Read Killoe (1962) for Free Online Page B

carried our guns across our saddle-bows, and we rode high in the saddle, ready for trouble. Tempers grew short; we avoided each other, each man guarding himself against the hot words that could come too easily under the circumstances.
    Karen ignored me. Before Tap returned we had walked out together, danced together, gone riding together. Now I hardly saw her; every moment she could spare she was with Tap.
    On this day she was driving the Foley wagon and, breaking away from the herd, I rode over to her. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.
    "I haven't seen much of you lately," I said. Her chin went up. " I've been busy." "I noticed that." I. "I don't belong to you. I don't have to answer to you."
    "No, ma'am, you surely don't. And Tap's a good man. One of the best."
    She turned and looked right straight at me. "I am going to marry him."
    Marry Tap? Somehow I couldn't see it. Tap was a drifting man . . . or that was how I thought of him.
    "Didn't take you long to make up your mind," I commented. "You haven't known him a week."
    "That's neither here nor there." Her temper flared suddenly. "He's a man! A real man! That's more than most people can say! He's more of a man than you'll ever be!"
    There did not seem reason to be mad about it, except that she was expecting criticism and was all wound up for it.
    "Maybe," I agreed. "Tap's a good man," I said again, "no question about it. Of course, it depends on what makes a man. If I was a woman I'd give a lot of thought to that.
    Now, Tap is a man's man . . . he's strong, he's regular, he does his work." "So?"
    "He's like a lot of men, he doesn't like to stay hitched. I don't think he will change."
    "You'll see." But her tone was less positive, and I wondered if she had given it any thought at all. Many a time when a girl gets herself involved with romance she is so busy being in love she doesn't realize what it can lead to. They are all in a rosy sort of glow until suddenly they find out the man they love was great to be in love with, but hell to be married to.
    Well, I just drifted off, feeling a sort of ache inside me, and angry with myself for it. Seems to me folks are foolish about other people. Karen and I had walked out together, and folks had come to think of her as my girl, but as a matter of fact, we were scarcely more than good friends. Only now that it seemed I'd lost her, I was sore about it. Not that I could ever claim I'd had a serious thought about her, or her about me.
    Moving over to the drag, I hazed a laggard steer back into the bunch, and ate dust in silence, feeling mean as a grizzly with a sore tooth.
    Yet through it all there was a thread of sanity, and I knew that while there had been nothing between Karen and me but conversation, Tap was all wrong for her. Karen and me had known each other quite a spell, and she knew the others around. Tap Henry was different: he was a stranger who came riding into camp with a fancy outfit and a lot of stories. It was no wonder she was finding something in him that she had been looking for.
    Truth to tell, all folks dream, old and young, and they picture in their minds the girl or man they would like to love and marry. They dream great dreams and most of them settle for much less. Many a time a man and wife lie sleeping in the same bed, dreaming dreams that are miles apart and have nothing in common .
    Only Tap Henry was a drifter--yet maybe not. Maybe Karen was the answer to his dream, too, and maybe he was going to settle down. It seemed unlikely, but it was none of my business.
    Milo Dodge rode back to the drag. "Talked to that Spanish man. He wants to see you."
    "Me?"
    "You found him. You fetched us to him."
    "Where's he from?"
    "He won't say. Except he kept asking me about a man with a spider scar on his cheek, a big, dark man with a deep indentation in his cheek and little scars radiating out from it, like a spider's legs."
    We made camp on Antelope Creek where the water was dear and sweet. Large oaks and pecan trees