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

said Wid. "The roan bronc can stand it. I'll go on over and tell the women folks not to be afraid."

"Gee, but this is some quiet place!" said Annie Squires, as the two women sat alone in nervous silence. "You can cut it with a knife, can't you?"

"Did you say Mr. Gardner was coming over here before long?" asked Mary. "Annie, I'm so afraid!"

"Hush, Sis! It's like enough only a scare. I wish't that doctor man had stayed. But tell me, was he saying anything to you about your eyes?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"He said he was coming up here in a week or two to take me down to the hospital. He said he thought perhaps he could save my eyes! Oh, Annie, Annie!"

"Hush, Sis! I told you to forget it. You mustn't hope—remember, you mustn't hope, Mary, whatever you do."

"No, I mustn't hope. I told him I wouldn't go."

"Some folks is grand little jokers. Women can't help stringing a man along, can they? Of course you'll go."

She cast her arms about Mary Gage, and held her tight. "You poor kid!" said she. "You get your eyes first, and let's figure out the rest after that. You make me tired. Cut out all that duty and sacrifice stuff. Live and get yours. That's the idea!"

"Now, you sit here." She rose and placed a comforting hand on Mary's shoulder. "Just keep quiet here, and I'll go out and see if I can call Henry Gardner. He seems to me like a man that wouldn't scare easy. I'll go as far as the fence and yoo-hoo at him. I'll be right back."

But Annie Squires did not come back for almost an hour. Wid Gardner, coming across lots by the creek path, found Mary Gage alone, and sat with her there in an uneasiness he could not himself conceal, wondering over the girl's absence. Mary was well-nigh beside herself when at length they heard Annie coming rapidly, saw her at the door.

"Get back in!" she said. "Sit down, both of you! Wait, now—Listen! Who do you think I found right out here, almost in our very yard, Mary?"

Panting, she seated herself, and after a time began more coherently. "I'll tell you. I just walked out to the gate, and says I to myself, I'll yoo-hoo so that Mr. Gardner can hear over there and come on down. So I yoo-hooed. Did you hear me?"

Wid shook his head. "I didn't hear nothing."

"Well, I heard some one holler back, soft-like, 'Yoo-hoo!' It didn't sound just right, so I walked on a little more. 'Yoo-hoo!' says I. Then I seen a man come out of the bushes. I seen it wasn't you, all right. He come on right fast, and Mary—I couldn't of believed it, but it's the truth. It was Charlie—Charlie Dorenwald! I couldn't make no mistake about them legs.

"When I seen who it was I turned around to run. I was scared he'd shoot me. He hollered at me to stop, and I stopped. He come after me and caught me by the arm, and he laughs. I was scared silly—silly, I tell you. He laughs some more, and then he sobers down to solid talk.

"'Why, Charlie,' says I, 'it can't be you. I'm so glad.' I allowed the best thing was to jolly him along. I knew he'd make trouble. I wanted a chance to think.

"We stood out there so close I could see the cabin all the time—and we talked. That fellow couldn't help bragging about himself. He was half loaded. Says I to him, 'What made you come out here, Charlie? To find me?'

"'Yes,' says he. 'I knew you was here.'"

"'How did you know it?' I asked him.

"'That's a good question,' says he. 'Haven't I got plenty people working for me that could tell me where you was, or anything else I wanted to know? The free brothers work together.'"

Wid Gardner's eyes were full on her. He did not speak.

"So we turned and moved further up the lane then," went on Annie. "I kept on asking him how he come here. I told him I'd been too proud to send for him. But now he'd come, how could I help loving him all over again!"

"You didn't mean that," said Wid quietly.

"How much do you think I'd mean it? That Dutch snake! Listen— He told me more than the papers ever told. He told me he'd been a sort of chief there in Cleveland right along, along in the war, and after peace was signed. He pulled off some good things, so he said, so they sent him out here. He was after me. Folks, that man took himself apart for me. He made me promise to go along with him, all dolled up, and in our own car!"

"You ain't going," said Wid, quietly.

"One guess! But there'll be trouble. I've only told you a little part of it that that fellow spilled to me. Dorenwald's nutty over these things. He tells what the German Socialists will do when they get to America. He says this is the world revolution,—whatever he means. Oh, my God!"

Annie began to weep in a sudden hysteria.

"Which way did that man go from here?" she heard Wid Gardner's voice at length.

"I don't know. He said he had a man with him, a 'brainy-cat,' he called him, to lecture in halls. He made me promise to be out there at the gate at sun-up to-morrow morning to go away with him. I'd have promised him anything. I'm awful scared. Why don't the men come back?"

Annie Squires was sobbing now. "And this was our country. We let them people in. I know it's true, what he said. And I told him that at sun-up——"

"Don't bother about that," said Wid Gardner quietly. "Now you two set right here in the house," he added, as he rose and picked up the rifle he saw hanging on its nails. "I'm going out and lay in the willers along the lane a little while, near the gate. I can hear you if you holler. I think it's best for me to go out there and keep a watch till the fellers come back. Don't be a-scared, because I'll be right there, not far from the gate."

He stepped out, rifle in hand. The two women sat alone, shivering in nervous terror, starting at every little sound.

They sat they knew not how long, before the clear air of the moonlight night was rent by sharp sounds. A single piercing shot echoed close at hand; scattering shots sounded farther up the lane; then many shots; and then came the sound of a car passing rapidly on the distant highway.

CHAPTER XXVIII A CHANGE OF BASE

The roan horse which Sim Gage rode was in no downcast frame of mind, but he himself, engrossed with his errand, did not at first notice that it was the same half wild animal with which he had had combat at an earlier time. He fought it for half an hour or more down a half dozen miles of the road, but at length the brute made matters worse by picking up a stone, and going dead lame, so that any great speed was out of the question.

Night was falling now across the winding trail which passed along the valley lands and over the shoulders of the mountains. It was wild country even yet, but beautiful as it lay in the light of the fading day. Sim Gage had no time to note the play of light or shadow on the hills. He rode. It was past midnight when he swung off his now meek and wet-sided horse, cast down the bridle rein, and went in search of Doctor Barnes.

The latter met his caller with the point of an electric torch at the door.

"Oh, it's you, Gage?" said he. "Come in."

Sim Gage entered and seated himself, his hurt leg stiffly before him on the floor. Briefly as he could, he told the reason of his errand and the reason for his delay.

"Leave your horse here," said Doctor Barnes, already preparing for his journey. "We'll take my car."

A half hour later the two were again en route. The head light of the car, swinging from side to side around the steep and unprotected curves of the mountain slopes, showed the rude passageway, in places risky enough at that hour and that speed. At that latitude the summer nights are short, and their journey was unfinished when the gray dawn began to turn to pink upon the mountain tops. In the clearer light Doctor Barnes saw something which caused him to pull up.

"There's the wire break," he exclaimed. "Look here."

They both left the car and approached the nearest pole. It bore the fresh marks of a linesman's climbing irons. "Professional work. And that's a cut with nippers—not a break. Keep away from the free end, Gage's, it's probably a live wire. You're right. That gang is back in here again. But tell me, what's that?—Do you smell anything?"

Sim Gage nodded. "Smoke," said he.

As the light grew stronger so that the far slopes of the mountain were visible they saw the proof. Smoke, a heavy, rolling blanket of smoke, lay high over the farther summits.

"Damn their souls!" said Doctor Barnes fervently and tersely. "They've set the forest afire again."

A half hour later they swung into the ranch yard. The call of "Halt!" came, backed by a tousled head nestled against the stock of a Springfield which protruded from a window.

"Advance, friend!" exclaimed the corporal when he got his countersign, and a moment later met his Major in the dooryard. They were joined by Wid Gardner, who rose from the place where he had sat, rifle across his knees, most of the night crouched against the end of the cabin.

"We've got him in here," said the Sergeant, leading the way to the barracks door.

"Got what?"

"The one we shot. He's deader'n hell, but I thought you might like to look through his pockets."

Wid Gardner unemotionally accompanied them into the room of the barracks where, on a couple of boards, between two carpenter's trestles, lay a long figure covered with a blanket.

"Scout Gardner got him last night about nine o'clock, sir," said the Sergeant; "out in the lane behind the gate. Called to him to halt, and he didn't stop."

"He didn't have no chanct to halt," said Wid Gardner calmly. "I hollered that to him after I had dropped him. He wasn't the one I was after, neither."

"The rest of them got away," went on the Sergeant. "We heard the shot when we was just coming down the road. We come on to the head of the lane and heard brush breaking. They was trying to get to their car, down a little further. They whirled and came back through us in the car, and we shot into them, but I don't know if we got any of 'em, the horses was pitching so. They went back up the trail, or maybe up on the Reserve road—I dunno. We come on down here to get orders."

Doctor Barnes slipped back the blanket. There was revealed the thin, aquiline face of a man dressed in rather dandified clothing. There were rings on both hands, a rather showy but valuable stickpin in the scarf. The hands were not those of a laboring man. At the bridge of the nose a faint depression showed that he wore eyeglasses. His complexion was blond, and his eyes, open now only to a slit, might also have been light in color. There was on his features, indefinably foreign, the stamp not to say of birth so much as of education. The man apparently once was used to easy if not gentle ways of life.

"Tell me how it happened," said Doctor Barnes to Gardner, who stood by.

"She can tell you more'n I can," said Wid—"Miss Squires. This ain't the feller. The real one that I want she used to work with—he was foreman back East in the