"Captain Harris doesn't need any wet-nursing, Emmett."
"Sure," Tucker murmured. His rawboned face cracked into a grin. "Almost as good an officer as I was, I reckon."
"You were an officer?"
"That was another war," Tucker murmured. He swung away abruptly and plowed through the night, apparently headed for the saloon. Tucker didn't drink often, but when he did, he put Sutherland's performance of tonight to shame.
Presently, Brady turned down the porch and walked toward the officers' houses. The night was deep and still. His footsteps along the porch boards sent back crisp echoes. He dropped off the end of the porch and went through the dust, walking with measured paces, pulling his hat forward across his brow, passing the major's house and the adjutant's and Surgeon Clayton's and Justin Harris's, and turning without hesitation up the stone-bordered walk of George Sutherland's house. A lamp burned inside; he lifted his fist and knocked.
Eleanor Sutherland owned a striking clear-featured beauty and the power to attract men strongly. And she knew it. When the door opened, she stood in dark silhouette against the hghted room; she tosSed her hair and Brady stood fast, letting her size him up, letting her take time to decide on her course of action.
It was some time in coming, but fmally she said, "Hello, Will."
He nodded and removed his hat.
"Well," she said a little dryly, "I suppose you want to come in." She stepped aside and swept her arm toward the room in a half-sardonic gesture. "Welcome to my parlor. Will."
Making a point of ignoring her sarcasm, he walked on into the parlor.
"Sit down. Will. What brings you, on such a fine night?" Everything she said seemed tinged with irony; he suspected it served mainly to cover up a monumental unhappiness; but that, for the moment, was not his concern. He sat, crossing his legs and hanging his hat over the lifted knee.
"I'll fix you a drink," she said, walking past him toward the kitchen, speaking over her shoulder: "That hat looks as though wolves have been chewing on it."
"I keep it out of sentiment," he said, matching her tone for dryness.
In a little while she came out of the kitchen with a half-filled tumbler of whisky in each hand. She put one on the table beside his chair, then looked around the sparsely furnished room with evident disdain. "You can't keep dust off things for five minutes here," she said, and shrugged, taking a place on the love seat facing him. She took a drink and regarded him blankly.
"Where I come from," Brady drawled, "ladies aren't supposed to drink hard Hquor in polite society."
"Since when is this polite society. Will?"
"I was under the impression your husband's an officer and a gentleman."
Her only response was a short laugh. She tossed her head back and watched him. Beautiful dark eyes she had; even now her beauty had the power to sway him, forcing him to maintain constant guard over his impulses.
She took another sip and said, in a far gentler tone, "It's been a long time since you've darkened my door, Will. To what do I owe the pleasm-e?"
She was now defensive and this surprised him; never before had she seemed to feel a necessity to construct shelters around herself in his presence.
She turned her supple body half-sideways on the love seat arid extended one long, graceful arm along the back of it and sat, drink in hand, regarding him through half-closed lids.
By way of answer to her question, he said, "Talk has been going around, Eleanor. I think you're playing dangerous politics."
"And just what," she rephed with mock sweetness, "is that supposed to mean?"
His drink sat where she had placed it on the table, untouched. His slouched posture was relaxed; long years of bone-pounding movement had trained him to treasure each available moment of inactivity and put it to best use.
He said softly, "I always figured you owned a little more respect for public opinion."
Her eyes flashed; he saw her hand clench white around the glass. Her words, though softly spoken, had bite in them: "You didn't seem to feel the same way a few months ago, Will. I didn't see any concern then on your part for George or for pubhc opinion."
"You and I were careful," Brady said. "We didn't let it get around."
"And that makes everything right," she answered.
He ignored the edge to her words. He said, "You've gotten careless."
She leaned forward, suddenly tense, suddenly dead serious. "Will, you and I were washed up months ago. You were the one who said so. Now what gives you the right to come in here and dictate my life to me?"
"I don't like what you're doing."
"Well," she said in measured syllables, "that is just too bad."
But her eyes behed the hard crust of her words; her eyes were too bright—the beginning glisten of tears. She stood, turned away, and walked across the room to the small window cut into the adobe-plaster wall; she snatched the curtains aside and leaned forward, arais braced against the sill. It was, he knew, another pose; there was nothing she could see through that window except her own reflection, and perhaps his. But her words were no pose. "What do you want from me, Will?"
He answered with disquieting calmness: "I want you to leave Justin Harris alone."
She wheeled. Her fists again were clenched. "You have no right to ask that of me."
"Come on, now," he said soothingly. "I don't think you understand what you're playing with, Eleanor."
"Don't I?" She walked swiftly toward him and glared down at him; he had to fear his head back to look at her. "Then listen to this, Will Brady. I don't know what it was that changed your mind about me a few months ago, but all of a sudden you decided you were too good for me. You dropped me, and that's fine—for you. You don't have to go on living, day in and day out, with George Sutherland. You don't have to sit and go quietly mad while he plays his stiff-backed little military games and preens himself in front of the mirror and complains every hour about the miserable administrative mistake that assigned him to this forsaken outpost. You don't have to live your life with a man who's lost all capacity for loving and feeling—you don't have to hve with a cold, dead machine. Will."
He interrupted her softly: "I didn't choose to marry George Sutherland, either. We make our own beds, Eleanor. You and I have talked this out before—and you know my feelings. It would be a lot more honorable for you to leave him than to keep playing around right under his nose."
Flesh rippled along the line of her jaw. "Let me finish, Will. Don't talk to me about honor. I've heard more tlian I can take about honor. Pride and honor—nothing else matters any more to George. Well, I've had my fill of it-right up to here." She threw her head back and touched her throat.
"All right," he said mildly. "That changes nothing."
"Doesn't it? Will, love is something you have to keep aHve, like a fire. You've got to feed it. George quit all that a long time ago."
"Then leave him."
"Leave him? And go where?"
"You'd make out all right, I reckon," he drawIed.
"I was wUing to go away with you. Will. Remember that little horse ranch up in the mountains? But you didn't want it. You wouldn't have any part of it You had a sudden attack of 'honor.' And I haven't seen you since that day." She dropped abruptly to one knee; her hand moved forward, ahnost reluctantly—as though it were against her will—and her fingers toyed with his sleeve. "I had to do something, Will," she said in a small voice.