotten all that I told you in the balcony? Have you forgotten all that I have risked for the friendship I held so dear? And then to spoil it all! Oh, I hate you –– I hate you!
He stopped and stiffened in his chair, and his eyes turned wild with horror; then he gathered his letters together blindly and crept away to bed. In the morning he arose and went about his work with mouse-like quietness, performing all things thoroughly and well, talking, even laughing, yet with a droop like that of a wounded creature that seeks only to hide and escape.
Creede watched him furtively, hung around the house for a while, then strode out to the pasture and caught up his horse.
“Be back this aft,” he said, and rode majestically away up the cañon, where he would be out of the way. For men, too, have their instincts and intuitions, and they are even willing to leave alone that which they cannot remedy and do not understand.
As Creede galloped off, leaving the ranch of a sudden lonely and quiet, Tommy poked his head anxiously out through a slit in the canvas bottom of the screen door and began to cry –– his poor cracked voice, all broken from calling for help from the coyotes, quavering dismally. In his most raucous tones he continued this lament for his master until at last Hardy gathered him up and held him to his breast.
“Ah, Kitty, Kitty,” he said, and at the caressing note in his voice the black cat began to purr hoarsely, raising his scrawny head in the ecstasy of being loved. Thief and reprobate though he was, and sadly given to leaping upon the table and flying spitefully at dogs, even that rough creature felt the need of love; how much more the sensitive and high-bred man, once poet and scholar, now cowboy and sheep-wrangler, but always the unhappy slave of Kitty Bonnair.
The two letters lay charred to ashes among the glowing coals, but their words, even the kindest meant, were seared
