Concerning The Strength Of Women
There were three things discussed by Lee Haines and Buck Daniels in the dreary days which followed.The first was to keep on their way across the mountains and cut themselves away from the sorrow of that cabin.The second was to strike the trail of Barry and hunt until they found his refuge and attempt to lead him back to his family.The third was simply to stay on and where they found the opportunity, help Kate.They discarded the first idea without much talk; it would be yellow, they decided, and the debt they owed to the Dan Barry of the old days was too great to be shouldered off so easily: they cast away the second thought still more quickly, for the trail which baffled the shrewd sheriff, as they knew, would be too much for them.
It remained to stay with Kate, making excursions through the mountains from day to day to maintain the pretence of carrying on their own business, and always at hand in time of need.
It was no easy part to play, for in the house they found Kate more and more silent, more and more thoughtful, never speaking of her trouble, but behind her eyes a ghost of waiting that haunted them.If the wind shrilled down the pass, if a horse neighed from the corral, there was always the start in her, the thrill of hope, and afterwards the pitiful deadening of her smile.
She was not less beautiful they thought, as she grew paler, but the terrible silence of the place drove them away time and again.Even Joan no longer pattered about the house, and when they came down out of the mountains they never heard her shrill laughter.She sat cross-legged by the hearth in her old place during the evenings with her chin resting on one hand and her eyes fixed wistfully upon the fire; and sometimes they found her on the little hillock behind the house, from the top of which she could view every approach to the cabin.Of Dan and even of Black Bart, her playmate she soon learned not to speak, for the mention of them made her mother shrink and whiten.Indeed, the saddest thing in that house was the quiet in which the child waited, waited, waited, and never spoke.
"She ain't more'n a baby," said Buck Daniels, "and you can leave it to time to make her forget.""But," growled Lee Haines, "Kate isn't a baby.Buck, it drives me damn near crazy to see her fade this way.""Now you lay to this," answered Buck."She'll pull through.She'll never forget, maybe, but she'll go on livin' for the sake of the kid.""You know a hell of a lot about women, don't you?" said Haines.
"I know enough, son," nodded Buck.
He had, in fact, reduced women to a few distinct categories, and he only waited to place a girl in her particular class before he felt quite intimate acquaintance with her entire mind and soul.
"It'll kill her," pronounced Lee Haines."Why, she's like a flower, Buck, and sorrow will cut her off at the root.Think of a girl like that thrown away in these damned deserts! It makes me sick--sick! She ought to have nothing but velvet to touch--nothing but a millionaire for a husband, and never a worry in her life." He grew excited."But here's the flower thrown away and the heel crushing it without mercy."Buck Daniels regarded him with pity.
"I feel kind of sorry for you, Lee, when I hear you talk about girls.No wonder they make a fool of you.A flower crushed under the foot, eh? You just listen to me, my boy.You and me figure to be pretty hard, don't we?
Well, soft pine stacked up agin' quartzite, is what we are compared to Kate."Lee Haines gaped at him, too astonished to be angry.He suggested softening of the brain to Buck, but the latter waved aside the implications.
"Now, supposin' Kate was one of these dark girls with eyes like black diamonds and a lot of snap and zip to her.If she was like that I s'pose you'd figure her to forget all about Dan inside of a month--and maybe marry you?""You be damned!"
"Maybe I am.Them hard, snappy lookin' girls are the ones that smash.
They're brittle, that's why; but you take a soft lookin' girl like Kate, maybe she ain't a diamond point to cut glass, but she's tempered steel that'll bend, and bend, and bend, and then when you wait for it to break it flips up and knocks you down.That's Kate."Lee Haines rolled a cigarette in silence.He was too disgusted to answer, until his first puff of smoke dissolved Buck in a cloud of thin blue.
"You ought to sing to a congregation instead of to cows, Buck.You have the tune, and you might get by in a church; but cows have sense.""Kate will buckle and bend and fade for a while," went on Buck, wholly unperturbed, "but just when you go out to pick daisies for her you'll come back and find her singing to the stove.Her strength is down deep, like some of these outlaw hosses that got a filmy, sleepy lookin' eye.They save their hell till you sink the spurs in 'em.You think she loves Dan, don't you?""I have a faint suspicion of it," sneered Haines."I suppose I'm wrong?""You are."
"Buck, I may have slipped a nickel into you, but you're playing the wrong tune.Knock off and talk sense, will you?""When you grow up, son, you'll understand some of the things I'm tryin' to explain in words of one syllable.
