The Full of the Moon/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
Bob Fights It Out
Riley, the freighter, now shoulder to shoulder, with his passenger, bellowed:
"Git!"
They stepped inside and cleared the doorway for the exit of the Mexicans, who, in obedience to the familiar voice, flung down their guns and fled upon each other's heels like a band of frightened sheep.
Through the settling dust the Americans looked into one another's faces, grinning foolishly.
"I feel like a feller what's been treed by a pole-kitty, or some such dangerous varmint. Serves us right for gittin' careless." Mossy Green picked up Señor Apedaca's crushed derby and poked it into shape with his fist as he made the shame-faced admission. Ben Evans, with a mixture of feelings, was watching the stranger make his way among the overturned benches to Nan's side. She met him with an outstretched hand.
"Are you glad to see me, Nan?" He searched her face eagerly, for the hope had grown that he might find something more than friendship in her welcome.
"So very glad, Bob," she answered, "and so amazed!"
A shadow crossed his face; there was only the frank cordiality of comradeship in her tone.
"I expected to surprise you," he returned, "but scarcely anticipated being so surprised myself. The situation was—awkward."
"Your coming as you did was exactly like one of these 'just-in-the-nick-o'-time' stories." Nan smiled up at him gratefully, and he returned the smile with yearning in his eyes. In her bizarre dress she looked more adorable than ever.
Then she presented him to Edith, who gave him her hand shyly and beckoned Ben.
Bob brought with him strongly the atmosphere of the world from which he had come. His well-fitting, inconspicuous clothes, his modulated speech, his poise of manner, bore the stamp of another environment and unconsciously Nan now looked at her present surroundings through the eyes with which she knew he saw.
Her pride was great, and she was more anxious than she realized that Ben should appear well before Bob. She wanted him to approve of him—in other words, to see him as she saw him, which was through the rosy glow of romance.
As Ben came toward them there flashed through Nan's mind the wish that Ben would eschew the purple scarfs, of which he seemed to have an unlimited supply, and his slight swagger, the result largely of his high-heeled boots, somehow made her uncomfortable.
To the cook's facetious—"Looks like Riley's dude is cuttin' you out, Ben," he had retorted curtly:
"Shut up! You stirred up trouble enough for one night"; but the implication rankled and evidenced itself in the stiffness with which he extended his hand to meet Bob's friendly grasp.
The moment was strained in spite of Nan's best efforts, and her cheeks grew warm under Bob's look of quizzical inquiry at the silent antagonism which Ben's manner displayed.
A singular attitude to assume toward one who had perhaps saved his life, or at least averted a clash in which he was almost certain to have been hurt. Bob's mystification was entirely real. Ben made no reference to Bob's timely interference, and Nan, in the hope that Ben might be reminded of the omission, asked Bob how he had learned of their predicament.
"A child," said Bob—"a little girl who was beside herself at your danger, Nan."
"Rosario Richards, bless her heart!"
"She could scarcely speak in her excitement. She had been looking at the dance through the window, it seems."
"But why are you here—you of all persons—reeking with effeteness one may say? Surely you are not the guardian with whom I've been threatened?"
Bob shook his head.
"No such luck. I'm here only for a few days, then I'm off for a try at big game."
Mr. Robert Ellison had no notion of explaining that she was the sole cause of his presence there; that her hint of Spiser and his bogus hospitality, and afterward her long silence, had troubled him until under this pretext he had come West.
Ben shifted restlessly during the conversation, giving only half attention to Edith, who made timid and despairing attempts to interest him.
"Shan't we better be going, Nan?" he interrupted in a tone of proprietorship which made Nan's color rise again as she saw Bob's eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise.
"Perhaps; obviously, the dance is over." She took the scarf he handed her, with an embarrassed laugh.
Bob helped Edith find her wrap and offered her his arm with a gentle deference which made her everlastingly his friend and ally.
There was no longer any mystery to Bob about Ben's constraint, his unbending manner, his downright rudeness. He was in love with Nan—he was childishly jealous and unable to conceal it. And Nan—did she care—was she seriously attached to this crude, picturesque man of the mesas and prairies?
With all her adventurous spirit and romantic notions, he always had thought of Nan as particularly level-headed, incapable of doing anything really outré, and for the moment the discovery of this love-affair affected him as though she had announced her intention of marrying Rupert, the coachman, whose last name was Higgins.
As he bade them all good night there was nothing in the easy friendliness of his manner to indicate the shock which the revelation had been to him. But he was anxious to be alone, to think it out, to readjust his plans if possible, and his point of view.
All night he lay awake on the hard cornhusk mattress in the one extra bed in the dobe of Riley, the freighter, trying to realize how life would seem if it no longer included Nan.
With a peculiar obstinacy, a characteristic tenacity of purpose for which Nan did not give him credit, he always had clung to the belief that in the end she would marry him—after she had had her "fling," as she called it—if he waited patiently for the time when she should learn her own mind and heart.
In spite of the attention Nan had received, there never had been any other man who had figured with sufficient prominence to seriously disturb him in this belief.
In his efforts to be just, Bob told himself over and over that it was unfair and un-American to urge it against Ben that his sphere was so radically different from Nan's and his own. He tried hard to think of this courageous, handsome but ill-mannered cowpuncher as a social equal, but his life-long training was against it. He failed dismally, and to scourge himself for his undemocratic prejudices he dwelt humbly upon his own short-comings. He told himself that he was a dawdler, a useless member of society and perhaps a coward. He was not sure that he would have had the courage to have stood up there as Ben had done and defied an hysterical Mexican to fill him full of holes. Also he was afraid of snakes—they made him shudder, shiver—and his antipathy for spiders was nearly as strong.
He was helpless, too, he told himself; he was not resourceful and able to cope with emergencies—like Riley, for instance. Riley could shoe a horse and mend a wagon with a twist of baling-wire and cook and tell how fast a horse was travelling from the track he left and—well, the versatile Riley was a wonder.
In his depression and humility he could not think of a single quality he had to recommend him to an intelligent girl.
Yet after reviewing every phase of the situation and admitting meekly his own inadequacy, he found when morning came that he was, no more resigned to the relinquishment of the future he had planned with Nan than before.
"I don't want to be a cad and force myself upon her if she really knows her own mind," he said miserably to the reflection which looked at him from the mirror, "but I can't just take myself off and quit until I'm sure beyond the question of a doubt that she loves him and has no use on earth for me.
"I'm not a noble hero. I'd run like thunder if one of these long-horned steers chased me, and any horse that pitches could probably lay me on the back of my neck, but I do believe I'm man enough to take my medicine and help smooth the way for her if she can't be happy with any one but this prairie knight."