The Sagebrusher, Emerson Hough [best love novels of all time txt] 📗

to his half-burnt home. Gasping, he looked in. It was empty!

"Where's she gone, Wid?" said he, when he could speak. "You reckon Big Aleck—? No. No!"

"Nothing's too low down for him," said Wid Gardner.

There were footprints in the path where the neighbors had stood, but Sim's eye caught others not trampled out, in the strip of sand toward the willows—two footprints, large, and beside them two others, small. The two, old big-game hunters as they were, began to puzzle out this double trail.

"He was a-leading her out this way, Sim," said Wid, pointing. "Look a-yonder, where we come in—them wheel tracks wasn't yours nor mine. Now, look-a-here, in this little open place where the ants has ate it clean—here's her footprints, right here. No use to hunt the creek or the willers, Sim—she's went off in a wagon."

"He took my six-shooter," said Sim, who had hurriedly examined the interior of his home. "Nothing else is gone. Wait while I go git my rifle. It's in the tent."

When he had returned with rifle and belt, Wid turned towards him. "I'll tell you, Sim," said he, "we'll run over to my place and look around, and come back here and eat before it gets plumb dark. I'll saddle up and pass the word."

They climbed back into the wagon seat and once more passed out along Sim Gage's little lane. At the end, where it joined the main road, Wid pulled up.

"Look yonder, Sim!" said he. "There's where that broad-tire wagon was tied."

"The road's full of all sorts of tracks," said Sim, looking down, rifle in hand, from his seat. He carried the puppy again in his arms, and the hens still were expostulating in the bottom of the wagon. "Is them car tracks?"

"A car could be a hundred and fifty miles away by now," said Wid.

They passed on to Wid Gardner's gate. It was wide open. There were wheel tracks there, also, of some sort.

The ruin of this homestead also was complete. The last stack of hay, the barn, house, all, were burned to the ground.

"Well, that's all I want here," said Wid, sighing. "We'll stop at your place for a spell, Sim—that's the best thing we can do."

"But look here!" he went on, his eyes running along the ground. "Been a car in here—this wasn't a wagon—it was a car! There must of been more'n one of 'em."

"Uh huh," said Sim, climbing down stiffly from the wagon seat now and joining him in the task of puzzling out the trail. They followed it to a place where some ashes had been trodden in the yard. Here the wheels of the car had left their clearest record.

"Not a big one," said Wid. "Ragged tire on the nigh hind wheel. See this?"

They ran the trail on out to the gate, picking it up here and there, catching it plain in the loose sand which covered the gravel road bed.

"Whoever done the work at my place," said Sim, "was drunk. Look how he busted down my mail box."

"Look how this car was running here," assented Wid. "You set here by the gate, Sim, and hold the team. I want to run up the road a piece to where the timber trail turns up the canyon."

"Sure, Wid," said Sim. "I can't walk good."

It was half an hour or more before his friend had returned from his hasty scout further along the road, and by that time it was dark.

"That's where they went, Sim," said Wid Gardner. "I seen the track of that busted tire plain in the half-dried mud, little ways up the trail. Whoever it was done this, has went right up there. When we get a few of the fellers together we'll start. To-morrow morning, early."

"To-morrow!" said Sim. "Why, Wid——"

Wid Gardner laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. "It's the best we can do, Sim," said he.

Without more speech they drove once more along Sim Gage's lane. As they approached the entrance, Sim turned. "Hold up a minute, Wid," said he, "while I look over here where the wagon was tied."

He limped across the road, bent to examine the marks dimly visible in the half darkness.

"Look-a-here," said he, "there's been a car here too—the same car, with the busted tire! They come up in that wagon from my place after they burned me out. They must of taken her out of the wagon and put her in the car, and like you say, they're maybe a couple of hundred miles away by now. Oh, my God A'mighty, Wid, what has you and me done to that pore girl!"

Wid only laid the large hand again on his shoulder. "It'll be squared," said he.

Their rude meal was prepared in silence, and eaten in silence. Sim Gage felt in his pocket, and drawing out the letter he had received, smoothed out the envelope on the table top.

"It's addressed to her, Wid," said he after a time, "and she ain't here."

"I don't see why we oughtn't to open it and read it," said Wid. "Some one'd have to anyhow, if she was here, for she couldn't read, herself."

Sim, by means of a table knife, opened the envelope.

"You read it, Wid," said he. "You can read better'n I can." And so Wid accepted Sim's conventional fiction, knowing he could neither read nor write.

"Dear Mary," said Anne's letter, "I got to write to you. I wisht you hadn't went away when you did and how you did, for, Mary, I feel so much alone.

"You know when you started out I was joking you about Charlie Dorenwald. I told you, even if you did have an inside chance you maybe might not be married any sooner than I was. That was just a little while ago. So far as it's all concerned you can come right on back. There's nothing doing now between Charlie and I.

"You know he was foreman in the factory. He ought to of had money laid up but he didn't. On Installments I'd soon have got a place fixed up, though Charlie and me was going to fix it up on Installments. But I got to talking with him, right away after you had left, it was all about the war and I said to him, 'Charlie, why didn't you go over?' He says one thing and he says another. Well you know that sort of got me started and at last we had it, and do you know when he got rattled he began to talk Dutch to me? Well, I talked turkey to him. One thing and another went on and Charlie and me we split up right there.

"'I couldn't join the army noways,' he says, 'they wouldn't take me. I had flat feet.'

"'You got a flat tire, that's what ails you,' I says to him, 'Well now I wouldn't marry you at all, not if you was the last man, which you look to me like you was.'

"Well, the way he talked, Mary, I wouldn't be surprised if he was married already anyhow. One of the girls said he'd been living with another woman not four blocks off. He ain't hurt none and I don't know as I am neither although of course a girl feels mortified that people think she's going to get married and then she ain't.

"But I'm thinking of you. I've gone back in our old room where it's cheaper and let them take back the Installment furniture. I ain't got a thing to do after hours except read the papers. The country's all stirred up. But anyhow I'm rid of my Dutch patriot. That's why I'm writing to you now.

"I wonder what you're doing out there. Are you married yet? What did he look like, Mary? I know he's a good man after all, kind and chivalrous like he said. If he wasn't you'd be wiring me telling me when you was coming home. I guess you're too happy to write to anybody like me. You'll have a Home of your own.

"And all the time I thought I was stronger than you was and abler to get on and here you are married and happy and me back in the old room! But don't worry none about me—I'll get another job. The most is I miss you so much and you haven't wrote me a word I suppose. When a girl gets married all the girls is crazy to hear all about her and her husband and I haven't heard a word from you.

"Respectfully your friend,
"Annie Squires."

The two men sat for a time. Wid reached in his pocket for his pipe.

"By God! she come out here maybe to get married, on the level and honest, after a while!" said he. "She'll have to, now!"

"That's what I was thinking, Wid," said Sim Gage. "It's—it's chivalerous. We got to find her, now."

CHAPTER XV THE SPECIES

"Well, pretty one, you got lonesome here all by yourself? So you holler for 'Sim! Sim!'" Big Aleck's voice was close to her as she sat in the tent.

Mary Warren felt about her, back of her on the blankets, stealthily seeking some weapon of defense. She paused. Under her fingers was something which felt like leather. She made no sudden movement, but temporized.

"How could I help it?" she asked.

Always her hand was feeling behind her on the blankets. Yes, there was a holster. It felt familiar—it might be Sim Gage's gun, taken from her at the house. She waited.

"Well, that's too bad you can't see," said Aleck. "You can't see what a fine feller I'd make for you! I'm chief. I'm a big man."

"You're a big coward," said Mary Warren calmly. "What's a blind woman to you? Why don't you let me go?"

"Well, even a blind woman can tell what she's heard," said he thoughtfully. "And then," his coarse voice undertaking a softness foreign to it, "I'm just as tired as Sim Gage was of keeping house alone. I'm a better man than Sim Gage. I'm making plenty of money."

She made no reply, leaned back upon the blanket roll.

"Now, then, gal, listen. I like you. You're handsome—the handsomest gal ever come in this valley. A pretty girl as you shouldn't stay single, and as good a man as me neither. I work on my ranch, but I'm a big man, miss. I'm a thinker, you can see that. I'm a leader of the laboring men. I begun with nothing; and look at me!"

"Well, look at you!" She taunted him. "What would you have been if you hadn't come to America? You'd be shoveling dirt over there at half a dollar a day, or else you'd be dead. You think this is Russia? You call this Germany?"

Pretending to rest her weight on her arm back of her, she felt the touch of leather, felt the stock of the pistol in the holster.

Her tormentor went on. "We don't need no army—we free men can fight the way we are. We'll spoil ten million feet of timber in here before we're through."

"I despise you—I hate you!" she cried suddenly, almost forgetful of herself. "Why do you come to this country, if you don't like it? If you hate America, why don't you go back to your own country and live there? You ought to be hung—I hope to God you will be!"

He only laughed. "That's fine talk for you, ain't it? You'd better listen to what I tell you." He reached out a hand and touched her arm.

With one movement, of sheer instinct, with a primal half-snarl, she swung the revolver out of the scabbard behind her, flung it almost into his face. He cowered, but not soon enough. The shot struck him. He dropped, tried to escape. She heard him scuffling on the sand, fired again and missed—fired yet again and heard him cry out, gasping, begging for mercy.

The range was too short for her to hear the impact of the bullets; she did not