The Sagebrusher by Emerson Hough (first ebook reader txt) 📖

It ain't right!"

"There's nothing they won't do," said Big Aleck's voice, virtuously. "They ask us we shall have respect for a Government that lets people lynch folks!"

"You didn't see any one when you was down in the road, Aleck?" asked some one again, uneasily.

"I told you, no. Well, we got to get to work."

Mary Warren heard them rising from their places. Footfalls passed here and there, shuffling. The woman could not repress her shuddering. This was Force—unrestrained, ignorant, unleashed, brute Force, that same aftermath Force which was rending apart the world back of the new-dried battlefields of Europe! Order and law, comfort, love, affection, trust—all these things were gone!

What then was her footing here—a woman? Was God indeed asleep? She heard her own soul begging for alleviating death.

Then came silence, except for the airs high up in the sobbing trees. They were gone on their errand. After that,—what?

After a time she heard a sound of dread—the sliddering of a footfall in the sand. She recognized the heavy, dragging stride of the man who had brought her here. He had come back—alone.

Terror seized her, keen and clarifying terror. She screamed, again and again, called aloud the only name that came to her mind.

"Sim!" she cried aloud again and again—"Sim! Sim!"

[1] Wheat clocks: Phosphorus bombs left in wheat or haystacks and fired by the sun.

[2] Clothes: Argot terms for phosphorus, cyanide and other chemicals used in destruction of property or life.

CHAPTER XIV THE MAN TRAIL

"What do you think of him, Wid?" asked Sim Gage after a time, when they were well on their way homeward in the late afternoon.

"Looks like a good doctor, all right," replied Wid. "Clean-cut and strictly on to his game. I reckon he got plenty practice in the war. I'm sorry neither of us was young enough to git into that war. Your leg hurt much now?"

"Say yes!" replied Sim. "You know, I reckon we didn't get there any too soon with that leg. Fine lot of us, up to my house, huh? Me laid up, and her can't see a wink on earth."

"And yet you said I couldn't come over and see her. So there you are, both alone."

"Well, it's this way, Wid, and you know it," insisted his friend. "The girl is right strange there yet—it's a plumb hard thing to figure out. We got to get her gentled down some. There's been a hell of a misunderstanding all around, Wid, we got to admit that. And we're all to blame for it."

"Well, she's to blame too, ain't she?"

"No, she ain't! I won't let no man say that. She's just done the best she knew how. Women sometimes don't know which way to jump."

"She didn't make none too good a jump out here," commented his friend. "Has she ever told you anything about herself yet?"

"Not to speak of none, no. She sets and cries a good deal. Says she's broke and blind and all alone. She's got one friend back home—girl she used to room with, but she's going to get married, and so she, this lady, Miss Warren, comes out here plumb desperate, not knowing what kind of a feller I am, or what kind of a place this is—which is both a damn shame, Wid, and you know it. I say I'm up against it right now."

"The real question, Sim, is what are folks going to say? There's people in this valley that ain't a-going to stand it for you and that girl to live there unless you're married. You know that."

"Of course I know that. But do you suppose I'd marry that girl even if she was willing? No, sir, I wouldn't—not a-tall. It wouldn't be right."

"Now listen, Sim. Leave it to me. I'd say that if you ever do want to get married, Sim—and you got to if she stays here—why, here's the one and only chancet of your whole life. Of course, if the girl wasn't blind, she wouldn't never marry you. I don't believe any woman would, real. The way she is, and can't see, maybe she will, after a while, like, when she's gentled down, as you say. It looks like a act of Providence to me."

"Well," said Sim, pondering, "I hadn't just thought of it that way. Do you believe in them things—acts of Providence?"

"I don't believe in nothing much except we're going to get into camp mighty late to-night. It's getting sundown, and I ain't keen to cut wood in the dark."

"I'll tell you what, Wid," said Sim suddenly relenting. "You come on down to our house to-night. I'll introduce you to her after all—Miss Warren. It ain't no more'n fair, after all."

Wid only nodded. They pushed along up the road until finally they arrived, within a few miles of their own homesteads, at the little roadside store and postoffice kept by old Pop Bentley. They would have pulled up here, but as they approached the dusty figure of the mail carrier of that route came out, and held up a hand.

"Hold on, Sim," said he. "I heard at Nels Jensen's place that you had gone down the river. Well, it's time you was gettin' back."

Sim Gage smiled with a sense of his own importance as he took the letter, turning it over in his hand. "What's it say, Wid?" said he.

His neighbor looked at the inscription. "It's for her," said he. "Miss Mary Warren, in care of Sim Gage, Two Forks, Montany."

"Who's it from?" said Sim. "Here's some writing on the back."

"From Annie B. Squires, 9527 Oakford Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. But listen——"

"That's the girl that Miss Warren told me about!" said Sim. "That's a letter from her. I'd better be getting back."

"I just told you you had," said the mail driver, something of pity in his tone. "I'm trying to tell you why you had. Why I brought this letter down is, you ain't got no place to get back to."

"What you mean?" said Wid Gardner suddenly.

"Hell's loose in this valley to-day," said the mail carrier. "Five fires, when I come through before noon. Wid, your house is gone, and your barn, too. Sim, somebody's burned your hay and your barn, and shot your stock, and set your house afire—it would of burned plumb down if Nels Jensen hadn't got there just in time. They saved the house. It wasn't burned very much anyways, so Nels told me."

Sim Gage and his companion, stupefied, sat looking at the bearer of this news.

"Who done it?" asked Wid Gardner grimly after a time. "That ain't no accident."

"Pop Bentley in here said Big Aleck, the squatter, come up the valley this morning right early——"

"That hellion!" exclaimed Sim. "He's always made trouble in this valley. We seen him down below here, driving a broad-tire wagon."

"Yes, a Company wagon, and a Company team. We found that wagon hitched above your lane, Sim. Your mail box was busted down. There wasn't no Big Aleck around, nor no one else."

"Not no one else?—No one in the house?"

"Nels said there wasn't."

"Light down, Sim," said Wid. "Let's go in and talk to Pop Bentley."

Pop Bentley, the keeper of the meager grocery store and little-used post-office, met them with gravity on his whiskered face. He was a tall and thin man, much stooped, who, as far as the memory of man, had always lived here in Two-Forks Valley.

"Well, you heard the news, I reckon," said he to his neighbors. Both men nodded.

"Big Aleck told me he was working on the Government job. He said he was going on up with his team to help finish some roads."

"Well, if it was him," said Wid Gardner, "or any one else, we're a-goin' to find out who it was done this. We been hearing a long while about the free Industrials, whatever the damned Bolsheviks call theirselves. They wander around now and won't settle. Hobos, I call them, no more, but crazy ones. They threatened to burn all the hay in the settlements below, and to wipe out all the wheat crop. Why? They been busting up threshing machines acrosst the range—the paper's been full of it. Why? They've got in here, and that's all about it. Well, fellers, you reckon we're goin' to stand fer this sort of Bolshevik business on the Two-Forks?"

"I say, Pop," broke in Sim Gage to the postmaster, with singular irrelevance at this time, "haven't you got a litter of pups around here somewheres, and a couple hens I can buy? I'm lookin' fer a dog, and things."

"Yard's full of pups, man. If you want one help yourself. But hens, now——"

"Sell me two or three hens and a rooster or so. I promised I'd take 'em home, and I plumb forgot."

Pop Bentley threw up his hands at his feckless neighbor. "You'd better be getting a place fer your hens and dogs, seems like."

Sim put a forefinger to his puckered lip. "I don't know as I want to take more'n about one pup now, and three or four hens. I'll fix up the price with you sometime. Yes, I got to be getting home now."

The mail carrier, the postmaster and Sim's friend looked at one another as these details went forward.

"Well," said Pop Bentley, shrugging his bent shoulders, "if you would go away and leave a woman alone in a place like that——"

"What do you mean?" said Sim Gage suddenly.

"Why, that woman ain't there no more, you fool. She's gone!"

"Gone? What do you mean?"

"Whoever set fire to your place took her away, or else she's got lost somewheres."

"Gone?" said Sim Gage. "Blind! You, Wid!"—he turned upon his friend half-savagely—"you was talking to me about acts of Providence. There ain't no such thing as Providence if this here's true. Come on—I got to get home."

They did start home, at a gallop, Sim half unconscious of what he did, carrying in his arm an excited puppy, impetuously licking his new master's hands and face. In the bottom of the wagon lay a disregarded sack with a half-dozen fowl, their heads protruding through holes cut for that purpose. Sim never knew how or when they got into the wagon.

At the next gate, that of Nels Jensen's homestead, Sim's neighbor below, the woman of the place came running. "You heard about it?—You're all burned out, both of you."

"Yes, we know," said Wid, nodding. "Tell Nels to come on up to Sim's place early in the morning. We're going to get the neighbors together." Again the tired team was forced into a dull gallop.

They had not far to go. A turn of the road freed them of the screen of willows. There lay before them in the evening light, long prolonged at this season in that latitude, that portion of the valley which these two neighbors owned. For a moment they sat silent.

"Mine's gone," said Wid succinctly. "Not a thing left."

Sim sat clasping the puppy in his arms as he turned to look at his own homestead.

"Mine's gone too," said he. "Barn's burned, and all the hay. House is there, anyhow. Lemme out, Wid."

"No, hold on," said his neighbor. "There's no hurry for me to go home, now that's sure. Your leg's bad, Sim. I'll take you down."

So they drove down Sim Gage's lane between the wire fence and the willows. Sim was looking eagerly ahead. Continually he moaned to himself low, as if in pain. But the hard-faced man on the seat beside him knew it was not in physical pain.

They fastened the team and hurried on about, searching the premises. The barn was gone, and the hay. Two or three head of slaughtered stock lay partially consumed, close to the hay stack. The house still stood, for the dirt roof had stopped the flames which were struggling up from the door frame along the heavy logs.

"The damn, murdering thieves," said Wid Gardner. "Look, Sim—your horse and mule was both killed in there." He pointed to the burned barn. "What made them? What do they gain by this? I know!"

But Sim Gage was hobbling