WE CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE—I’D BE TOO ASHAMED OF myself,” Dora said, nervously fastening her dress.
She already felt too ashamed of herself. Blue had merely been sitting in the kitchen, teasing Doosie. It was she who had drawn him upstairs; he had seemed uncharacteristically reluctant; for once he might have preferred to stay in the kitchen and enjoy his chat with the cook.
T. Blue felt a little melancholy, though he was not distraught to the extent that Dora was. They had disappointed themselves—why, he couldn’t quite grasp; their long love had not been built on disappointment. Still, it seemed to him that Dora was more upset than the occasion required. Life was a sturdy business; it wouldn’t founder because of one mess in the morning.
“What possessed you to marry?” he asked, clinging to her hand. He felt that if she would just settle in his arms for a bit she might calm down and things might go better. But Dora, with the hand he wasn’t holding, was brushing her hair desperately, as if well-brushed hair would hold back chaos.
Dora dropped the hairbrush in discouragement; what was the point? She allowed him to pull her back on the bed, though for a while she remained stiff.
“I don’t know, T.,” she said. “He carried me out of the mud—I guess that’s why.”
T. Blue couldn’t help grinning. It was the sanest reason for getting married he had yet been presented with. Few of the other explanations he had heard made half as much sense.
“Now why didn’t I think of that, in Dodge or somewhere?” he said. “There was plenty of mud around when we first got acquainted. If I’d just spotted you in the slush somewhere, we might have ten grandkids.”
“Don’t talk about it,” Dora said miserably. “Don’t talk about things that can’t happen. I’ll get too sad.”
“Oh, hush that!” Blue said. “Stop this moping. The sky ain’t fallen that I can see. You’ve got a strapping youth to help you now—I’m sure he’ll serve you far better than a broken-down cowpoke like me.”
“That’s fine, but I love you most,” Dora said. “I can’t help it. I love you most.”
“Well, I know you do,” Blue said. Dora was in such a delicate state, he thought he had best exert himself and be tactful. “You’ve had sort of a tricky way of showing it, though.”
Dora immediately bristled. “Tricky?” she said. “I deny it! When I can get you to show up, I show it fine. Don’t I?”
Blue had been referring to her long refusal to marry him, but he felt there was no advantage to be gained by clarifying the matter.
“You show it fine,” Blue agreed; in her state, if she had said the moon was green he would have agreed.
After a bit Dora felt a little calmer and became a bit less stiff.
“Things just get away from me,” she said. “You live so far away now.”
That was a little too exasperating to let pass, Blue felt. “Who moved?” he said. “Who moved to Belle Fourche? Was it me?”
“No, but you married first,” Dora said, realizing she had been a trifle illogical in her last statement.
“Let’s not argue that,” Blue said. “We can argue that till hulls grow teats, and not agree.”
They both slowly relaxed; they took a little nap. When Blue woke up, Dora had spread a towel under his head and was trimming his hair—it had grown shaggy in the last months. Trimming his hair had always been her special joy.
“Sit up,” she commanded. Blue sat up sleepily, and she finished the job.
“Now I’ll itch all the way home,” he said.
“It will serve you right—you deserve to suffer worse!” Dora informed him, but she was no longer distressed.
“What’s that strapping youth like?” Blue inquired. “Is he old enough to talk yet? Has anyone taught him his letters?”
“He reads better than you can, I’ll have you know,” Dora said. “Don’t be mocking my husband. He’s a peach of a boy and I’m mighty, mighty fond of him.”
“I intend to call him Ox,” Blue said. “An ox is a beast that has only one use, and that’s to tug you out of the mud. If you’ll restrict him to mud duty, you’ll hear no complaint from me.”
Dora almost laughed, as she had so often laughed at his sallies, but the laugh never came.
“T, he’s my husband,” she said. “I wanted someone—Ogden’s nice.”
Then she put her face in her hands and began to cry. Her hands were covered with his hairs—likewise the bedsheet. Quite a few had made it down the back of his shirt.
“Oh, no, now, this is tiresome, it’s a pretty day,” Blue said. “I was merely joshing—I’ve joshed you a thousand times. What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry—I’m sorry. I’m not myself,” Dora said.
Doosie had fixed a fine meal. They lingered at the table a long while, and Dora repaired her mood a little. Blue, trying hard, persuaded her to play the piano. He insisted on dancing with Doosie, hoping it would make Dora laugh. She did laugh, but mainly at Doosie, who was far too proper a woman to keep up with Blue in a dance.
Still, underneath the effort, the day was a failure. They were able to be their old selves only for a few minutes; the other parts of their lives could not be pushed away as neatly as had once been the case. Dora could not stop worrying that Ogden might make a quick kill and return while Blue was still there. The thought crossed Blue’s mind too. At other times, whatever the obstacles, when he really put his mind to wooing Dora he had always succeeded; it was just a matter of persisting until he uncovered the real Dora, the woman who had no need to resist him, and every need not to.
The sky might not have fallen, but that fact didn’t preclude let-downs and other disappointments. When they kissed at the back door, Dora thought she saw a tear in T.’s eye. She kept smiling when he mounted the buckskin mare and rode off; when he turned at the edge of town and waved she waved back vigorously. But Blue didn’t turn away again and leave briskly and dashingly, as he always had. She could only see the white spot that was his face, still turned toward her—just his face, looking. Finally he did go, but for the rest of her life, in moments of sadness, she would remember that distant white spot—T. Blue’s face—hanging there at the edge of Belle Fourche, looking at her.
It was sad; Dora went upstairs and did what she always did when he left—cried for two days.
When Ogden walked into town on the third morning, proud as could be, the mule Charley loaded with most of an elk, he felt fine until he saw Dora, and then lost the shine off his mood. She kissed him and hugged him tightly, but she looked worn, as if she had been mighty upset while he was gone. Doosie was happy with the elk, and Dora happy to see him, but Ogden wondered guiltily if perhaps he had stayed gone too long.