Tales of Trail and Town

B >> Bret Harte >> Tales of Trail and Town


"Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin' just now," said Ira, with a flash of
recollection. "Didn't ye, Sue?"

"Why the h-ll didn't she say it before?--I beg your pardon, ma'am;
didn't see you; you'll excuse haste."

Both the men's hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratified
smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward. There was the faintest of
color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she looked
singularly pretty. Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial stirring through
his monotonously wedded years.

The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands and
forearms--leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and upper arm
in charming contrast--and looked gravely past the admiring figures that
nearly touched her own. "It was somewhar over thar," she said lazily,
pointing up the road in the opposite direction to the barn, "but I ain't
sure it WAS any one."

"Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?" said the deputy.

"I reckon--if it WAS him," returned Sue.

"He must have got on," said the deputy; "but then he runs like a deer;
it's his trade."

"Wot trade?"

"Acrobat."

"Wot's that?"

The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity. "A man who runs,
jumps, climbs--and all that sort, in the circus."

"But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?" she
continued with adorable naivete.

The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle. "We're bound to come
up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and this house
it's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his hole without your
spottin' him a mile off! Good-by!" The words were addressed to Ira,
but the parting glance was directed to the pretty wife as the two men
galloped away.

An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife's prettiness and
its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira. It resulted in his
addressing the empty space before his door with, "Well, ye won't ketch
much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with women-folks like this;" and
he was unreasonably delighted at the pretty assent of disdain and scorn
which sparkled in his wife's eyes as she added:--

"Not much, I reckon!"

"That's the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep up,"
said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not amenable to
private sentiment there was no value in free government. Mrs. Beasley,
however, complacently resumed her dish-washing, and Ira returned to his
riata in the adjoining room. For quite an interval there was no sound
but the occasional click of a dish laid upon its pile, with fingers
that, however, were firm and untremulous. Presently Sue's low voice was
heard.

"Wonder if that deputy caught anything yet. I've a good mind to meander
up the road and see."

But the question brought Ira to the door with a slight return of his
former uneasiness. He had no idea of subjecting his wife to another
admiring interview. "I reckon I'll go myself," he said dubiously; "YOU'D
better stay and look after the house."

Her eyes brightened as she carried a pile of plates to the dresser;
it was possible she had foreseen this compromise. "Yes," she said
cheerfully, "you could go farther than me."

Ira reflected. He could also send them about their business if they
thought of returning. He lifted his hat from the floor, took his rifle
down carefully from its pegs, and slouched out into the road. Sue
watched him until he was well away, then flew to the back door, stopping
only an instant to look at her face in a small mirror on the wall,--yet
without noticing her new prettiness,--then ran to the barn. Casting
a backward glance at the diminishing figure of her husband in the
distance, she threw open the door and shut it quickly behind her.
At first the abrupt change from the dazzling outer plain to the deep
shadows of the barn bewildered her. She saw before her a bucket half
filled with dirty water, and a quantity of wet straw littering the
floor; then lifting her eyes to the hay-loft, she detected the figure of
the fugitive, unclothed from the waist upward, emerging from the loose
hay in which he had evidently been drying himself. Whether it was the
excitement of his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetry
of his bared bust and arms--unlike anything she had ever seen
before--clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could not
say, but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed to
the public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious of
detected unreadiness than of shame.

"Gettin' the dust off me," he said, in hurried explanation; "be down
in a second." Indeed, in another moment he had resumed his shirt and
flannel coat, and swung himself to the floor with a like grace and
dexterity, that was to her the revelation of a descending god. She found
herself face to face with him,--his features cleansed of dirt and grime,
his hair plastered in wet curls on his low forehead. It was a face
of cheap adornment, not uncommon in his profession--unintelligent,
unrefined, and even unheroic; but she did not know that. Overcoming a
sudden timidity, she nevertheless told him briefly and concisely of the
arrival and departure of his pursuers.

His low forehead wrinkled. "Thar's no getting away until they come
back," he said without looking at her. "Could ye keep me in here
to-night?"

"Yes," she returned simply, as if the idea had already occurred to her;
"but you must lie low in the loft."

"And could you"--he hesitated, and went on with a forced smile--"you
see, I've eaten nothing since last night. Could you"--

"I'll bring you something," she said quickly, nodding her head.

"And if you had"--he went on more hesitatingly, glancing down at his
travel-torn and frayed garments--"anything like a coat, or any other
clothing? It would disguise me also, you see, and put 'em off the
track."

She nodded her head again rapidly: she had thought of that too; there
was a pair of doeskin trousers and a velvet jacket left by a Mexican
vaquero who had bought stock from them two years ago. Practical as she
was, a sudden conviction that he would look well in the velvet jacket
helped her resolve.

"Did they say"--he said, with his forced smile and uneasy glance--"did
they--tell you anything about me?"

"Yes," she said abstractedly, gazing at him.

"You see," he began hurriedly, "I'll tell you how it was."

"No, don't!" she said quickly. She meant it. She wanted no facts to
stand between her and this single romance of her life. "I must go and
get the things," she added, turning away, "before he gets back."

"Who's HE?" asked the man.

She was about to reply, "My husband," but without knowing why stopped
and said, "Mr. Beasley," and then ran off quickly to the house.

She found the vaquero's clothes, took some provisions, filled a flask of
whiskey in the cupboard, and ran back with them, her mouth expanded to
a vague smile, and pulsating like a schoolgirl. She even repressed
with difficulty the ejaculation "There!" as she handed them to him. He
thanked her, but with eyes fixed and fascinated by the provisions. She
understood it with a new sense of delicacy, and saying, "I'll come again
when he gets back," ran off and returned to the house, leaving him alone
to his repast.

Meantime her husband, lounging lazily along the high road, had
precipitated the catastrophe he wished to avoid. For his slouching
figure, silhouetted against the horizon on that monotonous level, had
been the only one detected by the deputy sheriff and the constable, his
companion, and they had charged down within fifty yards of him before
they discovered their mistake. They were not slow in making this an
excuse for abandoning their quest as far as Lowville: in fact, after
quitting the distraction of Mrs. Beasley's presence they had, without in
the least suspecting the actual truth, become doubtful if the fugitive
had proceeded so far. He might at that moment be snugly ensconced behind
some low wire-grass ridge, watching their own clearly defined figures,
and waiting only for the night to evade them. The Beasley house seemed a
proper place of operation in beating up the field. Ira's cold reception
of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy. "I have the RIGHT,
ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as my posse
to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't the man to
be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as well if I
'requisition' your house." The dreadful recollection that the deputy had
the power to detail him and the constable to scour the plain while he
remained behind in company with Sue stopped Ira's further objections.
Yet, if he could only get rid of her while the deputy was in the
house,--but then his nearest neighbor was five miles away! There was
nothing left for him to do but to return with the men and watch his
wife keenly. Strange to say, there was a certain stimulus in this which
stirred his monotonous pulses and was not without a vague pleasure.
There is a revelation to some natures in newly awakened jealousy that is
a reincarnation of love.

As they came into the house a slight circumstance, which an hour ago
would have scarcely touched his sluggish sensibilities, now appeared to
corroborate his fear. His wife had changed her cuffs and collar, taken
off her rough apron, and evidently redressed her hair. This, with the
enhanced brightness of her eyes, which he had before noticed, convinced
him that it was due to the visit of the deputy. There was no doubt that
the official was equally attracted and fascinated by her prettiness, and
although her acceptance of his return was certainly not a cordial one,
there was a kind of demure restraint and over-consciousness in her
manner that might be coquetry. Ira had vaguely observed this quality in
other young women, but had never experienced it in his brief courtship.
There had been no rivalry, no sexual diplomacy nor insincerity in his
capture of the motherless girl who had leaped from the tail-board of her
father's wagon almost into his arms, and no man had since come between
them. The idea that Sue should care for any other than himself had been
simply inconceivable to his placid, matter-of-fact nature. That their
sacrament was final he had never doubted. If his two cows, bought
with his own money or reared by him, should suddenly have developed
an inclination to give milk to a neighbor, he would not have been more
astonished. But THEY could have been brought back with a rope, and
without a heart throb.

Passion of this kind, which in a less sincere society restricts its
expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira only
dumb and lethargic. He moved slowly and abstractedly around the room,
accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped helplessly into
a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the contiguity of his
wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of--he knew not what.
The atmosphere of the little house seemed to him charged with some
unwholesome electricity. It kindled his wife's eyes, stimulating the
deputy and his follower to coarse playfulness, enthralled his own limbs
to the convulsive tightening of his fingers around the rungs of his
chair. Yet he managed to cling to his idea of keeping his wife occupied,
and of preventing any eyeshot between her and her guests, or the
indulgence of dangerously flippant conversation, by ordering her to
bring some refreshment. "What's gone o' the whiskey bottle?" he said,
after fumbling in the cupboard.

Mrs. Beasley did not blench. She only gave her head a slight toss. "Ef
you men can't get along with the coffee and flapjacks I'm going to give
ye, made with my own hands, ye kin just toddle right along to the
first bar, and order your tangle-foot there. Ef it's a barkeeper you're
looking for, and not a lady, say so!"

The novel audacity of this speech, and the fact that it suggested
that preoccupation he hoped for, relieved Ira for a moment, while it
enchanted the guests as a stroke of coquettish fascination. Mrs. Beasley
triumphantly disappeared in the kitchen, slipped off her cuffs and set
to work, and in a few moments emerged with a tray bearing the cakes and
steaming coffee. As neither she nor her husband ate anything (possibly
owing to an equal preoccupation) the guests were obliged to confine
their attentions to the repast before them. The sun, too, was already
nearing the horizon, and although its nearly level beams acted like a
powerful search-light over the stretching plain, twilight would soon
put an end to the quest. Yet they lingered. Ira now foresaw a new
difficulty: the cows were to be brought up and fodder taken from the
barn; to do this he would be obliged to leave his wife and the deputy
together. I do not know if Mrs. Beasley divined his perplexity, but she
carelessly offered to perform that evening function herself. Ira's heart
leaped and sank again as the deputy gallantly proposed to assist her.
But here rustic simplicity seemed to be equal to the occasion. "Ef I
propose to do Ira's work," said Mrs. Beasley, with provocative archness,
"it's because I reckon he'll do more good helpin' you catch your
man than you'll do helpin' ME! So clear out, both of ye!" A feminine
audacity that recalled the deputy to himself, and left him no choice but
to accept Ira's aid. I do not know whether Mrs. Beasley felt a pang of
conscience as her husband arose gratefully and limped after the deputy;
I only know that she stood looking at them from the door, smiling and
triumphant.

Then she slipped out of the back door again, and ran swiftly to the
barn, fastening on her clean cuffs and collar as she ran. The fugitive
was anxiously awaiting her, with a slight touch of brusqueness in his
eagerness.

"Thought you were never coming!" he said.

She breathlessly explained, and showed him through the half-opened door
the figures of the three men slowly spreading and diverging over the
plain, like the nearly level sun-rays they were following. The sunlight
fell also on her panting bosom, her electrified sandy hair, her red,
half-opened mouth, and short and freckled upper lip. The relieved
fugitive turned from the three remoter figures to the one beside him,
and saw, for the first time, that it was fair. At which he smiled, and
her face flushed and was irradiated.

Then they fell to talk,--he grateful, boastful,--as the distant figures
grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his expression rather
than his words, with her own girlish face and brightening eyes. But what
he said, or how he explained his position, with what speciousness he
dwelt upon himself, his wrongs, and his manifold manly virtues, is not
necessary for us to know, nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.
Enough for her that she felt she had found the one man of all the world,
and that she was at that moment protecting him against all the world! He
was the unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhood
had never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child of
her unsatisfied maternal yearnings. If she could not comprehend all his
selfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she could not
follow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was SHE who was deficient;
if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was because it was the
language of a larger world from which she had been excluded. To this
world belonged the beautiful limbs she gazed on,--a very different
world from that which had produced the rheumatic deformities and useless
mayhem of her husband, or the provincially foppish garments of the
deputy. Sitting in the hayloft together, where she had mounted for
greater security, they forgot themselves in his monologue of cheap
vaporing, broken only by her assenting smiles and her half-checked
sighs. The sharp spices of the heated pine-shingles over their heads
and the fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air around
them. The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not; until
the usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying "I must go
now," she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end. For, as she
rose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and attempted to
raise the face that was suddenly bending down as if seeking to hide
itself in the hay. It was a brief struggle, ending in a submission as
sudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager that it might have been
impending for days instead of minutes.

"Oh, Sue! where are ye?"

It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only then
realized. The man threw her aside with a roughness that momentarily
shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHE would have
confronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and translated,--had he
but kept her there. Yet she answered, with a quiet, level voice that
astonished her lover, "Here! I'm just coming down!" and walked coolly
to the ladder. Looking over, and seeing her husband with the deputy
standing in the barnyard, she quickly returned, put her finger to her
lips, made a gesture for her companion to conceal himself in the hay
again, and was turning away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior
calmness, he grasped her hand tightly and whispered, "Come again
tonight, dear; do!" She hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips,
and then quickly disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.

"Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see," said Ira wearily. "Whitey
and Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just waitin'."

"The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, and
mustn't be disturbed," said Mrs. Beasley, with decision; "and ye'll have
to take the hay from the stack to-night. And," with an arch glance at
the deputy, "as I don't see that you two have done much either, you're
just in time to help fodder down."

Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the task
was soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no opportunity for
exclusive dalliance with Mrs. Beasley. She shut the barn door herself,
and led the way to the house, learning incidentally that the deputy had
abandoned the chase, was to occupy a "shake-down" on the kitchen-floor
that night with the constable, and depart at daybreak. The gloom of
her husband's face had settled into a look of heavy resignation and
alternate glances of watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her
with renewed vivacity. But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing
presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief. When
the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in copious
draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle, and even
pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her previous
inhospitality.

"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you that
Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.

Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a cocktail in
such delightful imitation of the fashionable barkeeper's dexterity that
her guests were convulsed with admiration. Even Ira was struck with
this revelation of a youthfulness that five years of household care had
checked, but never yet subdued. He had forgotten that he had married a
child. Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel,
had he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very
inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits. It was another face
that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of abstraction that
struck a chill to his heart. It was not HIS Sue that was standing there,
but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to his morbid extravagance, by
some one else's hand.

Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring she
was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the liquor she
had pretended to taste, went early to bed. The deputy, not finding the
gloomy company of the husband to his taste, presently ensconced himself
on the floor, before the kitchen fire, in the blankets that she had
provided. The constable followed his example. In a few moments the house
was silent and sleeping, save for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk
on his chest and his hands gripping the arms of his chair before the
dying embers of his hearth.

He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an
inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to grasp
the situation before him. The common sense that had hitherto governed
his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and that there was
nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her coquetry and aberration
would not pass as easily. But it recurred to him that she had never
shown this coquetry or aberration to HIM during their own brief
courtship,--that she had never looked or acted like this before. If this
was love, she had never known it; if it was only "women's ways," as he
had heard men say, and so dangerously attractive, why had she not shown
it to him? He remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride without
timidity, without blushes, without expectation beyond the transference
of her home to his. Would it have been different with another man?--with
the deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face? What
did it all mean? Were all married people like this? There were the
Westons, their neighbors,--was Mrs. Weston like Sue? But he remembered
that Mrs. Weston had run away with Mr. Weston from her father's house.
It was what they called "a love match." Would Sue have run away with
him? Would she now run away with--?

The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his first
impulse of anger--from the table. He took another gulp of whiskey. It
tasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of his
blood. He would go to bed. Here a new and indefinable timidity took
possession of him; he remembered the strange look in his wife's face. It
seemed suddenly as if the influence of the sleeping stranger in the next
room had not only isolated her from him, but would make his presence
in her bedroom an intrusion on their hidden secrets. He had to pass the
open door of the kitchen. The head of the unconscious deputy was close
to Ira's heavy boot. He had only to lift his heel to crush that ruddy,
good-looking, complacent face. He hurried past him, up the creaking
stairs. His wife lay still on one side of the bed, apparently asleep,
her face half-hidden in her loosened, fluffy hair. It was well; for in
the vague shyness and restraint that was beginning to take possession
of him he felt he could not have spoken to her, or, if he had, it would
have been only to voice the horrible, unformulated things that seemed to
choke him. He crept softly to the opposite side of the bed, and began to
undress. As he pulled off his boots and stockings, his eye fell upon
his bare, malformed feet. This caused him to look at his maimed hand,
to rise, drag himself across the floor to the mirror, and gaze upon his
lacerated ear. She, this prettily formed woman lying there, must have
seen it often; she must have known all these years that he was not like
other men,--not like the deputy, with his tight riding-boots, his soft
hand, and the diamond that sparkled vulgarly on his fat little finger.
A cold sweat broke over him. He drew on his stockings again, lifted the
outer counterpane, and, half undressed, crept under it, wrapping its
corner around his maimed hand, as if to hide it from the light. Yet he
felt that he saw things dimly; there was a moisture on his cheeks and
eyelids he could not account for; it must be the whiskey "coming out."

His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe. What if she
should never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the lanky
girl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated? It would be better
than this. Yet at the same moment the picture was before him of her
pretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared arms and laughing
eyes, all so new, so fresh to him! He tried to listen to the slow
ticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of air through the house,
and the movement, like a deep sigh, which was the regular, inarticulate
speech of the lonely plain beyond, and quite distinct from the evening
breeze. He had heard it often, but, like so many things he had learned
that day, he never seemed to have caught its meaning before. Then,
perhaps, it was his supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of
the whiskey he had taken, but all this presently became confused and
whirling. Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear
voices that called him to "wake," and in the midst of it he fell into a
profound sleep.

The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay motionless
for many minutes.

Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appalling
snort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke. A healthy animal, he had
shaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a thirst for water
and fresh air. He raised his knees and rubbed his eyes. The water bucket
was missing from the corner. Well, he knew where the spring was, and a
turn out of the close and stifling kitchen would do him good. He
yawned, put on his boots softly, opened the back door, and stepped out.
Everything was dark, but above and around him, to the very level of his
feet, all apparently pricked with bright stars. The bulk of the barn
rose dimly before him on the right, to the left was the spring. He
reached it, drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.
The dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him,
rimmed with stars, did the rest. He began to saunter slowly back,
the only reminiscence of his evening's potations being the figure he
recalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted glasses,
imitating the barkeeper. A complacent smile straightened his yellow
mustache. How she kept glancing at him and watching him, the little
witch! Ha! no wonder! What could she find in the surly, slinking, stupid
brute yonder? (The gentleman here alluded to was his host.) But the
deputy had not been without a certain provincial success with the fair.
He was true to most men, and fearless to all. One may not be too hard
upon him at this moment of his life.