CHAPTER IX

 

THE GIRL LAY beside him; he felt the flutter of her breath against his throat, the weight of her head on his arm. She said, “I should let you sleep now.”

He knew she was right—an hour or so of sleep had not been enough to restore his energies completely—but he was reluctant to part with her presence. He gripped her shoulder in his hand and felt a gentle resistance to his pressure. She said, “They’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”

“Let them.”

“The dishes must be washed.”

“It will wait.”

“You must sleep,” she said firmly; she worked her way out of his grasp after a final long kiss and picked up the emptied tray, and smiled gently for him before she left the room, hooking the door shut behind her with a foot in an unladylike manner.

The blizzard sent its shattering force against the old building throughout the fitfully stretching moments while he lay flat and tried to return to sleep, but speculations and new excitements and old fears kept his mind in a jumble.

After a time he wearily extracted the worn deck of cards from his pocket and rolled over onto his side to lay out a game of solitaire on the floor. With his hands thus occupied, he found himself alert and almost felt that he could perceive the vague currents of hate and suspicion and darkness that swirled among the men in the saloon below.

There was a sound of footfalls going somewhere, the soft plunk of a log tossed into the fire, the clang of the stove being opened or closed, the drowsy drone of voices; a door slammed. Footsteps came up the stairs and went along the hall into a room. He played a red jack on a black queen. He thought of Michaela and his eyes grew soft; he remembered the momentary trembling of her like the wariness of a slim wild animal quick to flight. She drugged his senses.

He knew that without artfulness and without intent, she had slipped into him a consciousness of herself that threw him entirely off balance—and now he lay slapping cards upon cards and trying to ask himself objectively what the odds would be with such a woman. He had known prettier girls; he could shake them down like ripe plums anywhere from the elaborate carpeted salons of New Orleans to the tarnished gilt rooms of San Antonio. But at no time had there ever been this glowing and delicate perceptiveness and warmth.

But a reasoning corner of his mind told him that perhaps it was too late. He had frittered away the best part of his youth, sinking into a muck of deadly and wasted cynicism that might in the long run brook no change. His life stood against him; how could he share the dreams of this girl and make them real?

Irritated, he swept the cards together and put them away, lying back and closing his eyes and forcing himself to drowse. Dreams crept into him, plaguing, fitful—he was standing centered in the saloon; in a circle around him were Elias and McCasford and Lutz and Andrews and Zane and the old man, each staring at him, each holding out a long-roweled Californio spur in his palm. “Me,” Elias said with his white grin, and McCasford said hotly, “Me,” and the others spoke the same word, Lutz with booming hearty enthusiasm, Andrews with a thickened slur, Zane in his soft, hard-gutted accent, the old man with a vapid senility.

As he watched, the spurs grew larger, the rowels swelling to the size of dishpans; they turned molten and oozed into strange shapes, elongating and swaying like seaweed strands on an ocean surface, suddenly becoming enormous buffalo guns; the six men advanced upon him and he found his feet rooted to the floor, he could not move. The men chanted me at him in unison, their eyes red with livid hatred; soundless flame stabbed from the gun muzzles and he was writhing, falling…

He awakened aggravated by such dreams; he tossed and fell back to sleep listening to the faint, baffled shriek of the wind.