The Tall Men by Will Henry Page A

you proposing to me?”
    “I reckon,” he stammered, blushing hard. “Leastways, the best I know how. Will you have me, Nella?”
    The smile went the way of the shadow in the eyes, fading swiftly.
    “I’ve had you, Ben,” she said slowly.
    “Meanin’ you don’t want no more of me.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Say what you mean, then. Straight talk walks the shortest distance.”
    She looked at him, shrugging helplessly. “All right, Ben, move the horse along. It’s cold here in the wind.”
    He turned away from her, kneed the gelding, held him down to a chop step as Nella talked. They were only a short distance from the fort now. But it was only a short story she told him. Short, and not quite sweet.
    When she finished, he let the silence grow for a long time. When his answer came at last, it was filled with all the child gentleness he had shown her the night before. Riding with his back to her, he could not see the return of the quick shadow to her eyes.
    “I don’t care where you been, Nella. Or what you been. Nor where you was goin’, or aimin’ to keep on bein’ once you’d got there. A woman’s got to live, same as a man. We ain’t no different, you and me, in the ways we’ve went about it.”
    Quickly, then, he told her of his own past, softening nothing and concluding abruptly. “We both picked the easy way and found it harder than the hubs of hell. It ain’t no sign we got to keep runnin’ on dry axles. A month ago, up in Montana, I took a new trail. Mebbe it’ll lead me summers, mebbe it won’t. But it’s a chance, girl, the best I’ve been give. I’m askin’ you to take it with me. To leave me split it with you, fifty-fifty. And nobody askin’ no questions about nothin’, from here on out. What you say?”
    “I say keep the horse moving,” said Nella Torneau huskily. “You were headed south when we met, me, north.”
    “Don’t riddle me none,” pleaded Ben earnestly. “I want a straight answer.”
    “You’ve got it, boy.” The quickness and the sharpness were back in the low voice. “I’m still heading north."
    The week at the fort passed. On the good, handcut winter hay and eastern rolled oats, there available, the gaunted horses rounded out quickly. With the morning of the eighth day they were ready to travel.
    Throughout the preceding days, Nella had not weakened to Ben’s increasingly hesitant persuasions. She insisted she would stay at the fort, continue her original way north with the first arriving of the spring emigrant outfits. She refused to wait for him until he returned with the herd, or to travel on with him and Clint and Stark to Fort Worth. He made his last, fumbling plea the night before the start, came away downcast and carrying a weight of heartsink and loneliness that kept him tossing till daybreak. He had seen Nathan Stark approach the girl shortly after he left her, thought nothing of it except to tell himself, of a sudden, that he didn’t want any man around her but himself. That was a small idea and he knew it. He had it pretty well fought down by first light, too. But the thought of leaving Nella was still hard and heavy inside him when the sun rolled up the long valley of the Arkansas.
    Within ten minutes after it did, he knew he was not going to leave her. Not then, and not ever.
    He walked away from the black, leaving him half saddled and whickering curiously, went straight to the post sutler’s store where she had been staying. He was in time to see her and Stark come out of her quarters, laughing and talking.
    Fighting down the black anger that rode up in him, knowing it wasn’t really black, but green, he waited until Stark left to see to his own preparations for departure. He stood awkwardly before her, not answering either her cheery good morning or the familiar, too bright smile that came with it.
    “Nella,” he blurted out, “I ain’t leavin’ you.”
    “Bad news sure travels fast!” She surprised him with her quick sarcasm.