Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (19 page)

Kinney turned sarcastic. “Oh, your wife
again? Seems to me you’re awful anxious to drag her into it.”
Gloria sensed Ray stiffen as if to respond, and she laid her
fingers cautioningly on his arm. “Even so you’d have some answering
to do if you hit one of ‘em.”

“I’m a little better shot than that,” said
Ray, sarcastic in his turn.

Gloria pulled gently at his arm. “Ray, let’s
go home,” she murmured.

Ray looked down at her, and Silas Kinney
took the opportunity to make his exit. “You’ve had my warnin’,” he
said shortly. “Miz Collins.” He gave his hat a compulsory shove of
courtesy and walked off.

That left them standing alone. Gloria looked
up into Ray’s face—his mouth was still bleeding a little, and there
was a darkened patch along his cheekbone, bruising already. She
looked down and pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket,
fumbling over it a little—she had not realized till now that her
hands were unsteady—and made as if to wipe the blood from his face,
but Ray took it from her and crushed it against the corner of his
mouth. “I’m all right,” he mumbled through it.

His eyes met hers. “I don’t want you to get
near any of that bunch from now on if you can help it,” he
said.

“I don’t particularly want to—get near any
of them,” said Gloria, with a rather false little laugh.

Ray glanced at the spots of blood on the
handkerchief in his hand, and then he put his other arm around her
and turned toward the blacksmith’s. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Thunder muttered somewhere to the northwest,
and a chill drift of air met Gloria’s face as she looked that way.
The sky was dark gray, the brown fields beneath looked uncannily
light by contrast. It looked like a storm was coming at last. A few
stray blowing drops of rain struck around her as Gloria walked
toward the barn.

It was dark in there, with only the odd
before-the-storm light coming in at the windows, lighting awkward
angles on the thin flanks of the two milk cows and a strange sheen
on the necks of the horses. Ray had just come in; he was unsaddling
his horse. Gloria moved round to the outer corner of the stall and
watched him for a moment; hesitant, somehow, to speak.

She had thought him troubled and silent
before. But in the few days since the fight at the trading-post
something had been wrong—very wrong. Ray had hardly spoken a
word—had hardly seemed to hear anything she said to him; had hardly
seemed to see her even when he gave her a brief absent good-night
kiss. There was a restless, hunted look in his face when she did
manage to get a look at him. Gloria did not know what had happened
to him that day, whether it was the fight or something else, but
something had pushed him close to what she sensed was a breaking
point.

A hollow spatter of raindrops tapped on the
barn wall. They both looked toward the window. Gloria said, after a
moment, “Will it make any difference now?”

Ray doubled the saddle-girth up across the
saddle on the stall bars. “Not enough to matter much,” he said.
“It’ll save what we have left.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then
Gloria turned to move away from the stall. Ray turned his head a
little and said, “Gloria.”

She came back and stood looking at him,
waiting. She stared at his face, her eyes drawn back again and
again unreasoningly to the dark bruised patch along his cheekbone.
Ray was not looking at her; he was staring ahead into his horse’s
stall and he was having a hard time putting together what he wanted
to say. That was not like him. Ray had never been an overly
talkative person, but words always came crisp and sure when he
wanted them.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Thinking a
lot—the last couple days. About—McDonough’s offer.”

He shifted his hands on the top bar of the
stall. “Maybe it is the best thing for us to do right now. Like he
said, we’d have the cattle, a chance to start over somewhere…” A
pause, and Ray took a short breath that tried to be a laugh and
failed. “I guess I made a mistake. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for
managing in the first place…I got in over my head.”

Gloria did not speak, for the only thing
going through her head was the thought that she had been right. Ray
wanted his freedom back—he had only been able to stand so much.
Well, she was not going to say anything now; she was not going to
beg—she could not keep him tied to her apron-strings if he didn’t
want to be there. Having him there and knowing that would hurt
worse than being apart—wouldn’t it?

“I was thinking,” said Ray again, slowly,
“you could go back and stay with your folks in Miles City for a
while—for the winter anyway. I could come and stay for a few weeks
at Christmas.”

Gloria’s lips moved at last. “If you
think—it’s the best thing,” she said.

She did not know her own voice. It was
quiet, reasoned, womanly. The schoolgirl had grown up—her summer in
the wild was over.

Ray looked at her, unsure. “You don’t
mind?”

“It would only be for a few months,” said
Gloria; “we’d be saving—and then maybe someday…”

The sentence fell unfinished between them,
and Gloria felt a sickening chill in the pit of her stomach.
Sentences that trailed off with “someday” always remained
unfinished.

Ray said, “We’ll have to talk about it some
more—decide a few things—”

“Yes,” said Gloria.

She was staring down at the stalks of hay
scattered on the dirt floor. She looked sideways at Ray. He was
looking away again into the back of the horse’s stall—Gloria felt
that he did not want to look at her just then, and she thought she
understood why. She turned away again to leave the barn. She
thought she heard or felt herself say almost inaudibly, “I’ll be…in
the house…” in that voice that was not really her own.

She had said what she thought was the right
thing, but there was a claw of pain around her heart at the
knowledge of what she was doing. Leaving what was as good as a lie
between them. She had not been honest; she had not told Ray all
that was in her heart. That had never been her way—it was not their
way.

The rain was falling in small steady drops
now. Gloria twisted her shawl closer around her shoulders as she
picked her way across the dampening ground toward the house. She
walked faster. Her breath caught painfully; she did not know
whether it was rain or tears that struck her in the face and
blinded her.

She made it halfway to the house before she
could bear the pain no longer. She spun around and ran back toward
the barn—she had to run. She was almost there when Ray emerged from
the doorway, with a long stride and a look on his face that must
have matched her own. Gloria gave him no chance to speak; she ran
straight against him and he caught her and held her so tightly that
for a moment it hurt to breathe.

He said, “Don’t go…Glorie, don’t leave
me…”

“No, no…I don’t want to…”

He kissed her, hard, and she clung to him,
her head tipped back so the rain struck in her face, blurring her
eyes till she could not see. They would have stayed there, outside
the doorway, but the rain was falling harder now, soaking into the
shawl on her shoulders and spitting off the brim of his hat. Ray
drew her inside, into the quiet, safe dimness of the barn, and drew
her to him. They stood together in the gray light from the barn
window, with the rain pattering on the roof, and kissed hungrily,
intensely, as if driven by some great need. Gloria’s arms found
their way around him and held tightly.

After a minute, Ray put his head down on her
shoulder, burying his face against her neck. “Don’t ever leave me,
Glorie,” he whispered again. “Please don’t leave me. I need
you.”

“I never
wanted
to,” said Gloria, her
voice choked. “I didn’t want to say it. I just thought—it would be
the best thing, if you wanted it—”

Ray lifted his head and stared at her in the
half-light. “What?”

Gloria’s face was wet, rain and tears
mingled. She freed a hand and wiped it shakily. “I’ve been thinking
about how…how you must have been regretting…that you ever let
yourself get tied down to a place like this. I thought you wanted
to be free again…that that was why you changed your mind.”

“No, no, no…” He cradled her face between
his hands, kissed her forehead, her cheek. “Why would you think
that? Did I ever—”

“I thought—that day we met Chris—the way you
talked about how you used to live, you sounded—like you wished
you’d never given that up. I thought—”

“Oh, Glorie. Gloria, listen to me.” He held
her face steady, looking straight into her eyes. “You know how hard
it’s been. This year…I don’t have to tell you. Sure I’ve had
moments where I wished I could drop everything, let it all go and
get away—but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to take you with
me.”

He rested his forehead against hers and drew
a deep breath. “I just feel I’ve failed you—failed at
everything—”

“Ray, no—”

“It’s true, Glorie. I should have known
better. I made a muck out of the cattle business, and I brought you
out here to take the fall with me. The way you’ve had to work and
slave and go without—it’s no kind of a life for you. I figured I
had no right to be stubborn about what
I
thought was best,
when you had to suffer for it. That’s why I changed my mind.”

Gloria pressed close to him, her head tucked
under his chin, staring up at the underside of the sod roof
overhead as his words soaked into her mind. Ray added in a slightly
lower voice, “But when you agreed like that, so easy, without even
arguing…I didn’t know…I wondered if it didn’t matter to you after
all…”

Gloria twisted to look up at him, her voice
warming with a surge of renewed feeling. “Oh, but it did! It did! I
only agreed because I thought that’s what you wanted. I know I
should have told you the truth.”

“You understand now, don’t you?”

“Yes—but Ray, I don’t care about any of
that. I thought you were right about staying here all along. And
you haven’t
failed
—if you made one mistake about the note,
that’s not the end of everything. It doesn’t matter what we have to
sell or how hard we have to work, just so long as we don’t have to
do it apart from each other.”

“Never—”

His arms went around her again, and Gloria
pillowed her head on his chest, relaxed into the assurance of his
embrace.

“Maybe McDonough’s offer did make the most
sense,” said Ray after a minute, “maybe we’re fools for turning it
down, but I don’t want to live that way. It might be harder going
our own way, but—Glorie, I love you—”

Their lips met again, and they stood locked
close together for a long time. The quiet, filled only by the light
swish of the rain, was broken at last, who knew how many moments
later, by a horse’s trot gradually approaching outside. It came up
close to the barn and stopped, and then came a voice calling Ray’s
name.

They pulled slowly apart and stared at each
other for a moment, unwilling to acknowledge the interruption. Then
Ray left her there and went to the door. Gloria stayed back in the
shadow, and wiped damp strands of hair back from her face, drawing
a slow breath, still trying to regain her composure.

The rain had slackened to a drizzle when Ray
stepped outside; small puddles vibrated by the windblown drops lay
on the hard surface of the yard. Chris Borden was sitting on his
horse a few yards away, water dripping from his hat brim and
sending little rivers down his slicker. He looked a little pale, as
if ill at ease but determined to do something.

“I’ve quit McDonough,” he said. “I’m going,
but there’s something I had to come and tell you about first.” He
paused and then added forcefully, as though irritated with himself
and ashamed of it at the same time, “If it was anybody else I don’t
know if I’d care, but seeing it’s you I’ve got to say
something.”

Ray was looking up at him with a slight
frown, but said nothing. Chris drew a breath through his teeth.
“McDonough’s been cutting your fences.”

“It’s happened before.”

“I know. Not like this. His boys are pushing
cattle onto your land, watering them in Wanderlust Creek.”

Ray lifted his head a little; there was a
subtle change in his face. “You sure about this?”

“I was there when they moved one bunch. It
was yesterday afternoon. I didn’t like it, but Cooley told me it
was orders from the top. I helped ‘em move that bunch and then I
went back to the home ranch and quit.” There was silence for a few
seconds, the last statement being one that Chris did not seem to
want to further enlarge upon. “I just figured you should know.”

A short silence again, while the wind
scattered the drops of rain around the yard. Chris’s attitude was
still defensive, as though he wanted no one to know the depth of
loyalty that had prompted his action. He had always been like that,
and Ray knew it. “Thanks, Chris,” he said. He looked up into his
friend’s face for a moment. “Good luck.”

“Same to you,” said Chris.

He wheeled his horse, headed out past the
barn and away across the sodden prairie, the horse’s gait lifting
to a steady mud-slinging lope as they receded from view.

Ray went back into the barn. Gloria, who had
heard it all from inside the door, followed him with a questioning,
faintly troubled gaze as he went across to his horse’s stall and
pulled his saddle off the bars. He flipped the saddle blanket over
the brown horse’s back with one hand, then grasped the saddle and
heaved it up into place.

Gloria came up to the bars of the stall,
letting the shawl drop back from her shoulders, her cold fingers
feeling the rough bark of the top rail. “What are you going to do?”
she said.

“I’m going over to McDonough’s,” said Ray.
“I’ll give him a chance to back off. If he’s already made up his
mind he doesn’t care about being in the wrong, that’ll be another
thing. But I’m going to have it out with him first.”