The Way West by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Page A

said what had to be said. And sometimes she tried the idle things, weather or mud or dust, and he answered shortly and saw the hurt in her face and was glad of it, and that was all.
   It would be all, he told himself as the train rolled on toward the Little Blue and the tension built up in him. He wouldn't bemean himself again. Let her save it, and to hell with it! He wouldn't beg as he had begged that night after they had crossed the Kaw.
   Spring had been in the air, and a night bird cried outside the tent, and a breeze played along the canvas, and he wanted her, as so many times before.
   "No, Curt," she said. "Please!"
   "It's been a long time."
  She pushed his seeking hand away. "Please."
   "Why not?"
   "I'm afraid."
   "Afraid?"
   "Yes."
   "Of what?"
   "You know."
   "You've never been that way yet."
   "I could be -and then having no doctor or anything."
   "You're just using that as an excuse." She didn't answer.
   "You never have really wanted to."
   "I know you think that."
   "You think it isn't ladylike, I guess. A lady isn't interested."
   "Curt!"
   "Back home you never wanted to. It's always been a case of rape."
   "That isn't true."
   "It's close enough." He was silent for a long minute and then, with the urgency mounting in him, he let himself plead. "Please, Amanda. I'm sorry. Now please."
   "I can't."
   "I've been patient, but I can't go on forever. Please."
   "I can't. I'm afraid."
   The edge came back into his voice. "You mean not ever, while we're traveling?"
   "I don't know."
   "My Godl You're going to quit being the half a wife which was the best you ever were. Is that it?"
   Her voice was small. "I can't help it, Curt."
   "You mean you won't."
   She was crying, crying softly, the sobs shaking her. Now, more than ever, he wanted her, wanted the hot, wet cheek against his, and the wounded mouth, and the body yielding and being comforted -except that it wouldn't be.
   Another man would have forced her to him. He would have taken her, yes or no. A wife without desire still had a duty. But he wouldn't do it, not Curtis Mack, late of Buffalo, New York, who was built of soft stuff, who had to recognize, beyond his fury, that something stood in her way that he couldn't understand. The recognizing made him madder. Why would God put beauty in a woman's face and give her full breasts and fine thighs and then withhold warmth?
   "If you had been a real wife," he said, "we'd have stayed in Buffalo."
   She didn't try to answer.
   "Why do you think I quit business and started west?" She kept silent.
   "To quit stewing, that's why. To get things off my mind."
   "You exaggerate so."
   "That was at the bottom of it."
   Her answer was more crying.
   "What you want for a husband is a damn monk."
   She cried out, "Why do you say those things? We love each other. We have so much to live for."
   "I'll never ask you again," he said, and hated himself, not for the lie he had spoken but for the weakness in him that made it a lie. He had said the same thing before, and then she had come to him, and he had forgotten resentment and lost his fury and, relaxed in the warm and rumpled bed, had spoken his love for her. He had asked forgiveness and laid the blame on himself for times like tonight's. Soft stuff, Curtis Mack, weak, unstable and -all right- sensual. Was anything wrong with sensuality? What was wrong was her tyranny over him. What was wrong was that he couldn't help himself and was light-spirited or surly, depending on the grant or refusal of so small a favor.
   He said, "You drive me to other women."
   "I don't mean to, Curt."
   "I can't help looking at them and thinking. I'll find another woman, too."
   "If that's what you want."
   "What do you care? You don't want me."
   "If that's what you want."
   "Want, hell!" He lurched over in bed.