IRIAM rode old Lemon Skin back to the ranch the next morning and a day later Jessie appeared in The Lariat. Hugh was alone. She strode to the rear window and stood strongly silhouetted against the light.
“Hughie,” she said abruptly, “what’s going on between you and Miriam Page?”
“Have you asked Miriam?” Hugh thrust his cigarette away and leaned against the counter.
“Yes, and she sent me to you.”
“How did you come to ask her such a question?” asked Hugh, white to the lips.
“Don’t stall with me, Hughie!” exclaimed his wife.
“I’ve a right to ask you that,” insisted Hugh.
“I knew when I came into The Lariat the day she arrived in Fort Sioux that I’d interrupted a scene. It was thick in the air. And you have a very honest face, besides. She has all the earmarks of a person very much in love. And so have you. It’s all intangible but unmistakable. Yesterday she deliberately started in to tell me what sort of a man she thought you to be. And I asked her point blank if she was in love with you. She refused to reply. Told me to come to you. Here I am.”
Hugh stood very straight and looked at Jessie squarely. “Jessie, you haven’t cared for me for at least five years. I want you to give me my freedom.”
“That’s masculine, putting it over on me! Does that mean that you are in love with Miriam Page?”
“Yes, Jessie, it does.”
Jessie, her fine color blanched, did not speak for a long time. She leaned heavily against the casement, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“You are asking too much, Hughie.”
“It’s not as if you cared. You’ve held me in contempt for years. Why mince matters? You’ll be relieved to be rid of me, Jessie. Be honest! Give us both our freedom.”
“I’ll not give it to you, Hugh. Never.”
“Then I shall take it.”
“Don’t be silly! She’s not big enough for you, Hughie. She’s clever, but not big.”
“She’s much too big for me.”
Jessie gave a sardonic laugh; then she said with a sudden tragic conviction in her deep voice: “Nobody is big enough for you but me, and I’ve wasted my chance. But Miriam Page shall not have you while I live.”
“How are you going to prevent it?” asked Hugh.
“I don’t know.”
Hugh, startled by the depth of pain in Jessie’s voice, looked at her with unusual attention. There was a new expression in her lips. They were no longer indifferent.
“Jessie,” he repeated, “you know you haven’t cared about me for years. Be fair about this and be kind.”
Jessie stared at him with wide eyes, and repeated, wonderingly, “Be fair! Be kind! God in heaven!” and she swung out of The Lariat and mounted Magpie without stopping to see her mother.
Hugh, much perturbed, paced the floor. He had a sudden sense of sadness for Jessie. But after all, he felt that cold justice was on his side. Jessie had never been a wife to him in any full sense of the word. It was not fair of her now to be resentful and vindictive. He was glad that afternoon to take a long ride with Miriam and recover his sense of sureness. Miriam was more fascinating at this period than poor Jessie ever had dreamed of being. She was in love for the only time in her life, in love with all the ardor of a highly trained, primitively passionate mind. Small wonder that the hours passed with her drugged Hugh with happiness.
The days of Miriam’s vacation passed all too quickly. She was obliged to return to Boston early in June. Her actual leaving was prosaic enough, as most leavings are. She spent the night before her departure at the Indian Massacre. Hugh met her at the rickety porch and carried her suitcase over to the station, and looked up into her face for a long, hungry moment as she stood on the observation platform of the train. Then he replaced his hat and turned away, for he could bear no more.
He needed now, as never before, to turn to his work. The Lariat was haunted by memories of Miriam, and the hours, which now bore no hope of seeing her, hung doubly heavy on his hands. As if to add to his discomfort, Fred, as the summer dragged on, reported findings on the Old Sioux Tract that confirmed Hugh’s conviction that here was one of the greatest fossil fields ever discovered. He chafed and fumed and wrote long letters to Miriam, and the days passed, as such days will. In mid-summer a group of young Cheyenne cub engineers did some survey work up the river, the perennial search for a dam site that always so hugely amused the citizens of Fort Sioux. It was the tenth survey, Billy Chamberlain said, that had been made in six years.