The Last Straw. Titus Harold
lifted her glass to her chin's level and smiled at him.
"To the future!" she said.
His question was adroitly timed for she had just given the glass a slight toss and was already carrying its rim toward her lips when his words checked the movement.
"I take it, ma'am, that you'll want this liquor to go where it'll do your future the most good?"
He looked from her down to the cocktail he held and moved the glass in a quick little circle to set the yellow liquid swirling. His voice had been quite casual, but when he raised his eyes to meet her inquiring look the last of a twinkle was giving way to gravity.
"You mean?..."
"Just about what I said: that you'd like to have this brace of drinks do your future some good?"
"Why, yes, that was my intention. Why?"
"You called me down here to get a little advice. Let's commence here."
He reached out for her glass in a manner which was at once gentle and dominating, presumptuous but unoffending, with a measure of certainty; still, by his face, she might have told that he was experimenting with her, not just sure of how she would react, not, perhaps, caring a great deal. His fingers closed on her glass and she yielded with half laughing, half protesting astonishment. He took both glasses in one hand, moved deliberately toward the hearth and tossed their contents into the flames. He then set the empty tumblers on the mantel and turned about with a questioning smile on his lips.
The sharp, slowly dwindling hiss of quenched flame which followed completely died out before she spoke. Color had leaped into her cheeks and ebbed as quickly; her lips had shut in a tight line and for a fraction of time it was as though she would angrily demand explanation.
But she said evenly enough: "I don't understand that."
"I'm glad you didn't show how mad it made you," he replied.
"But why.... What made you do it?"
"You said, you know, that you wanted that liquor to go where it'd help your future. I thought the fire was about the best place for it under the circumstances."
"But why di—"
"And I believed you when you said you had a lot to learn and that you called me down to start the job. You have a way of makin' people think you mean what you say. I'm mighty glad to give you advice; I thought this was a good way to begin."
Jane gave a queer laugh and sat down, looking blankly into the fire. She turned her face after a moment and found him studying her as he sat at the other end of the davenport.
"I understand your meaning," she said, "but you're as startling in your actions as you must be in your reasoning. You didn't object to the idea of a drink; I didn't think many of you people did out here."
"We don't, ma'am. Most of us drink our share. I do."
"But just now you threw yours away."
"You see, I was bound to throw yours away. It wouldn't have been polite, would it, for me to drink and not let you?" His smile mocked her. "Besides," dryly—"I ain't much on these fancy drinks. You warned me that it wouldn't be so very good anyhow."
She stared at him in perplexity.
"You have no scruples against drinking?"
"Moderate drinking; no."
"Then why did you take this liberty with me?"—suggesting indignation.
"You see, you're a woman. You guessed a minute ago that there wasn't much objection to hard liquor here. I told you you were right; most of us boys drink, but we can afford to and you can't." His manner was light, almost to the degree of banter, as if that which had aroused her was the simplest of matters.
"A man in this country don't build a reputation on many things. So long as he's honest, he gets along pretty well. But a woman: that's different. She has to make people know she's right in everything she does."
"An occasional drink will make her less right?"
"Not a bit less, ma'am, but it won't help other folks to know she's right. And that's all that counts. Everybody, man or woman, who comes into the west has to make or break by what he does here; nothin' that has been, good or bad, matters. They commence from the bottom again and by what they do people judge them.
"Reputation is the first thing you've got to make for yourself. Everybody is watchin' you: the boys here on the ranch, the neighbors down creek, the people in town. You've got to show that you're honest, that you've got courage; if you were a man it could stop there, but you're a woman an' that makes it....
"Well, men out here expect things from a woman that I guess men in cities don't think so much about and you might as well know now as any time that men in this country don't like to see a woman do some of the things they do. We ain't as polite as some; we ain't as gentle, when it's necessary to act quick and for sure, but maybe we make up for some of our roughness in the idea we have of women. We think a good woman is about as fine a thing as God has made, ma'am, and we have our ideas of goodness.
"You see, you've got to handle men; you've got to have their respect and you won't have their respect if you don't understand how they think, and then act accordingly.
"Besides, you're on a job that's going to take all the brains and grit and strength you've got. Booze never helped anybody on a job like that. If you was a man and your job was just ridin' after cattle it'd be different. But neither one is the case....
"My advice, ma'am!"
She watched his face a moment before saying:
"As long as I can remember, women about me have been drinking. Ever since I grew up I've been drinking. I've never taken too much; I've never needed it; I've done it because ... because it was being done."
"Yeah. Well, it ain't done here. It's a new country and a new life for you and one of the first things you've got to learn is how to get on with people. Maybe back east some of the folks wouldn't respect you if you didn't drink. There are folks like that, who think it's smart to do certain things, and maybe there are a lot of 'em like you, who don't need it, don't even want it, but they do it because of their reputations.
"You see, it's the same rule workin' backwards out here."
The girl moved to face the fire again. She scowled a trifle and the glow on her cheeks was not wholly due to the reflection of the blazing logs.
"Did it ever occur to you that there might be people who gave little attention to what others think of them?" she asked rather coldly.
"Sure thing! There are lots like that."
"I can see where, if a stranger were to plan to stay in a place like this for long it might be expedient to ... to cater to the community morals. I don't intend to be a permanent resident. That is, I won't if I can help it. I don't expect that I'd ever come up to your notion of a worthy woman,"—a bitterness creeping into the voice—"so perhaps it is fortunate that I look on this ranch only as means to an end."
"You mean, money, ma'am?" he asked, and when she did not reply at once he went on: "Folks generally come west for one of three reasons: money or health or because they like the country. I take it your health's all right ... and that you ain't just struck with the country."
She made a slight grimace and sat forward, elbows on knees.
"Yes, money!" she said under her breath. "I came here to get it. I'm going to." She looked up at him quickly, eyebrows arched in a somewhat defiant query, and, after a pause, went on: "You don't seem to approve?"
"No, ma'am," candidly, that smile only half hidden in his eyes.
"And why not? What else is there out here for a woman like me?"
"That's a hard question. One thing she might find is herself, for instance."
She gave a