Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

to stop it. An' the wind's jest right—” A curdled roll of smoke showed plainly for a moment in the haze. She crammed her armful of sheets into the battered willow basket, threw two clothespins hastily toward the same receptacle, and ran.

The special had just come to a stop at the depot. The cattlemen, cowboys, and townspeople were packed close around the rear of the train, their backs to the wind and the disaster sweeping down upon them, their browned faces upturned to the sleek, carefully groomed man in the light-gray suit, with a flaunting, prairie sunflower ostentatiously displayed in his buttonhole and with his campaign smile upon his lips and dull boredom looking out of his eyes.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying, as he smiled, “you favoured ones whose happy lot it is to live in the most glorious State of our glorious union, I greet you, and I envy you—”

Arline, with her soiled kitchen apron, her ragged coil of dust-brown hair, her work-drawn face and faded eyes which blazed with excitement, pushed unceremoniously through the crowd and confronted him undazzled.

“Mister Candidate, you better move on and give these men a chancet to save their prope'ty,” she cried shrilly. “They got something to do besides stand around here and listen at you throwin' campaign loads. The hull country's afire back of us, and the wind bringin' it down on a long lope.”

She turned from the astounded candidate and glared at the startled crowd, every one of whom she knew personally.

“I must say I got my opinion of a bunch that'll stand here swallowin' a lot of hot air, while their coat tails is most ready to ketch afire!” Her voice was rasping, and it carried to the farthest of them. “You make me tired! Political slush, all of it—and the hull darned country a-blazin' behind you!”

The crowd moved uneasily, then scattered away from the shelter of the depot to where they could snuff inquiringly the wind, like dogs in the leash.

“That's right,” yelled Blumenthall, of the Double Diamond. “There's a fire, sure as hell!” He started to run.

The man behind him hesitated but a second, then gripped his hat against the push of the wind, and began running. Presently men, women, and children were running, all in one direction.

The prospective President stood agape upon the platform of his bunting-draped car, his chosen allies grouped foolishly around him. It was the first time men had turned from his presence with his gracious, flatteringly noncommittal speech unuttered, his hand unshaken, his smiling, bowing departure unmarked by cheers growing fainter as he receded. Only Arline tarried, her thin fingers gripping the arm of her “breed girl,” lest she catch the panic and run with the others.

Arline tilted back her head upon her scrawny shoulders and eyed the prospective President with antagonism unconcealed.

“I got something to say to you before you go,” she announced, in her rasping voice, with its querulous note. “I want to tell you that the chances are a hundred to one you set that fire yourself, with your engine that's haulin' you around over the country, so you can jolly men into votin' for you. Your train's the only one over the road since noon, and that fire started from the railroad. The hull town's liable to burn, unless it can be stopped the other side the creek, to say nothing of the range, that feeds our stock, and the hay, and maybe houses—and maybe people!”

She caught her breath, and almost shrieked the last three words, as a dreadful probability flashed into her mind.

“I know a woman—just a girl—and she's back there twenty mile—alone, and her man's here to look at you go by! I hope you git beat, just for that!

“If this town ketches afire and burns up, I hope you run into the ditch before you git ten mile! If you was a man, and them fellers with you was men, you'd hold up your train and help save the town. Every feller counts, when it comes to fightin' fire.”

She stopped and eyed the group keenly. “But you won't. I don't reckon you ever done anything with them hands in your life that would grind a little honest dirt into your knuckles and under them shiny nails!”

The prospective President turned red to his ears, and hastily removed his immaculate hands from where they had been resting upon the railing. And he did not hold up the train while he and his allies stopped to help save the town. The whistle gave a warning toot, the bell jangled, and the train slid away toward the next town, leaving Arline staring, tight-lipped, after it.

“The darned chump—he'd 'a' made votes hand over fist if he'd called my bluff; but, I knew he wouldn't, soon as I seen his face. He ain't man enough.”

“He's real good-lookin',” sighed Minnie, feebly attempting to release her arm from the grasp of her mistress. “And did you notice the fellow with the big yellow mustache? He kept eyin' me—”

“Well, I don't wonder—but it ain't anything to your credit,” snapped Arline, facing her toward the hotel, “You do look like sin a-flyin', in that green dress, and with all that starch on your face. You git along to the house and mix that bread, first thing you do, and start a fire. And if I ain't back by that time, you go ahead with the supper; you know what to git. We're liable to have all the tables full, so you set all of 'em.”

She was hurrying away, when the girl called to her.

“Did you mean Mis' Fleetwood, when you said that about the woman burning? And do you s'pose she's really in the fire?”

“You shut up and go along!” cried Arline roughly, under the stress of her own fears. “How in time's anybody going to tell, that's twenty miles away?”

She left the street and went hurrying through back yards and across vacant lots, crawled through a wire fence, and so reached, without any roundabout method, the trail which led to the top of the bluff, where the whole town was breathlessly assembling. Her flat-chested, un-corseted figure merged into the haze as she half trotted up the steep road, swinging her arms like a man, her skirts flapping in the wind. As she went, she kept muttering to herself:

“If she really is caught by the fire—and her alone—and Man more'n half drunk—” She whirled, and stood waiting for the horseman who was galloping up the trail behind her. “You going home, Man? You don't think it could git to your place, do you?” She shouted the questions at him as he pounded past.

Manley, sallow white with terror, shook his head vaguely and swung his heavy quirt down upon the flanks of his horse. Arline lowered her head against the dust kicked into her face as he went tearing past her, and kept doggedly on. Some one came rattling up behind her with empty barrels dancing erratically in a wagon, and she left the trail to make room. The hostler from their own stable it was who drove, and at the creek ahead of them he stopped to fill the barrels. Arline passed him by and kept on.

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