Chapter 12

"You didn't know what, Honey?" says I. "There's heaps of things we all don't know. But is there anything your old friend Curly can do for you now? Listen, sis, I've got you mighty much to heart," says I. "Tell old Curly, can't you, what's gone wrong? Your pa he's just gone to bed. Shall I go and get him?"

"No, no, no! For Gawd's sake, no! I can't see him--I could never tell him."

"It's got to be told," says I.

Then she nodded up and down, fastlike, and didn't say anything.

"It ain't really any of my business," says I, "but have you and him---- Well now----"

"You men----" She broke down. "You men--what do you know about a girl? What have you men done to me?"

"We done all in God Almighty's world we knew how to do for you," says I. "We'd of done more for you if we'd knowed how."

"Ah, is it so! You've made me the most unhappy girl in all the world."

I couldn't say a word to that. It went through me like a knife-cut. I was glad that Old Man Wright wasn't there to hear it. I seen then that him and me had failed. We could never play no other game, for this was the only girl we had.

"You've brought me here," says she, "and I've been like a prisoner. But I've done all I could."

"Didn't you like it here?" says I. "We done considerable on your account. Don't you like us none?"

"Like you, Curly?" says she. "I love you! I love you!"

She come now and taken me by the shoulders and shook me. I didn't know she was so strong before.

"I love you--love both of you," says she. "I'd die for you any minute," says she. "I'd try to cut my heart out for either of you now--if it come to that. I tried it now, tonight. I tried it for an hour--two hours. I didn't know what it meant before."

"He ast you, Bonnie?" says I.

"Yes, yes," says she. "The poor boy! I like him so much--I pity him."

"My Gawd! Bonnie, you haven't refused him?" say I. "You haven't done that? You haven't broke the pore fellow's heart?" says I. "Why did you----"

"Why did you!" says she after me. "I told you he made it plain to me."

"What was it he made plain, Bonnie?" says I. "I suppose he, now, made some sort of love? It ain't for me to talk of that."

"Yes, yes!" She says it out sharp and high. "He did. I know now what it means to be a woman and in love. I never knew that before. But it wasn't--it wasn't for him! He held me--I was a woman--and it wasn't for him. How can I love---- What can I do? Why, I love you all, Curly--I love you all! I love Tom in one way; and I'm sorry, because he's good. But that isn't being a woman. It wasn't for him--it wasn't for him!"

She was sort of whispering by now.

"So he went right away?" says I.

She nodded.

"Maybe I've broken his heart. I've broken yours and my father's and my own--all because I couldn't help being a woman. And I'm the unhappiest woman in all the world. I want to die! I don't know what to do. I want to be square and I don't know how."

"Bonnie," says I after a while, slow, "I know all about it now. You've been plumb crazy and you're crazy now. You've kept on remembering that low-down sneak next door. You've turned down a high-toned gentleman like Tom--and you done it for what? You ain't acted on the square, Bonnie Bell Wright," says I. "It ain't needful for me to tell all I know about him now. I could tell you plenty more."

"No," says she, and she was crying now; "it was an evil thing of me ever to listen to him. I've done wrong," says she. "But what must I do?" says she, "Must I lie all my life? I can't do that."

"Well, some women are able to--just a little," says I. "Maybe you'd get over that business of that man next door if you was married and had a few kids of your own running around. You'd be happy with Tom. We'd all be happy. You'd forget--of course you'd forget. Women are built that way," says I. "I reckon I know!"

"Curly----" And, though she looked just like she always had, young and white and beautiful, and fit only to be loved by anybody, her face had something in it that made her look old, real old, like one of them statutes in our front yard.

She was twenty-three, and pretty as anything ever made in marble--and white as anything in marble; but she looked a thousand years old as she stood there then. There was something in her face that seemed to come down from 'way back in the past. She was--well, I reckon she was what she said--a woman!

"Curly," says she, "some women may be able to forget. It's the easiest way--maybe most of them do it. The average woman lives that way. But I can't, Curly; I can't--it isn't in my blood. Women like me have got to follow their own hearts, Curly--no matter what it means.

"I tried with all my heart to lie to Tom tonight. I even told him I wouldn't answer now--even told him to come back again after while; but I knew all the time I couldn't lie forever. I knew I could love some man--a man--but it wasn't for him. I'm like my father and like my mother, Curly. Do you want to crush the life out of me? Do you want to make me do something we'd all regret as long as ever we lived?"

She stopped talking then; but, sort of swinging around, she went on:

"It's been but a little while, Curly," says she. "It's been but such a little time! I don't know whether I can get over it--I don't know whether I can forget. But, oh, Curly, for one hour let me open my heart--for just this time let me be a woman!... But it wasn't for him!"

And now she was whispering again.

"I'm a thief, Curly!" says she after a while. "I've stolen your life and dad's. I've taken all you gave me. I don't deserve it."

"Oh, yes, you do," says I; "you deserved all we done for you. We loved you, Honey, and we do now."

"But you can't any more, Curly," says she. "I've been a thief. I've stolen your lives--from you two big, splendid men. But, oh! give me my hour--the one hour out of all my life.

"I stole from him too--from Tom," says she. "I've taken from him what I didn't pay for and can't. I never can. At least I can't until I've had--my hour.

"A woman has to face things all her life, Curly," says she; "and always she says: 'Well, let it be!' She takes her losses, Curly, and sometimes she forgets. But if she ever forgets what is in my heart tonight--if she forgets that--then life is never worth while to her again. There's nothing to do then--it's all a sham and a fraud. If that's what life means I don't want to live any more."

"Bonnie," says I, "you mustn't talk that way." I sort of drew her down on my knee now, and pushed her hair back and looked at her. "Listen at you--you that used to be up in the morning so early and hoorahing all through the ranch--your cheeks red with the sun, and your hair blowing, and your eyes like a deer's! Why, nothing but life was in the world for you then--nothing but just being alive."

"I wasn't a woman then, Curly," says she. "I didn't know."

"I didn't neither," says I; "and I don't know now."

"You can't," says she. "It's terrible! I'm--I think I'll go now."

She taken herself off my knee then; and, the first thing I know, she was gone.

I stayed there looking at the place where she'd been. I knew that now there shore was hell to pay!

XXIV

HOW BONNIE BELL LEFT US ALL

I never went to bed none at all that night. I couldn't of slept, nohow. I set there in the ranch room thinking and trying to figure out what I had ought to do. I concluded that might depend some on what Bonnie Bell was going to do; and I couldn't tell what that was, for she didn't seem clear about it herself.

Along about daybreak, maybe sooner, when I set there--maybe I'd been asleep once or twice a little--I heard the noise of a car going out not far from us. I suppose, like enough, it was over at the Wisners'; maybe some of their folks was going or coming. In the city, folks don't use the way they do on a ranch and night goes on about the same as daytime.

I'd been studying so hard over all these things, trying to see how I'd have to play the game, that I didn't notice Old Man Wright when he come in that morning, about the time he usual got up for breakfast. He wasn't worried none, but seemed right happy, like something was clear in his mind.

"Well, Curly," says he, "you're up right early, ain't you? What makes you so keen to hear the little birds sing this morning?"

He fills up his pipe. I didn't say nothing.

"Well," says he after a time, smoking and looking out the window, "I suppose I'm a fond parent again right now. Maybe I'll be a grandpa before long--who can tell? I never did figure on being a grandpa in my born days," says he; "but such is life."

"What do you mean, Colonel?" I ast him.

"Well," says he, "I ain't a real grandpa yet, maybe, but I reckon it's like enough. All them flowers and that sort of thing--and that late executive session last night. When's the day?"

He still looks right contented. What could I say to him then?

"Too bad," says he, "you couldn't of stayed up to get the happy news, Curly!" says he. "I expect Tom Kimberly would of been right glad to tell you or me; but I knew how the thing was going. I been a young man once myself. He don't want old people setting round--he wants the whole field clear for hisself. It takes young folks several hours sometimes to set and tell things to each other that could be told in just a minute. Proposing is a industrial waste, the way it's done customary.

"Well, well!" he goes on. "I'm glad my little girl's going to be so happy. She's a good girl and she loves her pa. Sometimes I even think she's right fond of you, Curly," says he. "I can't see why. You're a mighty trifling man, Curly," says he. "I don't see why I keep you."

Then I knowed he was feeling good. He wouldn't turn me off noways in the world, but he liked to joke thataway sometimes.

"Well," says he after a while, "what do you say about it your own self, Curly?"

"I say she loves you as much as any girl ever did her pa. She loves me, too, though I don't know why, neither."

"Shore she does!" he nods. "And she'll do the square thing by us two--that's shore."

"Is it?" says I. "Well, who knows what's the square thing in the world? Sometimes it's hard to tell what is."

"That's so," says he, thoughtful. "Sometimes it is. I might of liked some other man better'n Tom, maybe, if there'd been any other man; but there isn't. I'm glad she's taken him. He'll turn out all right. He's a good boy and his folks is good. He'll come out all right--don't you worry."

"No," says I; "I reckon it'll do no good to worry, Colonel."

"What do you mean?" says he. "Ain't it all right?" says he.

"That remains to be saw," says I.

"She accepts him, don't she?"

"If I knew I'd tell you," says I; "but I don't know for shore."

"Of course," he says to me, "the girl wouldn't be apt to talk very free to you about it, especial since you was in bed."

"Was I?" says I. "Oh, all right, if I was in bed! If I didn't talk to Bonnie Bell a while here last night, then everything is done, and I'm glad to know it."

"Well, where's she now?" says he. "I'm hungry as all get out; and you know I can't eat till she comes down to breakfast--I've got to have her setting right across the table from me, like her ma used to set. Oh, hum! I suppose some day she won't be setting there no more. Just you and me'll be setting there, looking at each other like two damn old fools. That's what fathers is for, Curly," says he. "That's the best they can get out of the draw.

"Well, that's what I've been living for ever since she was knee-high--just to make her happy; just to give her, like her ma told me I must, the place in life that she had coming to her. No little calico dress and a wide hat for Miss Mary Isabel Wright now, I reckon, Curly. Her game is different now. Them Better Things is coming her way, I reckon now, Curly. She's left the ranch and is playing a bigger game--and she's won it. Well, I'll tell 'em both how glad I am; but I wisht she'd come down to breakfast, for I'm getting right hungry."

She didn't come. I couldn't say anything to him yet, for I didn't exactly know what the truth was; Bonnie Bell hadn't told me whether or not she accepted Tom, but only said he was going to come back again. I wisht she'd come down and take this thing off my hands, for I was getting cold feet as shore as you're born.

He walks up and down, getting hungrier all the time, and singing "Tom Bass He Was a Ranger!" But she didn't come. At last he calls our William; and says he to William:

"Go send Annette up to ask Miss Bonnie if she's ready for breakfast."

"Yes, sir; very well, sir. Hit's all growing quite cold, sir," says William; and he went away.

He come back in a few minutes and stood in the door and said his Ahum! like he always did, and the old man turned to him.

"Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Wright's mide says Miss Wright 'as not come in."

"Not come in! What do you mean?"

"She's not in her room, sir. The mide thinks she's not been in her room during the night."

"What's that? What's that?" says he. "Curly, didn't you just now say she was here? Wasn't you up after I was?"

"I seen her around midnight," says I--"maybe later; I don't know. I thought she went to bed. I never did hear her go out. She couldn't of gone out--I'd of heard her."

"You'd of heard her! With you in bed yourself? What do you mean?"

The old man turned to me now and seen my face. He come close up to me.

"Where was you?" says he. "What do you mean?"

"Colonel," says I, "she was here after midnight. I ain't been to bed at all tonight."

"What did she say to you? Why didn't you go to bed? Where is she? What have you done?"

"I ain't done nothing," says I. "I've been trying to talk to you for days, and I couldn't. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to interfere in any girl's business and this shore is hers."

"It's hers?" says he, cold and hard. "I'm in this too. There's something in here that's got to come out. Come!" says he.

He motioned to me and I followed him up the staircase to the part of the house that was Bonnie Bell's--the second story and on the corner toward the lake. She had a fine, big bedroom, with wide windows, all the wood in white, and all the silks a sort of pale green.

We walked into the room; and he didn't knock. The room was empty! Her bed hadn't been slept in. On a chair, smoothed out, was her pale blue dress, which I remembered.

"That's the one she wore last," says I, pointing to it. "She's changed it."

"She's--she's gone!" says her pa. "Gone--without asking me--without telling me! Where's she gone? Tell me, Curly. Has--has anybody---- My girl--where is she? Tell me!"

He had hold of my shoulders then and shook me; and I ain't no chicken neither.

I got a look at the bed then, and there was something on the pillow. I showed it to him. It was a letter.

If you've ever seen a man shot, you know how it gets him. He'll stand for a time like he ain't hurt so bad. Then his face'll pucker, surprised, and he'll begin to crumble down slow. That was the way Old Man Wright done when he read the letter. It was like he was shot and trying to stand and couldn't, only a little while.

"She's--she's gone!" says he, like he was talking, to someone else. "She's run away--from me! She's gone, Curly!" He says it over again, and this time so loud you could of heard it for a block. "Our girl's left here--left her father after all! Curly, tell me, what was this? Could she--did she---- How could she?"

I taken the piece of paper from his hand when he didn't see me. It said:

Father [I never knew her to call him that before] Father, I'm going away. I'm a thief. I've broken your heart and Curly's and Tom's. I'm the wickedest girl in the world; and I'll never ask your forgiveness, for I don't deserve it. You must not look for me any more. I'm going away. Good-by!

Well, that was all. The letter had been all over wet--and a man can't cry.

"Curly," says her pa to me--"why, Curly, it can't be! She's hiding--she's just joking; she wouldn't do this with her old pa. She's scared me awful. Come on, let's find her, and tell her she mustn't do this way no more. There's some things a man can't stand."

"Colonel," says I, "we got to stand it. She's gone and it ain't no joke."

"How do you know?" He turned on me savage now. "Damn you! What do you know? There's nothing wrong about my girl--you don't dare to tell me that there is! She couldn't do no wrong; it wasn't in her."

"No," says I; "she wouldn't do anything but what she thought was right, I reckon. But, you see, you and me, we never knew her at all. I didn't till last night about half past twelve or one o'clock."

"What do you mean? What did she say?"

"She told me she'd got to be a woman."

He stood and looked at me; and now I seen I had to come through, for the girl couldn't be saved no more.

"Oh, hell, Colonel," says I, "I might of known all along the thing would have to come out--it was due to break some day. I ought to of told you, of course."

"What do you mean?" says he; and he caught me once more in his hands--he's strong too.

"Turn me loose, Colonel!" says I. "There can't no man put hands on me--I won't have it. I worked for you all my life pretty near, and I done right, near as I knew. Turn loose of me!"

He let go easy like, but kept his eyes on me.

"I want to be fair," says he, and he half whispered--"I want to be fair; but, the man that's done this'll have to settle with me! Tell me, did you and her plot against me?"

"I didn't plot none," says I. "I was only hoping she'd forget all about it and get married and settle down."

"Forget about what? Did she have any affairs that you knew about?"

I nods then. I was glad to get it off'n my mind.

"Yes," says I; "she did."

"Who was it, Curly?" says he, quiet.

"It was the man next door--the Wisners' hired man," says I.

I'd rather of shot Old Man Wright and killed him decent than say what I did then.

"You're a damn liar!" says he to me at length, quiet like.

"Colonel," says I, "you can't call that to me, nor no other man, and you know it."

"I do call it to you!" says he. "My girl couldn't of done that."

"I wish I was a liar, Colonel," says I; "but I ain't. I'll give you one day to take that back, and you ain't going to study about no proofs neither. I've worked for you a long time. I've loved the girl like you did. It ain't no way for you to do to talk thataway to me. I'll say I've knew this some time and tried to stop it--it was my business to stop it. I tried a hundred times to tell you about it, but I couldn't without pretty near killing her and you too. She ast me not to tell you and--why, hell! I loved her, same as you did."

"How far has it gone, Curly?" says he. He come over now and patted his hand up and down my shoulder, looking away, which was his way of saying he was sorry. "Don't mind me, Curly," says he. "I'm crazy! You mustn't mind me, but tell me all you know now. I know you couldn't lie to either of us if you tried."

"Yes, I could too," says I; "but I haven't tried. But I just couldn't go to you and tell you all this thing, for I knew what it would mean to you.

"It's been going on quietlike for quite a while and I've been doing all I could to stop it. It begun maybe when she hauled him out of the lake--I don't know. They didn't meet often. I heard 'em talking once on the dock, and I told him I'd run him off if he come across the fence or said another word to her. She begged for him then; but I never promised her nothing. I knew it was my job as your foreman to take care of that, so I didn't go to you."

"Go on," says he. "Tell me!"

"She didn't say nothing to him for a long time--she didn't meet him, not after she said she wouldn't. Then he sent letters over--tied to the collar of our little dog--two or three letters; maybe four or five, for all I know. He was crazy over her. All the time he owned up to her and me that he oughtn't to do what he done. He said in his letters he oughtn't to raise his eyes to her--he knowed he ought to of come around to the front door and not to the back door; and he said that very thing. But he said, like a man will, that he couldn't help it.

"She didn't never answer his letters, so far as I know. I don't know as she ever got any word to him at all. So far as I know, they never did talk much, only that one time when I heard 'em. But, as to something going on--why, yes, it's been going on for quite a little while. And I've knew it; I've knew I ought to go and tell you. And all the time I couldn't, because I loved her and she ast me not to tell."

"Did she ever tell you anything? Do you think she cared anyway for him? You see," he goes on, "I never seen him to know him. I don't know who he is. I didn't hardly know he was alive on earth. Gawd forgive me! I ought to of known. I told her once not to talk to that hired man; but if I'd thought anything of this I'd maybe of killed him then."

"Yes; and I ought to of told you, Colonel," says I. "It was only the way things happened and because she ast me not to."

"She had that secret from her father!" says he, slow. "Who can tell what's in a woman's heart?"

"That's it," says I; "now you got it. She was a woman--she told me so."

"What more did she say, Curly?"

"Once she come to me crying, and she says, 'Curly, I love him!'--she meant that man next door. And I know for shore now he wasn't fit to wipe her feet on."

Old Man Wright he set down then, quiet like. I couldn't help him none, I had to set and see him take it. It was awful.

"She said that--she loved him? How long ago?"

"A few weeks, maybe," says I. "I never could get the nerve to tell you then. I hoped she'd get to see how foolish it was for her to care for a cheap gardener--I thought she'd be too proud for that. And then I allowed she'd, like enough, marry Tom Kimberly, and that'd change her and it'd all come out all right. All the time I was hoping and trying to save both her and you. I been nigh about crazy, Colonel. And all the time, of course, I was only a damn fool cowpuncher, without any brains."

"She's gone!" says he, after a time.

"Yes," says I; "near as I can figure, she's thought about it all night and concluded it'd be best for her not to marry Tom, feeling like she did about this other man. She's shook us, Colonel. But, believe me, she wasn't never happy doing that. It must of been like death to her."

"Why did she do it, Curly?" he whispered. "How could she? Why?"

"I done told you, Colonel," says I. "It was because she found she was a woman. She hadn't knew that before--nor us neither."

At length he got up, but he couldn't stand up straight.

"How can we keep this quiet?" says he.

We couldn't keep it quiet at all. It was all over the house right now. That Annette girl had read all them Peanut letters before William ever got 'em. Like enough he'd read 'em too. They was scared when we walked into their part of the house.

"Where's that dog?" says Old Man Wright.

William, he got pale.

"Very good, sir," says he, and pretends to go after Peanut, which he knows wasn't there.

"Hi suppose she took 'im along with 'er, sir," says William after a while.

Annette she chips in:

"_Oui, oui_--yes, yes; she took him with her."

"Took him with her? What do you mean? What do you know about it? Keep quiet, you people!" says Old Man Wright. "Get into that room!" He locked them in.

"Now, Curly----" says he.

I knew he was clear in his own mind by now that the girl had run away with that gardener. He'd maybe go over there.

"No, Colonel," says I; "you keep out of this."

"What do you mean?" says he. "Ain't you my friend at all? Ain't I got a friend in all the world?"

"You're alderman here," I says, "and that's the same as being sher'f. When you was sher'f you couldn't do what the law said you couldn't--now could you? You have to keep up the law when you're a alderman or sher'f. With me, it's different. Besides, this is my job, not yours."