Bruce of the Circle A. Titus Harold

the man's thighs and leaning to the right, close against the woman's stooping body. He grasped the cold wrist with one hand and washed the jagged hurt quickly, thoroughly. The man he held protested inarticulately and struggled to move about. Once, the towel that hid his face was thrown off and Bayard replaced it, glad that the girl's back had been turned so she did not see.

      It was the crude, cruel surgery of the frontier and once, towards the end, the tortured man lifted his thick, scarcely human voice in a cursing phrase and Bayard, glancing sharply at the woman, murmured,

      "I beg your pardon, Miss ... for him."

      "That's not necessary," she answered, and her whisper was thin, weak.

      "You ain't goin' to faint, are you?" he asked, in quick apprehension, ceasing his work to peer anxiously at her.

      "No.... No, but hurry, please; it is very unpleasant."

      He nodded his head in assent and began the bandaging, hurriedly. He made the strips of cloth secure with deft movements and then said,

      "There, Miss, it's all over!"

      She straightened and turned from him and put a hand quickly to her forehead, drew a deep breath as of exasperation and moved an uncertain step or two toward the door.

      "All right," she said, with a half laugh, stopping and turning about. "I was afraid ... you see! I'm not accustomed...."

      Bayard removed his weight from the other man and sat again on the edge of the bed.

      "Lots of men, men out here in this country, would have felt the same way ... only worse," he said, reassuringly. "It takes lots of sand to fuss with blood an' man meat until you get used to it. You've got the sand, Miss, an' I sure appreciate what you've done. He will, too."

      She turned to meet his gaze and he saw that her face was colorless and strained, but she smiled and asked,

      "I couldn't do less, could I?"

      "You couldn't do more," he said, staring hard at her, giving the impression that his mind was not on what he was saying. "More for me or more for ... a carcass like that." A tremor of anger was in his voice, and resentment showed in his expression as he turned to look at the covered face of the heavily breathing man. "It's a shame, Miss, to make your kind come under the same roof with a ... a thing like he is!"

      After a moment she asked,

      "Is he so very bad, then?"

      "As bad as men get ... and the best of us are awful sinful."

      "Do you ... do you think men ever get so bad that anyone can be hurt by being ... by coming under the same roof with them?"

      He shook his head and smiled again.

      "I'd say yes, if it wasn't that I'd picked this hombre out of th' ditch an' brought him here an' played doctor to-night. You never can tell what you'll believe until the time comes when you've got to believe something."

      A silent interval, which the woman broke.

      "Is there anything else I can do for you now?"

      He knew that she wanted to go, yet some quality about her made him suspect that she wanted to stay on, too.

      "No, Miss, nothin' ..." he answered. "I've got to go tend to my horse. He's such a baby that he won't leave his tracks for anybody so long's he knows I'm here, so I can't send anybody else to look after him. But you've done enough. I'll wait a while till somebody else comes along to watch—"

      "No, no! let me stay here ... with him."

      "But—"

      "I came here to help you. Won't you let me go through with it?"

      He thought again that it was her pride forcing her on; he could not know that the prompting in her was something far deeper, something tragic. He said:

      "Why if you want to, of course you can. I won't be gone but a minute. I've let up on this pressure a little; we'll keep letting up on it gradual ... I've done this thing before. He's got to be watched, though, so he don't pull the bandages off and start her bleeding again."

      The woman seated herself on the chair as he turned to go.

      "It'll only be a minute," he assured her again, hesitating in the doorway. "I wouldn't go at all, only, when my horse is the kind of a pal he is, I can't let him go hungry. See?"

      "I see," she said, but her tone implied that she did not, that such devotion between man and beast was quite incomprehensible ... or else that she had given his word no heed at all, had only waited impatiently for him to go.

      He strode down the hallway and she marked his every footfall, heard him go stumping and ringing down the stairs two at a time, heard him leave the porch and held her breath to hear him say,

      "Well, Old Timer, I didn't plan to be so long."

      Then, the sound of shod hoofs crossing the street at a gallop.

      She closed her eyes and let her head bow slowly and whispered,

      "Oh, God ... there is manhood left!"

      She sat so a long interval, suffering stamped on her fine forehead, indicated in the pink and white knots formed from her clenched hands. Then, her lips partly opened and she lifted her head and looked long at the covered face of the man on the bed. Her breath was swift and shallow and her attitude that of one who nerves herself for an ordeal. Once, she looked down at the hand on the bed near her and touched with her own the hardened, soiled fingers, then gave a shake to her head that was almost a shudder, straightened in her chair and muttered aloud,

      "He said ... I had the sand...."

      She leaned forward, stretched a hand to the towel which covered the man's face, hesitated just an instant, caught her breath, lifted the shrouding cloth and gave a long, shivering sigh as she sat back in her chair.

      At that moment Bruce Bayard in the corral across the street, pulled the bridle over his sorrel's ears. He slung the contrivance on one arm and held the animal's hot, white muzzle in his hands a moment. He squeezed so tightly that the horse shook his head and lifted a fore foot in protest and then, alarmed, backed quickly away.

      "... I didn't intend it, Abe," the man muttered. "... I was thinkin' about somethin' else."

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

A REVELATION

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      When Bayard returned to the Manzanita House, he ran up the stairs with an eagerness that was not in the least inspired by a desire to return to his watching over the man he had chosen to succor. He strode down the hallway and into the room with his keen anticipation thinly disguised by a sham concern. And within the doorway he halted abruptly, for the woman who had helped him, whose presence there had brought him back from his horse on a run, sat at the bedside with her hands limp in her lap and about her bearing an air that quite staggered him. Her face was as nearly expressionless as a human countenance can become. It was as if something had occurred which had taken from her all emotion, all ability to respond to any mental or sensory influence. For the moment, she was crushed, and so completely that even her reflexes did not react to the horror of the revelation. She did not look at Bayard, did not move; she might have been without the sense of sight or hearing; she did not even breathe perceptibly; just sat there with a fixity that frightened him.

      "Why, Miss!" he cried in confused alarm. "I ... I wouldn't left you—"

      She roused on his cry and shook her head, and he thought she wanted him to stop, so he stood there through an awkward moment, waiting for her to say more.

      "Course,