Ironheart

It was impossible for Betty to escape the emotions that flooded her, but she was the last girl to sit down and accept defeat with folded hands. There was in her a certain vigor of the spirit that craved expression, that held her head up in the face of disaster.

At the Quarter Circle D E she was so briskly businesslike that none of the men would have guessed that she was passing through a crisis. Except for moments of abstraction, she gave no evidence of the waves of emotion that inundated her while she was giving orders about the fencing of the northwest forty or the moving of the pigpens.

When she was alone, it was worse. Her longing for Hollister became acute. If she could see him, talk with him, his point of view would be changed. New arguments marshaled themselves in her mind. It was ridiculous to suppose that a man’s past—one not of his own choosing, but forced on him—could determine his future so greatly as to make happiness impossible. She would not believe it. Every instinct of her virile young personality rebelled against the acceptance of such a law.

Tug’s persistence in renouncing joy had wounded her vanity. But at bottom she did not doubt him. He had stood out because he thought it right, not because he did not love her. In spite of her distress of mind, she was not quite unhappy. A warm hope nestled in her bosom. She loved and was loved. The barrier between them would be torn down. Again they would be fused into that oneness which for a blessed ten minutes had absorbed them.

Her father drove over in the rattletrap car. Ostensibly he had come to discuss with her plans for fertilization and crops of the Quarter Circle D E for the coming season.

“I took Hollister to town this morning. He wouldn’t stay any longer,” Reed presently mentioned, as though casually.

“Oh! Why wouldn’t he stay?” Betty was rather proud of the indifference she contrived to convey in her voice.

“Said he didn’t want to keep you away from home.”

“Was he keeping me away?” she asked.

“Seemed to think so. Wasn’t he?”

“I see you know all about it, Dad. What did he tell you?”

“I asked him point-blank what the trouble was between you and him. He told me.”

A faint crimson streamed into her cheeks. “What did he say it was?”

“He’s afraid. Not for himself, but for you.”

“I think that’s awf’ly silly of him.”

“I’m not so sure about that, Bettykins. If there’s any doubt whatever, he’d better wait till he’s certain.” He let his arm fall across her shoulders with a gentleness she knew to be a caress. “Have you found the man you want, dear? Sure about it?”

She smiled ruefully. “I’m sure enough, Dad. He’s the one that seems in doubt.” To this she added a reply to a sentence earlier in his period. “He didn’t say anything to me about waiting. His ‘No, thank you,’ was quite definite, I thought.”

Clint’s wrath began to simmer. “If he’s got a notion that he can take or leave you as he pleases—”

Betty put a hand on his arm. “Please, Dad. I don’t mean what I said. It’s not fair to him. He doesn’t think that at all.”

“There’s no man in the Rockies good enough for you—”

“Are you taking in enough territory?” she teased, her face bubbling to mirth. “I don’t even know whether you’re including Denver. Justin came from there, and he’s too good for me.”

“Who says he’s too good?”

“Too perfect, then. I couldn’t live up to him. Never in the world.” Her eyes fixed on something in the distance. She watched for a moment or two. “Talking about angels, Dad. There’s the flutter of his engine fan.”

Reed turned.

Merrick was killing the engine of his runabout. He came across to them, ruddy, strong, well-kept. Every stride expressed the self-reliant and complacent quality of his force.

The girl’s heart beat faster. She had not seen him since that moment, more than two weeks ago, when they had parted in anger. Her resentment against him had long since died. He had not been to blame because they were incompatible in point of view and temperament. It was characteristic of her that she had written to ask him to forgive her if she had in any way done him a wrong. If she could, she wanted to keep him for a friend.

He shook hands with them. Reed asked about the work.

“We’ve finished the tunnel and are laying the line of the main canal between it and the draw where it runs into Elk Creek Cañon. Soon as the ground is thawed out, I’ll have dirt flying on it,” the engineer said.

“Lots of water in the dam?” asked the cowman.

“Full up. The mild weather this last week has raised it a lot. There’s a great deal of snow in the hills. We’ll have no difficulty about a sufficient supply.”

“Good. You’ve got old Jake Prowers beat.”

“Justin has done a big thing for this part of the country. That’s more important than beating Mr. Prowers,” Betty said.

“Yes,” agreed Merrick impersonally. “By the way, the old fellow is still nursing his fancied injuries. He was hanging around the dam yesterday. I warned him off.”

“Say anything?” asked Clint.

“Tittered the way he does and congratulated me on the good job I had done. He’s a venomous old snake, but I don’t see that he can do us any harm. There’s nothing left to do now but the detail work of putting in the ditches.”

They talked for a few minutes about the irrigation project. The engineer did not betray the least self-consciousness, but his mind, too, was running on the last time he had seen Betty and the break between them.

Reed was called away by one of the men to look at a sick horse.

Merrick’s steady gaze at once challenged Betty. “I got your letter.”

She was a good deal less composed than he. It disconcerted her to know that she was blushing. That was a silly way to do, she told herself. It annoyed her to give an exhibition of gaucherie.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that we made a mistake,” he said. “We rushed into a decision too hastily.”

“Yes,” Betty agreed.

“You’re young. I hadn’t given enough consideration to that. Shall we forget our differences and be as we were, Betty?”

“You don’t mean—be engaged?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Oh, Justin, I can’t. I thought you meant we’d made a mistake in ever being engaged. We did. We’re not suited to each other.”

“I don’t agree with you. Your letter convinced me that we are.”

“I didn’t mean it that way at all,” she said unhappily. “We’re not, Justin. Not a bit. I’m too—too kinda wild for you. You don’t want a wife like me. If you knew, you wouldn’t want me a bit.”

“I’m the best judge of that,” he answered, smiling a little.

“But you don’t. I’d always be troubling you with my crazy ways.”

“No. It’s just that you’re young,” he insisted.

“It isn’t. I’m born that way. I’ll always be like that. Besides—” She stopped, searching for a way to put it gently. “Besides, I’d want a husband—if I ever marry at all—who needs me, who has to have me, who can’t get along without me.”

“I need you,” he said.

“Oh no, you don’t. Not really. You think you do, maybe, but not in the way I mean. You’re strong—self-sufficient. Please, I don’t mean it in an uncomplimentary way. But you are big, you know. A wife would have to fit into you—be just a—an important detail of your life. I couldn’t do that. I’ve got to be everything to a man—help him—talk over his difficulties with him—be just the biggest thing in the world to him. I couldn’t really do anything for you. You’re complete. You don’t need anything done for you. With or without me, you’re going to be awf’ly successful. Oh, I know it sounds silly, but it isn’t.”

“Do you mean you like me less because I’m reliable and efficient and—well, I take your own word—on the road to success? Would you want to marry an irresponsible failure?”

The allusion was plain, and she did not like him better for it. None the less, she recognized that this man, standing there in the quiet arrogance of strength, had qualities admirable and worthy of great respect. He was master of himself and, so far as one can be, of his destinies. The cleft chin, the square jaw, the cold gray eyes so keen and steady, expressed character, and of a kind that would take him far. But it was a road she would not travel with him.

“No. But I’d like to know that I was a help to my husband in making his success. You can’t understand, Justin. I’m not what you want—not at all. If you saw me as I am, you’d know it. I’d always be affronting your sense of the fitting thing. The right wife for you is one who would sit at the head of your table well-dressed, handsome, and charming, an evidence of your standing in the community. You know—a gracious hostess, good at teas and bridge and that sort of thing. You’re really a city man. I’m not a city woman and never shall be.”

To Merrick, clear-eyed in spite of his fondness for her, came a flash of insight that told him she had been wiser than he. He could never mould this wildling to his heart’s desire. Some day he would look back on this episode and smile at it. But he had not reached that state of philosophy yet. His vanity was still engaged, and more than that—the last passionate flame of the boy in him that was being sacrificed to ambition. He craved inordinately the willful charm of this devastatingly sweet girl with the quick, disturbing eyes. She represented to him certain values he was deliberately trampling down, not because they did not seem to him good, but because they warred with something that he wanted more. He had impossibly dreamed that she might stay what she was and yet become something different.

“Are you going to marry Hollister?” he asked.

She might reasonably have told him this was a private matter of her own. She might have evaded the question. Instead, she told him the truth.

“I don’t know.”

“Has he asked you?”

“No.”

“But you will if he does.”

“Yes.”

“Knowing what he has been, what he may be again?”

“Knowing what he is,” she corrected.

“Will girls never get over the folly of marrying men to reform them?” he flung out impatiently.

“I’m not marrying him to reform him—that is, if I’m marrying him at all, which isn’t likely. He does not need reforming.”

“How do you know he won’t slide back into his vice?” He answered his own query. “You can’t know. There’s no way of knowing.”

“He won’t.” She said it quietly, with absolute conviction.

Her attitude tremendously irritated him. It was a reflection on all the copybook virtues that had made him what he was. “Are you waiting for this tramp, this drug fiend, to make up his mind whether he wants to marry you or not?”

There was a spark of anger in her eye. She would not modify even his phrasing. It could stand as he put it.

“Yes.”

“Sheer perversity.”

“Isn’t it?” she agreed, with dangerous sweetness.

He knew he was being punished for having indulged himself, as he rarely did, in a display of temper. At once he took himself in hand.

“I’m serious about this, Betty. A girl has no right to take chances of this sort. I grant you Hollister has qualities—splendid ones. But the damning fact remains.”

Betty relented. He was human. He had cried out because he was hurt. “I don’t think it remains, Justin. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s conquered—what you call his vice.”

“What I call his vice! Wouldn’t every sane person call it that?”

“Not if they knew the circumstances. He was left with terrible pains in the head after he was wounded. They gave him morphine—a lot of it. He got to depending on it. The habit grew on him. Then he woke up and shook it off. It’s to his credit rather than the reverse.”

“Even so. There’s a danger that he’ll go back to it.”

And again she denied it, with the certainty of one who does not need evidence to bulwark an absolute assurance. “No danger at all.”

They were standing in front of the porch. Reed came toward them from the stable. Both knew that the last word had been said.

Justin Merrick struggled with himself a moment, then held out his hand. He did not want to be a poor loser.

“The best of luck, Betty,” he said.

Gladness gleamed in the soft eyes through which the eager spirit seemed to yearn to comfort him.

“You, too, Justin,” she whispered.