A Man Four-Square | Page 5

she was the sport.
After the ceremony had been finished the three men drank together
while she sat white-faced before the fire. When at last Ranse Roush and
the red-headed preacher left the cabin, both of them were under the
influence of liquor. Dave had drunk freely himself.
'Lindy would have given her hopes of heaven to be back safely in the
little mud-daubed bedroom she had called her own.
Three days later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine
across the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the
night before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already
she knew that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to
live with Dave Roush and hold her self-respect.
But she had cut herself off from retreat. All of her friends belonged to
the Clanton faction and they would not want to have anything to do
with her. She had no home now but this, no refuge against the neglect
and insults of this man with whom she had elected to go through life.
To her mind came the verdict of old Nance Cunningham on the
imprudent marriage of another girl: "Randy's done made her bed; I
reckon she's got to lie on it."
A voice hailed the cabin from outside. She went to the door. Ranse
Roush and the red-haired preacher had ridden into the clearing and
were dismounting. They had with them a led horse.
"Fix up some breakfast," ordered Ranse.
The young wife flushed. She resented his tone and his manner. Like
Dave, he too assumed that she had come to be a drudge for the whole
drunken clan, a creature to be sneered at and despised.

Silently she cooked a meal for the men. The girl was past tears. She had
wept herself out.
While they ate the men told of her father's fury when he had discovered
the elopement, of how he had gone down to the mill and cast her off
with a father's curse, renouncing all relationship with her forever. It
was a jest that held for them a great savor. They made sport of him and
of the other Clantons till she could keep still no longer.
"I won't stand this! I don't have to! Where's Dave?" she demanded, eyes
flashing with contempt and anger.
Ranse grinned, then turned to his companion with simulated perplexity.
"Where is Dave, Brother Hugh?"
"Damfino," replied the red-headed man, and the girl could see that he
was gloating over her. "Last night he was at a dance on God Forgotten
Crick. Dave's soft on a widow up there, you know."
The color ebbed from the face of the wife. One of her hands clutched at
the back of a chair till the knuckles stood out white and bloodless. Her
eyes fastened with a growing horror upon those of the red-headed man.
She had come to the edge of an awful discovery.
"You're no preacher. Who are you?"
"Me?" His smile was cruel as death. "You done guessed it, sister. I'm
Hugh Roush--Dave's brother."
"An'--an'--my marriage was all a lie?"
"Did ye think Dave Roush would marry a Clanton? He's a bad lot,
Dave is, but he ain't come that low yet."
For the first and last time in her life 'Lindy fainted.
Presently she floated back to consciousness and the despair of a soul
mortally stricken. She saw it all now. The lies of Dave Roush had
enticed her into a trap. He had been working for revenge against the

family he hated, especially against brave old Clay Clanton who had
killed two of his kin within the year. With the craft inherited from
savage ancestors he had sent a wound more deadly than any rifle bullet
could carry. The Clantons were proud folks, and he had dragged their
pride in the mud.
If the two brothers expected her to make a scene, they were
disappointed. Numb with the shock of the blow, she made no outcry
and no reproach.
"Git a move on ye, gal," ordered Ranse after he had finished eating.
"You're goin' with us, so you better hurry."
"What are you goin' to do with me?" she asked dully.
"Why, Dave don't want you any more. We're goin' to send you home."
"I reckon yore folks will kill the fatted calf for you," jeered Hugh
Roush. "They tell me you always been mighty high-heeled, 'Lindy
Clanton. Mebbe you won't hold yore head so high now."
The girl rode between them down from the hills. Who knows into what
an agony of fear and remorse and black despair she fell? She could not
go home a cast-off, a soiled creature to be scorned and pointed at. She
dared not meet her father. It would be