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

for a time, musing, looking at the pathetically beautiful face of the woman before him.

"You'd never get any of your own philosophy second hand," said he at length.

She smiled faintly. "No, I'm not given to hysteria, if that's what you want to say."

"Women do strange things. But not your sort—no."

"You don't call this strange—what I've done?"

"No, it was inevitable—for you."

She seated herself on the bed, hands in lap. How fine it was to hear a voice like his, to meet a brain like his, keen, broad, educated, here in this place!

"No, you've not read books to get your own philosophy of life. So you can reason about things."

"I don't think you're very merciful to me," said Mary Gage.

"Why, yes. God has shut your eyes to our new and distracted world. This new world?—you ought to be thankful that you cannot see it. I wish I did not have to see it. But you don't want to hear me talk? You don't want philosophizing? I'm afraid I'm not very happy in my philosophy after all."

He rose, hands in pockets, and tried to pace up and down the narrow little room.

"Don't move the chairs, please," said she. "I know where they all are now."

He laughed, and again seated himself.

"You know why I've come up? I suppose Sim has told you that we're going to have a soldier post here in your yard?"

"Yes, I was glad of that—it seemed like company."

"It will make you feel a great deal safer. And did your husband tell you that I'm going to be a person of consequence now? I'm a Major again, not just plain doctor."

"There must have been reason. The Government is alarmed?"

"Yes. Our chief engineer Waldhorn—well, he's still a German-American, to put it mildly. Told me three times he had bought fifteen thousand dollars' worth of Liberty Bonds. I fear German-Americans buying bonds! And I know Waldhorn's a red Socialist—Bolshevik—if they make them."

"If they doubt him, why don't they remove him?"

"If he knew he was suspected—bang! up might go the dam. I hardly need say that you're to keep absolutely quiet about all this. I tell you because I can trust you. As for me, I'm a pretty busy little doctor right now—cook and the captain bold, and the mate of the Nancy brig. Within a week we'll have a telephone line strung up here. My men will be here to-morrow morning to begin work with the building. Suppose I had a chance to get you a woman companion out here. Would you be glad?"

"Please don't jest."

"Well, I've sent for your old friend, Annie Squires!" said she.

"Annie! Why—no! She wrote to me——"

"Yes, I know. And I wired her. She's coming on out. She has left Cleveland to-day. I'm going to meet her myself at the station, and bring her out. If she can cook she can get on the pay roll. Odd, how you two came to meet——"

—"Why, cook?—work?—of course Annie could! Of course—she'd be happy. She's alone, like myself—but not married."

"And she'll find you happily married, as she said in the letter. You are happily married? I beg your pardon, but he's—he's been considerate?"

"More. Chivalrous. He wrote me at first that I might expect to find a 'chivalrous ranchman, of ample means.' That's true, isn't it?"

For a long time he sat silent. "Yes," said he, "I believe I'll say that's true!

"You think this Annie person can cook?" he added.

"Of course! Oh, do you suppose she really is coming?"

"If I'm going to be a Major again I'm going to have plenary powers!"

"Well, Major," she smiled slowly at last, "you seem to have a way of ordering things! Tell me about yourself. I mean about you, yourself, personally. I've no way of getting the commonest notion of people any more. It's very, very hard."

He went on quickly, warned by the quiver of her lips. "All right," said he. "I'll fill out my questionnaire. This registrant is Barnes, Major Allen, age thirty-one, Medical Corps, assigned to special service Engineers' detail, power dam of the Transcontinental Light and Power Company; graduate of Johns Hopkins; height eleven feet five inches—you see, I've felt all of that tall ever since I got to be a Major. Eyes, gray; hair, sandy. Mobility of chest, four and a half inches. Features, clean-cut and classical. Good muscular development. Stature, erect and robust. Blood pressure, 128. Pulse, full and regular. Habits, very bad. Three freckles on left hand."

"Dear me!" she said, smiling in spite of all, and thus evincing definitely a certain dimple in her left cheek which now he noticed in confirmation of his earlier suspicion. "Bad habits?"

"Well, I smoke, and everything, you know. Majors have to be regular fellows."

"You're rather pleasant to talk to!"

"Very!"

"You know, you seem rather a manny sort of man to me—do you know what I mean?"

"I'm glad you think so."

"And I owe you a great deal, Major—or—Doctor."

"Please don't make yourself a continuous trial balance all the time. Don't be thinking of sacrifices and duties—isn't there some way we can plan just to get some plain joy out of life as we go along? I believe that's my religion, if I've got any."

"I often wish I could see the mountains," said she, vaguely.

He rose suddenly. "Come with me, then! I'll take you out into the sunlight. I'll tell you all about the mountains. I'll show you something of the world. I couldn't live out here if it wasn't for the sheer beauty of this country. It's wonderful—it's so beautiful."

"What was it you put down by the door as you came in?" she asked of him curiously.

He turned to her with like curiosity. "How do you know?" said he. "Are you shamming? That was my fishing rod and my fish basket I put down there; but I didn't think you'd know anything about it."

"I'm beginning to have abnormally acute senses, I suppose. That's necessity."

"Nature is a very wonderful old girl," said Doctor Barnes. "But come now, I'm going to ask you to go down to the stream with me and have a try about those grayling. I told Sim Gage I was going to some time, and this will be about my last chance. If we have any luck I'll show you there's something in this country beside bacon and beans."

"I'd love to," said Mary, eagerly. "Why, that'll be fine!"

She rose and went directly to her sunbonnet, which hung upon a nail in the wall—the sunbonnet which Mrs. Jensen had fashioned for her and promised her to be of much utility. But she stumbled as she turned.

"I can tell where the window is, and the door," said she, breathlessly. "I miss the reading most of all—and friends. I can't see my friends."

"Well, your friends can see you, and that's much of a consolation," said Major Allen Barnes. "I stare shamelessly, and you never know. Come along now, and we'll go fishing and have a bully time."

He took her arm and led her out into the brilliant sunlight, across the yard, across the little rivulet which made down from the spring through the thin fringe of willows, out across the edge of the hay lands to the high, unbroken ridges covered with stubby sage brush which lay beyond between the meadows and the river. The little Airedale, Tim, went with them, bounding and barking, running in a hundred circles, finding a score of things of which he tried to tell them.

It was no long walk, no more than a half mile in all, but he stopped frequently to tell her about the country, to explain how blue the sky was with its small white clouds, how inviting the long line of the mountains across the valley, how sweet the green of the meadows and the blue-gray of the sage. She was eager as a child.

"The river is that way," said she after a while.

"How do you know?"

"I can feel it—I can feel the water. It's cooler along the stream, I suppose."

"Well, you've guessed it right," said he. "There's going to be quite a world for you, so don't be discouraged. Yes, that's the river just ahead of us—my word! it's the prettiest river that ever lay out of doors in all the world."

"I can hear it," said she, pausing and listening.

"Yes—that's where it breaks over a little gravel bed up yonder, fifty yards from us. And here, right in front of us, we are at the corner of the bend, and it's deep—twelve feet deep at least. And then it bends off to the left again, with willows on this side and grassy banks on the other side. And the water is as clear as the air itself. You can see straight down into it.

"And look—look!" he said, as he stood with her, catching her by the wrist at the brink. "Down in this hole, right before us, there's more than a million grayling—there's four hundred billion of them right down in there, and every one of them is eight feet long! Sim Gage was right—I'll bet some of them do weigh three pounds. It must be right in the height of the summer run. What a wonderful country!"

"Here, now," he went on, "sit right here on the grass on my coat. Lie down, you Tim! That's right, boy—I can't stand this any longer—I've got to get busy."

Hurriedly he went about jointing his rod, putting on the reel, threading the line through the guides, while she sat, her hand on the dog's shaggy head.

She felt something placed in her lap. "That's my fly hook," said he. "I'm asking you to look at it. Hundreds of them, and no two alike, and all the nineteen colors of the rainbow. I'm going to put on this one—see—it's dressed long and light, to look like a grasshopper. Queen of the Waters, they call it."

"Listen!" said she suddenly, raising a finger. "What was that?"

"What was it? Nothing in the world except the biggest grayling I ever saw! He broke up there just at the head of the pool where the water runs deep under the willows, just off the bar. If I can get this fly just above him—wait now—sit perfectly still where you are."

He passed up the stream a few paces and began to cast, measuring the distance with the fly still in the air. She could hear the faint whistle of the line, and some idea of what he was doing came to her. And then she heard an exclamation, synchronous with a splash in the pool.

"Got him!" said he. "And he's one sockdollager, believe me! We've got hold of old Grandpa Grayling now—and if things just hold——"

"Here," said he after a while. She felt the rod placed in her hand, felt a strenuous tugging and pulling that almost wrenched it away.

"Hold tight!" said he. "Take the line in your left hand, this way. Now, if he pulls hard, ease off. Pull in when you can—not too hard—he's got a tender mouth. Let him run! I want you to see what fun it is. Can't you see him out there now, jumping?"

Tim, eager for any sport, sprang up and began to bark excitedly. Her lips parted, her eyes shining, sightless as they were, Mary faced toward the splashing which she heard. She spoke low, in a whisper, as though afraid of alarming the fish. "Where is he?" she said. "Where did he go?"

"He's out there," responded her companion, chuckling. "He's getting rattled now. Don't hold him too tight—that's the idea—work him along easy now. Now shorten up your line a little bit, and sit right where you are. I'm going to net him. Lift the tip of the rod a little, please, and bring him in toward you."

She obeyed as best she could. Suddenly she heard a splash, and felt a flopping object placed, net and all, directly in her lap. With eagerness she caught it in her hands, meeting Tim's towsley head, engaged in the same errand, and much disposed to claim the fish as all his own.

"There's Grandpa!" said Doctor