Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/79



AY closed her door, and standing in the darkness of her room the iron repression of the evening, before William in the Mariposa, before Jake, suddenly gave way. She was suffering. She was suffering horribly. Tom could tell her what he had told her, imply what he had implied, and then go off and hunt out some girl of the town, some

Her cheeks burned with the cheapness of it. He had cheapened her. He had turned the situation between them into a tawdry thing. Maybe he had laughed about her with that girl.

"I've got a girl out at the ranch. Some girl, too. You'd better watch your step."

But by the time she had taken off her light frock and put on her night dress and a dressing gown, she was already making excuses for him. They had hurt him unbearably, and he had drifted back to an old weakness to forget it. They were to blame, largely. And how did they know he had been drinking? Just because he had done it before they were ready to think it of him now. He had not looked as though he had been drinking. And he had never had a chance, with that father who was always ready to move somewhere, provided it was West.

"Used to move so much, every time the chickens saw the team put in the wagon, they'd lie down on their backs and hold their legs up to be tied!"

It wasn't true. Even now he was plodding back through the night to the same thing again, if not here somewhere else. Hard work and small pay, hardships and dangers; for interest the care of another man's great herds of cows and horses, for relaxation the rough play of the bunk house, an occasional crap game, and for pleasure, what? The town and what little it could offer.