The Big Corral, page 15
North’s face had been puzzled. Now it seemed sardonic.
“So you’ve changed your mind, eh?” he mocked. “You figure now that it’s Devero who’s the big man on the Arkansas?”
Marian recoiled as if he had struck her, her face whitening, then it flamed with color.
“You fool!” she cried, and then her mood changed again, with something like compassion in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rawe,” she added, more quietly. “But I can see now that you’ll never understand.”
“Won’t I, ma’am?” Angry color was in North’s face to match her own. “Don’t delude yourself. I understand only too well. You made it plain from the day I first knew you that you were out to get the best bargain you could—and Tve lived up to my part of our compact! But don’t make a mistake. Maybe Devero was the big man for a while last fall. You should have married him then. He isn’t any longer. What he had is gone, as completely as what I had was destroyed half a year ago. I settle accounts—and I’ve settled this one—all but the final payment. I’m a bigger man on the Arkansas than I was last fall. Everything that you’ve wanted I can give you. He can’t give you anything.”
He stopped, breathless, baffled by the look in Marian’s eyes. Such a look as he had never seen there before. A glance, once more, of pity or compassion.
“I suppose I shouldn’t blame you for taking me at my word, Rawe,” she said. “For not understanding. You’re what you are, and nothing can ever change that. And I did tell you that I would marry the man who could give me the most, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” he agreed hoarsely. “You made that plain.”
“That was my fault,” Marian sighed. “You see—well, I’ll try and be honest with you—both of you. I liked you both. In fact, each of you attracted me—just as I seemed to appeal to you. You were the only two men who ever did mean anything to me. Both of you were strong, ruthless, and the kind who did things. You were cattle kings on the Arkansas.
“Maybe you can’t understand what that meant to me. I— I’d had a hard life. A rigorous upbringing. I was one of a big family. All that we ever had at home was poverty. Never quite enough to eat—never enough of anything. I made up my mind that I was going to get what I wanted out of life, without making a fool of myself. My mother had married for love—I guess. Certainly not for money. But I didn’t believe in love. I wasn’t going to be fooled by any of the usual traps. The only rule that counted was to get what you could, to do the best you could for yourself.”
She paused for a moment. North’s face had not changed. “It’s a good rule,” he said. “That’s what I liked about you.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed. “But there’s something else, curious as it may seem, that I still believed in. Loyalty. I went out to Kansas with you to marry you, Rawe. That “was why I waited. I intended to keep my promise.”
He stared at her, uncertain now.”
“When you knew I didn’t have anything—” He stopped, remembering the glove. Stubborn anger grew in him again.
“What does it matter?” he asked. “I’m here now. And with something to offer you again.”
Marian shook her head.
“No,” she denied. “Not with anything to offer me, Rawe. Not any more. All that you have is in your corral—the bigger the better. But it isn’t in you.”
“Words,” he flung at her, bitterly. “I didn’t think you were the kind to smother a man with words. I don’t understand you.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” she agreed. “And I’m sorry, Rawe. I truly am. What I’m trying to tell you is—that I’m only a woman, after all. And I’ve found out that there is such a thing as love. And that it counts for more, is bigger than all the rest.”
North was like a grizzly, hemmed in by yapping dogs which snarled and bit from half a dozen directions. Angry, baffled, growing more furious as he began to comprehend.
“You sound like a fool,” he said roughly. “But you’re the only woman for me. And don’t you understand? Devero’s wiped out. I’ve treated him as he treated me. He hasn’t a thing left—not a building standing, no cattle on his grass. I’m even takin’ over that range. I’m not one of the two big men on the Arkansas any longer. I’ve played your own game, De vero, and beat you at it. I’m the only man on the Arkansas now!”
For answer, Marian turned, crossed the room to Devero again, and rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. There was still pity in her eyes and the tones of her voice.
“I feel sorry for you, Rawe,” she said. “Really I do. That a man so big in some ways should be so blind.”
Fury burst out of him at last, but it was a controlled rage, cold and calculating.
“So that’s the way it is?” he gibed. “He’s been here with you till he’s hoodwinked you completely! Well, no man can say that I was ever a piker. I’ll gamble with you, Devero— ail or nothing! A roll of the dice, a game of cards. You name it. If I win, she marries me, goes back. If you win—you can go back with her, and everything on the western river is yours!”
Devero had listened, mostly silent, almost a spectator to this which had enmeshed the three of them from the beginning. His blood stirred again in the old wild way to North’s challenge, but he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “For a ranch, yes, I’d gamble you, North. For anything else on earth, I’d take you on. But for her— no.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.” The rage blared like an off-key trumpet in North’s voice now, so much so that he failed to hear the door open again behind him.
“Why do you think I made such an offer, Devero?” North raged on. “Only because I aimed to beat you. I promised myself long ago to settle with you—and most of it’s been done. Now I’m rinishin’ the job. Looks like you’ve no gun. But I pack two. Take one. And the winner takes all!”
Tripp Devero was still a sick man, slow and unready of movement. That was plain to see. But North was past all caring. He tossed a gun across the room, to fall at Devero’s feet. And in almost a continuing part of the same motion his hand chopped down toward his holster, his other weapon was a flash in the afternoon sunlight slanting across the floor.
Marian screamed, the sound swallowed in gun-thunder. Then she stared with dilating eyes from Doll, who lounged in the doorway, smoking revolver in hand, to North, sinking down almost as Pete Hartse had done upon another occasion, his unfired gun still clutched in stiffening Angers. Devero, though trying hard, had not been able to reach the gun on the floor. He had all but fallen from his chair in the effort.
Regret was in the face of Noland Doll as he returned his own weapon to holster.
“I’m right sorry it had to be that way, ma’am,” he apologized. “And he was my friend. . . . But you see, Miss Breen, I met another lady, down in Texas, last fall. She said you were the only friend she ever had. Altie, her name was.” He pronounced it softly, like a benediction.
“Altie died—takin’ a bullet that would have killed him.” He nodded toward North. “And the last thing she ever said, just about, was to ask him to be good to you, ma’am—to make you happy. Seemed like he was forgettin’ that—and so—on her account—I had to do it.”
He hesitated, added a last word.
“I reckon you will be, ma’am—and that’d sure please her. She thought a lot of you.”
Nodding, he turned and went out and down the stairs, a man walking with eyes that looked on empty places. For a moment, then, it seemed to Tripp Devero that Marian was going to faint again, so he got quickly to his feet and gathered her into his arms.
THE END
Al Cody, The Big Corral
