Harold Titus

“ I've learned that without love, without sympathy, without understanding or the effort, the desire, to understand, no marriage is a marriage; that without them it is only ugly, hideous.
"I've had to fight it all out and think it all out for myself. Circumstances and people have helped me make my decision. I owed you something, I still thought, and I came here to-day to fulfill my duty, to give you another chance. If you had met me with even friendliness, I'd have shut my eyes, my ears, my heart to Bruce Bayard in spite of all he means to me. ”

“ Bayard, too, fought his bitter fight. The urge in him was to take her, to bear her away, to defy the laws that men had made to hurt her and to devil him; but something behind, something deep in him, forbade. He must go on, nursing back to strength that mockery of manhood who could lift his fuddled, obscene head and, with the blessing of society, claim Ann Lytton as his—her body, her soul! ”

“ Her cheeks bronzed from sun and wind, the blood pumped closer to her skin from the outdoor life and her eyes, above the latent pain in their depths, took on the brilliance of health. Her new manner of dress, the better color that came to her face and accentuated her beauty, the growing indications of vitality about her, served only to fan the flame in Bayard's heart, for as it made her more attractive to him, it also made her more understandable, brought her nearer to his virile kind.
Ann had taken to Arizona whole-heartedly and dressed suitably for the new life she was leading. ”

“ Nora, th' girl downstairs, would come, Miss—"
"I can help you," she said, and a flush rushed into her cheeks, which at once relieved and accentuated their pallor. It was as though he had accused her of a weakness that she resented.
Bayard looked her over through a silent moment; then moved one foot quickly and, eyes still holding her gaze, his left hand groped for a towel, found it, shook it out and spread it over the face of the drunken, wounded man he had called her to help him tend.
"He ain't a beauty, Miss," he explained, relieved that the countenance was concealed from her. ”

“ He stood running over the worn, soiled pages of his "French Revolution" lost in thought and Ann, stooping before the shelves, turned her face to watch him covertly. This was the explanation of the Bruce Bayard she knew and loved; she now understood. This was why he had drawn her to him so easily. He was rough of manner, of speech, but behind it all was thought, intelligence; not that alone, but the intelligence of an intrinsically fine mind. For an unschooled man to accomplish what he had accomplished was beyond her experience. ”

“ Bruce Bayard had attempted to steal his wife, he repeated to himself, he had attempted to frighten him away from his other property, his mine, and he was roused to a pitch of nervous excitement that carried him beyond the caution of mental balance and yet did not stimulate him to the abandon of actual madness. He wanted Bayard's life with all the lust that can be stirred in men by an outraging of the sense of possession and the passion of jealousy ... beyond which there can be no destroying desire. ”

“ For a long time Bruce and Ann stood under the ash tree, watching them depart, hearing the last sounds of wheel and hoof and voice break in on the evening quiet.
The girl was wonderfully happy. The strained look about her eyes, the quick, nervous gestures that had characterized her after the tragedy of Ned Lytton's death and before her return to the East, were gone. A splendid look of peace was upon her; one life was gone, thrown away as a piece of botched work ”

“ And yet that other part, that Puritanical Ann, resisted, fought down this urge, told her that she must not, could not want Bayard because, at the Circle A ranch, waited another man who, in the eyes of the law, of other people, of her God, even, was the one who owned her loyalty and devotion even though he could not claim her love. Strange the ways of women who will guard so zealously their bodies but who will struggle against every natural, holy influence to give so recklessly, so uselessly, so hopelessly, of their souls! ”

“ Nora knew Bruce, knew his close adherence to his own code of morals, and she believed that something possibly might come to pass, some circumstance might arise which would take Ann out of their lives before the control that Bayard had built about his natural impulses could be broken down. That would leave her alone with the rancher, to worship him from a distance, to find a great solace in the fact that though he refused to be her lover no other woman was more intimately in his life. ”

“ Far away to the north and eastward snow-covered peaks, triplets, rose against the bright blue of the sky. As Bruce and Ann looked they lost the silver whiteness and became flushed with the pink of dying day. The distant, pine-covered heights had become blue, the far draws were gathering their purple mists of evening. The lilac of the valley's coloring grew fainter, more delicate, while the deep mauves of a range of hills to the southward deepened towards a dead brown. ”

“ Their common interest was their feeling for Bruce Bayard, and their greatest difference was the manner in which each reacted to the emotion. The waitress, more elemental, more direct and child-like, wanted the man with an unequivocal desire. She would have gone through any ordeal, subjected herself to any ignominious circumstances, for his pleasure. But she did not want him as a possession, as something which belonged to her; she wanted him for a master, longed with every fiber of her sensory system to belong to him. ”

“ He walked the floor of the room into which his bed had been moved from the kitchen after the first few days at the ranch; his strength gave out and for a time he lay on the bed, muttering wildly,—then walked again with trembling stride.
Bayard heard. He, too, was suffering; sleep would not come to ease him. He did not talk, did not yearn for action; just lay very quiet and thought and thought until his mind refused to function further with coherence. After that, he forced himself to give heed to other matters for the sake of distraction and became conscious of the sounds from the next room. ”

“ The steel sinews, the leather lungs, the great heart of the beast under him responded nobly to this need. They stormed along the wagon tracks when they held straight, thundered through the unmarked grass and over rocks when the highway turned and twisted. Once, when they ran through a shallow wash and Abe climbed the far side with a scramble, fire shot from his shoes and Bruce cried,
"You're th' stallion shod with fire, boy!" ”

“ As the days passed and Bruce saw Lytton steadying, gaining physical and mental force, his composure, already disturbed, was badly shaken. He tried to tell himself that what must be, must be; that brooding would help matters not at all, that he must keep up his courage and surrender gracefully for the sake of the woman he loved, keeping her peace of mind sacred. ”

“ With a drive of his hand, Bayard's fingers fastened on the gun and the jerk he gave the weapon tore Lynch from his footing.
"You'll not, Benny!"—in a whisper, securing the gun, and flinging it into the brush behind him, gripping the other man by his shirt front, "You won't, by God, if I have to choke you black in the face!"
Lynch drew back against the cabin wall, struggling to free himself.
"It's my fight, Bruce!" ... breathing in gasps, eyes wide, voice strained almost to the point of sobbing. ”

“ Somehow, Bruce got Ann away from the Sunset mine that day. She was brave and struggled to bear up, but after the strain of those last weeks the fatigue of the ride Ned had forced her to take unnerved her and she was like a child when they gained the Boyd ranch where she was taken to the maternal arms of the mistress of that house, to be petted and cried over and comforted.
In his rattling, jingling buckboard Judson Weyl drove out to the mining camp and beside a rock-covered grave murmured a prayer for the soul which had gone out from the body buried there ”

“ He ceased to smile and smote one hip in a manner that told of his sudden feeling of hopelessness. He walked toward the bed again and Ann watched him. As he passed the lamp on the chair, she saw the fine ripple of his thigh muscles under the close-fitting overalls, saw with eyes that did not comprehend at first but which focused suddenly and then scrutinized the detail of his big frame with an odd uneasiness. ”

“ Lytton was the lowest human being he had ever known, degenerated to an organism that lived solely to satiate its most unworthy appetites. Ann, the woman crying yonder, was quite the most beautiful creature on whom he had ever looked and, though he had seen her for the first time no more than an hour before, her charm had touched every masculine instinct, had gripped him with that urge which draws the sexes one to another ... ”

“ He made one step across the threshold and then paused between strides, for before him in the darkness of the hallway a woman's face stood out like a cameo. It was white, made whiter by the few feeble rays of the light outside that struggled into the entry; the eyes were great, dark splotches, the lips were parted; one hand was at the chin and about the whole suggested posture of her body was a tensity, an anxiety, a helplessness that startled the man ... that, and her beauty. For a moment they stood so, face to face, the one in silhouette, the other in black and white ”

“ Her face had not regained its color, but the haunted look was gone from her eyes, the tensity from about her lips. She was in a state of mental and spiritual convalescence, with hope and happiness in sight to hasten the process of healing. Going East for the purpose of explaining, of making what amends she could for Ned's misdeeds, was an ordeal, but she welcomed it for it was the last condition she deemed necessary to set her free.
"It won't be long," she said, assuringly, when Bruce stood before her to say farewell, forlorn and lonely looking already.
"It can't be too quick," he answered. ”

“ Bayard's mouth was open and each time the shock of being thrown forward and down racked his body, the breath was beaten from him. He looked ahead, watching the footing at the bottom, leaving that over which they then passed to his horse, for the most critical moment in a run such as they took is when the horses strike level ground. Then they are apt to go end over end, tripped by the impetus that their rush downhill gives them. He knew that he could not overtake and turn Ann's pony with safety before they reached the bottom. ”

“ It was to overtake Ann's runaway before he topped this rise that Bayard whipped his sorrel. He knew what might happen there. The animal that bore the woman was crazed beyond control, beyond his own horse judgment. He was running, and his sole objective was home. Now, he was taking the quickest possible route and the moment he struck the higher country he might leave the road and go straight for Yavapai, plunging down the sharp point that stood three hundred feet above the valley, and making over the rocks with the abandon of a beast that is bred and reared among them. ”

“ You're the hero; I'm the villain. You're the one who's always saying the things heroes say in books. You're the one who's always right, while I'm always wrong.
"You know, Bayard, when a man gets to be so damn heroic it's time he watched himself. I've never seen one yet whose foot didn't slip sooner or later. The higher you fly, understand, the harder you fall. You're pretty high; mighty superior to most of us. Look out!"
The other regarded him a moment, cheeks flushing slowly under the taunt.
"Lytton, if I was to ask a favor of you, would you consider it?" ”