Ironheart

Betty went to sleep critical of Justin. She woke, in the dawn of a new day streaming through the window, to censure of her own conduct. Willful though the girl was, she had a capacity for generosity that saved her from selfishness.

It was just as Lon said, her thoughts ran. She had to boss everybody and everything, always had to have her own way without regard to others. No wonder Justin did not like it. If she had tried hard enough, she could have made him see that this adventure was a duty laid on her, one she could not escape and retain her self-respect. Instead, she had managed so badly that she had thrown him quite out of sympathy with her point of view.

A child of impulse, she decided swiftly as she dressed to have a little talk with him and say she was sorry. With this resolve came peace. Everything would be all right now between them.

Hollister smiled when she came to his bedside and asked him how he was. His face reassured her. It was very pale, but it held the look of one who means to get well. Dr. Rayburn backed its promise.

“He’s doing fine. Fever gone down a lot. Nursing’s the thing now, Miss Betty. You can do more for him than I can.”

“Are you going back to town to-day?” she asked.

“Got to. No two ways about that. Be back day after to-morrow probably. Keep giving him the tablets. Every two hours. And a teaspoon of the liquid three times a day.”

They had drawn away from the bedside and by mutual consent passed out of the door into the sunshine. The crisp morning air was delightful. A million glints of light sparkled from the snow.

“He’s really better, isn’t he?” she asked eagerly, and her voice throbbed with young life.

“Better, yes. But—sometimes a man seems definitely to be on the mend and then he relapses without any apparent cause. It’s too soon to say he’s getting better. All I can say is that, if no unfavorable complications set in, he ought to improve.”

“Ought you to leave him?”

He threw up his hands in an energy of exasperation. “If you had half as much to do as I have, young lady—”

“I know, but if he’s really still in danger—”

“Danger!” fumed the doctor. “Do you think Mrs. Pillsbury can wait for him to get out of danger?”

“I didn’t know—”

“Babies are born when they’re born,” he sputtered. “I’ve got to leave for town right after breakfast.”

Justin came round the corner of the house. Betty almost ran to give him her hand. Her eyes were shining wells of friendliness.

“I want to see you after breakfast,” she whispered.

He nodded, non-committally.

Black called from inside, “Yore coffee’s b’ilin’, folks.”

He gave them flapjacks and syrup.

“I love flapjacks,” Betty told him.

Their host said nothing, but he was pleased.

Lon came in late and drew up a chair beside Betty. “How’s everything this glad mo’ning?” he asked.

“Fine as the wheat.” She added as an aside, “And the bossy little flapper isn’t half so bossy as she sometimes lets on.”

His grin met her smile. They understood each other very well and were still friends. Betty pushed into the back of her mind a fugitive wish that Justin could know and appreciate her as well as good old Lon did.

After breakfast Betty and Merrick took a short walk.

“Scrumptious day,” she commented. Then, as though it were a continuation of the same thought: “I’m sorry, Justin.”

“You mean—?”

“I’m kinda horrid sometimes. I flare out and say ‘I will’ or ‘I won’t’ like a spoiled kid. That’s no way to do.” She smiled at him, a little whimsically, a little apologetically. “It keeps me busy eating humble pie.”

He accepted her apology graciously. “Shall we forget it, Bess? It’s a new day. We’ll turn a page of the ledger and begin again.”

Rather timidly, she went on: “I had to come. It’s not that. But if I hadn’t been so tempery, I could have made you understand.”

He stiffened at once. “I think I understood—perfectly.”

“No, Justin. That’s just it. You didn’t, or you wouldn’t have stood in my way. You’re fair-minded, and when you see I was doing what I had to do—what it was my duty to do—”

“I can’t agree with you about that, Betty. I’m older than you are. I think I know more of the world. It’s not your duty—the duty of any unmarried girl for that matter, unless she is a trained professional nurse—to put herself in the position you have.”

In spite of her good resolutions Betty began to feel her temper slip. “What position have I put myself in?” she asked quietly.

“I’m an old-fashioned man,” he answered. “I believe that a young woman must be so circumspect that nobody can find any ground to talk about her.”

“A girl isn’t a china doll. She can’t be put away in moth balls, Justin. Every girl is talked about some time or other by somebody if she’s alive. It’s of no importance what gossips say.”

“It’s of the greatest importance that a girl give no chance for idle gossip about her,” he demurred.

Betty’s irritation expressed itself in the voice, a trifle sharp. “How do you think I can run the Quarter Circle D E without being criticized? I’m there with the men hours and days at a time, and no other woman on the place except old Mandy, who is deaf as a post and can’t see six feet from her nose. If any evil-minded person wants to talk—why, I’ll just have to let him talk.”

“On the contrary, I think you ought to have a foreman run the place for you except for some general supervision. It’s not a girl’s business.”

“Isn’t it? You never told me so before.”

“You never asked me.”

“For that matter, I’m not asking you now.” Her manner was dangerously quiet. It suggested banked fires of anger. “But just the same I’m glad to have your opinion.”

“I’m glad to give it. I’ve wanted to tell you what I think about it. Understand me. I admire your energy, your enthusiasm, your efficiency. I believe you are running the Quarter Circle D E better than a good many men could do it. That’s not the question. Aren’t you losing something you can’t afford to do without? I can’t go into this in detail. Cattle-raising—ranching—breeding Herefords—it’s a splendid occupation for a man. But there’s a side of it that’s—well, I’d rather you’d turn it all over to Forbes.”

“What do you want me to do—stay at home and knit?”

“You know what I want as soon as the Sweetwater project is finished.”

Betty side-stepped the proposed excursion into sentiment. She was a downright young woman and wanted to know exactly where she stood.

“I didn’t know you felt that way about the ranch, Justin. I thought you shared my view, that I was doing something worth while when I raised hundreds of cattle every year to help feed the world. If I had known you thought I was degrading myself—” She stopped, a tremolo of anger in her throat.

“I didn’t say that, Betty.”

“It’s what you meant.”

“No. No, it isn’t. I meant only that—well, there’s something very very precious that some girls have—that you have, Betty—something that’s like the bloom of a peach. If you lose it—well, it’s gone, that’s all.”

“And if I do anything that’s worth while—if I pay my way in the world by giving value received—the peach bloom is rubbed off, isn’t it?” she retorted scornfully.

“Aren’t there different ways of giving service? We are in danger of forgetting the home, which is the normal place for a young girl.”

“Is it? Thought you came from a city where thousands of girls go down to offices and stores every morning to earn a living.”

They stood on a small hilltop and looked over a world blanketed in white which flashed back countless gleams of light to the heliographing sun, a world so virgin clean, so still and empty of life, that it carried Betty back to the birthday of the race. She was, miraculously, at the beginning of things again.

“You’re not in a city fortunately,” he answered. “There’s no economic pressure on you to fight sordidly for a living.”

Her eyes sparkled. “You’re not consistent. When the city ways don’t suit you, I’m to live like people in the country, but when you don’t approve of ranch ways, then I’m to be like girls in Denver. I’m not to go into business, but I’m not to be neighborly as my mother was.”

“You’re distorting what I said, Betty.”

“Am I? Didn’t you say I wasn’t to help take care of a sick man because it wasn’t proper?”

“I said you were acting rather absurdly about this man Hollister,” he replied tartly. “There’s no call to turn the world upside down because he’s wounded. You want a sense of proportion.”

“I think that’s what you need, Justin,” she answered, a flush of anger burning her cheeks. “You’ve been horrid about it from the start without any reason.”

She moved down the hill toward the cabin. Merrick walked beside her. His eyes were hard and his lips set close.

For the first time it dawned upon Betty that he was jealous of her interest in another man. He was possessive, wanted to absorb all her thoughts, intended to be the center of every activity she had. This did not please her. It alarmed the individual in her. Marriage, as she had dreamed it, was wonderful because it enhanced life. It was the union of two souls, releasing all the better forces of their natures. Through it would come freedom and not bondage. The joys of the senses would be shared and transmuted to spiritual power. They ought not to put chains on a man or a woman that would narrow the horizon.

An illusion had been shattered. Justin was not the man with whom she could walk hand in hand. She sighed, and drew the gauntlet from her left hand.

Merrick looked at the ring she had dropped into his hand, then straight at her with rigid gaze.

“Are you in love with this fellow Hollister? Is that what it means?” he asked harshly.

The color in her cheeks deepened. “That’s—hateful of you, Justin,” she said, her voice ragged with feeling.

“I’ve seen it for some time. You’re infatuated with him.”

She lifted her chin and looked at him with eyes that blazed anger. “Now I know I’ve done right in giving you back your ring. I’m not going to—to quarrel with you because you insult me. It’s finished. That’s enough.”

A sob rose to her throat and choked her. She hurried on to escape him, the trail a blurred mist through her tears.