The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey

it would be more than desirable to pass it on to one of his own blood, and secretly he was pleased when Rose told him a baby was coming. A child, a son, might bring with him a little of what was missing in his marriage with her. She irritated him more and more, not by what she did but by what she was. Her whole temperament, in so much as he permitted himself to be aware of it, her whole nature, jarred on his.

      “When is it due?”

      “October.”

      “It’s lucky harvest will be over; silo filling, too,” was his only comment.

      In spite of Rose’s three long years with Martin his lack of enthusiasm was like a sharp stab. What had she expected, she asked herself sternly. To be taken in his arms and rejoiced over as others were at such a moment? What did he care so long as he wouldn’t have to hire extra help for her in the busy season! It was incredible—his hardness.

      Why couldn’t she hate him? He was mean enough to her, surely. “I’m as foolish as old Rover,” she thought bitterly. The faithful dog lived for his master and yet Rose could not remember ever having seen Martin give him a pat. “When I once hold my own little baby in my arms, I won’t care like this. I’ll have someone else to fill my heart,” she consoled herself, thrilling anew with the conviction that then she would be more than recompensed for everything. The love she had missed, the house that had been stolen from her—what were they in comparison to this growing bit of life? Meanwhile, she longed as never before to feel near to Martin. She could not help recalling how gallantly her father had watched over her mother when she carried her last child and how eagerly they all had waited upon her. At times, the contrast was scarcely to be borne.

      Rose was troubled with nausea, but Martin pooh-poohed, as childish, the notion of dropping some of her responsibilities. Didn’t his mares work almost to the day of foaling? It was good for them, keeping them in shape. And the cows—didn’t they go about placidly until within a few hours of bringing their calves? Even the sows—did they droop as they neared farrowing? Why should a woman be so different? Her child would be healthier and she able to bring it into the world with less discomfort to herself if she went about her ordinary duties in her usual way. Thus Martin, impersonally, logically.

      “That would be true,” Rose agreed, “if the work weren’t so heavy and if I were younger.”

      “It’s the work you’re used to doing all the time, isn’t it? Because you aren’t young is all the more reason you need the exercise. You’re not going to hire extra help, so you might just as well get any to-do out of your mind,” he retorted, the dreaded note in his voice.

      She considered leaving him. If she had earned her living before, she could again. More than once she had thought of doing this, but always the hope of a child had shone like a tiny bright star through the midnight of her trials. Since she had endured so much, why not endure a little longer and reap a dear reward? Then, too, she could never quite bring herself to face the pictures her imagination conjured of Martin, struggling along uncared for. Now, as her heart hardened against him, an inner voice whispered that everyone had a right to a father as well as a mother, and Martin might be greatly softened by daily contact with a little son or daughter. In fairness, she must wait.

      Yet, she knew these were not her real reasons. They lay far deeper, in the very warp and woof of her nature. She did not leave Martin because she could not. She was incapable of making drastic changes, of tearing herself from anyone to whom she was tied by habit and affection—no matter how bitterly the mood of the moment might demand it. Always she would be bound by circumstances. True, however hard and adverse they might prove, she could adapt herself to them with rare patience and dignity, but never would she be able to compel them to her will, rise superbly above them, toss them aside. Her life had been, and would be, shaped largely by others. Her mother’s death, the particular enterprise in which her father’s little capital had been invested, Martin’s peculiar temperament—these had moulded and were moulding Rose Wade. At the time she came to Martin’s shack, she was potentially any one of a half dozen women. It was inevitable that the particular one into which she would evolve should be determined by the type of man she might happen to marry, inevitable that she would become, to a large degree, what he wished and expected, that her thoughts would take on the complexion of his. Lacking in strength of character? In power of resistance, certainly. Time out of mind, such malleability has been the cross of the Magdalenes. Yet in what else lies the secret of the harmony achieved by successful wives?

      And as, her nausea passing, Rose began to feel a glorious sensation of vigor, she decided that perhaps, after all, Martin had been right. Child-bearing was a natural function. People probably made far too much fuss about it. Nellie came to help her cook for the threshers and, for the rest, she managed very well, even milking her usual eight cows and carrying her share of the foaming buckets.

      All might have gone smoothly if only she had not overslept one morning in late September. When she reached the barn, Martin was irritable. She did not answer him but sat down quietly by her first cow, a fine-blooded animal which soon showed signs of restlessness under her tense hands.

      “There! There! So Bossy,” soothed Rose gently.

      “You never will learn how to manage good stock,” Martin criticized bitingly.

      “Nor you how to treat a wife.”

      “Oh, shut up.”

      “Don’t talk to me that way.”

      As she started to rise, a kick from the cow caught her square on the stomach with such force that it sent her staggering backward, still clutching the handle of the pail from which a snowy stream cascaded.

      “Now what have you done?” demanded Martin sternly. “Haven’t I warned you time and again that milk cows are sensitive, nervous? Fidgety people drive them crazy. Why can’t you behave simply and directly with them! Why is it I always get more milk from mine! It’s your own fault this happened—fussing around, taking out your ill temper at me on her. Shouting at me. What could you expect?”

      For the first time in their life together, Rose was frankly unnerved. It seemed to her that she would go mad. “You devil!” she burst out, wildly. “That’s what you are, Martin Wade! You’re not human. Your child may be lost and you talk about cows letting down more milk. Oh God! I didn’t know there was any one living who could be so cruel, so cold, so diabolical. You’ll be punished for this some day—you will—you will. You don’t love me—never did, oh, don’t I know it. But some time you will love some one. Then you’ll understand what it is to be treated like this when your whole soul is in need of tenderness. You’ll see then what—”

      “Oh, shut up,” growled Martin, somewhat abashed by the violence of her broken words and gasping sobs. “You’re hysterical. You’re doing yourself as much harm right now as that kick did you.”

      “Oh, Martin, please be kind,” pleaded Rose more quietly. “Please! It’s your baby as much as mine. Be just half as kind as you are to these cows.”

      “They have more sense,” he retorted angrily. And when Rose woke him, the following night, to go for the doctor, his quick exclamation was: “So now you’ve done it, have you?”

      As the sound of his horse’s hoofs died away, it seemed to her that he had taken the very heart out of her courage. She thought with anguished envy of the women whose husbands loved them, for whom the heights and depths of this ordeal were as real as for their wives. It seemed to her that even the severest of pain could be wholly bearable if, in the midst of it, one felt cherished. Well, she would go through it alone as she had gone through everything else since their marriage. She would try to forget Martin. She would forget him. She must. She would keep her mind fixed on the deep joy so soon to be hers. Had she not chosen to suffer of her own free will, because the little creature that could be won only through it was worth so much more than anything else the world had to offer? She imagined the baby already arrived and visualized him as she hoped her child might be at two years. Suppose he were in a burning house, would she have the courage to rescue him? What would be the limit of her endurance in the flames? She laughed to herself at the absurdity of the question. How well