Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "You're a good sport," said Major Barnes]






THE SAGEBRUSHER

A STORY OF THE WEST



BY

EMERSON HOUGH




AUTHOR OF THE COVERED WAGON, THE BROKEN GATE, ETC.




ILLUSTRATED BY

J. HENRY






NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS




COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY

EMERSON HOUGH




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

      I.  SIM GAGE AT HOME
     II.  WANTED: A WIFE
    III.  FIFTY-FIFTY
     IV.  HEARTS AFLAME
      V.  BEGGAR MAN--THIEF
     VI.  RICH MAN--POOR MAN
    VII.  CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT MEANS
   VIII.  RIVAL CONSCIENCES
     IX.  THE HALT AND THE BLIND
      X.  NEIGHBORS
     XI.  THE COMPANY DOCTOR
    XII.  LEFT ALONE
   XIII.  THE SABCAT CAMP
    XIV.  THE MAN TRAIL
     XV.  THE SPECIES
    XVI.  THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE
   XVII.  SAGEBRUSHERS
  XVIII.  DONNA QUIXOTE
    XIX.  THE PLEDGE
     XX.  MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE
    XXI.  WITH THIS RING
   XXII.  MRS. GAGE
  XXIII.  THE OUTLOOK
   XXIV.  ANNIE MOVES IN
    XXV.  ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE
   XXVI.  THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER
  XXVII.  DORENWALD, CHIEF
 XXVIII.  A CHANGE OF BASE
   XXIX.  MARTIAL LAW
    XXX.  BEFORE DAWN
   XXXI.  THE BLIND SEE
  XXXII.  THE ENEMY
 XXXIII.  THE DAM
  XXXIV.  AFTER THE DELUGE
   XXXV.  ANNIE ANSWERS
  XXXVI.  MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE




ILLUSTRATIONS


"You're a good sport," said Major Barnes . . . _Frontispiece_

"You ought to hang!" said she

"You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"

"Get a board, or something, boys"




THE SAGEBRUSHER


CHAPTER I

SIM GAGE AT HOME

"Sim," said Wid Gardner, as he cast a frowning glance around him, "take
it one way with another, and I expect this is a leetle the dirtiest
place in the Two-Forks Valley."

The man accosted did no more than turn a mild blue eye toward the
speaker and resume his whittling.  He smiled faintly, with a sort of
apology, as the other went on.

"I'll say more'n that, Sim.  It's the blamedest, dirtiest hole in the
whole state of Montany--yes, or in the whole wide world.  Lookit!"

He swept a hand around, indicating the interior of the single-room log
cabin in which they sat.

"Well," commented Sim Gage after a time, taking a meditative but wholly
unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and I
ain't saying she ain't.  But I never did say I was a perfessional
housekeeper, did I now?"

"Well, some folks has more sense of what's right, anyways," grumbled
Wid Gardner, shifting his position on one of the two insecure cracker
boxes which made the only chairs, and resting an elbow on the oil cloth
table cover, where stood a few broken dishes, showing no signs of any
ablution in all their hopeless lives.  "My own self, I'm a bachelor
man, too--been batching for twenty years, one place and another--but by
God!  Sim, this here is the human limit.  Look at that bed."

He kicked a foot toward a heap of dirty fabrics which lay upon the
floor, a bed which might once have been devised for a man, but long
since had fallen below that rank.  It had a breadth of dirty canvas
thrown across it, from under which the occupant had crawled out.
Beneath might be seen the edges of two or three worn and dirty cotton
quilts and a pair of blankets of like dinginess.  Below this lay a worn
elk hide, and under all a lower-breadth of the over-lapping canvas.  It
was such a bed as primarily a cow-puncher might have had, but fallen
into such condition that no cow camp would have tolerated it.

Sim Gage looked at the heap of bedding for a time gravely and
carefully, as though trying to find some reason for his friend's
dissatisfaction.  His mouth began to work as it always did when he was
engaged in some severe mental problem, but he frowned apologetically
once more as he spoke.

"Well, Wid, I know, I know.  It ain't maybe just the thing to sleep on
the floor all the time, noways.  You see, I got a bunk frame made for
her over there, and it's all tight and strong--it was there when I took
this cabin over from the Swede.  But I ain't never just got around to
moving my bed offen the floor onto the bedstead.  I may do it some day.
Fact is, I was just a-going to do it anyways."

"Just a-going to--like hell you was!  You been a-going to move that bed
for four years, to my certain knowledge, and I know that in that time
you ain't shuk it out or aired it onct, or made it up."

"How do you know I ain't made her up?" demanded Sim Gage, his knife
arrested in its labors.

"Well, I know you ain't.  It's just the way you've throwed it ever'
morning since I've knowed you here.  Move it up on the bedstead?--First
thing you know you can't."

"Well," said Sim, sighing, "some folks is always making other folks
feel bad.  I ain't never found fault with the way you keep house when I
come over to your place, have I?"

"You ain't got the same reason for to," replied Wid Gardner.  "I ain't
no angel, but I sure try to make some sort of bluff like I was human.
This place ain't human."

"Now you said something!" remarked Sim suddenly, after a time spent in
solemn thought.  "She ain't human!  That's right."

He made no explanation for some time, and both men sat looking vaguely
out of the open door across the wide and pleasant valley above which a
blue and white-flecked sky bent amiably.  A wide ridge of good grass
lands lay held in the river's bent arm.  The wind blew steadily,
throwing up into a sheet of silver the leaves of the willows which
followed the water courses.  A few quaking asps standing near the cabin
door likewise gave motion and brightness to the scene.  The air was
brilliantly cool and keen.  It was a pleasant spot, and at that season
of the year not an uncomfortable one.  Sim Gage had lived here for some
years now, and his homestead, originally selected with the unconscious
sense for beauty so often exercised by rude men in rude lands, was
considered one of the best in the Two-Forks Valley.

"Feller, he loses hope after a while," began the owner of the place
after a considerable silence.  "Look at me, for instance.  I come out
here from Ioway more'n twenty-five years ago, when I was only a boy.
When my pa died my ma, she moved back to Ioway.  I stuck around here,
like you and lots of other fellers, and done like you all, just the
best I could.  Some way the country sort of took a holt on me.  It
does, ain't it the truth?"

His friend nodded silently.

"Well, so I stuck around and done about what I could, same as you,
ain't that so, Wid?  I prospected some, but you know how hard it is to
get any money into a mine, no matter what you've found fer a prospect.
I got along somehow--seems like folks didn't use to pester so much, the
way they do to-day.  And you know onct I was just on the point of
starting out fer Arizony with that old miner, Pop Haynes--do you
suppose I'd struck anything if I'd of went down there?"

"Nobody can say if you would or you wouldn't," replied Wid.  "Fact is,
you never got more'n half started."

"Well, you see, this old feller, Pop Haynes, he'd been down in Arizony
twenty years before, and he said there was lots of gold out there in
the desert.  Well, we got a team hooked up, and a little flour and
bacon, and we did start--now, I'll leave it to you, Wid, if we didn't.
We got as far as Big Springs, on the railroad.  What did we hear then?
Why, news comes up from down in Arizony that a railroad has went out
into the desert, and that them mines has been discovered.  What's the
use then fer us to start fer Arizony with a wagon and team?  Like
enough all the good stakes would be took up before we could get there.
Old Pop and me, we just turned back, allowing it was the sensiblest
thing to do."

"And you been in around here ever since."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir, that's what I been.  Been around here ever since.
I told you the country kind of takes a holt on a feller.  Ain't it the
truth?  Well, I trapped a little since then in the winters, and killed
elk for the market some, like you know, and fished through the ice over
on the lakes, like you know.  Some days I'd make three or four dollars
a day fishing.  So at last when that Swede, Big Aleck, got run out of
the county, I fell into his ranch.  There ain't a better in the whole
valley.  Look at that hay land, Wid.  You got to admit that this here
is one of the best places in Montany."

"Well, maybe it is," said his friend and neighbor.  "Leastways, it's
good enough to run like you mean to run it."

"I'm a-going to run her all right.  She's all under wire--the Swede
done that before I bought his quit claim.  Can't no sheep get in on me
here.  I'll bet you all my clothes that I'll cut six hundred ton of hay
this season--leastways I would if my horse hadn't hurt hisself in the
wire the other day.  Now, you figure up what six hundred ton of hay
comes to in the stack, at prices hay is bringing now."

"Trouble is, your hay ain't in the stack, Sim.  You'll just about cut
hay enough to buy yourself flour and bacon for next winter, and that'll
be about all.  If you worked the place right you'd make plenty fer
to----"

"Fer to be human?"

"Well, yes, that's about it, Sim."

"That's right hard--doing all your own work outside and doing all your
own cooking and everything all the time in your own house.  Just living
along twenty years one day after another, all by your own self, and
never--never----"

His voice trailed off faintly, and he left the sentence unfinished.
Wid Gardner completed it for him.

"And never having a woman around?" said he.

"Ain't it the truth?" said Sim Gage suddenly.  His eyes ran furtively
around the room in which they sat, taking in, without noting or
feeling, the unutterable squalor of the place.

"Well," said his friend after a time, rising, "it'd be a fine place to
fetch a woman to, wouldn't it?  But now I got to be going--I got my
chores to do."

"What's your hurry, Wid?" complained the occupant of the cabin.
"Cow'll wait."

"Yours might," said the other sententiously.  As he spoke he was making
his way to the door.

The sun was sinking now behind the range, and as he stood for a moment
looking toward the west, he might himself have been seen to be a man of
some stature, rugged and bronzed, with scores of wrinkles on his
leathery cheeks.  His garb was the rude one of the West, or rather of
that remnant of the Old West which has been consigned to the dry
farmers and hay ranchers in these modern polyglot days.

Sim Gage, the man who followed him out and stood for a time in the
unsparing brilliance of the evening sunlight, did not compare too well
with his friend.  He was a man of absolutely no presence, utterly
lacking attractiveness.  Not so much pudgy as shapeless; he had been
shapeless originally.  His squat figure showed, to be sure, a certain
hardiness and vigor gained in his outdoor life, but he had not even the
rude grace of a stalwart manhood about him.  He sank apologetically
into a lax posture, even as he stood.  His pale blue eyes lacked fire.
His hair, uneven, ragged and hay-colored, seemed dry, as though
hopeless, discouraged, done with life, fringing out as it did in gray
locks under the edge of the battered hat he wore.  He had been unshaven
for days, perhaps weeks, and his beard, unreaped, showed divers colors,
as of a field partially ripening here and there.  In general he was
undecided, unfinished--yes, surely nature must have been undecided as
he himself was about himself.

His clothing was such as might have been predicted for the owner of the
nondescript bed resting on the cabin floor.  His neck, grimed, red and
wrinkled as that of an ancient turtle, rose above his bare brown
shoulders and his upper chest, likewise exposed.  His only body
covering was an undershirt, or two undershirts.  Their flannel
over-covering had left them apparently some time since, and as for the
remnant, it had known such wear that his arms, brown as those of an
Indian, were bare to the elbows.  He was always thus, so far as any
neighbor could have remembered him, save that in the winter time he
cast a sheepskin coat over all.  His short legs were clad in blue
overalls, so far as their outside cover was concerned, or at least the
overalls once had been blue, though now much faded.  Under these, as
might be seen by a glance at their bottoms, were two, three, or
possibly even more, pairs of trousers, all borne up and suspended at
the top by an intricate series of ropes and strings which crossed his
half-bare shoulders.  One might have searched all of Sim Gage's cabin
and have found on the wall not one article of clothing--he wore all he
had, summer and winter.  And as he was now, so he had been ever since
his nearest neighbor could remember.  A picture of indifference, apathy
and hopelessness, he stood, every rag and wrinkle of him sharply
outlined in the clear air.

He stood uncertainly now, his foot turned over, as he always stood,
there seeming never at any time any determination or even animation
about him.  And yet he longed, apparently, for some sort of human
companionship, but still he argued with his friend and asked him not to
hurry away.

None the less after a few moments Wid Gardner did turn away.  He passed
out at the rail bars which fenced off the front yard from the
willow-covered banks of a creek which ran nearby.  A half-dozen head of
mixed cattle followed him up to the gate, seeking a wider world.  A
mule thrust out his long head from a window of the log stable where it
was imprisoned, and brayed at him anxiously, also seeking outlet.

But Sim Gage, apathetic, one foot lopped over, showed no agitation and
no ambition.  The wisp of grass which hung now from the corner of his
mouth seemed to suit him for the time.  He stood chewing and looking at
his departing visitor.

"Some folks is _too_ damn dirty," said Wid Gardner to himself as he
passed now along the edge of the willow bank toward the front gate of
his own ranch, a half-mile up the stream.  "And him talking about a
woman!"  He flung out his hand in disgust at the mere thought.

That is to say, he did at first.  Then he began to walk more slowly.  A
touch of reflectiveness came upon his own face.

"Still," said he to himself after a time--speaking aloud as men of the
wilderness sometimes learn to do--"I don't know!"

He turned into his own gate, approached his own cabin, its exterior
much like that of the one which but now he had left.  He paused for a
moment at the door as he looked in, regarding its somewhat neater
appearance.

"Well, and even so," said he.  "I don't know.  Still and after all,
now, a woman----"




CHAPTER II

WANTED: A WIFE

"I couldn't have ate at Sim's place if he would of asked me to,"
grumbled Wid Gardner aloud to himself as he busied himself about his
own household duties in his bachelor cabin.  "He's too damn dirty, like
I said, and that's a fact."

Wid's cabin itself was in general appearance no better, if no worse,
than the average in the Two Forks Valley.  There was a bed on a rude
pole frame--little more than a heap of blankets as they had been thrown
aside that morning.  The table still held the dishes which had been
used, but at least these had been washed, and there was thrown across
them what had served as a dish-towel, a washed and dried, fairly clean
flour sack which had been ripped out and turned into a towel.  There
was a box nailed up behind the stove which served as a sort of store
room for the scant supplies, and this had a flap at the top, so that it
was partly curtained off.  Another box nailed against the wall behind
the table served as book case and paper rack, holding, among a scant
array of ancient standard volumes, a few dog-eared paper-backed books
of cheap and dreadful sort, some illustrated journals showing pictures
of actresses and film celebrities--precisely the sort of literature
which may be found in most wilderness bachelor homes.

At one end of the up-turned box which served as a sort of reading table
lay a pile of similar magazines, not of abundant folios, but apparently
valued, for they showed more care than any other of the owner's
treasures.  It was, curiously enough, to this little heap of literature
that Wid Gardner presently turned.

Forgetful of the hour and of his waiting cows, he sat down, a copy in
his hands, his face taking on a new sort of light as he read.  At
times, as lone men will, he broke out into audible soliloquy.  Now and
again his hand slapped his knee, his eye kindled, he grinned.  The
pages were ill-printed, showing many paragraphs, apparently of
advertising nature, in fine type, sometimes marked with display lines.

Wid turned page after page, grunting as he did so, until at last he
tossed the magazine upon the top of the box and so went about his
evening chores.  Thus the title of the publication was left showing to
any observer.  The headline was done in large black letters, advising
all who might have read that this was a copy of the magazine known as
_Hearts Aflame_.

Curiously enough, on the front page the headline of a certain
advertisement showed plainly.  It read, "Wanted: A Wife."

From this it may be divined that here was one of those periodicals
printed no one knows where, circulated no one knows how, which none the
less after some fashion of their own do find their way out in all the
womanless regions of the world--Alaska, South Africa, the dry plains of
Canada and our Western States, mining camps far out in the outlying
districts beyond the edge of the homekeeping lands--it is in regions
such as these that periodicals such as the foregoing may be found.
Their circulation is among those who seek "acquaintance with a view to
matrimony."  They are the official organs of Cupid himself--_or_ Cupid
commercialized, or Cupid much misnamed and sailing his craft upon a
wide and uncharted sea.  In lands of the first pick or the first plow,
these half-illicit pages find their way for their own reasons; and men
and women both sometimes have read them.

Wid Gardner finished his own brief work about the corral, came in,
washed his hands, and began to cook for himself his simple supper.
Then he washed his dishes, threw the towel above them as before, and
went to bed, since he had little else to do.

Early the next morning Wid had finished his breakfast, and was at the
edge of the main valley road, which passed near to his own front gate.
He lighted a pipe and sat down to smoke, now and again glancing down
the road at a slowly approaching figure.

It was the schoolma'am, Mrs. Davidson, who daily presided at the little
log schoolhouse a mile further on up the road, where some twenty
children found their way over varying distances from the surrounding
ranches.  This lady was of much dignity and of much avoirdupois as
well.  Her ruddy face was wrinkled up somewhat like an apple in the
late fall.  She walked slowly and ponderously, and her gait being
somewhat restricted, it was needful that she make an early start each
day to her place of labor, since the only possible boarding place lay
almost a mile below Sim Gage's ranch.  She had been the only applicant
for this school, and perhaps was the only living being who could have
contented herself in that capacity in this valley.  Wid Gardner pulled
at the edge of his broken hat as he stepped down the narrow road to
meet her.

"'Morning, Mis' Davidson," said he.

"Good morning, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner," boomed out the great voice of Mrs.
Davidson.  "It is apparently promising us fair weather, sir-r-r."

Mrs. Davidson spoke with a certain singular rotund exactness, and hence
was held much in awe in all these parts.

"Yes, ma'am," said Wid, "it looks like it would rain, but it won't."

"Your hay in that case would not flourish so well, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner?"
said she.

"Without rain, not worth a damn, ma'am, so to speak.  But I'll get by
if any one can.  This is one of the best locations in the valley.  Me
and Sim Gage; and Sim, he says----"

"Sim Gage!" The lady snorted her contempt of the very name.  "That man!
Altogether impossible!"

"He shore is.  He certainly is," assented Wid Gardner.  "He seems to be
getting impossible-er almost every year, now, don't he?"

"I do not care to discuss Mr. Gage," replied the apostle of learning.
"I was in his abode once.  I should never care to go there again."

Already she was leaning partially forward, ponderously, as about to
resume her journey toward the school house.

"Well, now, Sim Gage," began Wid, raising a restraining hand, "he ain't
so bad as you might think, ma'am.  He's just kind of fell into this way
of living."

"Mr. Gar-r-r-dner," said the lady positively, "I doubt if he has made a
bed or washed a dish in twenty years.  His place is worse than an
Indian camp.  I have taught schools among the savages myself, in
Government service, and therefore I may speak with authority."

"Well, now, ma'am, I reckon that's all true.  But you see, if more
women come out in here, now, things'd be different.  I been thinking of
Sim Gage, ma'am.  I wanted you to do something fer me, or him, ma'am."

"Indeed?" demanded she.  "And what may that be?"

"I don't mean nothing in the world that ain't perfectly all right,"
began Wid, hesitatingly.  "I only wanted you to write something fer me.
I'm this kind of a man, that when he wants anything to be fixed up, he
wants it to be fixed up right.  I kind of got out of practice writing.
I want you to write a ad fer me."

"A what?" she demanded.  "Oh, I see--you have something to sell?"

"No, ma'am, I ain't got nothing to sell--not unlessen--well, I'll tell
you.  I want to advertise fer a woman--fer a wife--that is to say,
really fer him, Sim Gage--a feller's got to have something to sort of
occupy his mind, hain't he?"

Mrs. Davidson was too much astonished to speak, and he blundered on.

"Folks has done such things," said he.

"You offer me a somewhat difficult problem," rejoined the other, "since
I do not in the least understand what you desire to do."

"Well, it's this away, ma'am.  There's papers that prints these
ads--sometimes big dailies does, they tell me--where folks advertises
for acquaintances just fer to get acquainted, you know--'acquaintance
with a view to matrimony' is the way they usually say it--and that may
be a tip fer you--I mean about this here ad I want you to write.  Why,
folks has got married that way, plenty of 'em--I'll bet there ain't
more'n half the homesteaders in this state out here, leastways in the
sagebrush country, that didn't get married just that way--it's the
onliest way they _can_ get married, ma'am, half the time.

"Once, up in Helleny, years ago, right after the old Alder Gulch placer
mining days, there was eleven millionaires, each of 'em married to a
Injun woman, and not one of them women could set on a chair without
falling off.  Now, there wasn't no papers then like this one here, or
them millionaires might of done better."

She gasped, unable to speak, her lips rotund and pursed, and he went on
with more assertiveness.

"They turn out just as good as any marriages there is," said he.  "I've
knowed plenty of 'em.  There's three in this valley--although they
don't say much about it now.  _I_ know how they got acquainted, all
right."

"And you desire me to aid you in your endeavor to entr-r-r-ap some
foolish woman?"

"They don't have to answer.  They don't have to get married if they
don't want to.  You can't tell how things'll turn out."

"Indeed!  _Indeed_!"

"Well, now, I was just hoping you would write the ad, that's all.  Just
you write me a ad like you was a sagebrusher out here in this country,
and you was awful lonesome, and had a good ranch, and was
kind-hearted--and not too good-looking--and that you'd be kind to a
woman.  Well, that's about as far as I can go.  I was going to leave
the rest to you."

Mrs. Davidson's lips still remained round, her forehead puckered.  She
leaned ponderously, fell forward into her weighty walk.

"I make no promise, sir-r-r!" said she, as she veered in passing.

But still, human psychology being what it is, and woman's curiosity
what it also is, and Mrs. Davidson being after all woman, that evening
when Wid Gardner passed out to his gate, he found pinned to the
fastening stick an envelope which he opened curiously.  He spelled out
the words:


"Wanted: A Wife.  A well-to-do and chivalrous rancher of abundant means
and large holdings in a Western State wishes to correspond with a
respectable young woman who will be willing to appreciate a good home
and loving care.  Object--matrimony."


Wid Gardner read this once, and he read it twice.  "Good God A'mighty!"
said he to himself.  "Sim Gage!"

He turned back to his cabin, and managed to find a corroded pen and the
part of a bottle of thickened ink.  With much labor he signed to the
text of his enclosure two initials, and added his own post office route
box for forwarding of any possible replies.  Then he addressed a dirty
envelope to the street number of the eastern city which appeared on the
page of his matrimonial journal.  Even he managed to fish out a curled
stamp from somewhere in the wall pocket.  Then he sat down and looked
out the door over the willow bushes shivering in the evening air.

"'Chi_val_erous!'" said he.  "'Well-to-do!  A good home--and loving
care!'  If that can be put acrosst with any woman in the whole wide
world, I'll have faith again in prospectin'!"




CHAPTER III

FIFTY-FIFTY

It was late fall or early winter in the city of Cleveland.  An icy
wind, steel-tipped, came in from the frozen shores of Lake Erie,
piercing the streets, dark with soot and fog commingled.  It was
evening, and the walks were covered with crowded and hurrying human
beings seeking their own homes--men done with their office labors,
young women from factories and shops.  These bent against the bitter
wind, some apathetically, some stoutly, some with the vigor of youth,
yet others with the slow gait of approaching age.

Mary Warren and her room-mate, Annie Squires, met at a certain street
corner, as was their daily wont; the former coming from her place in
one of the great department stores, the other from her work in a
factory six blocks up the street.

"'Lo, Mollie," said Annie; and her friend smiled, as she always did at
their chill corner rendezvous.  They found some sort of standing room
together in a crowded car, swinging on the straps as it screeched its
way around the curves, through the crowded portions of the city.  It
was long before they got seats, three-quarters of an hour, for they
lived far out.  Ten dollars a week does not give much in the way of
quarters.  It might have been guessed that these two were partners,
room-mates.

"Gee!  These cars is fierce," said Annie Squires, with a smile and a
wide glance into the eyes of a young man against whom she had been
flung, although she spoke to her companion.

Mary Warren made no complaint.  Her face, calm and gentle, carried
neither repining nor resignation, but a high and resolute courage.  She
shrank far as she might, like a gentlewoman, from personal contact with
other human beings; the little droop beginning at the corners of her
mouth gave proof of her weariness, but there was a thoroughbred vigor,
a silken-strong fairness about her, which, with the self-respecting
erectness in her carriage, rather belied the common garb she wore.  Her
frock was that of the sales-woman, her gloves were badly worn, her
boots began to show signs of breaking, her hat was of nondescript sort,
of small pretensions--yet Mary Warren's attitude, less of weariness
than of resistance, had something of the ivory-fine gentlewoman about
it, even here at the end of a rasping winter day.

Annie Squires was dressed with a trifle more of the pretension which
ten dollars a week allows.  She carried a sort of rude and frank
vitality about her, a healthful color in her face, not wholly uncomely.
She was a trifle younger than Mary Warren--the latter might have been
perhaps five and twenty; perhaps a little older, perhaps not quite so
old--but none the less seemed if not the more strong, at least the more
self-confident of the two.  A great-heart, Annie Squires; out of
nothing, bound for nowhere.  Two great-hearts, indeed, these two tired
girls, going home.

"Well, the Dutch seems to be having their own troubles now," said Annie
after a time, when at length the two were able to find seats, a trifle
to themselves in a corner of the car.  "Looks like they might learn how
the war thing goes the other way 'round.  Gee!  I wish't I was a man!
I'd show 'em peace!"

She went on, passing from one headline to the next of the evening paper
which they took daily turns in buying.  Mary Warren began to grow more
grave of face as she heard the news from the lands where not long ago
had swung and raged in their red grapple the great armies of the world.

Then a sudden remorse came to Annie.  She put out a hand to Mary
Warren's arm.  "Don't mind, Sis," said she.  "Plenty more besides your
brother is gone.  Lookit here."

"He was all I had," said Mary simply, her lips trembling.

"Yes, I know.  But what's up to-night, Mollie?  You're still.  Anything
gone wrong at the store?"  She was looking at her room-mate keenly.
This was their regular time for mutual review and for the restoring
gossip of the day.

"Well, you see, Annie, they told me that times were hard now after the
war, and more girls ready to work."  Mary Warren only answered after a
long time.  A passenger, sitting near, was just rising to leave the car.

Annie also said nothing for a time.  "It looks bad, Mollie," said she,
sagely.

Mary Warren made no answer beyond nodding bravely, high-headed.  Ten
dollars a week may be an enormous sum, even when countries but now have
been juggling billions carelessly.

They were now near the end of their daily journey.  Presently they
descended from the car and, bent against the icy wind, made their way
certain blocks toward the door which meant home for them.  They clumped
up the stairs of the wooden building to the third floor, and opened the
door to their room.

It was cold.  There was no fire burning in the stove--they never left
one burning, for they furnished their own fuel; and in the morning,
even in the winter time, they rose and dressed in the cold.

"Never mind, dear," said Annie again, and pushed Mary down into the
rocking chair as she would have busied herself with the kindling.  "Let
me, now.  I wish't coal wasn't so high.  There's times I almost lose my
nerve."

A blue and yellow flame at last began back of the mica-doored stove
which furnished heat for the room.  The girls, too tired and cold to
take off their wraps, sat for a time, their hands against the slowly
heating door.  Now and again they peered in to see how the fire was
doing.

Mary Warren rose and laid aside her street garb.  When she turned back
again she still had in her hands the long knitting needles, the ball of
yellowish yarn, the partially knitted garment, which of late had been
so common in America.

"Aw, Sis, cut it out!" grumbled Annie, and reached to take the knitting
away from her friend.  "The war's over, thank God!  Give yourself a
chanct.  Get warm first, anyways.  You'll ruin your eyes--didn't the
doctor tell you so?  You got one bum lamp right now."

"Worse things than having trouble with your eyes, Annie."

"Huh!  It'll help you a lot to have your eyes go worse, won't it?"

"But I can't forget.  I--I can't seem to forget Dan, my brother."
Mary's voice trailed off vaguely.  "He's the last kin I had.  Well, I
was all he had, his next of kin, so they sent me his decoration.  And
I'm the last of our family--and a woman--and--and not seeing very well.
Annie, he was my reliance--and I was his, poor boy, because of his
trouble, that made him a half-cripple, though he got into the flying
corps at last.  I'm alone.  And, Annie--that was what was the trouble
at the store.  I'm--it's my _eyes_."

They both sat for a long time in silence.  Her room-mate fidgeted
about, walked away, fiddled with her hair before the dull little mirror
at the dresser.  At length she turned.

"Sis," said she, "it ain't no news.  I know, and I've knew it.  I got
to talk some sense to you."

The dark glasses turned her way, unwaveringly, bravely.

"You're going to lose your job, Sis, as soon as the Christmas rush is
over," Annie finished.  She saw the sudden shudder which passed through
the straight figure beside the stove.

"Oh, I know it's hard, but it's the truth.  Now, listen.  Your folks
are all dead.  Your last one, Dan, your brother, is dead, and you got
no one else.  It's just as well to face things.  What I've got is
yours, of course, but how much have we got, together?  What chanct has
a girl got?  And a blind woman's a beggar, Sis.  It's tough.  But what
are you going to _do_?  Girls is flocking back out of Washington.  The
war factories is closing.  There's thousands on the streets."

"Annie, what do you _mean_?"

"Oh, now, hush, Sis!  Don't look at me that way, even through your
glasses.  It hurts.  We've just got to face things.  You've got to
live.  How?"

"Well, then," said Mary Warren, suddenly rising, her hands to her hot
cheeks, "well, then--and what then?  I can't be a burden on you--you've
done more than your half ever since I first had to go to the doctor
about my eyes."

"Cut all that out, now," said Annie, her eyes ominous.  "I done what
you'd a-done.  But one girl can't earn enough for two, at ten per, and
be decent.  Go out on the streets and see the boys still in their
uniforms.  Every one's got a girl on his arm, and the best lookers,
too.  What then?  As for the love and marriage stuff--well----"

"As though you didn't know better yourself than to talk the way you
do!" said Mary Warren.

"I'm different from you, Mollie.  I--I ain't so fine.  You know why I
liked you?  Because you was different; and I didn't come from much or
have much schooling.  I've been to school to you--and you never knew
it.  I owe you plenty, and you won't understand even that."

Mary only kissed her, but Annie broke free and went on.

"When they come to talk about the world going on, and folks marrying,
and raising children, after this war is over--you've got to hand it to
them that this duty stuff has got a strong punch behind it.  Besides,
the kid idea makes a hit with me.  But even if I did marry, I don't
know what a man would say, these times, about my bringing some one else
into his house.  Men is funny."

"Annie--Annie!" exclaimed Mary Warren once more.  "Don't--oh, don't!
I'd die before I'd go into your own real home!  Of course, I'll not be
a burden on you.  I'm too proud for that, I hope."

"Well, dope it out your own way, Sis," said her room-mate, sighing.
"It ain't true that I want to shake you.  I don't.  But I'm not talking
about Mary Warren when she had money her aunt left her--before she lost
it in Oil.  I'm not talking about Mary Warren when she was eighteen,
and pretty as a picture.  I ain't even talking about Mary a year ago,
wearing dark glasses, but still having a good chanct in the store.
What I'm talking about now is Mary Warren down and out, with not even
eyes to see with, and no money back of her, and no place to _go_.  What
are you going to _do_, Sis? that's all.  In my case--believe me, if I
lose my chanct at this man, Charlie Dorenwald, I'm going to find
another some time.

"It's fifty-fifty if either of us, or any girl, would get along all
right with a husband if we _could_ get one--it's no cinch.  And now,
women getting plentier and plentier, and men still scarcer and scarcer,
it's sure tough times for a girl that hasn't eyes nor anything to get
work with, or get married with."

"Annie!" said her companion.  "I wish you wouldn't!"

"Well, I wasn't thinking how I talked, Sis," said Annie, reaching out a
hand to pat the white one on the chair arm.  "But fifty-fifty, my
dear--that's all the bet ever was or will be for a woman, and now her
odds is a lot worse, they say, even for the well and strong ones.
Maybe part of the trouble with us women was we never looked on this
business of getting married with any kind of halfway business sense.
Along comes a man, and we get foolish.  Lord!  Oughtn't both of us to
know about bargain counters and basement sales?"

"Well, let's eat, Mary," she concluded, seeing she had no answer.  And
Mary Warren, broken-hearted, high-headed, silent, turned to the
remaining routine of the day.

Annie busied herself at the little box behind the stove--a box with a
flap of white cloth, which served as cupboard.  Here she found a coffee
pot, a half loaf of bread, some tinned goods, a pair of apples.  She
put the coffee pot to boil upon the little stove, pushing back the
ornamental acorn which covered the lid at its top.  Meantime Mary drew
out the little table which served them, spread upon it its white cloth,
and laid the knives and forks, scanty enough in their number.

They ate as was their custom every evening.  Not two girls in all
Cleveland led more frugal lives than these, nor cleaner, in every way.

"Let me wash the dishes, Sis," said Annie Squires.  "You needn't wipe
them--no, that's all right to-night.  Let me, now."

"You're fine, Annie, you're fine, that's what you are!" said Mary
Warren.  "You're the best girl in the world.  But we'll make it
fifty-fifty while we can.  I'm going to do my share."

"I suppose we'd better do the laundry, too, don't you think?" she
added.  "We don't want the fire to get too low."

They had used their single wash basin for their dish pan as well, and
now it was impressed to yet another use.  Each girl found in her pocket
a cheap handkerchief or so.  Annie now plunged these in the wash
basin's scanty suds, washed them, and, going to the mirror, pasted them
against the glass, flattening them out so that in the morning they
might be "ironed," as she called it.  This done, each girl deliberately
sat down and removed her shoes and stockings.  The stockings themselves
now came in for washing--an alternate daily practice with them both
since Mary had come hither.  They hung the stockings over the back of
the solitary spare chair, just close enough to the stove to get some
warmth, and not close enough to burn--long experience had taught them
the exact distance.

They huddled bare-footed closer to the stove, until Annie rose and
tiptoed across to get a pair each of cheap straw slippers which rested
below the bed.

"Here's yours, Sis," said she.  "You just sit still and get warm as you
can before we turn in--it's an awful night, and the fire's beginning to
peter out already.  I wish't Mr. McAdoo, or whoever it is, 'd see about
this coal business.  Gee, I hope these things'll get dry before
morning--there ain't anything in the world any colder than a pair of
wet stockings in the morning!  Let's turn in--it'll be warmer, I
believe."

The wind, steel-pointed, bored at the window casings all that night.
Degree after degree of frost would have registered in that room had
means of registration been present.  The two young women huddled closer
under the scanty covering that they might find warmth.  Ten dollars a
week.  Two great-hearts, neither of them more than a helpless girl.




CHAPTER IV

HEARTS AFLAME

They rose the next morning and dressed in the room without fire,
shivering now as they drew on their stockings, frozen stiff.  They had
their morning coffee in a chilly room downstairs, where sometimes their
slatternly landlady appeared, lugubriously voluble.  This morning they
ate alone, in silence, and none too happily.  Even Annie's buoyant
spirits seemed inadequate.  A trace of bitterness was in her tone when
she spoke.

"I'm sick of it."

"Yes, Annie," said Mary Warren.  "And it's cold this morning, awfully."

"Cotton vests, marked down--to what wool used to be.  Huh!  Call this
America?"

"What's wrong, Annie?" suddenly asked Mary Warren, drawing her wrap
closer as she sat.

"I'd go to the lake before I'd go to the streets, though you mightn't
think it.  But how about it with only the discards in Derby hats and
false teeth left?  If we two are going to get married, Mollie, we got
to look around among the remnants and bargains--we can't be too
particular when we're hunting bargains.  Whether it's all off for you
at the store or not ain't for me to say, but you might do worse than
listen to me."

Mary Warren looked at her in a sort of horror.  "Annie, what do you
mean?" she demanded.

The real reply came in the hard little laugh with which Annie Squires
drew from the pocket of her coat--in which she also was muffled at the
breakfast table--a meager little newspaper, close-folded.  She spread
it out before she passed it to her companion.

"_Hearts Aflame!_" said she.  "While you have to dry your own socks,
while you break the ice in your coffee!  Can't you feel your heart
flame?  Anyway, here you are--bargains in husbands and wives!  Take 'em
for the asking.  Here's a lot of them advertised.  Slightly damaged,
but serviceable--and marked down within the reach of all.

"Why, us girls over at the shop, we read these things regular," she
rattled on in explanation, her mouth full.  "Some of the girls answer
these ads--it's lots of fun.  You ought to see what some of the men
write back.  Look at this one, Sis!" said she, chuckling.  "Some class
to it, eh?"  She pointed to an advertisement a trifle larger than its
fellows, a trifle more boldly displayed in its black type.


"Wanted: A Wife.  A well-to-do and chivalrous rancher of abundant means
and large holdings in a Western State wishes to correspond with a
respectable young woman who will appreciate a good home and loving
care.  Object--Matrimony."


"How ridiculous," said Mary Warren simply.

"Uh huh!  Is it, though?  I don't know.  I put this thing to my ear,
and it sort of sounded as if there was something behind it.  That
fellow wants a woman of his own to keep house for him.  Out there women
are scarce.  It's supply and demand, Sis, same as in your store.  Well,
here's a man looking for goods.  So'm I.  I've been looking him over
for myself, because I ain't as strong for Charlie Dorenwald as I might
be, even if he's foreman.  He talks so damn much Bolshevik, somehow.
Of course, the country's rotten, but it's ours!  Still and all, I'll
tell you what I'll do, Sis, with you!"

She pulled her chair up to the side of her companion, fumbling in her
little purse as she did so; drew out a copper coin and held it balanced
between her fingers.

"'The one shall be taken and the other left,' Sis," said she.  "Two
women, grinding at the mill, the same little old mill, as the Bible
said; and 'The one shall be taken and the other left.'  Which one?  One
throw, Mary.  Heads or tails.  It's got to hit the ceiling before it
falls."

"Why, nonsense, Annie----  No, no!"

"Heads or tails!" insisted Annie Squires; and as she spoke she flipped
the coin against the ceiling.  It rolled toward the street window,
where neither of them at first could see it.

"Tails!" called Mary Warren faintly, suddenly.  It seemed to her she
heard some other voice, speaking for her, without her real volition.

"You're on!" said Annie.  They both rose and walked toward the darker
side of the room.

"I can't see," said Mary.  "Strike a match."

Annie did so, and they both bent over the coin.

"Tails--you win!" said Annie Squires.  "Well, what do you know about
that?"

She was half in earnest about her chagrin--half in earnest as she
spoke.  "I'd saved him for myself.  Sometimes, I say, I don't know
about this Charlie Dorenwald, even if he is crazy over me--I'm mostly
being beware of foremen, me.  And here's a chivalrous and well-to-do
ranchman--out West!  Gee!  Congratulations, Sis!"




CHAPTER V

BEGGAR MAN--THIEF

They laughed like girls, each with slightly heightened color in spite
of all the make-believe.  Then Annie ran to a vase of artificial
flowers which stood upon the mantel, and pulled out a draggled daisy.

"What's he going to be, Kid--your man?  Is he rich or poor?  Listen!
'Lawyer--doctor--merchant--chief--rich man--poor man--beggar
man--thief----'"  She stopped in a certain consternation, the last
petal in her hand--"A thief?----"

"Why, Annie, you surely don't believe in such things," said Mary Warren
reprovingly.  "And of course we oughtn't to have done anything foolish
as this.  It's--it's awful."

Annie, her mood suddenly changing, drew apart and sat down moodily.

"You couldn't blame a fellow for trying to forget things, Sis," said
she.  "Look at me.  I'm on the street, you might say--they canned me
yesterday!  Yes! that's the truth.  I wasn't going to tell you--you
looked so cold last night, and you with your eyes what they are.
It--it looks like Charlie had a chance, eh?"

Mary Warren looked at her for a time in silence.  "You'll never have to
toss a copper for a husband, I'm sure of that.  If I were handsome as
you----"

"Oh, am I?" said her companion.  "Men hang around--what does it get me?
Time passes.  Where are we pretty soon?  Men ain't all husbands that
make love."

"How much money you got saved up, Mary?" she asked suddenly.

"Just one hundred thirty-five dollars and eighty cents," said Mary, not
needing to consult her pass book.  "I can pay for my bond now."

"Got me beat.  Best I can do for my life savings is fifty-eight dollars
and seventy-five cents.  How long will that last you and me?"

"You're despondent, Annie--you mustn't feel blue--why, to-morrow we'll
both go out and see what we can do."

"About me?  I like that!  It's _you_ we got to bother about.  My Lord!
It ain't so far off, this ad in _Hearts Aflame_!  What you really _do_
need is a man who'll be kind and chivalrous with you."

"I haven't got to that yet," said Mary Warren, stoutly.  Her color rose.

"No?  Funnier things have happened.  You might do worse."

"I'm not _bred_ that way, Annie," said Mary Warren slowly; but her
color rising yet more as she realized that perhaps she had been cruel.

"You needn't explain anything to me," replied Annie.  "I'm not sore.
You came of a better family, and so it'll be harder for you to get
through life than it is for me."

As she spoke she had risen, and was buttoning her street wraps.  Mary
Warren sat silent, the dark lenses of her glasses turned toward her
companion.

"Beggar man--thief!" she said at last.  "I'd be robbing him, even
then!" She smiled bitterly.  "Who'd take _me_?"




CHAPTER VI

RICH MAN--POOR MAN

When spring came above the icy shores of the inland seas, Mary Warren
had been out of work for more than three months.  She was ill; ill of
body, ill of mind, ill of heart.  Her splendid, resilient courage had
at last begun to break.  She was facing the thought that she could not
carry her own weight in the world.

She sat alone once more one evening in the little room which after all
thus far she and Annie had been able to retain.  Her oculist had taken
much from her scanty store of money.  She held in her hand his last
bill--unpaid; and though she had paid a score of his bills, yet her
eyesight now was nearly gone.  Her doctor called it "retinal failure";
and it had steadily advanced, whatever it was.  Now she knew that there
was no hope.

She greeted the homecoming of her room-mate each nightfall with
eagerness.  Annie by this time had found harder and worse paid work in
another factory.  She came in with her hands scarred and torn, her
nails broken and stained.  She had grown more reticent of late.

"Well, how are things coming along, Sis?" said she this evening on her
return, after she had thrown her wrap across a chair back.  "How much
money have you got left?  You look to me like you was counting it."

"Not very much, Annie--not very much.  The doctor--you see, I can't
take his time and not pay him."

"You're too thin-skinned.  What are doctors for?"

"But, Annie, I don't know what to do.  I'm scared.  That's the truth
about it--I'm scared!"

Her companion smiled, with her new slow and cynical smile.  "Some of us
go to the lake--or to a man--or to men," said she, succinctly.  "Look
over the stock of goods that's within your means.  Bargains.  Odds and
Ends."

"What could I _do_?"

"Suppose you got married to your gentle and chivalrous rancher out
West.  Maybe you'd be able to stand it after a while, even if he dyed
his hair, or had his neck shaved round.  Mostly they have false
teeth--before they'll advertise.  Probably he's a widower.  Object:
matrimony; that mostly is a widower's main object in life; and you
can't show 'em nothing except when you bury 'em."

"I'd die before I'd answer that sort of a thing!" said Mary Warren
hotly.

"You would," replied Annie.  "I know that.  I knew it all along.
That's why I had to take it into my own hands."  Again the cynical
smile of Annie Squires, twenty-two.

"Your own hands--what do you mean by that?"

"I might as well tell you.  I've been writing to him in your name!
I've sent him a _picture_ of you--I got it in the bureau drawer.  And
he's crazy over you!"

Mary Warren looked at her with wrath, humiliation and offended dignity
showing in her reddened cheeks.

"You had the audacity to do that, Annie!  How _dared_ you?  How _could_
you?"

"Well, I was afraid of the lake for you, and I knew that something had
to be done, and you wouldn't do it.  I've got quite a batch of letters
from him.  He's got three hundred and twenty acres of land, eight cows,
a horse and a mule.  He has a house which is all right except it lacks
the loving care of a woman!  Well, stack that up against this room.
And we can't even keep this for very long.

"Listen, Mary," she said, coming over and putting both her broken hands
on her friend's shoulders.  "God knows, if I could keep us both going I
would, but I don't make money enough for myself, hardly, let alone you.
You don't belong where you've been--you wouldn't, even if you was well
and fit, which you ain't.  Mollie, Mollie, my dear, what is there ahead
for you?  We _got_ to do some thinking.  It's up to us right now.
You're too good for the lake or the poor farm--or--why, you _belong_ in
a home.  Keep house?  I wish't I knew as much as you do about that."

"I'll tell you," she resumed suddenly.  "I'll tell you what let's do!
A stenographer down at our office does all these letters for me--she's
a bear, come to correspondence like that.  Now, I'll have her get out a
letter from you to him that will sort of bring this thing to a head one
way or the other.  We'll say that you can't think of going out there to
marry a man sight-unseen----"

"No," said Mary Warren.  "The lake, first."  She was wringing her
hands, her cheeks hot.

"But now, as a housekeeper----"  After a long and perturbed silence
Annie spoke again.  "That's the real live idea, Sis!  That's the dope!
You might _think_ of going out there as a housekeeper, just to see how
things _looked_--just so that you could look things _over_, couldn't
you?  You wouldn't marry any man in a hurry.  You could say you'd only
do your best as a sincere, honest woman--why, I have to tell that
stenographer what to write, all the time.  She's sloppy."

"But _look_ at me, Annie--I wouldn't be worth anything as a
housekeeper." Mary Warren was arguing!  "As to marrying that way----"

--"Letter'll say you're not asking any pay at all.  You don't promise
anything.  You don't ask _him_ to promise anything.  You don't want any
wages.  You don't let him pay your railroad fare out--not at all!  You
ain't taking any chances nor asking him to take any chances,--unless
she falls in love with you for fair.  Which I wouldn't wonder if he
did.  You're a sweet girl, Mollie.  Put fifteen pounds on you, and
you'd be a honey.  You are anyway.  Men always look at you--it's your
figure, part, maybe.  And you're so good--and you're a _lady_, Sis.
And if I----"

"Tell him," said Mary Warren suddenly, pulling herself together with
the extremest effort of will and in the suddenest and sharpest decision
she had ever known in all her life, "tell him I'm square!  Tell him
I'll be honest all the time--all the time!"

"As though you could be anything else, you poor dear!" said Annie
Squires, coming over and throwing a strong arm about Mary Warren's
neck, as though they both had done nothing but agree about this after a
dozen conversations.  And then she wept, for she knew what Mary
Warren's surrender had cost.  "And game!  Game and square both, you
sweet thing," sobbed Annie Squires.

"Give me fifteen pounds on you," she wept, dabbing at her own eyes,
"and I wouldn't risk Charlie near you,--not a minute!"




CHAPTER VII

CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT MEANS

Around the Two Forks Valley the snow still lay white and clean upon the
peaks, but the feet of the mountains were bathed in a rising flood of
green.  On the bottom lands the grasses began to start, the willows
renewed their leafery.  On the pools of the limpid stream the trout
left wrinkles and circles at midday now, as they rose to feed upon the
insects swarming in the warmth of the oncoming sun.

On this particular morning Wid Gardner turned down the practically
untrod lane along Sim's wire fence.  Now and again he glanced at
something which he held in his hand.

When he entered Sim Gage's gate, the ancient mule, his head out of the
stable window, welcomed him, braying his discontent.  Here lay the
ragged wood pile, showing the ax work of a winter.  At the edge of a
gnawed hay stack stood the remnant of Sim's scant cattle herd, not half
of which had "wintered through."

No smoke was rising from Sim Gage's chimney.  "Feller's hopeless,
that's what," complained Wid Gardner to himself.  "It gravels me
plenty."

A muffled voice answered his knock, and he pushed open the door.  Sim
Gage was still in bed, and his bed was still on the floor.

"Come in," said he, thrusting a frowsy head out from under his
blankets.  He used practically the same amount of covering about him in
winter and summer; and now, as usual, he had retired practically
without removing his daily clothing.  His face, stubbled and unshaven,
swollen with sleep and surmounted by a tangled fringe of hair, might
not by any flight of imagination have been called admirable or
inviting, as he now looked out to greet his caller.

"Oh, dang it!  Git up, Sim," said Wid, irritated beyond expression.
"It's after ten o'clock."

His words cut through the somewhat pachydermatous sensibilities of Sim
Gage, who frowned a trifle as, after a due pause, he crawled out and
sat down and reached for his broken boots.

"Well, I dunno as it's anybody's damn business whether I git up a-tall
or not, except my own," said he.  "I'll git up when I please, and not
afore."

"Well, you might git up this morning, anyhow," said Wid.

"Why?"

"I got a letter for you."

"Look-a-here," said Sim Gage, with sudden preciseness.  "What you been
doing?  Letter?  What letter?  And how come you by my letters?"

"Well, I been talking with Mis' Davidson--she run the whole
correspondence, Sim.  We--now--we allowed we'd ought to take care of it
fer you.  And we done so, that's all."

"Huh!" said Sim Gage.  "Fine business, ain't it?"

"Well, she's a-coming on out," said Wid Gardner, suddenly and
comprehensively.

"_What's that_?  Who's a-coming on out?"

The face of Sim Gage went pale even under the cold water to which at
the moment he was treating his leathery skin in the basin on top the
stove.

"Sim," said Wid Gardner, "it was understood that this thing was to run
in your name.  Now, Mis' Davidson--when it comes to fixing up a love
correspondence, she's the ace!  It all ain't my fault a-tall, Sim.  We
advertised--and we got a answer, and we follered it up.  And this here
letter is the _re_-sult.  I allowed we'd ought to tell you too, by now."

"What you been doing--fooling with me, you two?" demanded Sim.  "That
whole thing was a joke."

"It's one hell of a fine joke now," rejoined Wid Gardner.  "She's
a-coming on out.  Sim, it's up to you.  _I_ ain't been advertising fer
no wife.  This here letter is _yours_."

"That's a fine thing you done, ain't it?" said Sim Gage, turning on to
his neighbor.  "When you find the ford's too deep to git acrost, you
begin to holler fer help."

"That's neither here nor there.  That ain't the worst--I've got her
picture here, and her letters too.  She's been plumb honest all along.
She says she's pretty much broke, and not too well.  She says when she
sees you she hopes you won't think she's deceived you.  She says she
knows you're everything you said you was--a gentle and chi_val_erous
ranchman of the West, sure to be kind to a woman.  She's scared--she's
that honest.  But she's a-coming.  She's going to try housekeeping
though--no more'n that.  Rest's all up to you, not her.  She balked
from the jump on all marrying talk."

"Mis' Davidson ought to take care of this thing," said Sim Gage, his
features now working, as usual, in his perplexity.

"Mis' Davidson is due to pull her freight.  She's going down on her own
homestead.  I'm some scared too, Sim.  You don't really _know_ how you
been making love to this woman.  I didn't know Mis' Davidson had it in
her.  You got to come through now, Sim."

"Who says I got to come through?"

"You got to go to town to-morrow."

"So you're a-going to make me go in to town tomorrow and marry a woman
I never seen, whether I want to or not?"

"No, it ain't right up to that--you needn't think she's coming out here
to hunt up a preacher and git married to you right away.  Not a-tall,
Mr. Gage, not none a-tall!  She never onct said she'd do any more'n
come out here and keep house fer you one season--that's all.  Said she
wouldn't deceive you.  God knows how you can keep from deceiving _her_.
Look at this place.  And you got to bring her here--to-morrow.  She'll
be at Two Forks station to-morrow morning at eight-thirty, on the Park
train.  This here thing is up to you right now.  You made such a holler
about needing a woman to make things human fer you.  Well, here you
are.  There's the cards--play 'em the way they lay.  You be human now
if you can.  You got the chance."

"I ain't got no wagon, Wid," said Sim, weakly.  "You know I ain't got
none."

"You'll have to take my buckboard."

"And you know I ain't got no team--my horse, he ain't right
strong--didn't winter none too well--and I couldn't go there with just
one mule, now could I?"

"You'll have to take my team of broncs," said Wid.  "You can start out
from my place."

"But one thing, Sim Gage," he continued, "when you've started, I'm
a-coming down here with a pitch-fork and I'm a-going to clean out this
place!  It ain't human.  We'll do the best we can.  Since there ain't
a-going to be no marrying right off, you'll have to sleep in your wall
tent outside.  You'll have to git some wood cut up.  You'll have to git
a clean bed here in the house,--this bed of yours is going to be burned
out in the yard.  You'll have to git new blankets when you go to town."

"As fer your clothes"--he turned a contemptuous glance upon Sim as he
stood--"they ain't _hardly_ fit fer a bridegroom!  Go to the Golden
Eagle, and git yourself a full outfit, top to bottom--new shirts, new
underclothes, new pants, new hat, new socks, new gloves, new
everything.  This girl can't come out here and see you the way you are,
and this place the way it's been.  She'd start something."

"Well, if you leave it to me," said Sim Gage mildly, "all this here
seems kind of sudden.  You come in afore I'm up, and tell me to burn my
bed, and sleep in a tent, and borry a wagon and team and go to town fer
to marry a girl I never seen.  That don't look reason'ble to me,
especial since I ain't had no hand in it."

"It's up to you now."

"How do I know whether I want that girl or not?  I ain't read no
letters--nor wrote none.  I ain't seen no picture of her----"

"Well," said Wid, and reached a hand into his breast pocket, "here she
is."

In a feeling more akin to awe than anything else, Sim Gage bent over,
looking down at the clear oval face, the piled dark hair, the tender
contour of cheek and chin of Mary Warren, as beautiful a young lady as
any man is apt ever to see; so beautiful that this man's inexperienced
heart stopped in his bosom.  This picture once had been buttoned in the
tunic of an aviator who flew for the three flags; her brother; and
before his death and its return more than one of Dan Warren's army
friends had looked at it reverently as Sim Gage did now.

"Wears glasses, don't she," said he, to conceal his confusion.  "Reckon
she's a school ma'am?"

"Ask me, and I'll say she's a lady.  She says she's a working girl.
Says she's had trouble.  Says she's up against it now.  Says she ain't
well, and ain't happy, and--well, here she is."

"My good God A'mighty!" said Sim Gage, his voice awed as he looked at
the high-bred, clear-featured face of Mary Warren.




CHAPTER VIII

RIVAL CONSCIENCES

The transcontinental train from the East rarely made its great climb up
the Two Forks divide on time, and to-day it was more than usually late.
A solitary figure long since had begun to pace the station platform,
looking anxiously up and down the track.

It was Sim Gage; and this was the first time he ever had come to meet a
train at Two Forks.

Sim Gage, but not the same.  He now was in stiff, ill-fitting and
exclaimingly new clothing.  A new dark hat oppressed his perspiring
brow, new and pointed shoes agonized his feet, a new white collar and a
tie tortured his neck.  He had been owner of these things no longer
than overnight.  He did not feel acquainted with himself.

He was to meet a woman!  Her picture was in his pocket, in his brain,
in his blood.  A vast shyness, coming to consternation, seized him.  He
felt a sense of personal guilt; and yet a feeling of indignity and
injustice claimed him.  But all this and all his sullen anger was wiped
out in this great shyness of a man not used to facing women.  Sim Gage
was product of a womanless land.  This was the closest his orbit ever
had come to that of the great mystery.  And he had been alone so long.
A sudden surging longing came to his heart.  Sim Gage was shy always,
and he was frightened now; but now he felt a longing--a longing to be
human.

Sim Gage never in all his life had seen a young woman looking back at
him over his shoulder.  And now there came accession of all his ancient
dread, joined with this growing sense of guilt.  A few passengers from
the resort hotel back in the town began to appear, lolling at the
ticket window or engaged at the baggage room.  Sim Gage found a certain
comfort in the presence of other human beings.  All the time he gazed
furtively down the railway tracks.

A long-drawn scream of the laboring engines told of the approaching
train at last.  Horses and men pricked up their ears.  The blood of Sim
Gage's heart seemed to go to his brain.  He was seized with a panic,
but, fascinated by some agency he could not resist, he stood
uncertainly until the train came in.  He began to tremble in the
unadulterated agony of a shy man about to meet the woman to whom he has
made love only in his heart.

Sim Gage's team of young and wild horses across the street began to
plunge now, and to entangle themselves dangerously, but he did not
cross the street to care for them.  _She_ was coming!  The woman from
the States was on this very train.  In two minutes----

But the crowd thinned and dissipated at length, and Sim Gage had not
found her after all.  He felt sudden relief that she had not come,
mingled with resentment that he had been made foolish.  She was not
there--she had not come!

But his gaze, passing from one to another of the early tourists, rested
at last upon a solitary figure which stood close to the burly train
conductor near the station door.  The conductor held the young woman's
arm reassuringly, as they both looked questioningly from side to side.
She was in dark clothing.  A dark veil was across her face.  As she
pushed it back he saw her eyes protected by heavy black lenses.

Sim Gage hesitated.  The conductor spoke to him so loudly that he
jumped.

"Say, are you Mr. Gage?"

"That's me," said Sim.  "I'm Mr. Gage."  He could not recall that ever
in his life he had been so accosted before; he had never thought of
himself as being Mr. Gage, only Sim Gage.

One redeeming quality he had--a pleasant speaking voice.  A sudden turn
of the head of the young woman seemed to recognize this.  She reached
out, groping for the arm of the conductor.  Consternation urged her
also to seek protection.  This was the man!

"Lady for you, Mr. Gage," said the conductor.  "This young woman caught
a cinder down the road.  Better see a doctor soon as you can--bad eye.
She said she was to meet you here."

"It's all right," said Sim Gage suddenly to him.  "It's all right.  You
can go if you want to."

He saw that the young woman was looking at him, but she seemed to make
no sign of recognition.

"I'm Mr. Gage, ma'am," said he, stepping up.  "I'm sorry you got a
cinder in your eye.  We'll go up and see the doctor.  Why, I had a
cinder onct in my eye, time I was going down to Arizony, and it like to
of ruined me.  I couldn't see nothing for nearly four days."

He was lying now, rather fluently and beautifully.  He had never been
in Arizona, and so little did he know of railway travel that he had not
noted that this young woman came not from a sleeping car, but from one
of the day coaches.  The dust upon her garments seemed to him there
naturally enough.

She did not answer, stood so much aloof from him that a sudden sense of
inferiority possessed him.  He could not see that her throat was
fluttering, did not know that tears were coming from back of the heavy
glasses.  He could not tell that Mary Warren had appraised him even
now, blind though she was; that she herself suffered by reason of that
wrong appraisal.

The throng thinned, the tumult and shouting of the hotel men died away.
Sim Gage did not know what to do.  A woman seemed to mean a sudden and
strangely overwhelming accession of problems.  What should he do?
Where would he put her?  What ought he to say?

"If you'll excuse me," he ventured at last, "I'll go acrosst and git my
team.  They're all tangled up, like you see."

She spoke, her voice agitated; reached out a hand.  "I--I can't see at
_all_, sir!"

"That's too bad, ma'am," said Sim Gage, "but don't you worry none at
all.  You set right down here on the aidge of the side walk, till I git
the horses fixed.  They're scared of the cars.  Is this your satchel,
ma'am?"

"Yes--that's mine."

"You got any trunk for me to git?" he asked, turning back, suddenly and
by miracle, recalling that people who traveled usually had trunks.

He could not see the flush of her cheek as she replied, "No, I didn't
bring one.  I thought--what I had would do."  He could not know that
nearly all her worldly store was here in this battered cheap valise.

"You ain't a-going to leave us so soon like that, are you?"

She turned to him wistfully, a swift light upon her face.  He had said,
"leave us"--not "leave me."  And his voice was gentle.  Surely he was
the kind-hearted and chivalrous rancher of his own simple letters.  She
began to feel a woman's sense of superiority.  On the defensive, she
replied: "I don't know yet.  Suppose we--suppose----"

"Suppose that we wait awhile, eh?" said Sim Gage, himself wistful.

"Why--yes."

"All right, ma'am.  We'll do anything you like.  You don't need no
trunk full of things out here--I hope you'll git along somehow."

Knowing that he ought to assist her, he put out a hand to touch her
arm, withdrew it as though he had been stung, and then hastily stood as
he felt her hand rest upon his arm.  He led her slowly to the edge of
the platform.  Then she heard his footsteps passing, heard the voices
of two men--for now a bystander had gone across to do something for the
plunging horses, one of which had thrown itself under the buckboard
tongue.  She heard the two men as they worked on.  "Git up!" said one
voice.  "Git around there!"  Then came certain oaths on the part of
both men, and conversation whose import she did not know.

Their voices were as though heard in a dream.  There suddenly came an
overwhelming sense of guilt to Mary Warren.  She had been unfair to
this man!  He was a trifle crude, yes; but kind, gentle, unpresuming.
She felt safer and safer--guilty and more guilty.  How could she ever
explain it all to him?

"I reckon they're all right now," said Sim Gage, after a considerable
battle with his team.  "Nothing busted much.  Git up on the seat, won't
you, Bill, and drive acrosst--I got to help that lady git in."

"Who is she?" demanded the other, who had not failed to note the
waiting figure.

"It's none of your damn business," said Sim Gage.  "That is, it's my
housekeeper--she's going to cook for the hay hands."

"With a two months' start?" grinned the other.

"Drive on acrosst now," said Sim Gage, in grim reply, which closed the
other's mouth at once.

Mary Warren heard the crunch of wheels, heard the thump of her valise
as Sim Gage caught it up and threw it into the back of the buckboard.
Then he spoke again.  She felt him standing close at hand.  Once more,
trembling as in an ague, she placed a hand upon his arm.

"Now, when I tell you," he said gently, "why, you put your foot up on
the hub of the wheel here, and grab the iron on the side, and climb in
quick--these horses is sort of uneasy."

"I can't see the wheel," said Mary Warren, groping.

She felt his hand steadying her--felt the rim of the wheel under her
hand, felt him gently if clumsily try to help her up.  Her foot missed
the hub of the wheel, the horses started, and she almost fell--would
have done so had not he caught her in his arms.  It was almost the
first time in his life, perhaps the only time, that he had felt the
full weight of a woman in his arms.  She disengaged herself, apologized
for her clumsiness.

"You didn't hurt yourself, any?" said he anxiously.

"No," she said.  "But I'm blind--_I'm blind_!  Oh, don't you know?"

He said nothing.  How could she know that her words brought to Sim Gage
not regret, but--relief!

He steadied her foot so that it might find the hub of the wheel,
steadied her arm, cared for her as she clambered into the seat.

"All right," she heard him say, not to her; and then he replaced the
other man on the high seat.  The horses plunged forward.  She felt
herself helpless, alone, swept away.  And she was blind.

All the way across the Middle West, across the great plains, Mary
Warren had been able to see somewhat.  Perhaps it was the
knitting--hour after hour of it, in spite of all, done in sheer
self-defense.  But at the western edge of the great Plains, it had
come--what she had dreaded.  Both eyes were gone!  Since then she had
not seen at all, and having in mind her long warning, accepted her
blindness as a permanent thing.

She passed now through a world of blackness.  She could not see the man
who had written those letters to her.  She could catch only the wine of
a high, clean air, the breath of pine trees, the feeling of space,
appreciable even by the blind.

Suddenly she began to sob.  Sim Gage by now had somewhat quieted his
wild team, and he looked at her, his face puckered into a perturbed
frown.

"Now, now," he said, "don't you take on, little woman."  He was abashed
at his daring, but himself felt almost like tears, as things now were.
"It'll all come right.  Don't you worry none.  Don't be scared of these
horses a-tall, ma'am; I can handle 'em all right.  We got to see that
doctor."

But when presently they had driven the half mile to the village, he
learned that the doctor was not in town.

"We can't do anything," said she.  "Drive on--we'll go.  I don't think
the doctor could help me very much."

All the time she knew she had in part been lying to him.  It was not
merely a cinder in her eye--this was a helpless blindness, a permanent
thing.  The retina of each eye now was ruined, gone.  So she had been
warned.  Again she reached out her hand in spite of all to touch his
arm.  He remained silent.  She cruelly misunderstood him.

At last she turned fully towards him, and spoke suddenly.  "Listen!"
said she.  "I believe you're a good man.  I'll not deceive you."

"God knows I ain't no good man," said Sim Gage suddenly, "and God knows
I'm sorry I deceived you like I have.  But I'll take care of you until
you can do something better, and until you want to go back home."

"Home?" she said.  "I haven't any home.  I tell you I've deceived you.
I'm sorry--oh, it's all so terrible."

"It shore is," said Sim Gage.  "I didn't really write them letters--but
it's my fault you're here.  You can blame me fer everything.  Why,
almost I was a notion never to come near this here place this morning.
I felt guilty, like I'd shot somebody--I didn't know.  I feel that way
now."

"You're all your letters said you were," said Mary Warren, weeping now.
"Any woman who would deceive such a man----"

"You ain't deceived me none," said Sim Gage.  "But it's wrong of me to
fool a woman such as you, and I'm sorry.  Only, just don't you git
scared too much.  I'm a-going to take care of you the best I know how."

"But it wasn't true!" she broke out--"what the conductor said!  It
isn't just a cinder in my eye--it's worse.  My eyes have been getting
bad right along.  I couldn't see _anything_ to-day.  You didn't know.
I lost my place.  I have no relatives--there wasn't any place in the
world for me.  I was afraid I was going blind--and yesterday I _did_ go
blind.  I'll never see again.  And you're kind to me.  I wish--I
wish--why, what shall I _do_?"

"Ma'am," said Sim Gage, "I didn't know, and you didn't know.  Can you
ever forgive me fer what I've done to you?"

"Forgive you--what do you mean?" she said.  "Oh, my God, what shall I
do!"

Sim Gage's face was frowning more than ever.

"Now, you mustn't take on, ma'am," said he.  "I'm sorry as I can be fer
you, but I got to drive these broncs.  But fer as I'm concerned--it
ain't just what I want to say, neither--I _can't_ make it right plain
to you, ma'am.  It ain't right fer me to say I'm almost _glad_ you
can't see--but somehow, that's right the way I do feel!  It's
mercifuler to _you_ that way, ma'am."

"What do you mean?" said Mary Warren.  She caught emotion in this man's
voice.  "Whatever can you _mean_?"

"Well," said Sim Gage, "take me like I am, setting right here, I ain't
fitten to be setting here.  But I don't _want_ you to see.  I got that
advantage of you, ma'am.  I can _see_ you, ma'am"; and he undertook a
laugh which made a wretched failure.

"How far is it to your--our--the place where we're going?" she asked
after a time.

"About twenty-three mile, ma'am," he answered cheerfully.  "Road's
pretty fair now.  I wish't you could see how pretty the hills
is--they're gitting green now some."

"And the sky is blue?" Her eyes turned up, sensible of no more than a
feeling that light was somewhere.

"Right blue, ma'am, with leetle white clouds, not very big.  I wish't
you could see our sky."

"And trees?"

"Dark green, ma'am--pine trees always is."

She heard the rumble of the wheels on planks, caught the sound of
rushing waters.

"This is the bridge over the West Fork, ma'am," said her companion.
"It's right pretty here--the water runs over the rocks like."

"And what is the country like on ahead, where--where we're going?"

"It's in a valley like, ma'am," said Sim Gage.

"There's mountains on each side--they come closest down to the other
fork, near in where I live.  That fork's just as clean as glass,
ma'am--you can see right down into it, twenty feet----"  Then suddenly
he caught himself.  "That is, I wish't you could.  Plenty of fish in
it--trout and grayling--I'll catch you all you want, ma'am.  They're
fine to eat."

"And are there things about the place--chickens or something?"

"There's calves, ma'am," said Sim Gage.  "Not many.  I ain't got no
hens, but I'll git some if you want 'em.  We'd ought to have some eggs,
oughtn't we?  And I got several cattle--not many as I'd like, but some.
This ain't my wagon.  These ain't my horses; I got one horse and a
mule."

"What sort is it--the house?"

Sim Gage spoke now like a man and a gentleman.

"I ain't got no house fitten to call one, ma'am," said he, "and that's
the truth.  I've got a log cabin with one room.  I've slept there alone
fer a good many years, holding down my land."

"But," he added quickly, "that's a-going to be your place.  Me--I'm out
a leetle ways off, in the flat, beyond the first row of willers between
the house and the creek--I always sleep in a tent in the summer time.
I allow you'd feel safer in a house."

"I've always read about western life," said she slowly, in her gentle
voice.  "If only--I wish----"

"So do I, ma'am," said Sim Gage.

But neither really knew what was the wish in the other's heart.




CHAPTER IX

THE HALT AND THE BLIND

The sweet valley, surrounded by its mountains, was now a sight to
quicken the pulse of any heart alive to beauty, as it lay in its long
vistas before them; but neither of these two saw the mountains or the
trees, or the green levels that lay between.  Long silences fell,
broken only by the crackling clatter of the horses' hoofs on the hard
roadway.

It was Mary Warren who at last spoke, after a deep breath, as though
summoning her resolution.  "You're an honest man," said she.  "I ought
to be honest with you."

"I reckon that's so enough, ma'am," said Sim Gage.  "But I just told
you I ain't been honest with you.  I never wrote one of them letters
that you got--it was some one else."

"But you came to meet me--you're here----"

"Yes, but I didn't write them letters.  That was all done by friends of
mine."

"That's very strange.  That's just the reason I wanted to tell _you_
that I hadn't been honest--I never wrote the letters that _you_ got!
It was my room-mate, Annie Squires."

"So?  That's funny, ain't it?  Some folks has funny idees of jokes.  I
reckon they thought this was a joke.  It ain't."

"Your letters seemed like you seem now," she broke in.  "It seems to me
you must have written every word."

"Ma'am----" said Sim Gage; and broke down.

"Yes, sir?"

"Them is the finest words I ever heard in my life!  I ain't been much.
If I could only live up to them words, now----

"Besides," he went on, a rising happiness in his tones, "seems like you
and me was one just as honest as the other, and both meaning fair.
That makes me feel a heap easier.  If it does you, you're welcome."

Blind as she was, Mary Warren knew now the gulf between this man's life
and hers.  But his words were so kind.  And she so much needed a friend.

"You're a forgiving man, Mr. Gage," said she.

"No, I ain't.  I'm a awful man.  When you learn more about me you'll
think I'm the worst man you ever seen."

"We'll have to wait," was all that Mary Warren could think to say.  But
after a time she turned her face toward him once more.

"Do you know," said she, "I think you're a gentleman!"

"Oh, my Lord!" said Sim Gage, his eyes going every which way.  "Oh, my
good Lord!"

"Well, it's true.  Look--you haven't said a word or done a thing--you
haven't touched me--or laughed--or--or hinted--not once.  That's being
a gentleman, in a time like this.  This--this is a very hard place for
a woman."

"It ain't so easy fer a man!  But I couldn't have done no other way,
could I?"

She made no answer.  "Are there many other women in this valley, Mr.
Gage?" she asked after a time.  "Who are they?  What are they like?"

"Five, in twenty-two miles between my place and town, ma'am," he
answered, "when they're home.  The nearedest one to us is about couple
miles, unless you cut through the fields."

"Who is she?  What is she like?"

"That is Mis' Davidson, our school ma'am--  She's the only woman I seen
a'most all last summer, unlessen onct in a while a woman would come out
with some fishing party in a automobile.  Most of them crosses up above
on the bridge and comes down the other side of the creek from us.
Seems to me sometimes women has always been just acrosst the creek from
me, ma'am.  I don't know much about them.  Now, Wid--Wid Gardner--he's
the next rancher to me, this side--he sometimes has folks come there in
the fishing season."

"Your log house is all painted and nice, isn't it?"

"_Painted_, ma'am?  Lord, no!  You don't paint a log house none."

"I never saw one in my life," said she contritely; then, sighing.  "I
never will, now."

"Do men come to your place very much, then?" she asked at length.

"Why, Wid, he sometimes comes over."

"And who is Wid?"

"Like I said, he's got the next ranch to mine.  He's maybe a forwarder
sort of man than me."

"Did he have anything to do with--that advertisement?"

"How can you guess things like that?"

"He thought you were all alone?"

"We did have some talk.  But I want to tell you one thing, ma'am--if I
had ever thought onct that we'd a-brung a woman like _you_ here, I'd
never of been part nor party to it.  I guess not!"

"And yet you can't see why you're a gentleman!" said she again slowly.

"You said you'd be going back home again before long?"  It was the
first thing Sim Gage could say.

"I haven't any home."

"Nor no folks neither?"

"There's not a soul in the world that I could go back to, Mr. Gage.  So
now, I've told you the truth."

"But there was oncet, maybe?" he said shrewdly.  "How old are you?"  He
flushed suddenly at this question, which he asked before he thought.

"I'm twenty-five."

"You don't look that old.  Me, I'm thirty-seven.  I'm too old to marry.
Now I never will."

"How do you know?" she said.  "What do you mean?"  As she spoke she
felt the tears come again on her cheeks, felt her hands trembling.

"Well, ma'am, I know mighty well I'll never marry now.  Of course, if
one sort of woman had came out here--big and strong enough to be a
housekeeper and nothing else, and all that, and one thing with
another--I won't say what might have happened.  Strange things has
happened that way--right out of them damn _Hearts Aflame_ ads--right
around along in here, in this here valley, too, I know.  Well, of
course, a man can't get along so well, ranching, unless he has a
wife----"

"Or a housekeeper?"

"Why, yes.  That's what we advertised fer.  I didn't know it."

Mary Warren pondered for a long time.

"Look at me," she said at last.  "There's no place for me back home,
and none here.  What sort of housekeeper would I make--and what sort
of--of--wife?  I'm disappointing you; and you're disappointing me.
What shall we both do?"

"Why, how do you mean?" said Sim Gage, wonderingly.  "Disappoint you?
Of course I couldn't marry a woman like you!  You don't want me to do
_that_?  That wouldn't be right."

"Oh, I don't mean that!  I don't know what I did mean!"

Some sense of her perturbation must have come to him.  "Now don't you
worry, ma'am.  Don't you git troubled none a-tall.  I'm a-goin' to take
care of you myself until everything gits all right."

"I'm a thief!  I'm a beggar!" was all she could say.

"The same here, ma'am!  You've got nothing on me," said Sim Gage.
"What I said is, we're in the same boat, and we got to go the best way
we can till things shapes out.  It ain't very much I got to offer you.
Us sagebrushers has to take the leavings."

"You've said the truth for me--the very truth.  I'm of the discard--I
can't earn my living.  Leavings!  And I wanted to earn my living."

"You've earned it now, ma'am," said Sim Gage; and perhaps made the
largest speech of all his life.

"Well, anyways, we're going to come to my land right now," he added
after a time.  "We've passed the school house, only couple mile from my
place.  On ahead here is Wid Gardner's ranch, on the left hand side.  I
don't reckon he's at home.  I told you the school ma'am had maybe went
off to her homestead, didn't I?  Maybe Nels Jensen, he's maybe driving
her to the Big Springs station down below.  This here is Wid Gardner's
team and buckboard, ma'am.  I ain't got around to fixing mine up this
spring.  I've got to drive back after a while and take these things
back to Wid."

Her situation grew more tense.  They were coming now to the end of the
journey--to her home--to his home.  She did not speak.  To her ears the
sound of the horses' feet seemed less, as though they were passing on a
road not so much used.

"This is a sort of alley, like, down along between the willers and the
rail fence," explained Sim Gage.  "It's about half a mile of this.
Then we come to my gate."

And presently they did come to his gate, where the silver-edged willows
came close on the one side and the wide hay meadows reached out on the
other toward the curving pathway of the river.  He pulled up.

"Could you hold these horses, ma'am, fer a minute?  I got to open the
gate."

He handed her the reins, it never occurring to him that there was any
one in the world who had never driven horses.  She was frightened, but
resolved to appear brave and useful.

Sim Gage began to untwist the short club which bound the wire gate
shut.  He pulled it back, and clucked to the horses, seeing that she
did not start them.

Mary Warren knew nothing of horses.  It seemed to her that the correct
thing to do was to drop the reins loosely, shaking them a little.  The
half wild horses, with their uncanny brute sense, knew the absence of a
master, and took instant advantage of the knowledge.  With one will
they sprang, lunged, and started forward, plunging.  Mary Warren
dropped the lines.

"_Sit still there_!" she heard a voice call out imperatively.  Then,
"Whoa! damn you, whoa now!"

She could see nothing, but sensed combat.  Sim Gage had sprung forward
and caught the cheek strap of the nearest horse.  It reared and struck
out wildly.  She heard an exclamation, as though of pain, but could not
see him as he swung across to the other horse and caught his fingers in
its nostrils, still calling out to them, imperiously, in the voice of a
commander.

At length they halted, quieted.  She heard his voice speaking brokenly.
"Set still where you are, ma'am.  I'll tie 'em."

"You're hurt!" she called out.  "It was my fault."

"I'm all right.  Just you set still."

Apparently he finished fastening the horses to something.  She heard
him come to the end of the seat, knew that he was reaching up his arms
to help her down.  But when she swung her weight from the seat she felt
him wince.

"One of 'em caught me on the knee," he admitted.  "It was my new pants,
too."

She could not see his face, gray with pain now under the dust.

"It's all my fault--I didn't dare tell you--I don't know anything about
horses.  I don't know anything about anything out here!"

"Take hold of my left hand coat sleeve," he answered to her confession.
"We'll walk on into the yard.  Keep hold of me, and I'll keep hold of
them horses.  I'll look out if they jump."

For some reason of their own the team became less fractious.  He limped
along the road, his hand at the bit of the more vicious.  She could
feel him limp.

"You're hurt--they did jump on you!" she reiterated.

"Knee's busted some, but we'll git along.  Don't you mind.  Anyhow,
we're here.  Now, you go off, a little ways--it's all level here--and
I'll unhitch these critters."

"That's the barn over there," he added, pointing in a direction which
she could not see.  "Plain trail between the house and the corral gate.
On beyond is my hay lands and the willers along the creek.  There's a
sort of spring thataway"--again he pointed, invisibly to her--"and
along it runs a band of willers--say a hundred yards from the house.
It all ain't much.  I never ought to of brought you here a-tall, but
like I said, we'll do the best we can.  Please don't be afraid, or
nothing."

Stripped of their harness, the wild team turned and made off at a run
down the road, through the gate and back to their own home.

"Good riddance," said Sim Gage, stooping, his hands at his cut
knee-cap.  "Wid can come over here fer his own buckboard, fer all of
me."

"Take right a-holt of my arm tight, and go easy now," he added, turning
to Mary Warren.  She felt his hand on her arm.

They passed around the corner of the cabin.  She reached out a hand to
touch the side post as she heard the door open.

"It's a right small little place inside," said Sim Gage, "only one bunk
in it.  I've got some new blankets and I'll fix it all up.  Maybe
you'll want to lay down and rest a while before long.

"Over at the left is the stove--when I git the fire going you can tell
where it is, all right.  Between the stove and the bunk is the table,
where we eat--I mean where I used to eat.  It all ain't so big.  Pretty
soon you'll learn where the things all is.  It's like learning where
things is in the dark, ma'am, I suppose?"

"Yes.  What time is it?" she asked suddenly.  "You see, I can't tell."

"Coming on evening, ma'am.  I reckon it's around three or four o'clock.
You see, I ain't got a clock.  I ain't got round to gitting one yet.
Mine's just got busted recent.

"This here's a chair, ma'am," he said.  "Jest set down and take it
right easy.  Lay off your wraps, and I'll put 'em on the bunk.  You
mustn't worry about nothing.  We're here now."

By and by she felt his hand touch her sleeve.

"Here's a couple of poker sticks," said he.  "I reckon maybe you'll
need to use one onct in a while to kind of feel around with.  Well,
it's the same with me--I'm going to need something, kind of, my own
self.  That knee's going to leave me lame a while, _I_ believe."

A sudden feeling that they two were little better than lost children
came to her as she turned toward him.  A strange, swift feeling of
companionship rose in her heart.  Her vague fears began to vanish.

"You're hurt," said she.  "What can I do?  Can't you put some witch
hazel on your knee?"

"I ain't got none, ma'am."

"Isn't there some alcohol, or anything, in the place?"

"No, ma'am--why, yes, there is too!  I got some whiskey left.  Whiskey
is good fer most anything.  I'll tell you what I'll do.  I'll just go
round the house, and I'll rub some of that whiskey on my knee."

She heard him pass out of the door.  She was alone.  Absolutely she
welcomed the sound of his foot again.  He might have seen her face
almost light up.

"When you git kicked on a bone," he said, "it hurts worse.  She's
swelled up some, but I reckon she'll get well in a few days or weeks.
I don't think she's busted much, though at first I thought he'd knocked
the knee cap plump off.  There's a cut in above there.  Cork of the
shoe must of hit me there."

The gravity of her face was her answer.  She could see nothing.

"I reckon you can smell that whiskey," said he, "but I ain't drunk
none--it's just on my leg, that's all."

"You're not a drinking man?" she asked.

"Why, yes, of course I am.  All of us people out here drinks more or
less when they can git it--this is a dry state.  But I allow I'll cut
it out fer a while, now, ma'am."

"Ain't you hungry now, ma'am?" he added.  "We didn't have a bite to eat
all day."

"Yes," said she.  "But how can I help cook supper--what can I do?"

"There ain't much you need to do, ma'am.  If I've lived here alone all
this time, and lived alone everywhere else fer thirty-seven years, I
reckon I can cook one more meal."

"For your housekeeper!" she said, smiling bitterly.

"Well, yes," he replied.  "You don't know where things is yet.  I got
some bacon here, and aigs too.  I brought out some oranges from
town--fer you."  She did not see him color shyly.  Oranges were
something Sim Gage never had brought to his ranch before.  He had
bought them of the Park commissary at the station.

"Then I got some canned tomatoes--they're always good with bacon.  Out
under my straw pile I got some potatoes that ain't froze so very bad
anyways, and you know spuds is always good.  I didn't bring no more
flour, because I had plenty.  I can make all sorts of bread,
ma'am--flapjacks, or biscuits, or even sour dough--even dough-gods.  I
ain't so strong when it comes to making the kind of bread you put in
the oven."

"Why, I can make that--I know I can do that!" she said, pleased at the
thought.

"We'll start in on that to-morrow," said he.  "I'll just cook you one
meal--as bad as I can, ma'am--so as to show you how bad I needed a
housekeeper out here."

The chuckle in his tones was contagious, so that she almost laughed
herself.  "All right," said she.

She heard him bustling around here and there, rattling pans, stumbling
over sticks of wood on the floor.

"Haven't you any chickens?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, I ain't got around to it.  I was a-going to have some."

"I'd like awfully well to have some chickens.  Those little yellow
things, in my hands----"

"We can get plenty, ma'am.  I can drive out just a leetle ways, about
forty miles, to where the Mormons is at, and I can get plenty of 'em,
even them yeller ones."

"Where is the dog?  Haven't you got a dog?"

"No, ma'am, I ain't.  The wolves got mine last winter, and I ain't got
round to getting another one yet.  What kind would you like?"

"Why, a collie--aren't they nice?"

"Yes, ma'am, I reckon.  Only thing is, they might take me fer a sheep
man.  I'd hate that."

"Well--even a little dog?"

"I'll get you one, any kind you want.  I allow myself, a dog is a heap
of comfort.  I'm about the only homesteader in this valley that ain't
got one right now.  Some has sever'l."

"I can make the coffee, I'm sure," she said, still endeavoring to be of
use.  But she was skimpy in her measurement, and he reproached her.

"That won't make it strong enough.  Don't you like it right strong?"

"Well, Annie and I," said she honestly, "couldn't afford to make it
very strong.  Annie was my roommate, you see."

"We can afford anything we want out here, ma'am.  I got a credit at the
store.  We're going to make six hundred tons of hay right out there in
them medders this summer.  We're going to have plenty of money.  Hay is
mighty high.  I can get eight dollars a ton standing out there, and not
put a machine into it myself.  Wheat is two dollars and twenty cents a
bushel, the lowest."

"Why, that's fine, that's fine!" said she.  "I'm so glad."  She knew
nothing in the world about hay or wheat.

The odors from the stove appealed pleasantly enough to the tired woman
who sat on the box chair, in the same place she originally had taken.
"Draw up," said Sim Gage.  But it was clumsy work for her to eat, newly
blind.  She was so sensitive that she made no pretence of concealing
her tears.

"I wouldn't worry none, ma'am," said Sim Gage, "if I could help it.  I
wouldn't worry any more'n I could help, anyways.  I'll put things where
you can find 'em, and pretty soon you'll get used to it."

"But at least I can wash the dishes."

"That's so," said he.  "That's so.  I reckon you could do that.  It
ain't hard."  And indeed in due course he made arrangements for that on
the table in front of her, so that she might feel easier in being
useful.

"Why, that isn't the dish pan," said she.

Sim Gage flushed with great guiltiness.

"No, ma'am, it ain't.  It's only the wash pan.  Fact is, some one has
been in this place since I been away, and they stole my dish pan, the
low-down pups.  I didn't know as you'd notice the wash pan."

"Well, it will do for once," she said dubiously, and so she went on,
making good shift, wiping the dishes carefully and placing them before
her on the table.  Then she laughed.  "It was the same with Annie and
me--we only had the one pan.  Yours is much larger than ours was.  I
always helped with the dishes."

"That's fine," said he.  "Do you know, that's the part of keeping house
I always hated more'n anything else, just washing dishes."

"I almost always did that for Annie and me," said Mary Warren, feeling
out with her hands gently and trying to arrange the battered
earthenware upon the table.

"Now," said Sim Gage, "I reckon I'd better get them new blankets in and
make up that bed.  Come along, ma'am, and I'll show you."  And in spite
of all he took her arm and led her to the side of the rude bunk.

"I'm so tired," she said.  "Do you know, I'm awfully scared out here."
Her lips were quivering.

"Ain't a woman a funny thing, though?" said Sim Gage.  "No use to be
scared, none a-tall.  I'll show you how us folks makes a bed.  There's
willer branches and pine underneath, and hay on top.  Over that is the
tarp, and now I'm spreading down the blankets.  You can feel 'em--soft
ones--_good_ blankets, I can tell you!  Whole bed's kind of soft and
springy, ma'am.  You reckon you can sleep?"

Responsively she stretched out a hand and felt across the surface of
the soft new blankets.

"Why, where are the sheets?" said she.

"Sheets!" said Sim Gage in sudden consternation.  "Now, look at that!
That ornery low-down pup that come and stole my dish pan must of took
all my sheets too!  Fact is, I just made it up with blankets, like you
see.  But you needn't mind--they're plumb new and clean.  Besides, it
gets cold here along toward morning, even in the summer time.  Blankets
is best, along toward morning."

She stood hesitant as she heard his feet turning away.

"I'm going away fer a hour or so," said he.  "I got to take care of my
horse and things.  Now, you feel around with your stick, sort of.  I
reckon I better go over before long and make up my own bed--my tent is
beyond the willers yonder."

She could not know that Sim Gage's bed that night would be composed of
nothing better than a pile of willow boughs.  He had given her the last
of the new blankets--and his own old bed was missing now.  Wid had
fulfilled his threat and burned it.

She stood alone, her throat throbbing, hesitant, at the side of the
rude bunk.

"He's a kind man," said she to herself, half aloud, after a time.  "Oh,
if only I could see!"

She began to feel her way about, stood at the door for a time, looking
out.  Something told her that the darkness of night was coming on.  She
turned, felt her way back to the edge of the bunk, and knelt down, her
head in her hands.  Mary Warren prayed.

She paused after a long time--half-standing, a hand upon the soft-piled
blankets, her eyes every way.  Yes, she was sure it was dark.  And
above all things she was sure that she was weary, unutterably,
unspeakably weary.  The soft warmth of the blankets about her was
comforting.

Sim Gage in his own place of rest was uneasy.  Darkness came on late by
the clock in that latitude.  Something was on Sim's mind.  He had
forgotten to tell his new housekeeper how to make safe the door!  He
wondered whether she had gone to bed or whether she was sitting there
in the dark--an added darkness all around her.  He was sure that if he
told her how to fasten the door she would sleep better.

Timidly, he got up out of his own comfortless couch, and groped for the
electric flash-light which sometimes may be seen in places such as his
to-day.  He tiptoed along the path through the willows, across the
yard, and knocked timidly at the door.  He heard no answer.  A sudden
fear came to him.  Had she in terror fled the place--was she wandering
hopelessly lost, somewhere out there in the night?  He knocked more
loudly, pushed open the door, turned the flash light here and there in
the room.

He saw her lying, the blankets piled up above her, a white arm thrown
out, her eyes closed, her face turned upon her other arm, deep in the
stupor of exhaustion.  She was a woman, and very beautiful.

Suddenly frightened, he cut off the light.  But the glare had wakened
her.  She started up, called out, "Who's there?"  Her voice was vibrant
with terror.  "Who's _there_?" she repeated.

"It's only me, ma'am," said Sim Gage, his voice trembling.

"You said you wouldn't come!--Go away!"

"I wanted to tell you----"

"Go away!"

He went outside, but continued stubbornly, gently.

"--I wanted to say to you, ma'am," said he, "you can lock this here
door on the inside.  You come around, and you'll find a slat that drops
into the latch.  Now, there's a nail on a string, fastened to that
latch.  You can find that nail, and if you'll just drop that bar and
push the nail in the hole up above it--why, you'll be safe as can be,
and there can't _no_ one get in."

He stood waiting, fumbling at the button of the flash light.  By
accident it was turned on again.

He saw her then sitting half upright in the bed, both her white arms
holding the clothing about her, the piled mass of her dark hair framing
a face which showed white against the background.  Her eyes, unseeing,
were wide open, dark, beautiful.  Sim Gage's heart stopped in his
bosom.  She was a woman.  She had come, of her own volition.  They were
utterly alone.




CHAPTER X

NEIGHBORS

Sim Gage, hesitant at the door of his bare-floored tent in the cool
dawn, saw smoke arising from the chimney of Wid Gardner's house.  From
a sense of need he determined to pay Wid a visit.  His leg was doing
badly.  He needed help, and knew it.  He hobbled over to the cabin
door, where all was silent; knocked, and knocked again, more loudly.
She still slept--slept as she had not dreamed she could.

"Who's there?" she demanded at length.  "Oh yes; wait a minute."

He waited several minutes, but at length heard her at the door.  His
eyes fell upon her hungrily.  She was fresher, her air was more eager,
less pitiful.

"Good morning, ma'am," said he.  "I've come to get the breakfast."  All
she could do was to stand about, wistful, perplexed, dumb.

"Now, ma'am," said he, after he had cooked the breakfast--like in all
ways to the supper of the night before--"I'm a-going to ask you to stay
here alone a little while to-day.  You ain't afraid, are you?"

"You'll not be gone long?  It's lonesome to me all the time, of
course."  In reality she was terrified beyond words at the thought of
being left alone.

"I know that.  But we got to get a dog and some hens for you.  I just
thought I'd go over and see Wid Gardner, little while, and talk over
things."

"How is your knee now?" she asked.  "It seemed to me you sounded rather
limpy, Mr. Gage."

"Is that what you want to call me, ma'am?" said he at last--"Mr. Gage?
It sounds sort of strange to me, but it makes me feel taller.  Folks
always called me Sim."

She heard him turn, hesitant.  "You'll not be gone long?" said she.

"I reckon not."

"Then bring me the pan of potatoes in here, so that I can peel them."

"You're mighty helpful, ma'am.  I don't see how I kept house here at
all without you.

"Ma'am," he went on, presently, hesitating, after his bashful fashion.
"This here is a right strange place, way you and me is throwed in here
together.  I only wish't you wouldn't git scared about anything, and
you'd sort of--_believe_ in me, till we can shape things out somehow,
fairer to you.  Don't be scared, please.  I'll take care of you the
best I can.  The only trouble is I'm afraid about folks, that's all."

"What do you mean--about folks?"

"If there was a woman within fifty miles of you knowed you wasn't
married to me, she'd raise hell sure.  All women is that way, and some
men is, too.  There ain't been no room for talk--yet."

"Yet?" she said.  "What do you mean?"

But this was carrying Sim Gage into water too deep for him.  He only
stepped closer to the door.  "Don't you be scared to be alone a little
while.  So long," he added, and so he left her.

She heard his hobbling footfalls across the boards at the end of the
house, heard them pass into silence on the turf.  What had he meant?
How long could she maintain her supremacy over him, here alone in the
wilderness, helpless, blind?  And those other women?  What, indeed, was
her status to be here?  When would he tire of this?  When would he
change?

Questions came to Sim Gage's mind also.  Now and again he paused and
leaned against the fence.  He was in much pain alike of body and of
mind.

He saw Wid himself turn out at his gate and approach him; dreaded the
grin on Wid's face even before he saw it.

"Well, there, neighbor," said the oncomer.  "You're out at last.  How's
everything?"

Sim looked down at his bandaged leg with a gesture.

"How come that?"

"One of them damn broncs cut me with his forefoot when I was
unhitching.  Did you git track of them anywhere?  They run off."

"They're hanging around here," said Wid indifferently.  He bent over
the wounded member.  "So struck you with his front hoof?  That's a bad
leg, Sim.  It's getting black; and here's some red streaks."

"I'm some scared about it," said Sim.  "Seems to me I'd better get to a
doctor.  I got to get me a dog first, and some hens."

Wid Gardner took a hasty but careful inventory of his friend's
appearance, his shaven face, his clean hands, his new clothing.

"How's your wife, Sim?" he said, grinning.

"That lady, she's all right.  Left her paring spuds.  And I want to say
to you, Wid, while I'm away from there, everybody else stays away too."

"What, not get to see the bride?  That ain't very friendly, seems to
me."

"Well, what I said goes."

"You're a jealous sort of bridegroom?" said Wid, laughing openly.

The dull color of Sim's face showed the anger in his heart.  "That
lady, she's there at my house," said he, "and she's going to be left
alone there.  She's sort of shy.  This country's plumb new to her."

"But honest, Sim"--and his neighbor's curiosity now was apparent--"what
sort of a looker is she?"

"Prettier'n a spotted pup!" said Sim succinctly.

"She like the country pretty well?"

"Says it's the prettiest she ever seen," replied Sim.  "That's what she
said."

"And you owe all this to me, come to simmer it down."

"I ain't simmering nothing down," said Sim.  "Here's your gate.  Down
there is mine.  Don't none of you go in there until I tell you it's
time, that's all."

"Well, I dunno as I care to," replied Wid.

"Better not," said Sim Gage.  "I ain't a-going to have that girl
bothered by nobody.  Of course, you and me both knows we ain't married,
and won't never be.  It was a housekeeper I was after, and I got one,
and a damn good one.  But I don't want her bothered by no one fer a
while.  I've played this game on the level with her so far, anyways,
and I allow to play it that way all the way through."

"But now," he added, wincing with pain, "let's cut out all this sort of
thing.  I believe I got to get to a doctor."

"I'll tell you," said Wid Gardner, "I'll hitch up and take you down to
the doctor at the big dam, twenty-five miles below.  He's taking care
of all the laborers down there--they're always getting into accidents;
dynamite, you know.  He's got to be a good doctor.  I'll take you down."

"Wid," said Sim, "I wish't you would.  I don't believe I'll go back
home first.  She'll be all right there alone, won't she?"

Wid still smiled at him understandingly.  "Jealousest man I ever did
see!  Well, have it your own way.  It'll take just so much time
anyway--if we get back by nine or ten o'clock to-night we'll be lucky.
She'll have to begin sometime to get used to things."




CHAPTER XI

THE COMPANY DOCTOR

The Two Forks, below their junction, make a mighty stream which has
burst through a mountain range.  Across this narrow gorge which it has
rent for itself in time immemorial, the insect, Man, industrious and
persevering, has cast a great pile of rock and concrete, a hundred feet
high, for that good folk some hundreds of miles away one day may bless
the Company for electric lighting.  In this labor toiled many
man-insects of divers breeds and races, many of them returned soldiers,
much as did the slaves of Pharaoh in earlier times.  The work was on
one of the new government projects revived after the war, in large part
to offer employment to the returning men of the late Army.

But Pharaoh had not dynamite or rack-rock or TNT; so that in the total
it were safer for an insect to have labored in Pharaoh's time.  The
Company doctor--himself a returned major--stationed there by reason of
the eccentricities of dynamite, rack-rock and other high explosives,
was much given to the sport of the angle, and disposed to be irritable
when called from the allurements of the stream to attend some laboring
man who had undertaken to attach a fuse by means of his teeth, or some
such simple process.  That is to say, Doctor Allen Barnes was irritable
until he had reeled up his line and climbed the bank below the dam
site, and betaken himself to the side of the last hospital cot where
lay the last victim of dynamic and dynamitical industry.  After that he
was apt to forget angling and become an absorbed surgeon, and a very
able one.

But on this particular day, when word came to him at the stream side
that a stranger not of the force had arrived in town with a "bum
leg"--so reported the messenger, Foreman Flaherty--Doctor Barnes was
wroth exceedingly, for at that moment he was fast in a noble trout that
was far out in the white water, and giving him, as he himself would
have phrased it, the time of his life.

"Tell him I can't come, Flaherty!" he called over his shoulder.  "I'm
busy."

"I reckon that's so, Doc," said the foreman.  "Why don't you haul him
in?  That pole of yours ain't no good, it's too limber.  If I had him
on mine I'd show you how to get him in."

"Oh, you would, would you, dad burn you," remarked Doctor Barnes, who
had small love for the human race at many times, and less at this
moment.  "I wouldn't put it past you.  Well, this is my affair and not
yours.  Who is the fellow, anyhow, and where did he come from, and what
does he want?  Has he been trying to beat the shot?"

"He ain't on our job," replied the foreman.  "Come down from twenty
mile up the East Fork.  Got kicked by a horse."

"Huh!  What's his name?  Look at him jump!" remarked the doctor, with
mixed emotions and references.

"Sim Gage.  Come down with a feller name of Gardner that lives up in
there."

"Oh, above on the East Fork?  Say, how's the fishing up there?--Did
they say there were any grayling in there?"

"I've saw Wid Gardner lots of times before, and he says a feller can
always get a sackful of grayling any time he wants to, in there, come
summer time."

"Look at him go!  Ain't that fine?" inquired Dr. Allen Barnes.  "Did he
say they were coming good now, up there?  Ain't he a peach?"

"Yes, Wid said the grayling was risin' right good now," said Flaherty.
"But this feller, Sim Gage, his leg looks to me like you'd have to cut
it off.  Can I help, Doc?--I never seen a man's leg cut off, not in my
whole life."

"How do I know whether it's got to come off or not, I'd like to know.
See that?--Ain't he a darling, now, I'm asking you?"

"He is.  Like I was saying, this feller's leg is all swoll up.  Leave
it to me, I'd say we ought to cut it off right now."

"Well, you go tell him not to cut it off till I get this fish landed,"
said Dr. Barnes.  "Tell him I'll be up there in a few minutes.  What's
the matter with it, anyhow?"

"Been gone a couple of days," said Flaherty, breaking off twigs and
casting them on the current.  "Blood poison, I reckon."

"What's that?"  The Doctor turned under the spur of his professional
conscience.  "Oh, well, dang it!  Here goes!"

He began to lift up and reel in with all his might, so that his fish,
very much obliged, broke the gear and ran off with joy, a yard of
leader attached to his mouth.

"That's the way it goes," said the Doctor.  "Get fast to a six-pound
brown trout, and along comes a man with a leg that's got to be cut off.
Dang such a job anyhow--I will cut his leg off, too, just for this!"

Fuming as usual, he climbed the steep bank below the white face of the
dam and crossed the street to his own raw shack, which was office and
home alike.  He gazed resentfully at his parted leader as he hung up
the rod on the nails at the rear of the small porch, and sighing,
entered the office for his surgical case.

"Where is that fellow?" he demanded of Flaherty, who had followed him
in.

"That's him settin' on the wagon seat up with Wid Gardner, in the
road," replied the messenger.  "He's got his foot up on the dash board
like it was sore, ain't he?"

Grumblingly Dr. Allen Barnes passed on up the road to the wagon where
two passengers awaited his coming.

"Are you the man that wants me?" he asked, looking up at Sim Gage.

"Why, yep," said Sim Gage, his face puckered up into his usual frown of
perplexity.  "I reckon so, Doc.  I got my leg hurt."

"Well, come on over to the hospital."

"Hospital?  I can't go to no hospital.  I can't afford it, Doc."

"Well, I can't cut your leg off right out here in the street, can I,
man?  I'm offering you the hospital free--the Company takes care of
those things.  Not that I've got any business taking care of you, but I
will."

"Why, this ain't nothing," said Sim Gage, pointing a finger towards his
swollen knee, "just a leetle kick of a bronc, that's all.  I got to be
getting right back, Doc--I ain't got much time."

"It don't take much time to cut off a leg," said Dr. Barnes.  "Do it in
three minutes."  His face, professionally grim, showed no token of a
smile.

"Well, I left my folks all alone up there," began Sim.

"You did, eh?  Well, they'll be there when you get back, won't they?"

"I dunno, Doc----"

"Well, I don't know anything about it, if you don't.  But tell me,
how's the fishing up in there?  Any grayling?"

"All you want," said Sim Gage.  "Come along up any time, and I'll take
you out.  But no, I guess maybe----"

Dr. Barnes looked at him curiously, and Wid Gardner went on to explain
for his neighbor.

"You see, Doc, Sim, he's just newly married," said he, "or else he's
going to be right soon.  Sim, he's kind of bashful about having you
around."

"Thanks!  But come--I haven't any time.  Come into the office, and
we'll have a look at the leg."

Wid drove after the stalking figure, which presently drew up in front
of the little office.  In a few moments they had Sim Gage, the injured
member bared, sitting up in a white chair in a very white and clean
miniature hospital which Dr. Barnes had installed.

"This wound hasn't been cleaned properly," commented the doctor at
once.  "What did you put on it?"

"Why, whiskey.  I didn't have nothing else."

"Try water the next time," said Dr. Barnes with sarcasm.  "We'll have
to paint it up with iodine now.  Lockjaw, blood poison and amputation
is the very least that will happen to you if you don't look out."

"Amputation?"  Sim turned with curiosity to his neighbor.

"It's where they cut off your leg, Sim," said Wid, explaining.

"Oh, well, maybe we'll save his leg," said Dr. Barnes, grinning at
last.  "But don't let this occur again, my Christian friend.  This will
lay you up for two or three weeks the best way it can happen, in all
likelihood.  Well, I'll swab it out and tie it up, and give you some
iodine.  Keep it painted.  How big do the grayling go up in your
country?"

"I've seen plenty over three pounds," said Sim Gage.

"I don't like to doubt your word, my friend, but if you'll show me one
three-pound grayling, you won't ever owe me anything for fixing up your
leg."

"I sure can, Doc," said Sim Gage.  "Grasshoppers is best."

"For you, maybe.  If you please, I'll try Queen of the Waters, or
Professor, long-shanked, and about Number 8.  And I say again, if
you'll put me up to a three-pound grayling I'll cut off your leg for
nothing any time you want it done!"

"Well, now," said Sim Gage, his forehead puckering up, "I don't want to
put you under no obligations, Doc."

"He won't, neither, Doc," interrupted Wid Gardner, while the surgical
dressing was going forward.  "There's holes in there twenty feet deep,
and I've see two or three hundred grayling in there dang near as long
as your arm."

"Ouch, Doc!" remarked Sim Gage, "that yellow stuff smarts."

"It's got to, my man.  A couple of days more and you might really have
lost that leg, sure enough.  I've seen plenty of legs lost, my man.  I
don't think it'll go much further up--I hope not.  But blood poisoning
is something bad to have, and I'll tell you that."

"You ain't been in this country long, have you, Doc?" queried Wid
Gardner.  "You come on up and go fishing with us fellers.  A few weeks
from now it'll be better.  I ain't got no woman at my place, but I can
cook some.  Sim's got a woman at his."

"What's that?" inquired Dr. Barnes.  "Oh, the woman that's waiting?
What do you mean about that?"

"Well," replied his patient, his forehead furrowed, "that is, we ain't
rightly married yet.  Just sort of studying things over, you know, Doc.
We're waiting for--well, until things kind of shapes up.  You
understand, Doc?"

"I don't know that I do," said the Doctor, looking at him straightly.
"You understand one thing--there can't any funny business go on in this
valley now.  The administration's mighty keen.  You know that."

"There ain't, Doc.  She's my housekeeper.  I'd ask you in all right,
only she can't cook, nor nothing."

"A housekeeper, and can't cook?  How's that?"

Sim Gage wiped off his face, finding the temperature high for him.
"Well," said he, "Wid there and me, we advertised fer a housekeeper.
This girl come on out.  And when she come she was blind."

"Blind!"

"Blind as a bat.  So she says she's fooled me.  I sort of felt like
we'd all fooled _her_.  She's a lady."

"Why don't you send her back, man?" asked the doctor, with very visible
disgust.

"I can't.  How can I, when she's blind?  She wasn't born that way, Doc,
far's I can tell, but she was blind when she come out here.  Now,
leaving her setting there alone, it makes me feel kind of nervous.  You
don't blame me, now, do you, Doc?"

"No," said Dr. Barnes gravely, "I don't blame you.  You people out here
get me guessing sometimes.  But you make me tired."

He swept a hand across his face and eyes, just because he was tired.
"That's all I'm going to do for you to-day, my man," said he in
conclusion.  "Go on back home and fight out your own woman
problems--that isn't in my line."

"She--I reckon she'd be glad to see you--if she could.  You see, she's
a lady, Doc.  She ain't like us people out here."

The physician looked at him with curious appraisal in his eyes,
studying both the man and this peculiar problem which all at once had
been brought to view.

"A lady?" said he at last, somewhat disgusted.  "If she was any lady
she'd never have answered any advertisement such as you two people say
you have been fools enough to print."

"Look here!  That ain't so," said Sim Gage with sudden heat.  "That
ain't so none a-tall.  Now, she is a lady--I won't let nobody say no
different.  Only thing, she's a blind lady, that's all.  She falls over
things when she walks.  She got her eyes plumb full of cinders on the
train, I expect.  Cinders is awful.  Why, one time when I was going out
to Arizony I got a cinder in my eye, and I want to tell _you_----"

"Listen at him lie, Doc!" interrupted Wid Gardner.  "He never was
nowhere near Arizony in his life.  That's his favoright lie.  But he's
telling you the truth, near as I know it, about that woman.  She did
come out to be a housekeeper, and she did come out here blind.  Now,
couldn't she be a lady and that be true?"

"How can I tell?" said Dr. Barnes.  "All I know; is that you people
came down here and made me break loose from the best fish I've seen
since I've been out here.  My best fish of a lifetime--I'll never get
hold of a trout like that again."

Sim Gage was experiencing at the moment mingled gratitude and
resentment, but nothing could quench his own hospitable impulses.  "Aw,
come on up, Doc," said he, "won't you?  We can figure out some way to
take care of you right at my place.  You and me can sleep in the tent."

"So you live in the tent?" inquired Dr. Barnes.

"Why, of course.  She stays in the house.  And she's there all alone
this very minute."

"Hit the trail, men," said Dr. Barnes.  "Go on back home, and stay
there, you damn sagebrushers!"




CHAPTER XII

LEFT ALONE

Mary Warren, alone in the little cabin, found herself in a new world
whose existence she had never dreamed--that subjective and subconscious
land which bridges the forgotten genesis of things to the usual and
busy world of the senses, in which we pass our daily lives.  Indeed,
never before had she known what human life really is, how far out of
perspective, how selfish, how distorted.  Now, alone in the darkness,
back in the chaos and the beginning, she saw for the first time how
small a thing is life and how ill it is for the most part lived.  A fly
buzzed loudly on the window pane--a bold, bronzed, lustrous fly, no
doubt, she said to herself, pompous and full of himself--buzzed again
and again, until the drone of his wings blurred, grew confused, ceased.
She wondered if he had found a web.

The darkness oppressed her like a velvet pall.  She strained her eyes,
trying in spite of all to pierce it, beat at it, picked at it, to get
it from around her head; and only paused at length, her face beaded,
because she knew that way madness lay.

Time was a thing now quite out of her comprehension.  Night and day,
all the natural and accustomed divisions of time, were gone for her.
She felt at the hands of her little watch, but found her mind
confused--she could not remember whether it was the stem or the hinge
which meant noon or midnight.

A thousand new doubts and fears of her newly created world assailing
her, she felt rather than saw the flood of the sunlight when she
stepped to the door gropingly, and stood, stick in hand, looking out.
Yes, that was the sun.  But it was hard to reason which way was north,
which way lay the east, which was her home.

Home?  She had no home!  These years, she had known no home but the
single room which she had occupied with Annie Squires.  And now even
that was gone.  And even if it were not gone, she had no means of going
back to it--her money was almost exhausted.  And this black world was
not the earth, this new covering of her soul was not life.  Oh, small
enough seemed Mary Warren to her own self now.

She stumbled back to her seat behind the table, near the bunk, and
tried to take up her knitting again.  The silence seemed to her so
tremendous that she listened intently for some sound, any sound.  Came
only the twitter of a little near-by bird, the metallic clank of a
meadow lark far off across the meadows.  They at least were friendly,
these birds.  She could have kissed them, held them close to her, these
new friends.

But why did he not come back--the man?  What was going to happen if he
did come back?  How long would all this last?  Must it come to death,
or to the acceptance of terror or of shame, as the price of life?

She began to face her problem with a sort of stolid courage or
resolution--she knew not what to call it.  She was at bay--that was the
truth of it.  There must be some course of action upon which presently
she must determine.  What could it be?  How could she take arms against
her new, vast sea of troubles, so far more great than falls to the
average woman, no matter how ill, how afflicted, how unfit for the
vast, grim conflict which ends at last at the web?

One way out would be to end life itself.  Her instinct, her religious
training, her principles, her faith, rebelled against that thought.
No--no!  That was not right.  Her life, even her faint, pulsing,
crippled life, was a sacred trust to her.  She must guard it, not
selfishly, but because it was right to do so.  She could feel the
sunshine outside, could hear the birds singing.  They said that life
still existed, that she also must live on, even if there were no sound
of singing in her own heart ever again.

Then she must go back to the East, whence she had come?--Even if
great-hearted Annie would listen to that and take her back, where was
the money for the return passage?  How could she ask this man for
money, this man whom she had so bitterly deceived?  No, her bridges
were burned.

What then was left?  Only the man himself.  And in what capacity?
Husband; or what?  And if not a husband, what?

. . . No, she resolved.  She would accept duty as the price of life,
which also was a duty; but she would never relax what always to her had
meant life, had been a part of her, the principles ingrained in her
teachings and her practices, ever since she was a child.  No, it was
husband or nothing.

And surely he had been all that he had said he would be.  He _was_
kindly, he _was_ chivalrous, he had proved that.  She wondered how he
looked.  And what had she now to offer for perfection in a man?  Was
she not reduced to the bargain counter, in the very basement of life?
If so, what must be her bargain here?

And then she recalled the refusal of Sim Gage himself to think of
marriage.  He had said he was not good enough for her.  How could she
then marry him, even if she so wished?  Must she woo him and persuade
him, argue with him?  All her own virginal soul, all the sanctity of
her life, rebelled against that thought also.

Object, matrimony!  What a cruel jest it all had been.  What a terrible
dilemma, this into which it all had resolved itself.  Object, matrimony!

So if this man--so she reasoned again, wearily--if this man who had
been kind at least, even if uncouth, was willing to take her with all
her stories told, and all shortcomings known and understood--if he was
willing to take chances and be content--was that indeed the only way
out for her, Mary Warren?

What made it all most bitter, most difficult, most horrible for her was
the strength of her own soul.  Was it the _right_ thing to do--was it
the courageous and valiant thing to do?  Those were the two questions
which alone allowed her to face that way for an answer; and they were
the very two which drove her hardest.  Could she not do much, if in the
line of duty?  Sacrifice was no new thing for women. . . .  And the
war! . . .  This was not a time for little thoughts.

Such are some of the questions a woman must ask and answer, because she
is a woman.  They are asked and answered every day of the world;
perhaps not often so cruelly as here in this little cabin.

She began, weakly, to try to resign herself to some frame of mind by
which she could entertain the bare, brutal thought of this alternative.
She had come more than a thousand miles to meet this man by plan, by
arrangement.  Oh, no (so she argued), it could not be true that there
was but one man for one woman, one woman for a man, in all the world.
Annie must have been right.  Propinquity did it--was that not why men
and women nearly always married in their own village, their own social
circle?  Well, then, here was propinquity.  Object, matrimony!  Would
propinquity solve all this at last, as though this were a desert
island, they two alone remaining?  God!

Was it indeed true, asked Mary Warren, in her bitter darkness, that the
rude doctrine of material ideas alone must rule the world now in this
strange, new, inchoate, revolutionary age?  Was it indeed true that
sentiment, the emotions, the tenderer things of life, a woman's
immeasurable inheritance--must all these things go also into the
discards of the world's vast bloody bargain counter?

She remembered Annie's rude but well-meant words, back there where they
once crudely struggled with these great questions.  "What's the use of
trying to change the world, Sis?" she had said.  "Something's going
wrong every minute of the day and night--something's coming up all the
time that ought to be different.  But we ain't got nothing to do with
running the world--just running our own two lives is enough for us."

Hours or moments later--she could not have told which--she raised her
head suddenly.  What was it that she had heard?  There was a cough, a
footfall in the yard.

Oh, then he was coming home!  Why not have the whole thing out now,
over once and for all?  Why not speak plainly and have it done?  He had
not been so terrible.  He was an ignorant man, but not unkind, not
brutal.

She felt the light in the door darken, knew that some one was standing
there.  But something, subconscious, out of her new, dark
world--something, she could not tell what--told her this was not Sim
Gage.

She reached out her hand instinctively.  By mere chance it fell upon
the heavy revolver in its holster which Sim had hung upon the pole at
the head of her bed.  She caught it out, drew back into the room,
toward the head of the bed, and stumbling into her rude box chair, sat
there, the revolver held loosely in her hand.  She knew little of its
action.

She heard a heavy step on the floor, that did not sound familiar, a
clearing of the throat which was yet more unfamiliar, a laugh which was
the last thing needed.  This man had no business there, else he would
not have laughed.

"Who's there?" she called out, tremulously.  "Who are you?"  She turned
on him her sightless eyes, a vast terror in her soul.

"Good morning," said a throaty voice.  She could fairly hear him grin.
"How's everything this morning?  Where's your man this morning?"

"He's--just across in the meadows--he'll be back soon," said Mary
Warren.

"Is that so?  I seen him ten miles down the road just a while back.
Now, look here, woman----"

He had come fully into the room, and now he saw in her lap the weapon.
Half unconsciously she raised it.

"Look out!" he called.  "It may be loaded.  Drop it!"

"Come a step further, and I'll shoot!" said Mary Warren.  And then,
although he did not know that she was sightless, he saw on her face
that look which might well warn him.  Any ruffian knows that a woman is
more apt to shoot than is a man.

This ruffian paused now half way inside the door and looked about him.
A grin spread across his wide, high-cheeked face.  He reached down
silently to the stout spruce stick, charred at one end, that stood
between him and the stove.  Grasping it he advanced on tiptoe, silent
as a cat, toward the woman.  He was convinced that her sight was poor,
almost convinced that she did not see at all, because she made no move
when he stopped, the stick drawn back.  With a swift sweep he struck
the barrel of the revolver a blow so forceful that it was cast quite
across the room.  He sprang upon it at once.

Mary Warren cried out, drew back as far as she could.  The impact of
the blow had crushed a finger of the hand that held the weapon.  She
wrung her hands, held up the bloody finger.  "Who are you--what do you
want?" she moaned.

"That's what you get when you run against a real one," sneered the
voice of the man, who now stood fully within the little room.  "Just
keep quiet now."

"What do you mean?  What are you going to do?"  She felt about again
for some weapon, anything, but could find nothing.

"That's a purty question to ask, ain't it now?" sneered her assailant.
She could catch the reek of raw spirits around him as he stood near by.
She shuddered.

"Sim!" she called out aloud at last.  "Sim!  Sim!"

The name caused a vast mirth in her captor.  "Sim!  Sim!" he mocked
her.  "Lot o' help Sim'd be if he was here, wouldn't he?  As though I
cared for that dirty loafer.  He's going to git all that's comin' to
_him_.  Aw, Sim!  He'll leave us Soviet sabcats alone.  We're thinkers.
We're free men.  We run our own government, and we run our own selves,
too."

The liquor had made the man loquacious.  He must boast.  She tried to
guess what he might mean.

But something in the muddled brain of the man retained recollection of
an earlier purpose.  "Stay inside, you!" he said.  "I got work to do.
If you go outside I'll kill you.  Do you hear me?"

She heard his feet passing, heard them upon the scattered boards near
the door, then muffled in the grass.  She could not guess what he was
about.

He went to the edge of the standing grass beyond the dooryard, and
began sowing, broadcast, spikes, nails, bits of iron, intended to ruin
the sickle blades of the mowers when they came to work.  Even he thrust
a spike or bolt here or there upright in the ground to catch a blade.

Mary Warren where she sat knew none of this, but she heard a sound
presently which she could not mistake--the crackling of fire!  The
scent of it came to her nostrils.  The man had fired the meager
remnants of Sim Gage's hay stacks.

She heard next a shot or two, but could not tell what they meant.  She
could not know that he was firing into the dumb, gaunt cattle which
hung about the ricks.

Then later she heard something which caused her very soul to shiver,
made her blood run ice--the shrieking scream of a horse in death
agony--the hoarser braying of a mule, both dying amid fire!  She did
not understand it, could not have guessed it; but he had set fire also
to the stables.  Brutal to the last extreme, he left the animals penned
to die in the flames, and laughed at their agony.

Again and again the awful sounds came to her.  She was hysterical when
she heard his footstep approach once more, shrieked aloud for mercy.
He mocked her.

"Stop it!  Cut it out, I say.  Come on now--do you want to stay here
and burn up in the house?"

"I can't see--I'm blind," was all she could manage to say.

"Blind, huh?" He laughed now uproariously.  "Well, it's a good thing
you was blind, or else you might of seen Sim Gage!  Did you ever see
Sim?  What made you come here?  What did you come for?"

"I'm his housekeeper.  He employed me----"

"Employed you?  For what?--for housekeeping?  It looks like it, don't
it?  Where did you come from, gal?"

"East--Ohio--Cleveland," she spoke almost unconsciously and truthfully.

"Cleveland?  Plenty of our people there too still in the iron works.
Cleveland?  And how come you out here?"

"I'm ill--I'm a blind woman.  Can't you leave me alone?  Are you any
man at all?"

He remained unmoved, phlegmatic.  "So?  Nice talk about you and Sim
Gage!  Was you two married?  I know you ain't.  You come out to marry
him, though, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Next week--he's gone for the minister to-day."  She said anything, the
first thing.

"That's a lie," said the coarse voice of the man she could not see.  "I
seen him ten mile down toward the dam, I tell you, with Wid Gardner,
and Nels Jensen's folks, below, said they was going for a doctor, not a
preacher.  He wouldn't marry no blind woman like you, no ways."

She sank back, limp, her face in her bloody hands, as she lay against
the edge of the bed.

"Come now," said he.  "We got no time to waste.  We'll see what the
other fellers think.  Housekeeper--huh!  You said you wasn't married to
him.  You never will be, now."

"You brute!" she cried, with the courage of the cornered thing, the
courage of the prisoner bound to the stake for torture.  "You brute!"

She could hear him chuckle throatily.  "You don't know me--I'm Big
Aleck, general of the Soviet brothers in this county."  He juggled
phrases he never had understood.

"You ought to hang!" she panted.  "You will hang, some day."

[Illustration: "You ought to hang!" said she.]

"You better look a little out, gal, I tell you that.  You come along
out to the camp, and I'll see how you like that!"

She felt his iron grasp fall upon her wrist.  He dragged her across the
floor as though she weighed nothing.  She had been wholly helpless,
even if in possession of all her faculties and all her senses.  He
flung her from him upon the grass, laughing as she rose and tried to
run, bringing up in the willows, which she could not see.  She could
hear the flames crackling at the hay ricks on beyond.  By this time the
sounds from the burning barn mercifully had ceased, but she heard him
now at some further work.  He was trying to light the battered edge of
the door with a match, but it would not burn.

"Where's the oil, gal?" he demanded.

"We've got none," said she, guessing his purpose of firing the house
now.

He made no answer but a grunt, and finding the ax at the wood pile
nearby, began to hack at the jamb of the door, so that a series of
chips stood out from it, offering better food for flames.  She heard
him again strike a match--caught the faint smell of burning pine.

"Come on!"  Again she felt his hand.  He dragged her, her feet
stumbling in the grass.  She could hear horses snorting, so there was
some vehicle here, she supposed.  He flung her up to the seat, jerked
loose the halters, and climbed in as the team plunged forward.  Had any
one seen the careening wagon, seen the upflung arm of a woman swaying
in the grasp of the man who sat beside her in the seat--had any one
heard the laugh of the man, the shrieks of the woman, struggling and
calling,--he must have thought that two drunken human beings instead of
one were endeavoring to show the astonished sky how bestial life may be
even here in America in an undone day.




CHAPTER XIII

THE SABCAT CAMP

To Mary Warren's ears, had she struggled in her captor's arms less
violently, the sound of the wheels might have changed from the loam of
the lane to the gravel of the highway as they passed.  But she heard
nothing, noted nothing, did not understand why, after a time, the
driver pulled up, and with much profanity for his team, descended from
his seat.  Apparently he fastened the horses near the road.  He came
back.  "Git down, and hurry," said he.  "Here's where we change cars."

She heard the grind of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine.
As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side,
and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small
car.  She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turned
the gas on full, felt it sway as it set to its pace.  She now knew that
they were on some highway.

"Now we go better," laughed Big Aleck, his face at her ear.  "They
can't catch us now.  These Johns 'll find what's what, heh?  Look
yonder--five fires in sight, besides plenty stock bumped off.  They'll
learn how the free brothers work.  If you can't see, you can't tell.
All the better!"

She shrank back into the seat, undertaking no reply to his maudlin
boastings.  She was passing away from the only place in all the world
that meant shelter for her now, and already it felt like home, this
place that she was leaving.

The car shifted and slowed down, apparently on a less used
thoroughfare.  "Where are you going?" she cried.  "You've left the
road!"

Big Aleck laughed uproariously after his fashion.  "I should say we
have," said he.  "But any road's good enough just so it gets us up to
our jungle.  You don't know what iss a jungle?  Well, it's where the
sabcat brothers meets all by theirselves on the Reserve."

"Reserve?" asked Mary Warren.  "What do you mean?"

"Where the timber is that them army scum is cutting for the Government.
Pine, some spruce.  This road was made to get timber out.  I ought to
know about it--I was foreman of the road gang!  I know every tree
that's marked for the Government.  My old bunch of bundle stiffs and
before-the-war wobblies is in there now.  What chance has them
Government cockroaches got against my bullies?  Wait till the wheat
clocks[1] get started and the clothes[2] begins.  We ain't forgot what
we knew when they tried to draft us.  We're free men now, same as in
Russia and Germany."

He laughed again and again at the vast humor of this situation as it
lay before him, exulting in the mystification his thieves' jargon would
create.  His liquor made him reckless.

"It's a rough road, up Tepee Creek," said he, "but nobody comes.  This
is a Government car--the Cossacks would think I'm going up to work.
They got to mark some trees.  I'll mark 'em--so they can tell, when
they come to saw 'em, heh?"

He said little more, but one hand cast over her shoulder was his answer
to her panting silence, every time she edged over in the impulse to
fling herself out of the car.  He was a man of enormous strength.

Continually the jolting of the car grew worse and worse.  She began to
hear the rush of water.  Twice she felt the logs of a rude bridge under
the wheels as they crossed some stream.  They were winding their way up
the valley of a stream, into a higher country?  Yes.  As they climbed
now, she could catch the scent of the forest as the wind changed from
time to time.  The profanity of her captor grew as the difficulty of
the trail increased.  They were climbing at a gradient as steep as the
laboring car could negotiate.

At last, after interminable time, they seemed to strike a sandier soil,
more level country--indeed, the trail was following the contour of a
high sandy ridge among the pines.

On ahead she heard a shout.  "Halt!  Stop there!  Who are you?"

"Don't shoot, John," replied the driver of the car, laughing.  "It's
Aleck."

"Well, I'll be damned!" was the reply.  "Time you was back, Aleck.
Who's that with you?"

"That's a friend of mine I brought along!  She's come up to see how us
wobblies lives!"

Again his coarse laugh, which made her shudder.  Then more broken
laughs, whispered words.  She was obliged to take the arm of her rough
captor to descend from the car.

"She don't see very well," said Aleck in explanation.  "Maybe just as
well she don't, heh?"

She stood looking about her vaguely, helpless.  She could hear the high
moaning of the wind above her, in the tops of pine trees.  Some one led
her to the front of a tent--she could hear the flapping of the fly in
the wind.  She sank down by chance upon a blanket roll.  Her captor
threw down the front flap of the tent.  She heard voices of other men.
They paid not too much attention to her at first.  Big Aleck, their
leader, went on with hurried orders.

"We got to get out of here in not more'n an hour or so," said he.  "The
Johns'll come.  I fixed a couple dozen stacks of hay for them."

"See anybody down below, Aleck?" asked a voice which Mary Warren
recognized as different from the others she had heard.  And then some
low question was asked, to which Big Aleck replied.

"Well, I'll take her along with me, when I go out, far as that's
concerned," said he.  "She says she's Sim Gage's housekeeper!  Huh!"

"But suppose she gets away and squeals on us?" spoke a voice.

"She can't get away.  Let's go eat."

She was close enough to where they sat eating and drinking to hear all
that was said, and they spoke with utter disregard of her presence.
She never had heard such language in her life, nor known that such men
lived.  Never yet had she so fully taken home to herself the actual
presence of a Government, of a country, never before known what threats
against that country actually might mean.  An enemy?  Why, here was the
enemy still, entrenched inside the lines of victorious and
peace-abiding America--trusting, foolish, blind America, which had
accepted anything a human riff-raff sneeringly and cynically had
offered her in return for her own rich generosity!  Mary Warren began
to see, suddenly, the tremendous burden of duty laid on every man and
every woman of America--the lasting and enduring and continuous duty of
a post-bellum patriotism, that new and terrible thing; that sweet and
splendid thing which alone could safeguard the country that had fought
for liberty so splendidly, so unselfishly.

"If they ever run across us in here with the goods on us--good-night!"
hesitated a voice.  "I don't like to carry this here cyanide--we got
enough for all the sheep and cattle in Montana."

"Our lawyers'll take care of us if we get arrested," said Big Aleck
indifferently.

"Yes, but we mightn't get arrested--these here ranch Johns is handy
with rope and lead."

"Ach, no danger," argued Aleck.  "It's safer than to blow up a armory
or a powder mill, or even a public building--and we done all that,
while the war was on.  We'll give 'em Force!  This Republic be
damned--there is no republic but the republic of Man!"

These familiar doctrines seemed to excite the applause usual among
hearers of this sort.  There was a chorus of approval, so that their
orator went on, much inspired.

"People in Gallatin offered a thousand dollars for one man catched
putting matches in a threshing machine.  Other ranchers was willing to
give a thousand if they found out what made their hay get a-fire!  Hah!
They don't know how we set a bomb so the sun'll start it!  They don't
think that the very fellers running the threshing machine is the ones
that drops the matches in!  They don't think that the man running the
mowing machine is the one that fixes the sickle bar!  They don't think
that the man in charge of this here road gang is the one that's
a-doctoring trees!

"They're still eating all sorts of things for bread now," he resumed.
"Folks in the cities pays more and more.  Wheat'll go to four dollars
before we're through.  We're the farmer's friends, huh?  Hay'll be
worth fifty dollars a ton in this valley before we're through--but
there won't be no horses left to haul it to town!  There's thousands of
right boes all across the country now.  If fourteen thousand iron and
steel people was out at one time in Cleveland, what couldn't we do, if
we once got a good strike started all across the country, now the war
is done?  We've made 'em raise wages time and again, haven't we?  I
tell you, freedom's coming to its own."

Cleveland!  Mary Warren pricked up her ears.  She had reason; for now
the voice went on, mentioning a name which Annie Squires had made
familiar--Dorenwald, Charlie Dorenwald, the foreman in the rolling
rooms!

"Charlie Dorenwald's the head of that bunch.  He's a good man.  You
know what he pulled in Youngstown."

"Well, I don't know," said one voice, "they lynched a man in Illinois.
America's getting lawless!  Think about lynching people!  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 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 know she had struck him with two shots, the second of which had
broken his leg and left him disabled.  She had shot a man.  He was
there in front of her, about to die.

"Are you hurt?" she demanded, staring, the revolver in both her hands.
"Keep away.  I'll kill you!"

"You----  Don't shoot again," he cried, as she moved.  She could not
tell what he meant, what really had happened, except that he was
helpless.  She rose and fled, groping, stumbling, falling.  She could
hear him crying out.  He did not follow her.

In the forest growth at this altitude the trees stood large, straight
and tall, not very close together.  The earth was covered with a dense
floor of pine needles.  As she ran she felt her feet slipping, sinking.
Now and again she brought up against a tree.  Still she kept on,
sobbing, her hands outstretched, getting away farther than would have
been possible in denser cover.  She felt the sand of the roadway under
her feet as her course curved back toward the road, endeavored to
follow the trail for a time, but found herself again on the pine
needles, running she knew not where or how.  She had no hope.  She knew
she was fleeing death and facing death.  Very well, she would meet it
further on and in a better guise.

She felt that she was passing down, along the mountain side, advanced
more rapidly, stumbling, tripping--and so at last fell full length over
a log which lay across her course.  Stunned by the impact of her fall
beyond and below the unseen barrier, she lay prone and quite
unconscious.

At a length of unknown moments, she gained her senses.  She sat up,
felt about her, listened.  There was no sound of pursuit.  Only the
high wailing of the pines came to her ears.

She could not know it, but the men were not following her.  When they
heard the sound of three shots ring out, every man busy in his work of
sabotage stopped where he was.  Was it a surprise?  Were officers or
the ranchers coming?  They scattered, hiding among the trees.

They could hear the bellowing of Big Aleck, beseeching aid.  They
advanced cautiously, to spy out what had happened and saw him rolling
from side to side, striving to rise, falling back.  The woman was
nowhere visible.

"Who done it, Aleck?" demanded the man next in command, when he had
ventured closer.  "Did she shoot you?"

Aleck groaned as he rolled over, his face upward.  A nod showed his
crippled shoulder.  His other hand Big Aleck feebly placed upon his
hip.  They bent over him.

"By God, she got you fair that time!" said one investigator.  "She's
plugged you twice.  She wasn't blind.  Where did she go?"

"I don't know where--I heard her run.  God, that leg!  What will I do?
I can't stay here alone!"

"I tell you, you'll have to!  If that girl's not blind she'll get out
and give this snap away."

"But you can take me out with you, fellers.  I can ride."  Aleck was
pleading, his face gray with pain.

"Worst thing we could do, either for you or for us," replied the other,
coldly.  "If we got you down to the settlements what could we say?  If
you was shot once we could call it an accident, but shot twice, and
once through the hip from behind--how would that be explained, I'd like
to know?  Folks would begin to ask too many questions.  Besides, they'd
ask where that girl was.  Then there's the fires you set.  No, sir, you
stay right here.  We other fellers'll get out of here as fast as we
can."

"And leave me here?"  The terror in Big Aleck's voice had been piteous
for any men but these.

"Listen!  Before midnight I'll be at the Company dam.  I'll tell that
new doctor there's been an accident up here in the timber camp.  I'll
tell him to come up here to-morrow morning sure.  When he gets here,
you tell him how the accident happened.  It's up to you, then.  You'll
have to pay him pretty well, of course."

"And that reminds me," he went on, "we fellers has got to have the
funds, Aleck.  We'll need money more'n you will now.  Here!"

He stooped over and began to feel in Aleck's coat, drew out a heavy
wallet, and began to transfer the bills to his own pocket.

"I'll leave you a hundred and fifty.  That's enough," said he.  "No
telling what we fellers'll have to do before we get out of this.  Your
getting shot here is apt to blow the whole thing.  Did she take the gun
away with her?"

Aleck groaned and rolled his head.  "I don't know," he said.

Jim Denny was the new leader of the brigand party.  "Hell's bells!"
said he, impatiently now.  "We can't be fooling around--this don't look
good to me.  Noon to-morrow, anyways, the Doctor ought to be here.  As
for us, we got to beat it now."

The wolf pack knew no mercy nor unselfishness.  Aleck got no more
attention from them.  There were two cars beside the one which had
brought Aleck and Mary Warren up the day before.  This last one they
left, seeing that the tire was in bad condition.  Not one of them
turned to say good-by to Aleck as he lay in the tent where he had been
dragged.

"Got it right on top the hip bone," said one man.  "She busted him
plenty with that soft-nose."

"And served him right," said Jim Denny, the new leader, grumbling.
"Aleck has never been looking for the worst of it, any way of the game.
If he had left that woman down below where she belonged, we wouldn't be
in this fix.  I tell you them ranchers'll be out in a pack after us,
and the only thing we can do is to pull our freight good and plenty
right now."

The whir of the engine drowned conversation.  An instant later the two
carloads of banditti were passing down around curve after curve of the
sandy road.  Mary Warren, still dazed, and dull where she lay, heard
them go by.  Yonder then, lay the trail--but could she know which way?
If she turned her head she would lose the direction.  She kept her eyes
fixed upon the last point of the compass from which she had heard the
car distinctly, and taking the muzzle of the revolver in her hand,
endeavored to scratch a mark in the sand to give her the direction
later by the sense of touch.  She laid the pistol itself at the upper
end of the little furrow, pointing toward the road which she had left.
Sinking down, she resigned herself to what she felt must soon be the
end.

The chill of the mountain night was coming on.  The whispering in the
pines grew less.  Vaguely she sensed that the sun was low, that soon
twilight would come.  She had no means of making a fire, had no
covering, no food.  Simply a lost unit of one of the many species
inhabiting the earth, surviving each as it may, she cowered alone and
helpless in the wilderness.

The hush of the evening came.  The pines were silent.  There was only
one little faint sound above her--in some tree, she thought.  It was
made by a worm boring under the bark, seeking place for the larvae
which presently it would leave, in order that its species might endure.
A small sound, of no great carrying power.




CHAPTER XVI

THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE

Neither Sim Gage nor his neighbor slept to any worth that night.  At
times one would speak, but they held no discussion.  Wid Gardner, in an
iron wrath, was thinking much.

Sim Gage lay with his eyes opened toward the rude ceiling.  In his
heart was something new.  Hitherto in all his life he had never
quarreled with fate, but smiled at it as something beyond his making or
his mending.  He was one of the world's lost sheep, one of the army of
the unhoping.  The mountains, the valleys, the trees, had been enough
for him, the glint of the sun on the silver gray of the sage yonder on
the plains.  He had been content to spend his life here where chance
had thrown him.  But now--and Sim Gage himself knew it--something new
had been born in Sim Gage's heart.  It troubled him.  He lay there and
bent his mind upon the puzzle, intensely, wonderingly.

It had been bravado with him up to the time that he knew this girl was
coming out.  After that, curiosity and a sense of fair play, mingled,
had ensued.  Then a new feeling had come after he had met the girl
herself--pity, and remorse in regard to a helpless woman.  Sim Gage did
not know the dangerous kinship that pity holds.  He knew no proverbs
and no poetry.

But now, mixed also with his feeling of vague loss, his sense of rage,
there was now, as Sim Gage realized perfectly well, a new and yet more
powerful emotion in his soul.  He was not the same man, now; he never
again would be.  Pity and propinquity and the great law had done their
work!  For the first and only time in all his life Sim Gage was in love!

Love dareth and endureth all things, magnifies and lessens, softens and
hardens, loosens and binds, establishes for itself new worlds,
fabricates for itself new values, chastens, humbles, makes weak, makes
strong.  Sim Gage never before had known how merciless, how cruel all
this may be.  He was in love.  With all his heart and life and soul he
loved _her_, right or wrong.  There had been a miracle in Two-Forks
Valley.

The two men were astir long before dawn.  Wid Gardner first kicked off
his blankets.  "I'll find me a horse," said he.  "You git breakfast,
Sim, if you can."  He went into the darkness of the starlit morning.

Sim Gage, his wounded leg stiff and painful enough, crawled out of his
bunk--the same where She but now had slept--and made some sort of a
light by means of matches and a stub of candle; found a stick and made
some shavings; made shift to start a fire.  With a hatchet he found on
the floor he hacked off more of the charred woodwork of his own
door-frame, seeing that it must be ruined altogether.  It was nothing
to him what became of this house.  The only question in his mind was,
Where was She?  What had happened to Her?

His breakfast was that of the solitary man in such surroundings.  He
got a little bacon into a pan, chipped up some potatoes which he
managed to pare--old potatoes now, and ready to sprout long since.  He
mixed up some flour and water with salt and baking powder and cooked
that in a pan.

The odors of the cooking brought new life into the otherwise silent
interior of Sim Gage's cabin.  Sim felt something at his feet, at his
leg.  It was the Airedale puppy which he had left curled up all night
at the foot of his bed.  The scent of the meat now had awakened him,
and he was begging his new master for attention.

Sim leaned down stiffly to pat him on the head, gave him a bit of food.
Then he bethought him of the sack of fowls which he had entirely
forgotten--found them luckily still alive in the wagon bed, cut off the
sacking around them, and drove them out into the open to shift for
themselves as best they might.  But the little dog would not be cast
off.  He followed Sim wherever he went, licked his hand.  That made him
think how She would have petted the puppy had She been there.  He had
got the dog for Her.

By the time he had the meal ready Wid Gardner was back leading a horse.
There was no saddle at either ranch now, but Wid searched around and
found a bit of discarded sack, a piece of rope near the burned barn.

"I'll ride down the valley," said he after the two had eaten in
silence.  "Wait till I ride down to Jensen's.  He'll come along."

"Well, hurry back," said the new Sim, with a resolution and decision in
his voice which surprised his neighbor.  "I can't very well go off
alone.  Send word down to the dam.  We got to clean out this gang."

"Yes," replied Wid, "they'd better look out who's working on the dam.
It ain't all soldiers.  You can't tell a thing about where this is
going to run to--they might blow out the dam, for all you can tell.
They ain't up in there for no good,--after the timber, likely.  I
wonder how many there is of them."

"I don't care how many there is," said Sim Gage simply.

Early as Gardner was, he was not the only traveler on the road.  As he
approached Nels Jensen's gate he saw below that place on the road the
light of a car traveling at speed.

He slid off his horse, tied the animal, and stood, rifle in hand,
directly in front of the approaching vehicle.

"Halt!" he cried, and flung up his left hand high, the rifle held in
his right, under his arm pit.

It was no enemy who now slowed down the car and cut out the lights.  A
voice not unfamiliar called out, "What's wrong with you, man?  What do
you want?  You trying to hold me up?"

"Is that you, Doc?  No one passes here.  What are you doing up here?"
Wid walked up to the edge of the car.

"I'm on a call, that's what I'm doing up here," replied Doctor Barnes.
"Have you heard anything about an accident up on the Reserve?"

"Accidents a-plenty, right around here.  I don't know nothing about the
Reserve.  Who told you?"

"A man, last night late.  Said there was a man hurt up in the timber
camp, for me to go up fast as I could.  Tree fell on him.  They left
him up there alone, because they couldn't bring him out."

"That so?" commented Wid Gardner grimly.

--"So that elected me, you see.  Every time I try to get a night's
sleep, here comes some damn sagebrusher and wants me to come out and
cure his sick cow, or else mamma's got a baby, or a horse has got in
the wire, or papa's broke a leg, or something.  Damn the country
anyhow!  I wish I'd never seen it.  I'm a doctor, yes, but I'm the
Company doctor, and I don't have to run on these fool trips.  But of
course I do," he added, smiling sunnily after his usual fashion.  "So I
come along here.  And you hold me up.  What do _you_ want?"

"I want you to wait and come in and see Nels Jensen with me, Doc," said
Wid Gardner.  "Hell's to pay."

"What's wrong?"  Doctor Barnes' face grew graver.

"We don't know what.  When Sim and me come home, some one had been here
when we was gone.  Sim's barn is burned, and all his hay, and all mine,
and my house--I haven't got lock, stock nor barrel left of my ranch,
and nothing to make a crop with."

"What do you think?" asked Doctor Barnes gravely.

"We don't know what to think.  It's like enough a hold-on from that old
Industrial work--they been threatening all down the valley, since times
are hard and wages fell a little after the war work shut down.  There
was some hay burned down below there.  Folks said it was spontaneous
combustion, or something--said it got hot workin' in the stacks.  I
ain't so sure now.  It's them old ways.  As if they ever got anything
by that!"

Dr. Barnes puckered his lips into a long whistle.  "I wonder if there's
any two and two to put together in _this_ thing!" said he.  "I came up
here to get that poor devil out of the woods.  But who can tell what in
the merry hell has really happened up there?"

"We got to go and see," said Wid Gardner.  "You know that woman?"

The doctor nodded.

"She's gone too.  Whoever it was took her off in a car from up at the
head of Sim Gage's lane."

Doctor Barnes got down out of the car, and the two walked through Nels
Jensen's gate.  Jensen was afoot, ready for the day's work.  He agreed
that one of his boys would carry the news to the Company dam.

"Better give us a little something to eat along with us, Karen," he
said to his wife.  He took down his rifle, and looked inquiringly at
Doctor Barnes.  "Have you got an extra gun?" asked the latter.  Jensen
nodded, finding the spare piece near at hand.

Very little more was said.  They all walked out into the morning, when
the red ball of the sun was coming up above the misty valley.

"Go on ahead in the car," said Wid.  "I'll bring my horse."

They met at Sim Gage's half-burned home.  Sim himself hobbled out,
rifle under one arm and the little Airedale under the other, the latter
wriggling and barking in his delight.  The purr of a good motor was
soon under them.  In a few moments they were out of Sim Gage's lane and
along the highway as far as the point where the Tepee Creek trail
turned off into the mountains.

"Wait here, Doc," said Wid, "Sim and me want to have a look--we know
the track of that car that done the work down here."

But when they bent over the trail, they saw that it was different
from what it had been when they left it the night before!  Wid cursed
aloud, and Sim Gage joined him heartily.

"It's wiped out," said Sim.  "Some one's been over this trail since
last night.  This car ain't got no busted tire."

"That may be the very man that came down and called me!" exclaimed
Doctor Barnes.

"I heard him when he went down the road," nodded Nels Jensen--"last
night.  I'll bet that's the same car.  I'll bet it come down out of the
mountains."

They passed on up the creek valley toward the Reserve far more rapidly
than the weaker car of Big Aleck had climbed the same grade the day
previous, but the main body of the forest lay three thousand feet above
the valley floor, and the ascent was so sharp that at times they were
obliged to stop in order to allow the engine to cool.

"What's that?" said Sim Gage after a time, when they had been on their
way perhaps an hour up the winding cañon, and had paused for the time.
"Smoke?  That ain't no camp fire--it's more."

They made one or two more curves of the road and then got confirmation.
A long, low blanket of smoke was drifting off down the valley to the
right, settling in a gray-blue cloud along the mountain side.  The wind
was from left to right, so that the smoke carried free of the trail.

"She's a-fire, boys!" exclaimed Wid.  "We better git out of here while
we can."

"We ain't a-going to do nothing of the sort," said a quiet voice.  Wid
Gardner turned to look into the face of Sim Gage.  "We're a-going right
on up ahead."

Wid Gardner looked at Doctor Barnes.  The latter made his answer by
starting the car once more.  Although they did not know it, they now
were approaching their journey's end.  They could not as yet see the
swift advance of the fire from tree to tree, because the wind as yet
was no stronger than the gentle air of morning; could not as yet hear
any roar of the flames.  But they saw that now, on these mountain
slopes before them, one of the most valuable timber bodies in the state
was passing into destruction.

"God damn their souls!" said Wid Gardner fervently.  "Wasn't it enough
what they done to us already?"

"Go on, Doc."  It was Sim's voice.  Wid Gardner knew perfectly well
what drove Sim Gage on.

But the car soon came to a sudden halt.  A couple of hundred yards on
ahead lay an open glade.  At the left of the trail stood a great wall
tent.

In an instant, every man was out of the car, the three ranchmen, like
hounds on the scent, silently trotting off, taking cover from tree to
tree.  A few moments, and the four of them, rifles at a ready, had
surrounded the tent.  As they closed in, they all heard a high, clear
voice--one they would not have suspected Sim Gage to have
owned--calling out: "Throw up your hands, in there!"  Actually, Sim
Gage was leader!

There came an exclamation in a hoarse and broken voice.  "Who are you?
Don't shoot--I surrender."

"How many are there of you?" inquired Doctor Barnes.

"It's me--Big Aleck--I'm shot--I'm dying--  Help!--Who is it?"

"Come out, Aleck!" called the high and resolute voice of Sim
Gage--"Come on out!"

"I can't come out.  I'm shot, I tell you."

Then Sim Gage did what ordinarily might not have been a wise thing to
do.  Without pause he swept aside the tent flap with the barrel of his
rifle, and stepped in, quickly covering the prostrate figure that lay
on the bloody blankets before him.

Big Aleck was able to do more than move.  He raised one hand, feebly,
imploring mercy.

"Come out, damn you!" said Sim Gage, his hand at the dollar of the
crippled man.  He dragged his prisoner out into the light and threw him
full length,--mercilessly--upon the needle-covered sand.

The crippled man began to weep, to beg.  It was small mercy he saw as
he looked from face to face.

"That's my man," exclaimed Doctor Barnes.  "But it's not any accident
with a tree.  That's gun shot!"

"Who done that work down below?" demanded Sim of the prostrate man.
"Where is she?  Tell me!"  His voice still rang high and imperative.

Big Aleck shivered where he lay.  Now he too saw the flames on ahead in
the woods.

"Who set that fire?" demanded the Doctor suddenly.  "Whose work was
that?"

"It was sabcats!" said Big Aleck, frightened into an ingenious lie.
"They was in here.  I'm the government foreman.  I don't know how they
got in or got out.  They must of set a 'clock' somewhere for to start
it."

"Who do you mean--sabcats?" demanded Doctor Barnes.  The other three
stood coldly and implacably staring at the crippled man.

"I caught them in here--I'm in charge of this work, you see.  I tried
to stop them.  They shot me and left me here.  They said they'd send a
doctor."

"I'm the doctor," replied the medical man, who stood looking at him.
"Where is that woman?"

Big Aleck rolled his head.  "I don't know.  I don't know nothing.  I'm
shot--I'm going to die."

"We've got to get out," said Doctor Barnes.  "Boys, shall we get him
into the car?"

"No!" said Sim Gage, sharply.  "I won't ride with him.  _Where is
she_?"  He stepped close up to Big Aleck, pushing in front of the
others.  "You know.  Damn you, tell me!"

"Keep him away!" yelled Big Aleck.  "He's going to kill me!"  He tried
to get on his elbows, his hands and knees, but could not, broken down
as he was.  He was abject--an evil man overtaken by an evil fate.

"Where is she?" repeated Sim Gage.  "Tell me!"

"I tell you I don't know.  She ran off, that way."

"That's the car that brung her up!" said Wid Gardner, motioning toward
the ragged tire of the rear wheel.  "See that tire, Sim?  That's the
car!  She's been here."

"Go see if you can git the trail, Wid," said Sim Gage to his friend.
"Quick!"

Sim himself passed for a moment, hurriedly, to the car which had
brought his party up.  He had left the little dog tied there, but now
heard it whining, and stopped to loosen it.  It ran about, barking.
Head down, Sim Gage stumbled off, following a trail which he half
thought he saw, but he lost it on the pine needles, and came back,
bitter of heart, once more to face the man who lay helpless on the
ground--the man who now he knew was his enemy, not to be forgiven or
spared.

"Where is she?" he said to Aleck once more.  "It was her trail, I know
it.  Tell me the truth now, while you can talk."

"You was follering right the way she went, far as I know," moaned
Aleck.  "How kin I tell where she went, after I was shot?"

"After you was shot?  Who shot you?  _Did she_?"

"I told you who shot me.  It was them fellers."

"Then why didn't they kill you, if they wanted to?  They _could_ of
finished you, couldn't they?  Where's my six-shooter, Aleck--you took
it outen my house, and you know you did."

He stepped back into the tent and began to kick around among the
blankets.  "There's nothing here excepting your own rifle."  He came
out, unloaded the gun, smashed the lever against the nearest tree.

"You won't never need no gun no more," said he.

"I'll have to look after him, now," said Doctor Barnes, stepping
forward.  He had stood looking at the crippled man, his own hands on
his hips.  "He's bad off."

"Keep away--don't you touch him!"  It was still the new voice of Sim
Gage that was talking now, and there was something in his tone which
made the others all fall back.  All the time Sim Gage's rifle was
covering the writhing man.

"I tried to save her," whimpered Big Aleck now.

"You lie!  Why did you bring her up here then?  Why didn't you leave
her there--she didn't have to come."  Sim Gage still was talking now
sharp, decisive.  "Where is she now?"

"Good God, man, I told you I didn't know.  How do I know which way
she'd run?  She said she was blind--but I don't believe she was."

"_Why_ don't you?" demanded Sim Gage.  "_Because she could shoot
you_?--Because she _did_ shoot you, twice?  What made her?  Where's my
gun?  Did she take it with her after she shot you?"

The sweat broke out now on the gray and grimed forehead of the
suffering man.  "I won't tell you nothing more!" he broke out.  "What
right you got to arrest me?  I ain't committed no crime, and you ain't
got no warrant.  I want a lawyer.  I want this doctor to take care of
me.  I got money to get a lawyer.  I don't have to answer no questions
you ask me."

"You say she went over that way?"  Sim's finger was pointing across the
road in the direction of the fire.

"I told you, yes," nodded Big Aleck.  And Sim Gage's own knowledge
gained from the last direction of the footprints confirmed this.

"Blind--and out all night in these mountains!" he said, his voice
shaking for the first time.  "And then comes that fire.  You done that,
Aleck--you know you done it."

"I told you I didn't know nothing," protested the crippled man, who now
had turned again upon his back.  "I ain't a-goin' to talk.  It was them
fellers."

"Some things you'd better know," said Sim Gage, suddenly judge in this
court, suddenly assembled.  "Some things I know now.  You come down to
my house your own self.  It was you set my barn a-fire and burned my
house and my hay, and killed my stock.  It was you carried that girl
off.  I know why you done it, too.  You wasn't fighting that bunch in
here--they was with you.  You was all on the same business, and you
know it.  You made trouble before the war, and you're making it now,
when we're all trying to settle down in the peace."

He was beginning to tremble now as he talked.  "Didn't she shoot
you?--Now, tell me the truth."

"Yes!" said the prisoner suddenly, seeing that in the other's eyes
which demanded the truth.  "She did shoot me, and then ran away.  She
took your gun.  But I didn't set the fire.  Honest to God, I don't know
how it got out.  I swear--oh, my God--have mercy!"

But what he afterward would have sworn no man ever knew.  There was a
rifle shot--from whose rifle none of the four ever could tell.  It
struck Big Aleck fair below the eyes, and blew his head well apart.  He
fell backward at the door of the tent.

They turned away slowly.  Just for an instant they stood looking at the
sweeping blanket of smoke.  They walked to the car, paying no further
attention to the figure which lay motionless behind them.  The fire
might come and make its winding sheet.

It was coming.  Wid Gardner lifted his head.  "Wind's changing," said
he.  "Hurry!"

They headed down the trail as fast as might be.

"_Wait_, now, Doc!" said Sim Gage, a moment after they started.  "Wait
now!"

"What's up?" said Doctor Barnes.  "Look at that smoke."

"Where's that little dog, now?  We've forgot him."

He sprang out of the car, began stumbling back up the trail, his own
leg dragging.

"Cut off the car!" he called back.  "I can't hear a thing."

As he stood there came up to him from the mountain side a sound which
made him turn and plunge down in that direction himself.  It was a
shot.  Then the bark of the Airedale, baying "treed."

The dog itself, keen of nose, and of the instinct to run almost any
sort of trail, even so very faint as this on which it was set, had in
part followed out the winding course of the fleeing girl after Sim Gage
himself had abandoned it, thinking it had been laid on that trail.  And
now what Sim saw on ahead, down the hill, below the trail, was the
figure of Mary Warren herself, sitting up weakly, gropingly, on the log
over which she had fallen the night before--beneath which, like some
animal, she had cowered all that awful night on the heap of pine
needles which she had swept up for herself!

A cry broke from Sim Gage's lips.  She heard him and herself called out
aloud, "Sim!  Sim!  Is it you?  I knew it was you when the dog came!"

And then, still shivering and trembling with fear and cold and
exhaustion, Mary Warren once more lost all sense of things, and dropped
limp.  The little dog stood licking at her hands and face.

Here was work for Doctor Barnes after all.  He took charge.  The four
of them carried the woman up the hill to the car.  He had restoratives
which served in good stead now.

"Poor thing!" said he.  "Out all night!  It's just a God's mercy she
didn't freeze to death, that's all."

He himself was wondering at the extraordinary beauty of this woman.
Who was she--what was there in this talk that two ranchmen had made,
down there at the dam?  Why, this was no ordinary ranchwoman at all,
but a woman of distinction, one to attract notice anywhere.

Mary Warren at last began to talk,--before the smoke cloud drove them
down the trail.  "I heard a shot," said she, turning a face toward
them.  "Who was it?  I didn't signal then, for I didn't know.  I
waited.  Then the dog came."

No one answered her.

"That must have been what brought me to.  It sounded up the hill.
Where--where is he?"

They did not answer even yet, and she went on.

"Who are you all?" she demanded.  "I don't see you, of course."  She
was looking into the face of Doctor Barnes who bent above her, his hand
on her pulse.

"I'm Doctor Barnes," said he.  "I work down at the Company's plant at
the big dam.  You are Miss Mary Warren, are you not?"

She nodded.  "Yes."

"I won't introduce these others, but they're all friends--we all are."

She was recognizing the voice, the diction of a gentleman.  The thought
gave her comfort.

"What's that smoke?" she said suddenly, herself catching the scent
pervading the air.

"The whole mountain's afire," said Sim Gage.  "We got to hurry if we
get out of here."

"I know--it was those people!--Where is that man?  You found him?"

The voice of Doctor Barnes broke in quickly.  "He'd been hurt by a
tree--we had to leave him because he was too far gone, Miss Warren,"
said he.  "We couldn't save him.  He couldn't answer any questions--not
even a hypothetical question--when we tried him.  But now, don't try to
talk.  He's got what he had coming, and he'll never trouble you again."

"Whose little dog is this?" she asked suddenly, reaching out a hand
which the young Airedale kissed fervently.  "If it hadn't been for that
little dog, you'd never have found me, would you?  You couldn't have
heard me call.  I would not have dared to shoot.  Whose little dog?"

"It's yours, ma'am," said Sim Gage.  "And I got four hens."




CHAPTER XVII

SAGEBRUSHERS

Nels Jensen reached his home late in the afternoon, his face grave and
his tongue more than usually tight.  His wife, Karen, looked at him for
some time before she spoke.

"Find anything, up in?"

He nodded quietly.

"Doctor get to that sick man?"

"He wasn't sick," rejoined Nels.  "Tree fell on him."

"What you do with him?"

"Died before we come out.  Whole woods was afire up in there."

"I see the smoke a while back," said she unemotionally, nodding and
gazing out of the window toward the distant landscape.  "Died, did he?
Did you bring him down?"

"The wind has changed," said Nels sententiously.  "Before night, won't
be nothing to bring down.  We left him in his tent."

"Who set that fire, Nels?" she demanded of her husband after a time.

"The same people that burned out Sim Gage and Wid Gardner.  All of 'em
had cleared out but that one."

"How about that woman, Nels?"

"We brung her down with us.  She'd spent the night in the woods alone.
Doctor's got her in bed over at Sim's place now."  He turned his heavy
face upon her frowningly, apparently passing upon some question they
earlier had discussed.  "I say it's all right, Karen, about her."

"Well, are they going to be married?" she demanded of him.  "That's the
question.  Because if they ain't----"

"If they are or they ain't," said Nels Jensen, "she's not no common
folks like us."

"A lady--huh!"

"Yes, if I can tell one.  Such being so, best thing you can do, Karen,
is to get some eggs together, and like enough a loaf of bread, and go
over there right soon."

"If they wasn't _going_ to be married," began Karen, "people in here
wouldn't let that run along."

"Karen," said her husband succinctly, "sometimes you women folks make
me tired.  Go on and get the eggs."

"Oh, all right," said his wife; and already she was reaching for her
sunbonnet.  When she and her sturdy spouse had made their way by a
short cut across the fields to Sim Gage's house, Karen Jensen had
melted, and was no longer righteous judge, but simply neighbor.

"Where is she?" she demanded imperiously of Wid Gardner, whom she found
standing outside the door.

Wid nodded toward the interior of the half-ruined cabin.  As she passed
in she saw Doctor Barnes, sitting on a box, quietly watching the pale
face of a woman, young, dark-haired, flushed, her eyes heavy, her hands
spread out piteously upon the blanket covering of the rude bunk bed.
Karen's first quick glance assured her that this young woman was all
that Nels Jensen had called her--a lady.  She looked so helpless now
that the big ranchwoman's heart went out to her in spite of all.

"You'd better get right out, Doctor," said she; and that gentleman
followed her orders, exceeding glad to welcome a woman in this
womanless wreck of a home.

Doctor Barnes stood outside, hands in pocket, for a time looking across
the meadows lined with their banks of willows, silvering as usual in
the evening breeze.  "Come here," said he at length to the three men.
They all followed him to one side.

"Now, Gage," said he, "I want you to tell me the truth about how this
woman came out here."

Wid Gardner, taking pity on his friend, told him instead, going into
all the details of the conspiracy that had now proved so disastrous.
Doctor Barnes frowned in resentment when he heard.

"She's got to go back East," said he, "as soon as she's able to travel."

"That's what I think," said Sim Gage slowly.  "It's what I told her.
But she always said she didn't have no place to go back to.  She could
stay here as long as she liked, but now I ain't got much."

"But it can't run on this way, Gage," said Doctor Barnes.  "That girl's
clean as wheat.  Something's got to be done about this."

"Well, good God A'mighty!" said Sim Gage, "ain't that what I know?  If
only you'll tell me what's right to do, I sure will do it.  In one way
it ain't just only my fault she come out here, nor it ain't my fault if
she don't go back."

Doctor Barnes engaged for some time in breaking up bits of bark and
casting them from his thumb nail.  "Have you ever had any talk with her
about this?" said he.

"Some," said Sim honestly; "yes, some."

"What was it?"

"She told me, when she answered that ad, she was getting plumb
desperate, account of her eyes.  She was out of work, and she was
broke, and she didn't have no folks on earth, and she'd lost all her
money--her folks used to be rich, I reckon, like enough.  That's the
only reason she answered that fool ad about me being in the market, so
to speak, fer a wife.  That's how she come out.  She must of been
locoed.  You cain't blame _her_.  She was all alone in the whole world,
but just one girl that knowed her.  We got a letter from that girl--I
got it here in my pocket.  We opened it and read it, Wid and me did,
yesterday.  Her name's Annie Squires.  But she's broke too, I reckon.
Now what are we a-goin' to do?"

"Have you ever talked the whole business over--you two--since she came
out?"

"Doc," said Sim Gage, "I told you, I tried my damnedest, and I just
couldn't.  I says to myself, lady like she was, it wouldn't be right
fer a man like me to marry her noways on earth."

"And what did she say?"

Sim Gage began to stammer painfully.  "I don't know what she would
say," said he.  "I ain't never asked her none yet."

"Well, I reckon you'll have to," said Doctor Barnes slowly, after a
long time in thought; "if she lives."

"Lives?  Doc, you don't mean to tell me she's that sick?"

"She isn't trying to fight very hard.  When your patient would rather
die than live, you've got hard lines, as a doctor.  It's hard lines
here more ways than one."

"Die--her!--What would _I_ do then, Doc?" asked Sim Gage, so simply
that Doctor Barnes looked at him keenly, gravely.

"It's not a question about you, you damn sagebrusher," said he at last,
gently.  "Question is, what's best for her.  If I didn't feel such a
woman was too good to be wasted I'd say, let her go; ethics be damned
out here.  If she gets well she'll have to decide some time what's to
do about this whole business.  That brings you into the question again.
It was a bad bet, but deceived as she was, she's put herself under your
protection.  And mine!"

"You see," he added, "that's something that really doesn't come under
my profession, but it's something that's up to every decent man."

Mrs. Jensen came to the door, broom in hand.  "You, Sim," said she,
"come in here!"  She accosted him in hoarse whispers when he had obeyed.

"Look-a-here at this place!" said she.  "Is this where a hog or a human
has been living?  I've got things straightened around now, and don't
you dare muss 'em up.  When that pore girl is able to get around again
I'm a-going to take her and show her where everything is--she'll keep
this house better blind than you did with your both eyes open.  I've
got a aunt been blind twenty year, and she cooks and sweeps and sews
and knits as good as anybody.  She'll do the same way.  She's a good
knitter, I know.  The pore child."

Sim reached out a hand gently to the work which he found lying, needles
still in place, on the table where Mary Warren had left it the day
before.

"She'll learn soon," said Karen Jensen.  "Ain't she pretty enough to
make you cry, laying there the way she is."  The keen gray eyes of
Karen Jensen softened.  "She's asleep," she whispered.  "Doctor doped
her."

"If only now," said Sim Gage, frowning as usual in thought, "if only I
could get some sort of woman to come here and stay a while, until she
gets well.  It ain't right she should be in a place like this all
alone."

"You pore fool," said Karen Jensen, "did you think for a minute I'd go
away and leave that girl alone with you?  Go out and get some wood!
I'm a-going to get supper here.  Tell Nels he can go back home after
supper, and him and Minna and Theodore 'll have to keep house until I
get back.  The pore thing--you said she was right blind?" she concluded.

"Plumb blind," said Sim Gage.  "What's more, she can't see none a-tall.
It ain't no wonder she's scared sick."

"I'm mighty glad you're a-goin' to get supper here to-night," he
continued.  "I'm that rattled, like, I couldn't make bread worth a
damn."

He edged out of the cabin and communicated his news.  "Mrs. Jensen says
she'll take care of her till she gets better," he said.

"That's the best thing I've heard," commented Doctor Barnes.  "That'll
help.  I'll stay here to-night myself.  Gardner, can you run my car
down to the dam?"

"I might," said Wid.  "I never did drive a car much, but I think I
could.  Mormons does; and I've had a lot to do with mowing machines,
like them."

"Well, get down to the dam and tell the people I can't be back until
to-morrow afternoon.  Here's where I belong just now.  Where do I
sleep, Gage?"

"Out here in the tent, I reckon," replied Sim, "though most all my
blankets is in there on the bed.  Maybe I kin find a slicker
somewheres.  Wid, he ain't got nothing left over to his place, neither."

"Don't bother about things," said Nels Jensen.  "I'll go over and bring
some blankets from my place.  The woman'll take care of that girl until
she gets in better shape."

Doctor Barnes looked at them all for a time, frowning in his own way.
"You damn worthless people," said he with sudden sheer affection.  "God
has been good to you, hasn't he?"

"Now, ain't that the truth?" said Sim Gage, perhaps not quite fully
understanding.




CHAPTER XVIII

DONNA QUIXOTE

At ten of the following morning Mrs. Jensen had finished "redding up,"
as she called it, and had gone out into the yard.  Doctor Barnes, alone
at the bedside of his patient, was not professionally surprised when
she opened her eyes.

"Well, how's everything this morning?" he said quietly.  "Better, eh?"

She did not speak for some time, but turned toward him.  "Who are you?"
she asked presently.

"Nobody in particular," he answered.  "Only the doctor person.  I was
up in the mountains with you yesterday."

"Was it yesterday?" said she.  "Yes, I remember!"

"What became of him?" she asked after a time.  "That awful man--I had
it in my heart to kill him!"

Doctor Barnes made no comment, and after a while she went on, speaking
slowly.

"He said so many things.  Why, those men would do anything?"

"He'll not do any more treason," said Doctor Barnes.

"What do you mean?"

"A tree fell on him.  I got there too late to be of any use."

"He's dead?"

"Yes.  Don't let's talk of that."

"I've got to live?"

"Yes."

"Who are you?" she inquired after a time.  "You're a doctor?"

"I'm your sort, yes, Miss Warren," said he.

"A gentleman."

"Relative term!"

"You've been very good.  Where do you live?"

"Down at the Government dam, below here.  I'm the Company doctor."

"Well, why don't you go?  Am I going to live, or can I die?"

"What brought you out here, Miss Warren," said he at last.  "You don't
belong in a place like this."

"Where then do I belong?" she asked.  "Food and a bed--that's more than
I can earn."

"Maybe we can fix up a way for you to be useful, if you don't go away."
He spoke so gently, she began to trust him.

"But I'm not going away.  I have no place to go to."  She smiled
bitterly.  "I haven't money enough to buy my ticket back home if I had
a home to go to.  That's the truth.  Why didn't you let me die?"

"You ought to want to live," said Doctor Barnes.  "The lane turns,
sometimes."

"Not for me.  Worse and worse, that's all. . . .  I'll have to tell
you--  I don't like to tell strangers, about myself.  But, you see, my
brother was killed in the war.  We had some money once, my brother and
I.  Our banker lost it for us.  I had to work, and then, after he went
away, I began to--to lose my eyes."

"How long was that coming on?"

"Two years--about.  The last part came all at once, on the cars, when I
was coming out.  I've never seen--him--Mr. Gage, you know.  I don't
know what he looks like."

"They call him Sim Gage."

She remained silent, and he thought best to add a word or so, but could
not, though he tried.  Mary Warren's face had colored painfully.

"I suppose they've told you--I suppose everybody knows all about
that--that insane thing I did, coming out here.  Well, I was desperate,
that's all.  Yet it seems there are good people left in the world.  You
are all good people.  If only I could see; so I could tell what to do.
Then maybe I could earn my living, someway--if I have to live.

"Good-hearted, isn't he--Mr. Gage?"  She nodded with a woman's
confident intuition as she went on.  "He didn't cast me out.  What can
I do to repay him?"

He could make no answer.

"Little to give him, Doctor--but of course, if he could--in any sort of
justice--accept--accept----"

Doctor Barnes suddenly reached out a hand and pushed her hair back from
her forehead.  "I wouldn't," said he.  "Please don't.  Take things easy
for a little while."

She turned her dark and sightless eyes upon him.  "No!" said she.
"That isn't the way we do in my family.  We don't take things easy."

"Has he said anything to you?" asked Doctor Barnes after a long time.
"I have very much reluctance to ask."

"He's too much of a man," she said.  "No, not yet.  It was a sort of
bargain, even if we didn't say so outright.  'Object, matrimony!'  I
came out here with my eyes open.  But now God has closed them. . . .
Will you tell me the truth?"

"Yes."

"Does he--do you think he----"

"Cares for you?"

"Yes!"

Doctor Barnes replied with extreme difficulty.  "We'll say he does
care--that he cares immensely."

She nodded.  "I wanted to be fair," said she.  "I'm glad I can talk to
some one I can trust."

"What makes you think you can trust me?" blustered Doctor Barnes.  "And
you're so Puritan foolish, you're going to marry this man?  You think
that is right?"

"He took me in, when I deceived him.  I owe my life to him.  He's never
once hinted or laughed since I came here.  Why, he's a gentleman."

She turned her head away.  "Perhaps he would never know," she added.

"Something to take on," commented Doctor Barnes grimly.

"I'd try very hard," she went on.  "I'd try to do my best.  Mrs. Jensen
says I could learn a great many things.  She has an aunt that's--that
has lost her eyesight.  It may be my place in the world--here.  I want
to carry my own weight in the world--or else I want to die."

"He seems hard to understand--Mr. Gage," she went on slowly, the damp
of sheer anguish on her forehead now at speaking as she never could
wish to speak, thus to a stranger, and of the most intimate things of a
gentlewoman's life.  "As though I didn't know he couldn't ever really
love a woman like me!  Of course it isn't right either way.  It's
awful. . . .  But I'd do my best.  Life is more of a compromise than I
used to think it was.  But someway, out here--I'd be shut in forever
here in this Valley.  No one would ever know.  It--it wouldn't seem so
wicked, some way?  It's the end of the world, isn't it, to-day?  Well,
then----"

"I'm trying my best," said Doctor Barnes after a time, "to get at the
inside of your mind."

She lay for a time picking at the nap of the rough blanket--there were
no pillow slips and no pillows.  At length she turned to him, her eyes
wet.

"It's rather hard for a man to understand things like these--hard for a
woman to explain them to a stranger she's never seen," said she.  "But
there wasn't ever any other man.  I'm not here on any rebound.  It's
reason--it's duty.  That's all.  They keep telling us women we must
reason.  My brother was all I had left.  You see, he didn't have a good
foot--he was lame.  That was why we lived together so long, and--and
there was no one else.  And then--you know about my eyes?  Of course I
didn't know I was going to be quite blind when I started out here.  If
I had, I should have ended it all."

"You're a good man, Doctor," said she presently, since he made no
answer.  "You didn't tell me your name?"

"My name is Allen Barnes.  I've been down at the dam for quite a while.
I'm only around thirty yet myself.  I don't know a lot."

"Tell me about the country--it's very beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yes, very beautiful."

"And the people?"

"If you don't marry Sim Gage they'll tar and feather you.  If you do,
they'll back-bite and hate you.  If you get in trouble they'll work
their fingers to the bone to take care of you."

"There was another thing," she resumed irrelevantly, "I thought it was
a _sacrifice_, my coming out here to work.  I thought I ought to make
it.  You see, I'm the only one left of all my family.  I couldn't count
much anyway."

"Donna Quixote!" broke out Allen Barnes.

"Oh, I suppose," said she, smiling bitterly.  "I suppose that, of
course."

"This is a terrible thing!  I don't believe I can make you change."

"No, I suppose not," said she.  "My brother went to France, crippled as
he was.  Do you suppose my duty's going to frighten me?  You were in
the army?"

"Yes," said he.  "Mustered out a major.  Medical Corps.  In over a
year--I saw the last days--before Metz and the armistice.  I'm a
doctor, but they crowd me into the service again now, because they
think I'll be safe and useful here.  But from what you know about
things going on in this country, you know there's danger for any big
public work like that plant.  Our country's not mopped up, yet--though
it's going to be!  There must be some reason for suspicion at
Headquarters--I think we all might guess why from the doings of the
last day or so in here.

"I'm glad," said she.  "That makes me feel much better.  I shall be
sorry to have you go away.  But you'll not be so far.  And you were in
the war?"

"A little."  He laughed, and Mary Warren tried to laugh.  Then, hands
in pockets, and frowning, he left her, and walked apart in the yard for
a time.

Sim Gage, his face puckered up, was wandering aimlessly, shovel in
hand, in the vicinity of the burned barn, engaged in burying his dead
cattle.  He had relapsed as to his clothing, and was clad once more in
his ancient nether garments.  His arms were bare, his brick-red
shoulders showed above a collarless and ragged flannel shirt.  His
face, unreaped, was not lovable to look on.  When Doctor Allen Barnes
saw him, he walked away, his head forward and shaking from side to
side.  He did not want to talk with Sim Gage or any one else.




CHAPTER XIX

THE PLEDGE

Wid Gardner, by some miracle of self-confidence, did prove able to
drive a car in some fashion, for he made the round trip to the dam in
good enough time.  But he had had his trip for nothing; for Doctor
Barnes now made sudden and unexplained resolution not to remain longer
at Sim Gage's ranch.  After his departure in his own car, Wid Gardner
approached Sim as he stood, hands in pockets, in his door yard.

"Well," said he.  And Sim, in the succinct fashion of the land, replied
likewise, "Well"; which left honors even conversationally.

"How's things down below?" asked Sim presently.

"Sort of uneasylike," replied Wid.  "News had got down there that
something's wrong.  Company of soldiers is expected any day from
Kansas.  This here Doc Barnes is the main guy down there, a Major or
something.  They're watching the head engineer for the Company, I
believe.  No one knows who's who.  A heap of things has happened that
oughtn't to happen, but looks like Washington was getting on the game.

"Well, I got to go over home and look around," he concluded.  "We've
got to do some building before long--you got to get up another house
and barn, and so have I."

"I don't see why," said Sim Gage bitterly.  "I ain't got nothing to put
into a barn, ner I ain't got no cows to feed no hay to neither.  I
could of sold the Government plenty hay this fall if I'd had any, but
now how could I, without no horses and no money to get none?  I'm run
down mighty low, Wid, and that's the truth.  Mrs. Jensen can't stay
along here always, though Lord knows what we would a-done if she hadn't
come now.  One thing's sure--_She_ ain't a-goin' to stay here lessen
things straightens out.  You know who I mean."

Wid nodded, his face grave under its grizzled stubble.  "Yes," said he.

"Say," he added, suddenly.  "You know that letter we got fer her?  Now,
if that girl that wrote it, that Annie Squires, could come out here and
get into this here game, why, how would that be?  You reckon she would?"

"Naw, she wouldn't come," said Sim Gage.  "But, say, that reminds me--I
never did tell _her_ about that letter."

"Better take it in to her," said Wid, turning away.

He walked towards the gate.  After Sim had seen him safely in the
distance he went with laggard step toward the door of his own home.

Mary Warren was not asleep.  It was her voice, not loud, which greeted
his timid tapping at the half-burned door frame.

"Come in.  Who is it?"

"It's me, ma'am," said he; and entered a little at a time.

He might have seen the faint color rise to her cheek as she drew
herself up in bed, to talk with him.  Her face, turned full toward him,
was a thing upon which he could not gaze direct.  It terrified him with
its high born beauty, even as he now resolved to "look right into her
eyes."

"You've not been in to see me, Mr. Gage," said she at length, bravely.
"Why didn't you come?  I get awfully lonesome."

"Is that so?" said he.  "That's just the way I do."

"It's too bad, all this awful trouble," said she.  "I've been what they
call a Jonah, don't you think, Mr. Gage?"

"Oh, no, ma'am!"

"It was very noble of you--up there," she began, on another tack.  "You
saved my life.  Not worth much."

She was smiling cheerily as she could.  Sim Gage looked carefully at
her face to see how much she knew.

"Doctor Barnes told me that that man, the one that took me away, was
hurt by a tree; that you got there too late to save him.  But to think,
I'd have shot that man.  I _did_ try to shoot him, Mr. Gage!"

"Why, _did_ you, ma'am?" said Sim Gage.  "But then, it would of been a
miracle if you had a-hit him, your eyes being poor, like.  I reckon
it's just as well you didn't."

"Won't you sit down?"  She motioned her hand vaguely.  "There's a box
right there."

"How do you know, ma'am?"

"Oh, I know where everything is now.  I'm going to learn all about this
place.  I can do all sorts of things after a while--cook and sweep and
wash dishes and feed the chickens, and--oh, a lot of things."  It was
well enough that he did not see her face as she turned it away, anxious
to be brave, not succeeding.

"That there looks, now, like you'd moved in," said Sim Gage.  "Looks
like you'd come to stay, as the feller says."  He tried to laugh, but
did not make much of it; nor did she.

"Oh, I forgot," he resumed suddenly, bethinking himself of the errand
which had brought him hither.  "I got a letter fer you, ma'am."

"A letter?  Why, that's strange--I didn't know of any one----"

"Sure, it's fer you, ma'am.  It's from Annie Squires."

"Annie!  Oh! what does she say?  Tell me!"

Sim had the letter opened now, his face puckered.

"Why, nothing very much, ma'am," said he.  "I can't exactly see what it
says--light's rather poor in here just now.  But Wid, he read it.  And
she said it was all right with her, and that she was back in her little
room again.  I reckon it's the room where you both used to live?"

"She isn't married!  What did she say?"

"No'm, not married.  That's all off.  Her feller throwed her down.  But
she says she wants you to write to her right away and tell
her--now--tell her about things--you know----"

"What does she say?--Tell me _exactly_ what she said."

"One thing-"--he plunged desperately--"she said she was sure you was
happily married.  And she wanted you to tell her all about your
husband.  But then, good God A'mighty! she didn't know!"

"Well," said Mary Warren, her blood high in her face, "I'll have to
tell her all about that, won't I?  I'll write to her at once."

"You'll write to her?  What?"

--"And tell her how happy I am, how fortunate I've been.  I'll tell her
how you took me in even though I was blind; how you saved my life; how
kind and gentle you've been all along, where you might have been so
different!  I'll tell her how fine and splendid it's been of you to
take care of a sick, blind, helpless girl like me; and to--to--give her
a man's protection."

He was speechless.  She struggled on, red to the hair.

"You don't know women, how much they want a strong man to depend on,
Mr. Gage; a man like you.  Chivalrous?  Why, yes, you've been all of
that and more.  I'll write to Annie and tell her that I'm very happy,
and that I've got the very best--the very best--_husband_--in all the
world.  I'll tell her that?  I'll say that--that my _husband_----"

He heard her sobbing.  He could endure no more.  Suddenly he reached
out a hand and touched hers very gently.

"Don't, ma'am," said he.  "Fer God's sake don't cry."

It was some time after that--neither could have told how long--that he
managed to go on, his voice trembling.  "Do you _mean_ that, ma'am?  Do
you mean that, real and for sure?  You wouldn't joke with a feller like
over a thing like that?"

"I'm not joking," said she.  "My God!  Yes, I mean it."

His hand, broad, coarse, thick-fingered, patted hers a hundred times as
it lay upon the blankets, until she got nervous over his nervousness.

"It's too bad I ain't got no linen sheets," said he suddenly.  "But
them blankets is eleven-pound four-points, at that.  Of course, you
know, ma'am," said he, turning towards her, his voice broken, his own
vague eyes wet all at once, "you _do_ know I only want to do whatever
is the best fer you, now don't you?"

"Of course.  I do believe that."

"And it _couldn't_ run on this way very long.  Even Mrs. Jensen
wouldn't stay very long.  Nobody would come.  They'd like enough tar
and feather you and me, people in this Valley, if we _wasn't_ married.
And yet you say you've got no place to go back to.  You talk like you
was going to tell her, Annie Squires, that you was married.  She
supposes it _now_, like enough.  If there was any way, shape or manner
you could get out of marrying me, why of course I wouldn't let you.
But what else is there we can do?"

"Some time it would come to that," said Mary Warren, trying to dry her
eyes.  "It's the only way fair to us both."

"Putting it that way, now!" said Sim Gage, wisely, "putting it _that_
way, I'm here to say I ain't a-scared to do _nothing_ that's best fer
you.  And I want to say right now and here, I didn't mean no harm to
you.  I swear, neither Wid nor me ever did dream that a woman like
you'd come out here--I never knew such a woman as you was in the whole
_world_.  I just didn't _know_--that was all.  You won't blame me too
much fer gettin' you here into this awful place, will you?"

"No, I understand," said she gently.  "I think I know more about you
now than I did at first."

"I ain't much to know, ma'am.  But you--why, if I studied all my life,
I wouldn't begin to know you hardly none at all."  She could not doubt
the reverence of his tone, could not miss the sweetness of it.  No; nor
the sureness of the anchorage that it offered.

"If this is the way you want it," he went on, "I'll promise you never
to bother you, no way in the world.  I'll be on the square with you, so
help me God!  I'll take care of you the best way I can, so help me God!
I'll work, I'll do the best I can fer you; so help me God!"

"And I promise to be faithful to you, Sim Gage," said she, using his
common name unconsciously now.  "I swear to be true to you, and to help
you all I can, every way I can.  I'll do my duty--my _duty_.  Do you
understand?"

She was pale again by now, and trembling all through her body.  Her
hands trembled on the blankets.  It was a woman's pledge she was
giving.  And no man's hands or lips touched hers.  It was terrible.  It
was terrible, but had it not been thus she could not have endured it.
She must wait.

"I understand a heap of things I can't say nothing about, ma'am," said
Sim Gage.  "I'm that sort of man, that can't talk very much.  But I
understand a heap more'n I'm going to try to say.  Sometimes it's that
way."

"Sometimes it's that way," said Mary Warren, "yes.  Then that's our
promise!"

"Yes, it's a promise, so fer as I'm concerned," said Sim Gage.

"Then there isn't much left," said she after a time, her throat
fluttering.  She patted his great hand bravely as it lay upon the
blankets, afraid to touch her own.  "The rest will be--I think the rest
will be easier than this."

"A heap easier," said he.  "I dreaded this more'n I would to be shot.
I wanted to do the right thing, but I didn't know what _was_ right.
Won't you _say_ you knowed I wanted to do right all the time, and that
I just didn't _know_?  Can't you see that I'm sorry I made you marry
me, because it wasn't no way right?  Can't you see it's only just to
get you some sort of a home?"

"I said _yes_, Sim Gage," said Mary Warren.

"Yes?"  A certain exultation was in his voice.  "To _me_?  All my life
everything's been _no_ to me!"

She laid her hand on his, pity rising in her own heart.  "I'll take
care of you," said she.

"I was scared from the first of any woman coming out here," said Sim
Gage truthfully.  "But whatever you say goes.  But our gettin' married!
When?"

"The sooner the better."

They both nodded assent to this, neither seeing the other, for he dared
not look her way now.

"I'll go down to the Company dam right soon," said he.  "Ministers
comes in down there sometimes.  Up here we ain't got no church.  I
ain't been to church--well, scarcely in my whole life, but sure not fer
ten years.  You want to have it over with, don't you, ma'am?"

"Yes."

"That's just the way I feel!  It may take a week or so before I can get
any minister up here.  But I hope you ain't a-goin' to change?"

"I don't change," said Mary Warren.  "If I promise, I promise.  I have
said--yes."

"How is your bad knee?" she asked after a time, with an attempt to be
of service to him.  "You've never told me."

"Swoll up twict as big as it ought to be, ma'am.  But how come you to
think of that?  _You_ mustn't mind about me.  You mustn't never think
of me a-tall."

"Now," he continued a little later, the place seeming insufferably
small to him all at once, "I think I've got to get out in the air."  He
pushed over his box seat with much clatter as he rose, agony in every
fiber of his soul.

"I suppose you could kiss me," said Mary Warren, hesitatingly.
"It's--usual."  She tried to smile as she turned her face toward him.
It was a piteous thing, a terrible thing.

"No, ma'am, thank you.  I don't think I will, now, but I thank you just
the same.  You see, this ain't a usual case."

"Good-by!" said Mary Warren to him with a sudden wondering joy.  "Go
out and look at the mountains for me.  Look out over the valley.  I
wish I could see them.  And you'll come in and see me when you can,
won't you?"

She was talking to the empty room, weeping to an empty world.




CHAPTER XX

MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE

Sim Gage's reflections kept him wandering about for the space of an
hour or two in the open air.

"I'll tell you," said he, after a time to Mrs. Jensen, who once more
had cared for their household needs, "I reckon I'll go on down to the
dam, on the mail coach this evening.  You go in and tell her, won't
you?  Say I can't noways get back before to-morrow.  I got to see about
one thing and another.  She'll understand."

Therefore, when the mail wagon came down the valley an hour later, Sim
Gage was waiting for it at the end of his own lane.  He had meantime
arrayed himself cap-a-pie in all the new apparel he recently had
purchased, so that he stood now reeking of discomfort, in his new hat,
his new shoes, his tight collar.  Evidently something of formal
character was in his plans.

It was well toward midnight when the leisurely mail wagon arrived at
the end of its semi-weekly round and put up at the Company works.  At
that hour the company doctor was not visible, so Sim found quarters
elsewhere.  It was a due time after breakfast on the following morning
before he ventured to the doctor's office.

Doctor Barnes himself was engaged in bringing up his correspondence.
He was his own typist, and at the time was engaged in picking out
letter after letter upon a small typewriter with which he had not yet
acquired familiarity.  He was occupied with two letters of importance.
One was going to a certain medical authority of the University from
which he himself had received his degree.  It contained a certain
hypothetical question regarding diseases of the eye, upon which he
himself at the time did not feel competent to pass.

The second letter was one to his new Chief, an officer of the
reclamation engineers, at Washington.  He wore again to-day the uniform
of a Major of the Army.  The wheels of officialdom were revolving.  The
public quality of this enterprise was well understood.  That lawless
elements were afoot in that region was a fact also well recognized.  To
have this dam go out now would be an injury to the peace measures of
the country.  Soldiers were coming to protect it, and the soldiers must
have a commander.  In the hurried times of war, when there was not
opportunity always for exactness, majors were made overnight when
needful out of such material as the Government found at hand.  It might
have used worse than that of Allen Barnes to-day and here.

"Oh, there _you_ are," said he at length, turning around and finding
Sim Gage standing in the door.  "What brought you down here?  Anything
gone wrong?"

"Well, I ain't sure, Doc," said Sim Gage, "but like enough.  One thing,
my knee hurts me considerable."  In reality he was sparring for time.
"But you're dressed up for a soldier?"

"Yes.  Sit down there on the operating chair," said Doctor Barnes,
tersely.  "We'll look it over.  Anything happen to it?"

"Why, nothing much," said Sim.  "I hurt it a little when I was getting
in the mail wagon yesterday evening--busted her open.  So last night,
when I was going to bed, I took a needle and thread and sewed her up
again."

"What's that?  Sewed it up?"

"Yes, I got a needle and some black patent thread.  Do you reckon
she'll hold all right now, Doctor?"

Doctor Barnes was standing, scissors in hand, about to rip open the
trouser leg.

"No, you don't!" said Sim.  "Them's my best pants.  You just go easy
now, and don't you cut them none a-tall.  Wait till I take 'em off."

The doctor bent over the wounded member.  "You put in a regular
button-hole stitch," said he, grinning, "didn't you?  About three
stitches would have been plenty.  You put in about two dozen--and with
black thread!  Like enough poisoned again."

"Well," said Sim, "I didn't want to take no chances of her breaking
open again."

The doctor was busy, removing the stitches, and with no gentle hand
this time made the proper surgical suture.  "Leave it alone this way,"
said he, "and mind what I tell you.  Seems like you can't kill a man
out in this country.  You can do things in surgery out here that you
wouldn't dare tackle back in France, or in the States.  I suppose,
maybe, I could cut your head off, for instance."

"I wish't you would," said Sim Gage.  "She bothers me sometimes."

After a pause he continued, "I been thinking over a heap of things.
You see, I'm busted about flat.  If I could go on and put up some hay,
way prices is, I could make some money this fall, but them damn robbers
has cleaned me, and I can't start with nothing.  And I ain't got
nothing.  So there I am."

He vouchsafed nothing more, but had already said so much that Doctor
Barnes sat regarding him quietly.

"Gage," said he after a time, "things might be better in this valley.
I know that you'll stick with the Government.  Now, listen.  I'm going
to have practical command here from this time on.  This is under Army
control.  I'm going to run a telephone wire up the valley as far as
your settlement.  I'll appoint you a government special scout, to watch
that road.  If these ruffians are in this valley again we want to catch
them."

"You think I could be any use that way, Doc?" said Sim.

"Yes, I've got to have some of the settlers with me that I can depend
on, besides the regular detail ordered in here."

"Would I be some sort of soldier, too, like?" demanded Sim Gage.  "I
tried to get in.  They wouldn't take me.  I'm--I'm past forty-five."

"You'd be under orders just like a soldier."

"Would I have any sort of uniform, like, now?"

Doctor Barnes sat thinking for some time.  "No," said he.  "You have to
pass an examination before you really get into the Army; and you're
over age, you and Wid, both of you.  But I'll tell you--I'll give you a
hat--you shall have a hat with a cord on it, so you'll be like a
soldier.  We'll have a green service cord on it,--say green with a
little white in it, Sim Gage?  Don't that make you feel as if you were
in a uniform?"

"Now that'd sure be fine, Doc, a hat like that," said Sim.  "I sure
would like that.  And I certainly would try to do what was right."

Doctor Barnes, still sitting before the little white operating table
where his surgical instruments lay, was looking thoughtful.  "In all
likelihood I shall have to put a corporal and four men up at your
place.  That means they'll have to have a house.  I can commandeer some
of the teams down here, and some men, and they'll all throw in together
and help you build an extra cabin.  You and they can live in that, I
suppose?"

"I reckon we could," said Sim Gage.  "That'd be fine, wouldn't it?"

"And as those men would need horses for their own transport, they'd
need hay.  We'd pay you for hay.  I don't see why we couldn't leave one
wagon and a team at least up there, to get in supplies.  That would
help you in getting things started around on your place again, wouldn't
it?"

"Would it, Doc?" said Sim Gage, brightening immensely.  "It would raise
a _load_ offen me, that's what it would!  Right now, especial."  He
cleared his throat.

"That there brings me right around to what I come down here to talk
about," said he with sudden resolution.  "For instance, there was a
letter come to her up there--from back where she lived--from Annie
Squires.  So her and me got to talking over that letter, you see."

"What did Annie Squires say, if it's any of my business?" said the
Doctor, looking at him steadily.

"Well, I was just talking things over, that way, and we allowed that
maybe Annie Squires could come out here--after--well, after the
_wedding_, you see."

It was out!  Sim Gage wiped off his brow.

"The wedding?"

"Why, one thing and other, her and me got to talking things over.
Things couldn't run on; so we--we fixed it up."

"Gage," said Doctor Barnes suddenly, "I've got to talk to you."

"Well, all right, all right, Doc.  That'll be all right.  I wish't you
would."

"See here, man.  Don't you realize what that woman is?  She's too good
for men like you and me."

"Yes, Doc.  But I wouldn't never raise hand nor voice to her, the least
way in the world.  I allowed she could live along as my housekeeper,
but seems not.  You can shoot me, Doc, if you don't think I'm a-doing
the right thing by her in every way, shape and manner."

"She's too _good_--it's an impossible thing."

Sim Gage's face was lifted, seriously.  "Doc, you know mighty well
that's true, and so do I--she's plumb too good for me.  But it ain't me
done all the thinking."

"Didn't you ask her about it?"

"It kind of come around."

Doctor Barnes rose and paced rapidly up and down within the narrow
confines of his office.  "You _do_ love her, don't you?"

Sim Gage for the first time in his life felt the secret quick of his
simple, sensitive soul cut open and exposed to gaze.  Not even the
medical man before him could fail of sudden pity at witnessing what was
written on his face---all the dignity, the simplicity, the reticence,
all the bashfulness of a man brought up helplessly against the knife.
He could not--or perhaps would not--answer such a question even from
the man before him, whom he suddenly had come to trust and respect as a
being superior to himself.

But Allen Barnes was the pitiless surgeon now.  "I don't care a damn
about you, of course, Gage.  You're not fit for her to wipe her shoes
on, and you know it.  But _she_ can't see it and doesn't know it.  If
she could see you--what do you suppose she'd think?  Gage--_she mustn't
ever know_!"

Sim Gage looked at him quietly.  "Every one of them words you said to
me, Doc, is plumb true, and it ain't enough.  I told her my own self,
that first day, and since then, it was a blessing she was blind.  But
look-a-here, I reckon you don't understand how things is.  You say
you're going to build a house up there, and help me get a start.
That's fine.  Because hers is the other one, my old house.  I wish't I
could get some sheets and pillow cases down here while I'm right here
now--I'd like to fix her up in there better'n what she is.  I'd even
like to have a tablecloth, like.  But you understand, that's for _her_,
not me.  That's _her_ house, and not mine.  She can't see.  It's a
God's blessing she can't.  And what you said is so--she mustn't _ever_
know, not now ner no time, what--Sim Gage really is."

Doctor Barnes' voice was out of control.  He turned once more to this
newly revealed Sim Gage, a man whom he had not hitherto understood.

"Marriage means all sorts of things.  It covers up things, begins
things, ends things.  That's true."

"It ends things for her, Doc--it don't begin nothing fer me, you
understand.  It is, but it isn't.  I'd never step a foot across that
door sill, night or day--you understand that, don't you?  You didn't
think _that_ for one minute, did you?  You didn't think I was so
low-down I couldn't understand a thing like _that_, did you?  It's
because she's blind and don't know the truth; and because she's plumb
up against it.  That's why."

"Oh, damn you!" said Doctor Barnes savagely.  "You understand me better
than I did you.  Yes--it's the only way."

"It sure is funny how funny things get mixed up sometimes, ain't it,
Doc?" remarked Sim Gage.  "But now, part of my coming down here was
about a minister."

"Well," said Doctor Barnes, desperately, feeling that he was party to a
crime, "it's priest day next Sunday.  We have five or six different
sorts of priests and ministers that come in here once a month, and they
all come the same Sunday, so they can watch each other--every fellow is
afraid the other fellow will get some souls saved the wrong way if he
isn't there on the job too.  Listen, Gage--I'll bring one of these
chaps--Church of England man, I reckon, for he hasn't got much to do
down here--up to your ranch next Sunday morning.  We've got to get this
over with, or we'll all be crazy--I will, anyhow.  When I show up, you
two be ready to be married.

"Does that go, Sim Gage?" he concluded, looking into the haggard and
stubbly face of the squalid-figured man before him.

"It goes," said Sim Gage.




CHAPTER XXI

WITH THIS RING

It was the Sabbath, and the summer sun was casting its southering light
even with the eaves of Sim Gage's half-ruined house.  It was high noon.

High noon for a wedding.  But this was a wedding of no pomp or
splendor.  No bell summoned any hither.  There was no organ peal, nor
maids with flowers and serious faces to wait upon the bride; no
processional; no aisles fenced off with bride's ribbon; no audience to
crane.  In the little room stood only a surpliced priest of the Church
of England.  The witnesses were Nels Jensen and Karen, his wife, back
of whom was Wid Gardner, near to him Doctor Barnes.  Those made all
present, now at high noon.  And Sim Gage, trembling very much, stood at
the side of a bed where Mary Warren lay propped up in the blankets to
speak her wedding words.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together," began the holy man; and so
the ceremony went on in the lofty words which some inspired man has
written for the most solemn of all ceremonies.

"Dearly beloved . . .  Dearly beloved!

"Who giveth this woman in marriage?" went on the deep voice of the
minister at last, himself strangely moved.  Indeed, it had only been
after a long consultation with Doctor Barnes that he had been willing
to go on with this ceremony.  "Who giveth this woman in marriage?"

Sim Gage had no idea of the marriage ceremony of the Church of England
or of any other church.  As for Doctor Barnes, the matter had been too
serious for him to plan details.  But now, seeing the exigency, he
stepped forward quickly and offered himself as the next friend of Mary
Warren, orphaned and friendless.

The ceremony went on until it came to that portion having to do with
the ring--for this was Church of England, and full ceremony was used.

"With what token?" began the voice of the man of God.  Sim Gage's eyes
were raised in sudden question.  Neither he nor Doctor Barnes, quasi
best man, had ever given thought to this matter of the ring.  But again
Doctor Barnes was able to serve.  Quickly he slipped off the seal ring
from his own finger and passed it to Sim Gage.  The gentle hand of the
churchly official showed him how to place it upon the finger of Mary
Warren, who raised her own hand in his.

So finally it was over, and those solemn ofttimes mocking words were
said: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!"  And then
the surpliced minister of the church prayed God to witness and to bless
this wedding of this man and this woman; that prayer which sometimes is
a mockery before God.

There was at least one woman to weep, and Karen Jensen wept.  She left
the place and ran out the door into the open sunlight, followed soon by
her husband and Wid Gardner.

Sim stood for a moment undecided.  He did not stoop even now to greet
his wife with that salutation usual at this moment.  The group at the
bedside broke apart.  The bride, white as a ghost, dropped back on her
blankets.  It was a godsend that at this instant Tim, the little dog,
broke in the door, barking and overjoyed, welcoming the company, and
making a diversion, which saved the moment.

Sim bent and picked up the little animal.

"He's glad," said he.  With a vague and gentle pat of the blankets in
the general direction of Mary Gage, his wife, he turned, head bent, and
tip-toed out into the sunlight.

Karen Jensen interrupted any conversation, having dried her tears.
"Come on back in five or ten minutes," she said.  "I'll have the
wedding breakfast ready.  I've baked a cake."

When they had eaten of the cake, which they all agreed was marvelous,
the minister gladly repacked his vestments in his traveling bag
preparatory to his journey back with Doctor Barnes.  He turned, after a
gentle handshake, saying: "Good-by, Mrs. Gage."  Sim Gage, bridegroom,
suddenly flushed dark under his brick-red skin at hearing these words.

Karen Jensen finished her labors attendant upon the wedding breakfast,
and made ready for her own departure.  Wid Gardner likewise found
reason for a visit to his own homestead.  Mary Gage was left alone, and
ah! how white a bride she was.

Sim Gage stood outside his own door, looking at the departing figures
of Nels and Karen Jensen crossing the meadow toward their home; turning
to catch sight of Wid, though the latter was no longer visible.  In
desperation he looked upon a sky, a landscape, which for the first time
in all his life seemed to him ominous.  For the first time in his life
Sim Gage, sagebrusher, man of the outlands, felt himself alone.




CHAPTER XXII

MRS. GAGE

Ten days after the wedding at Sim Gage's ranch, the mistress of that
establishment, sitting alone, heard the excited barking of the little
dog in the yard, and the sound of a motor passing through the gate.
Instinctively she turned toward the window, as the car stopped.  She
heard a voice certainly familiar and welcome as well.

"Well, how do you do this morning?  And how is everything?"  It was
Doctor Barnes saluting her.  He came up to the unscreened window where
she stood, and stood there for a time with one or other like remark,
before he passed around the house and came in at the door.

"You're alone?" said he.

"Why, yes, Mr. Gage has gone over to Mr. Gardner's.  They're getting
out some building material."

"Mrs. Jensen gone home too?"

"Oh, yes.  I'm mistress of the house.  I wonder how it looks?"

"You'd be surprised!" said Doctor Barnes, cryptically.

He sat down, hat on knee, silent 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 Barnes.  "I've lost my bet to Sim
Gage--that fellow will go over three pounds.  I didn't know there was
such a grayling in the world."

"And now tell me," said he, as she felt him lift the fish from her lap,
and with woman's instinct brushed away the drops of water from her
frock, "isn't life worth living after all, when you have a day like
this, and a sky such as we have, and sport like this?"

He looked at her face.  There was less droop to the corners of her
mouth than he ever had seen.  There was a certain light that came to
her features which he had not yet recognized.  She drew a long breath
and sighed as she dropped her hands into her lap.  "Do you suppose we
could get another one?" said she.

He laughed exultantly.  "I should say we could!  Just sit still where
you are, and we'll load up again."

As a matter of fact the grayling were rising freely, and in a moment or
so he had fastened another which he added to the one in the basket.
This one she insisted that he land alone, so that he might have all the
sport.  And thus, he generously sharing with her, they placed six of
the splendid fish in the basket, and he declared they had enough for
the time.

"Come," said he, "we'll go back now."

She reached out a hand.  "I want to carry the fish," said she.  "Let
me, please.  I want to do something."

He passed the basket strap over her shoulder for her, Tim following on
behind, panting, as guardian of the spoils.  "You're a good sport,"
said Major Barnes.  "One of the best I ever saw, and I saw a lot of
them over there."

She was stumbling forward through the sage as best she might, tripping
here and there, sweeping her skirts now and again from the ragged
branches which caught against them.  He took her hand in his to lead
her.  It lay light and warm in his own--astonishingly light and warm,
as suddenly he realized.  She had pushed the sunbonnet back from her
forehead as she would have done had she been desirous of seeing better.
He noted the color of her cheeks, the regularity of her features, the
evenness of her dark brows, the wholly pleasing contour of her figure,
as she stumbled bravely along at his side.

"You're fine!" he repeated, suddenly.  "You're fine!  I expect to see
you live to bless the day you came here.  I expect to hear you say yet
that you're _glad_ you're alive--not alive just because it was your
duty to live.  Don't talk to me any more about duty."

He was striding along excitedly.  "Not too fast!" she panted, holding
fast to his hand.

And so they came presently to the cabin door again, and saw Sim Gage
perched high on a load of logs, coming down the lane.

"I'm going to put the new cabin for the men right over there," said
Doctor Barnes.  "And when Annie Squires comes--why, we're going to have
the grandest little ranch here you ever saw.  And, of course, I can
telephone up every once in a while."

"Telephone?" said she vaguely.  "Then you won't be coming up yourself?"




CHAPTER XXIII

THE OUTLOOK

Doctor Barnes was making ready to depart when Sim Gage came in at the
gate with his load of logs.  They exchanged greetings, Sim regarding
his visitor rather closely.

"We've just got back from fishing," said Doctor Barnes.

"Yes, I seen you both, down in the medders."

"We had one grand time, brother.  Look here."  He opened the lid of his
basket.

"All right," said Sim.  "We'll cook 'em for supper.  Some folks like
'em.  There's need for about everything we can get.  I reckon God's
forgot us all right."

"Cheer up!" rejoined his guest.  "I was just thinking God was in His
heaven to-day.  Well, thank you, old man, for that fishing.  That's the
finest grayling water in the whole world.  I've lost my bet with you.
May I come up again some time?"

"Yes," said Sim Sage, "sometimes,--when you know I'm around.  Come
again," he added, somewhat formally, as they shook hands.  "I'll be
around."

He turned toward his house as soon as he saw the car well off in the
lane.  He found his wife sitting with her face turned toward the window.

"He's just about going around the corner now," said she, following the
sound of the car.  And then, presently, "And how are you, sir?  You've
been gone a long while."

Sim had seated himself awkwardly on a chair, his hat on his knee.
"Have a good time down in the medder?" he asked presently.  "He told me
you was fishing."

"Oh, yes, and we caught some whoppers too.  They'll be good to eat, I'm
sure."

"Yes, I expect you'll like them."  He seemed for some reason less than
ordinarily loquacious, and suddenly she felt it.

"Tell me," said she, turning squarely towards him with a summoning of
her own courage.  "Why are you away all the time?  It's been more than
a week, and I've hardly seen you.  You're away all the time.  Am I
doing wrong in any way?"

"Why, no."

"I don't mean to cry--it's just because I'm not used to things yet.
It's hard to be blind.  But--I meant all I said--then.  Don't you
believe me?"

"I know you did," said he, simply.  But still the awkward silence, and
still her attempt to set things more at ease.

"Why don't you come over here close to me?" said she, with an attempt
dutiful at least.  "How can I tell anything about you?  You've never
even touched me yet, nor I you.  You've never even--I've never had any
real notion of how you look, what you are like.  I never saw your
picture.  It was an awful thing of me to do."

"Are you sorry?"

"But any woman wants to see her husband, to know what he is, what he
looks like.  I can't tell you how I wonder.  And I don't seem to
know--and can't learn.  Tell me _about_ yourself, won't you?  What sort
of looking man are you?  What are you like?"

"I ain't like nothing much," said Sim Gage.  "I ain't much for looks.
Of course, I suppose women do kind of want to know what men folks is
like, that way.  I hadn't thought of that, me being so busy--and me
being so pleased just to look at you, and not even thinking of your
looking at me."  He struggled in saying these words, so brave for Sim
Gage to venture.

"Yes?  Can't you go on?"

"I ain't so tall as some, but I'm rather broad out, and right strong at
that.  My eyes is sort of dark, like, with long lashes, now, and I got
dark hair, in a way of speaking--and I got good features.  I dunno as I
can say much more."  Surely he had been guilty of falsehood enough for
one effort.  But he did not know he lied, so eager was he to have favor
in her eyes.

"That's fine!" said she.  "I knew all along you were a fine-looking
man--the Western type.  We women all admire it, don't you know?  And
I'd like to see you in the Western dress too.  I always liked that.
But, tell me, what can you do?  What do you do?  Do you read out here
much?  Do you have anything in the way of music?  I used to play the
piano a little."

Sim moved about awkwardly on his chair.  "I ain't got around to getting
another pianny since I moved in here.  Maybe we can, some day, after
the hay gets turned.  I used to play the fiddle some, but I ain't got
no fiddle now, neither.  Some play the fiddle better'n what I do.  A
mouth harp's a good thing when you're alone a good deal.  Most any one
can play a mouth harp some.  Lots of fellers do out here, nights, of
winters."

"Is there anything else you can do?" she asked, bravely, now.  The
utter bleak barrenness of the man and his life came home to her,
struggling with her gratitude, her sense of duty.

He thought for a time before he spoke.  "Why, yes, several things, and
I'm sorry you can't see them things, too.  For instance, I can tie a
strong string around my arm, and bust it, just doubling up my muscle.
I'm right strong."

"That's fine!" said she.  "Isn't it odd?  What else, then?"  She smiled
so bravely that he did not suspect.  "Mayn't I feel the muscle on your
arm?"

Hesitatingly, groping, she did put out her hand.  By chance, as he
shifted back, afraid of her hand, it touched the coarse fabric of his
shirt sleeve.  Had it fallen further she might have felt his arm, bare;
might have discovered the sleeve itself to be ragged and fringed with
long-continued use.  But she did not know.

"Oh, you're just in your working clothes, aren't you?" she said.  "So
this is the West I used to read about," she said musing.  "Everything
Western--even the way you talk.  Not like the people back East that I
used to know.  Is every one out here like you?"

"No, not exactly, maybe," said he.  "Like I said, you'd get tired of
looking at me if that's all there was to do."

She broke out into laughter, wholly hysterical, which he did not in the
least understand.  He knew the tragedy of her blindness, but did not
know that he himself was tragic.

"You are odd," said she.  "You've made me laugh."  She both laughed and
wept.

"You see, it's this way," he went on eagerly.  "It's all right in the
summer time, when you can get out of doors, and the weather is
pleasant, like it is now.  But in the winter time--_that's_ when it
gets lonesome!  The snow'll be eight feet deep all around here.  We
have to go on snow shoes all the winter through.  Now, if we was shut
in here alone together--or if you was shut in here all by yourself, and
still lonesomer, me being over in the other house mostly--the evenings
would seem awful long.  They always used to, to me."

She could not answer at all.  A terrible picture was coming before her.
He struggled on.

"If that Annie Squires girl came out here, she'd be a lot of help.  But
how can you tell whether she'd stay all winter?  That's the trouble
with women folks--you can't tell what they'll do.  She wouldn't want to
stay here long unless she was settled down some way, would she?  She
ain't married, like you, ma'am.  She might get restless, like enough,
wouldn't she?"

"I don't know," said Mary Gage, suddenly turning away.  She felt a vast
cloud settling down upon her.  Ten days?  She had been married ten
days!  What would ten years mean?

"I wish I didn't have to think at all," said she, her lips trembling.

"So do I, ma'am," said Sim Gage to his lawful wedded wife with engaging
candor.  "I sure do wish that."




CHAPTER XXIV

ANNIE MOVES IN

The hum of a motor at the gate brought Mary Gage to the window once
more, the third morning after Doctor Barnes' visit.  It was Doctor
Barnes now, she knew.  She could not see that he now helped out of the
car a passenger who looked about her curiously, more especially at the
figure of Sim Gage who, hands in pockets, stood gazing at them as they
drove into the yard.

"Listen," said Doctor Barnes under his breath to the young woman,
"that's the man--that's Sim Gage.  Don't show surprise, and don't talk.
Remember what I've told you.  For God's sake, play the game!"

Sim Gage slowly approached the car, and the doctor accosted him.  "This
is Miss Squires, Mr. Gage," said he, "the young woman we have been
expecting."

"Pleased to meet you," said Sim, after the fashion of his extremest
social formality.  And then, in a burst of welcome, "How'd you like it,
coming out?"

"Fine!" said Annie, dusting off her frock.  "Lovely."

She paid no attention to Sim Gage's words, "Go right on in.  She's
anxious to see you," but hurried on, muttering to herself, "Ain't it
the limit?  And her blind!"

She stopped for an instant at the door, staring into the dim interior,
then with a cry rushed in.  Mary, stone blind, stood staring,
trembling.  The two met in swift embrace, mingled their tears.

"Oh, Mary, it can't be!" said Annie after a time.  "It will get well,
won't it?  Say, now--your eyes will come back, won't they?  How did you
get here--what did you do?  And you're married!"

"Yes," said Mary Gage, "that's true."

"Oh, then," said Annie Squires, pulling herself together with
resourcefulness, "that was your husband out in the yard, that
fine-looking man!  I was in such a hurry.  You lucky thing!  Why didn't
you tell me more about him, Mary?  He has such a pleasant way.  I don't
mind men being light complected, or even bald.  He's fine!"

"I think so," said Mary.  "You like him?"

"Why, how could any one help liking him, Sis?" demanded Annie, choking.
"Of course.  So this is where you live?"

"Yes, this is my home," said Mary Gage.  "And then you're not
disappointed in him?  I'm so glad!  I've never seen him--my husband.
You're joking about the color of his hair, of course."

"You'll have to help yourself, Annie," she went on, having no reply.
"I'm not of much use.  I've learned a few things and I help a little.
You can see about everything there is, I suppose, at one look.  Isn't
it nice?"

"Couldn't be better," said Annie Squires, again choking back her tears.
"You certain are the lucky kid.  And he--he married you after he saw
you was blind?"

"It was a strange thing for a man to do," said Mary Gage, slowly.
"Yes,--but fine."

"I'm glad you've done so well.  This will settle a heap of things,
won't it, Mary?"

"Some things."

The step of Doctor Barnes was heard at the door.  Mary Gage called out,
asking him to come in.  Some talk then followed about the domestic
resources of the place, in which Annie was immediately interested.

"But I've got four hens," said Mary Gage, smiling.

"Well, it seems to be a right cheerful, friendly sort of place, don't
it?" said Annie after a while, "where they come in and kill the cattle
and horses and burn the house, and run away with people!"  She was
looking at the burned door jamb of Sim Gage's cabin as she spoke.
Doctor Barnes had told her the story of the raid.

"Who's _that_ coming in?" she remarked after a time, having caught
sight through the window of an approaching figure.

"That's your neighbor, Wid Gardner," said Doctor Barnes.

"He's taller than some," said Annie after a time.  "Gee, ain't he
plain!  And ain't he sunburned!"

Wid Gardner himself presently approached the door, to be suddenly taken
aback when he met the somewhat robust and blooming young person who had
just arrived.

"You've knew Mrs. Gage for some time?" he managed to say at last, to
make conversation, after he also had declared himself pleased to meet
the newcomer.

"Lived together for years," said Annie.  "Only real pal I ever had.  I
took care of her the best I knew how.  I'm going to keep on."  A
certain truculence was in her tone.

Wid Gardner and Annie Squires soon found themselves together and
somewhat apart, for she beckoned him to meet her outside the cabin.

"Say, Mister," said she to him suddenly, "tell me,--are you the man
that wrote them letters to us girls?  I know he never done nothing like
that."  She indicated Sim Gage, who stood staring vacuously at her
trunk, which still stood upon the ground near the car.

Wid Gardner flushed deeply.  "I ain't saying one way or the other,"
said he.  "But I know the letters went, all right.  Like enough we both
ought to of been shot for it."

"You know it, and you said it!"

"But now, Miss Squires," he went on, "we didn't ever really suppose
that anybody would answer our fool letters.  We never did realize that
a girl would actual be so foolish, way that one was."

"Fine business, wasn't it, you men--to treat a good clean girl like
that!  Look at that!"  Again she indicated Sim Gage, withering contempt
in her tone.

"Who's going to run this place?" she demanded.  "She can't."

"I dunno," said Wid Gardner vaguely.  "You won't be going back right
away, will you?"'

"Not any quicker'n God'll let me!" said Annie Squires.  Which struck
poor Wid silent.

Doctor Barnes and Sim had passed to the other side of the premises,
where the little group of men who had come in the day previous, and had
pitched their tent in the yard, were engaged in laying up the logs of
the cabin which was to be the quarters of the men stationed here.
There were a half dozen of them in all, a corporal, four privates, and
a carpenter impressed from the Company forces to supervise the building.

"In a week you won't know the place, Sim," said the doctor.  "They'll
run this house up in jig time.  With two bunk rooms and a dining room
and a kitchen, there'll be plenty of room.  I'll see that it's
furnished.  Gardner can stay here until he gets time to build on his
own place.  That girl that came out with me is a good sort, as
big-hearted as they make them.  It's a godsend, her coming out.  She
told me she could cook, and would be glad to have a job.  If your wife
can keep busy, it will be all the better for them both."

"But now, I told you I'd put you on the pay roll, Gage," he concluded.
"I want you to act as a scout here, to keep watch on this road and the
cross road into the Reserve.  When I was in town I got you a
hat--regulation O. D.,--with a green cord around it, as I told you.  Go
on over to the car and get it--it's yours."

Sim walked slowly over to the car and peered in at the new head gear.
He took it up gingerly by the rim, regarding the green cord with
curiosity.  Half reverently he placed it on his head.  A vast new pride
came to him at that moment.  Never before had he taken on any badge of
authority, known any sort of singling out or distinction in all his
drab, vague life.  No power ever had sent to him a parchment engraved
"placing special confidence in your loyalty and discretion."  But even
his mind divined that now in some way he did represent the authority
and government of his country, that some one had placed confidence in
his loyalty and discretion.  If not, why this green cord on his hat?

"When you wear that, Gage," said Doctor Barnes sharply to him, "you
button up your shirt and roll down your sleeves, do you understand?
You shave and you wash clean every morning.  You comb your hair and
keep it combed.  If I'm cast away as Major of this desert island out
here I'm going to be the law and the gospel.  And the first thing, Sim
Gage, that a soldier learns is to be neat.  Think of that cord on your
hat!"

"Doc," said Sim Gage, "that's just what I am a-thinking of."

"Well, I've got to go on back to the dam.  I suppose those two women
can take care of themselves somehow now."

"I wish't you wouldn't go away," said Sim uneasily.  "One woman is bad
enough--but now there's two of them."

"Two won't be as much trouble as one," said Doctor Barnes.

As he turned he saw standing in the door a figure which to him suddenly
seemed pathetic.  It was Mary Gage.  She was looking out now vaguely.
He did not even go over to say good-by.

In the meantime Annie Squires, not backward in her relations with
mankind, again engaged Wid Gardner in conversation as they stood at the
edge of the yard, and Wid's downcast head bespoke his lack of happiness
at what he heard.

"I never in all my born days saw a joint like this," said Annie, her
dark eyes snapping.  "It ain't fit for cowboys--it ain't fit for
nobody.  Her _married_ to him!  And how on earth are we going to keep
it from her?  If she ever knew--my God!  it would break her
heart--she'd kill herself now if she knew the truth.  Man, you don't
know that girl--you just think she's a common, ordinary woman, don't
you?  You can't understand a woman like that, you people.  She just
thought it was her duty to get married.  Her _duty_--do you get
me?--her _duty_!  It's a crime when a woman like that gets that sort of
bugs in their nut.  Well, what could I do?  I figured if she could
marry and get a good home it would be the best thing for her.  Do you
know what us two girls done?--we flipped a copper to see which one of
us should have the chance.  Wasn't that a fine thing to do?  Well, she
won--and look at that!"

She again pointed to Sim Gage, who stood hands in pocket, looking after
Doctor Barnes' departing car.  "Look at him!  Is he human or ain't he?
He ain't got but one gallus, and I bet he ain't been shaved for a week.
His clothes may fall off him any minute.  He's past forty-eight if he's
a day.  Say, man, leave me take the ax and go kill that thing right
away!  I got to do it sometime.  Do you get me?"

"Yes," said Wid Gardner, somewhat agitated, "yes, there's a heap of
truth in what you say.  There ain't no use in me denying not a single
thing.  All I got to say is we didn't never mean to do what this here
has turned out to be.  But now you've come out here, too, and in some
ways it makes it harder to keep things quiet.  You don't look to me
like you was easy to be right quiet.  What are you going to do about it
your own self?"

"I've told you what I'm going to do about it.  Just as soon as the
Lord'll let us, I'm going to take her out of here.  Do you think I'm
one of them sort that'll set down and let the world walk over me, and
say I like it?  Oh, no, not sister Annie!  I ain't blind."

"Say, Mister," said she a moment later as he maintained disconsolate
silence, "they call you Wid.  What's your real name?"

"My name is Henry," remarked her companion.  "They only call me Wid for
short."

"Huh!  Well, now, Henry, go get some wood for supper.  Cut it short
enough so the door'll shut tight.  And fetch in another pail of
water--water's apt to get bad, standing around that way.  And while
you're out along this little creek pull some of this water cress and
bring it in--didn't you know it's good to eat?  And, Henry, if you've
got any cows, you see that one of them is brought over here, and a
churn--we got to have some butter.  We got to get a garden started even
if it is a little bit late.  And, Henry, listen, them hens got to have
some kind of a door to their coop--they're just walking around aimless.
And I want you to get a collar for that little dog--I'm going to see if
I can learn it to lead Mary around.  There's a heap of things have got
to be done here.  How long you been living here yourself?"

"Why, I don't live here a-tall," said Wid, aghast at the new duties
which seemed to be crowding upon him.  "That's my place over there
acrosst the fence.  I just strolled over in here to-day.  They burned
me out."

"You two was neighbors, huh?  And I suppose you both set around and
figured out that fine little game about advertising for a wife?  Well,
you got one, anyway, didn't you?"

"Well, this ain't my place--Sim lives here."

"You don't suppose I'd ask him to do anything, do you?" said Annie
Squires.  "He's no good.  I tell you he'll be playing in luck if I
don't break loose and read the law to him."

"Well, now," said Wid, apologetically, "I wouldn't start any too strong
right at first.  There ain't nothing he wouldn't do for her--nothing in
the whole, wide world."

"But now, about you," he added--"I'm glad you've come.  It looks sort
of like you was going to move in, don't it?"

"You've said it," said Annie.

Wid Gardner looked at her curiously, and meekly went about his new
duties regarding wood and water.




CHAPTER XXV

ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE

Revolution, and not less, had occurred within a month at Sim Gage's
ranch.  This was not so much evidenced by the presence of a hard-bitten
corporal and his little army of four men; nor so much more by the
advent of Annie Squires; neither was it proved by the new buildings
that had risen so quickly; nor by the appearance of new equipment.  It
was not so much in the material as in the intangible things of life
that greatest change had come.

Karen Jensen smiled now as she talked with her new friend, Annie
Squires.  Even Mary Gage, for some reason, had ceased to weep.  But the
main miracle was in the instance of Sim Gage himself.

Perhaps it was the hat which did it, with its brave cord of green,
humblest of all the insignia of those who stand at the threshold of the
Army.  To Sim's vague soul it carried a purpose in life, knowledge that
there was such a thing as service in the world.  Daily his face now was
new-reaped, his hands made clean.  He imitated the erectness and
alertness of these young soldiers whom he saw, learned the jerk of the
elbow in their smart salute.  Enriched by a pair of cast-off breeches,
and the worn leggins thereto, he rode now with both feet in the
stirrups and looked square between his horse's ears.  Strong as are
many lazy men, not cowardly, and therefore like many timid men, he rode
straight, with his campaign hat a trifle at one side, like to the
fashion of these others.

And he wished that She might see him now, in his new uniform.  He
wondered if she knew how much larger and more important a man he was
now.  Into the pleached garden of his life came a new vision of the
procession of the days; and he was no longer content.  He saw the
vision of a world holding the cares and duties of a man.

That this revolution had come to pass was by reason of the presence of
this blind woman who walked tap-tapping, led by a little dog; a blind
woman who for some reason had begun to smile again.

As for Doctor Barnes, he had been the actual agent, to be sure.  This
new order of things was the product of his affirmative and initiating
mind.  Mary Gage, consciously or unconsciously, within a few weeks,
learned his step as surely as his voice, could have told you which was
his car had a dozen come into the yard at the same time.  Therefore, on
this certain morning, she knew his voice, when, after stopping his car
in the dooryard, he called out to the men before he approached the door
of her own home.  It was then that Mary Gage did something which she
never yet had done when she had heard the step and voice of her lawful
lord and master--something she had not done since her arrival here.
Blind, she turned unconsciously to the mirror which she knew Annie had
hung on the wall!  She smoothed back her hair, felt for the corners of
her collar to make it neat.  She really did not know that she did these
things.

She was young.  Life was still buoyant in her bosom, after all, and far
more now than at any time in her life.  New graciousness of face and
figure began to come to her.  Well-being appeared in her eye and her
cheek.  The clean air of this new world had done its work, the actinic
sun had painted her with the colors of the luckier woman, who expects
to live and to be loved.  It was a lovely face she might have seen in
yonder mirror--a face flushed as she heard this step at the door.

"Greetings and salutations!" said he as he entered.  "Of course you
know who I am."

"I'm trained in hide-and-seek," said she.  "Sit down, won't you?"

He tossed his hat on the table.  "Alone?" he asked.

"I always am.  Annie is busy almost all day, over at the soldier house,
you know."

"I suppose he is up in the hills to-day?"

She knew whom he meant.  "Yes.  Annie tells me he goes up every other
day to look around.  I should think he would be afraid."

"Annie told you?--doesn't he tell you what he does?"

"No.  Sometimes in the evening he comes in for a moment."

"Well, of course," he went on, "in my capacity as Pooh Bah, Major and
doctor too, I've got to be part medico to take care of the poor devils
who blow off their hands or drop things on their feet, or eat too much
cheap candy at the store.  How is Sim's knee by this time?"

"He limps a little--I can hear it when he walks on the boards.  Annie
says that Wid Gardner says that Sim says that his leg's all right."
She smiled, and he laughed with her.

"That's fine.  And how about Madam herself, Mrs. Gage?"

She shivered.  "I wish you wouldn't call me that.  It--well, don't,
please.  Let's not ever joke."

"What shall I call you?"

"I don't know.  What's _wrong_ here, Doctor?"  She faced him now.

He evaded.  "I was wondering about your health."

"Oh, I'm very well.  Sometimes my eyes hurt me a little, as though I
felt more of the light.  Subjective, I suppose."

She could not feel him look at her.  At length, he spoke, quietly.
"I've some news for you, or possible news.  It has very much to do with
your happiness.  Tell me, if it were in my power to give you back your
eyes, would you tell me to do that?"

"My eyes?  What do you mean?  To see again?"

"If I gave you back your sight, I would be giving you back the truth;
and that would be very, very cruel."

He saw the fluttering of her throat, the twitching of the hands in her
lap, and so hurried on.

"Listen!  There's a chance in a hundred that your sight can be
restored.  My old preceptor writes me, from what I've told him, that
there is about that chance.  If it did succeed----"

"Then I'd see again!"

"Yes.  So you would be very unhappy."

"You say a thing like that!"

He winced, flushed.

"You come here now with hopes that you ought not to offer, and you
qualify even that!  Fine--fine!  You think I can stand much more than I
have?"

Still the trembling of her hands, the fluttering at her throat.  He
endured it for a time, but broke out savagely at last.  "You'd be
perfect then--as lovely as ever any woman--why, you're perfect now!
And yet without that one flaw where would you be?  You'd not be married
then, though you are now."

"Go on!" she said at length, coldly.

"You don't know one of us here except that girl, Annie, as different
from you as night is from day.  You don't know about the rest of us.
You only think about us, imagine us--you don't see us, don't know us.
Ah, God!  If you only could!  But--if you did!"

The last words broke from him unconsciously.  He sat chilled with
horror at his own speech, but knew he had to go on.

"I am going to do what shall leave us both unhappy as long as we live.
I'll give you back your eyes if I can."

"I am helpless."  She spoke simply.

"Yes!  Why, if I even look at you, I feel I'm an eavesdropper, I'm
stealing.  You can't see in my face what your face puts there--you
can't see my eyes with yours.  You can't understand how you've made me
know things I never did know until I saw you.  Why, cruel? yes!  And
now you're asking me to be still more cruel.  And I'm going to be."

"Don't!" she broke out.  "Oh, God!  Don't!  Please--you must not talk.
I thought you were different from this."

"And yet you have asked me a dozen times what's wrong here.  Why,
everything's wrong!  That man loves you because he can see you--any man
would--but you don't love him, because you _haven't_ seen him.  You're
not a woman to him at all, but an abstraction.  He's not a man to you
at all, but an imagination.  _That's_ not love of man and woman.  But
when you have back your eyes,--_then_ you're in shape to compete with
the best women in the world for the best man in the world.  That's
love!  That's marriage!  That's right!  Nothing else is."

He paused horrified.  Her voice was icy.  "I asked you what was wrong
here.  I begin to see now.  You spoke the truth--everything is wrong."

"You'll hate me all your life and I hate myself now as I never have
before in my life--despise myself.  What a mockery we've made of it
all.  God help those who see!"

She sat silent for a very long time.  "You say I shall be able to see
him--my husband?"

[Illustration: "You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"]

"Yes, I think so," he said.

"And you also?"

"No!  Him, but not me.  You never will.  I'll be an imagination
forever.  You'll never see me at all."

"Under what star of sadness was I born?" said Mary Gage, simply.  "What
a problem!"

"Good-by," he replied.  "I don't need to wait."

She held out her hands to him, gropingly.  "Going?"

"Yes.  I'm coming back, week after next, to get you.  I'll not talk
this way ever again.  Don't forgive me--you can't.

"You'll have to go down to our hospital, perhaps for a couple of
weeks," he concluded.

He stepped from the room so silently, passed so quickly on the turf,
that she was not sure he had gone.  He never saw her hands reach out,
did not hear her voice: "No, no!  I'll not go!  Let me be as I am!"




CHAPTER XXVI

THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER

Two figures stood regarding Doctor Barnes as his car turned into the
willow lane out-bound for the highway.

"Why didn't he say good-by, anyways, when he left?" commented Wid,
turning to Annie Squires.  "Went off like he'd forgot something."

"That's his way," replied Annie, rolling down her sleeves.  They had
met as she was passing from the barracks cabin.  "He's a live wire,
anyways.  God knows this country needs them."

"Why, what's the matter with this country?" demanded Wid mildly.
"Ain't it all right?"

"No, it ain't.  Till I come here it was inhabited exclusively with
corpses."

"Well, then?"

"And since then, if it wouldn't of been for the Doctor yonder, you and
Sim Gage would be setting down here yet and looking at the burned
places and saying, 'Well, I wonder how that happened?'"

"Well, if you didn't like this here country, now what made you come
here?" demanded Wid calmly and without resentment.

"You know why I come.  That lamb in there was needing me.  A fine sight
you'd be, to come a thousand miles to look at!  You and him!  Say,
hanging would be too good for him, and drowning too expensive for you."

"Oh, come now--that's making it a little strong, now, Miss Annie, ain't
it?  What have I done to you to make you feel that way?  _I_ ain't ever
advertised for no wife, have I?  Comes to that, I can make just as good
bread as you kin."

"Huh!  Is that so!"

"Yes, and cook apricots and bacon, and fry ham as good as you can if
there was any to fry.  Me, I'd be happy if they wasn't no women in the
whole wide world.  They're a damn nuisance, anyways, ask me about it."

He was looking out of the corner of his eye at Annie, witnessing her
wrath.

"The gall of you!" exclaimed Annie, red of face and with snapping eye.
"Oh, they're damn nuisances, are they?  Well, then, I'll tell you.  I
fixed your socks up last night for you.  Holes?  Gee!  Me setting in
there by a bum lamp that you had to strike a match to see where it was.
Never again!  You can go plumb to, for all of me, henceforth and
forever."

"I ain't never going to wear them socks again," said Wid calmly.  "I'm
a-going to keep them socks for soovenirs.  Such darning I never have
saw in my born days.  If I couldn't darn better'n that I'd go jump in
the creek.  I didn't ask you to darn them socks noways.  Spoiled a
perfectly good pair of socks for me, that's what you done."

The war light grew strong in Annie's eyes.  "You never did need but one
pair anyways, all summer.  Souvenirs!  Why, one pair'd last you your
whole life.  I suppose you wrop things around your feet in the winter
time, like the Rooshians in the factory.  Say, you're every way the
grandest little man that ever lived alone by hisself!  Well, here's
where you'll get your chance to be left alone again."

"You ain't gone yet," said Wid calmly.

"What's the reason I ain't, or won't be?"

"Well," said Wid Gardner, reaching down for a straw and moving slowly
over toward a saw horse that stood in the yard, "like enough I won't
let you go."

"What's that you say?" demanded Annie scoffingly.  None the less she
slowly drew over to the end of another saw horse and seated herself.
"I'll go when I get good and ready."

"Of course, you can't tell much about a woman first few weeks.  They
put on their best airs then.  But anyways, I've sort of got reconciled
to seeing you around here.  I had a po'try book in my house.  Like it
says, I first endured seeing you, and then felt sorry for you, and
then----"

"Cut out the poetry stuff," said Annie.  "It ain't past noon yet."

"I ain't had time to build my own house over yet.  Pianny and all gone
now, though."

"Gee, but you do lie easy," said Annie.  "You're the smoothest running
liar I ever did see."

"And all my books and things, and pictures and dishes."

"All of your both two tin plates, huh?"

"And my other suits of clothes, and my bedstead, and my dewingport, and
everything--all, all gone, Miss Squires!"

"Is that so!  Oh, sad! sad!  You must of been reading some of them mail
order catalogues in your dreams."

"And my cook stove too.  I've just been cooking out in the open air
when I couldn't stand your cooking here no more--out of doors, like I
was camping out."

"If any sheep herder was ever worse than you two, God help him!  You
wasn't one of you fit for her to wipe a foot on,--that doctor least of
all, that got me out here under pretences that she was married happy.
And I find her married to that!  I wish to God she could see all this,
and see you all, for just one minute.  Just once, that's all!"

"Yes," said Wid Gardner, suddenly serious.  "I know.  There ain't
nothing I can do to square it.  But all I've got or expect to
have--why, it's free for you to take along and do anything you can for
her and your own self, Miss Annie, if you want to, even if you do go
away and leave us.

"But look at my land over there."  He swept a long arm toward the
waving grasses of the valley.  "I've got my land all clear.  She's
worth fifty a acre as she lays, and'll be worth a hundred and fifty
when I get water out of the creek on to her.  I got three hundred and
twenty acres under fence.  I been saving the money the Doc's paying me
here.

"Say," he added, presently, "what kind of a place is that Niagry place
I been reading about?  Is it far from Cleveland?"

"Not so very," replied Annie to his sudden and irrelevant query.

"It's a great place for young married folks to go and visit, I reckon?
I was reading about in a book onct, before my books was burned up.
Seems like it was called 'A Chanct Acquaintance.'  Ever since, I
allowed I'd go to Niagry on my wedding journey."

"Well," said Annie, judicially, "I been around some, what with
floor-walkers and foremen and men in the factory, but I'm going to say
that when it comes to chanct acquaintances, this here place has got 'em
faded for suddenness!  Go on over home and rub your eyes and wake up,
man!  You're dopy."

"No, I ain't," said Wid.  "I'm in a perfectly sane, sound and disposin'
mind.  You're getting awful sun-burned, but it only makes you
good-lookinger, Miss Annie.

"But now lemme tell you one thing," he went on, "I don't want to see
you making no more eyes at that corporal in there.  Plenty of men in
the Army has run away and left three, four wives at home."

"I don't care nothing about no man's past," said Annie.  "They all look
alike to me."

"Well, I can't say that about you.  Some ways you're a powerful homely
girl.  Your hair's gettin' sunburned around the ends like Karen
Jensen's.  And your eyes--turn around, won't you, so I kin remember
what color your eyes is.  I sort of forgot, but they ain't much.  Not
that I care about it.  Women is nothing in my young life."

"Huh! you're eighty if you're a day."

"It's the way I got my hair combed."

Extending a strong right arm she pushed him off the end of the saw
horse.  He rose, dusting his trousers calmly.  "Oh, dear, I didn't
think so much sinfulness could be packed in so young a life!  But say,
Annie, what's the use of fooling?  I got to tell you the truth about it
sometime.  Like on my flour sack: 'Eventual, why not now?'  And the
plain, plumb truth is, you're the best as well as the pertiest girl
that ever set a foot on Montana dirt."

Annie's face was turned away now.

"Your hair and eyes and teeth, and your way of talking, and your way of
taking hold of things and making a home--haven't you been making a home
fer all of us people here?  I told you I'd have to tell the truth at
last.  Besides, I said I was to blame for everything that's gone wrong
here.  I was.  But I'll give you all I am and all I got to square it,
anyways you like."

"Well, anyways," said Annie Squires, drawing a long breath, "I think if
you took on something, you'd see it through; and you wouldn't pass the
buck if you fell down."

"That's me," said Wid.

"I get you," said Annie.

"You said that to me right out here in broad daylight, in presence of
witnesses, four hens and a dog."

"I said I understood you.  That was all."

Wid Gardner turned to her and looked her squarely, in the eyes.  "Not
appropry to nothing, neither here nor there, ner bragging none, I'm
able to put up as much hay in a day as any two Mormons in the Two Forks
Valley.  In the hay fields of life, it's deeds and not words that
counts.  I read that in a book somewheres."

"Say," he went on, suddenly, "have you noticed how perty the moonlight
is on the medders these nights?  You reckon it shines that same way
over at Niagry?"

Annie did not answer at the instant.  "Well," said she at last, "in
some ways this country is a lot like Cleveland.  Go on over to your own
house, if you've got one, and don't you never speak to me again, so
long as you live."

"Well, anyways," said Wid, chuckling, "you didn't really call me a
sheep man.  But listen--I've told you almost the truth about
everything.  Now I got to be going."

"I was _afraid_ you'd be making some break," said Annie Squires.  "I
was _expecting_ you'd do some fool thing or other.  I almost _knew_
you'd do it.  But then----"

"Yes; and but then?"

"But then----" concluded Annie.




CHAPTER XXVII

DORENWALD, CHIEF

Mary Gage, sitting alone in her cabin, could hear the hum of voices as
Wid Gardner and Annie Squires talked together in the open sunlight.
Presently she heard the footfall of Annie as she came to the door.

"Well, Sis," said that cheerful individual, "how are you getting on?"

"Couldn't you come in for a while, Annie?  I'm very lonesome.  What
were you talking about?"

"I just told that man out there I'm going to take you back home."

Mary Gage sat silent for a time.  "We'll have to get a better solution
than that."

"It's a fine little solution you've got so far, ain't it now?"
commented Annie.  "Highbrows always have to lean on the lowbrows, more
or less.  You listen to me."

"Sometime, I suppose," she went on after a moment's pause, "I'll have
to talk right out with you.  For instance, you being a farmer's wife!
Now, as for me, I was raised on a farm.  When I was ten years old I was
milking five cows every day.  When I was twelve I was sitting up at
night knitting socks for the other kids.  That was before I got the
idea of going to the white lights after my career.  Well, it's lucky I
met you, like enough.  But me once talking of getting married to
Charlie Dorenwald!  I should admire to see him, me handy to a flat
iron."

"But, Annie, I'd die if it wasn't for some one to help me all the time.
Some pay for that with money.  How can I pay for it at all?  Tell me,
Annie."  She turned suddenly.  "If I--if I could get my eyesight back
again, what ought I to do?"

"I wouldn't talk about that, Sis, if I was you.  But just wait, there's
some one coming--it's him."

Mary could hear Sim Gage's rapid step as he came around to the door,
pausing no more than to throw down his horse's bridle over its head.

Sim Gage was excited.  "Where's the Doc?--he been here this morning?"

"He went away less than an hour ago," replied Mary Gage.  "How long was
it, Annie?  Why?"

"Well, I got to go down to the dam.  Something up in the hills I don't
like."

"Not those same men?"  Mary Gage's face showed terror.

"I don't know yet.  Two cars was in camp on the creek, half way up
towards the Reserve.  I seen 'em and sneaked back."

"Telephone down, why don't you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," said Sim.  "I ain't used to them things.
Say, Miss Squires, supposin' you see if you can get the doctor down at
the dam?"

But when Annie tried to use the telephone her ring sounded idle and
vacant in the box.  The instrument was dead.

"Out of order!" said Annie, "right when you want it.  When you want to
make a date the girls says, 'Party's line's out of order.'  Of course
it is!"

"Well, then I'll have to start down right away.  I got to see the Doc
about this.  I hate to leave you alone."

"Let him go," said Annie to Mary Gage.  "The soldiers 'll be back for
supper pretty soon."

"I've got to go over to Wid's," said Sim; "got to get another horse."

He turned and left the room without more word of parting than he had
shown of greeting.  He walked more alertly than ever he had in his life.

He found Wid Gardner and told his news.  His neighbor listened to him
gravely.

"It may be only some people in there fishing," said Wid, "but it's no
time to take chances.  You say the wire's down?  That looks so bad, I
reckon you'd better ride on down.  How far have you rode today?"

"Round thirty, forty miles."

"Forty more won't hurt you none," 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 shops where she worked.  His name was
Dorenwald.  She promised to meet him out there at sun-up this morning.
I went out last night to see what I could see.  I found this feller.
He was coming down the trail.  I waited till he got clost enough--about
forty yard.  Onct was enough."

"How many cars did you see?" Doctor Barnes demanded of the sergeant.

"One."

"Gage says he saw two."

"The other may be back in the hills yet."

"Well, here's work!  Tell me, Gardner, is there any way those people
can get out on the other side of the Reserve, down the West Fork?  You
know the backwater above the little dam, two miles below the big dam?
Most of the timber we intended to float out that way, to the mill at
the little dam.  They may have gone on across in there.

"Now, Corporal, leave McQueston and two men here.  I want the rest of
you with me--we'll go up in the hills with my car.  McQueston, take one
man and go and fix the break in the line three miles down the road.
We'll either come back in my car or send it back to you somehow.  The
fire may block us.  Get your men ready.  March!"

It was anxious enough waiting at the ranch, but the wait might have
been longer.  It was not yet eleven o'clock when the two women heard
the hum of the heavily loaded car and saw the men climb out again.  It
was Doctor Barnes who came to the cabin.

"It's no use," said he.  "The fire has cut off the Tepee Creek trail.
The best fir is gone, and there's no hope of stopping the fire now.  If
they took their car up, they must have left it in there--some of them
went back up the trail.  They may be over on the West Fork; and if
they've got there, they've got a shorter route down to the dams than
around by the Valley road."

He turned now to Mary Gage more specifically.  "We've got a company of
troops down there to guard the big dam.  It's safer there than it is
here.  What do you think of going back now, to stop until this row is
over?  We can take better care of you there than we can here."

She sat for a moment, her face turned away.

"Will you come?" he repeated.

"One guess!" said Annie Squires for her.  "In a minute!"  And by that
time she was throwing things into the valises.




CHAPTER XXIX

MARTIAL LAW

The entire flow of the greater of the Two Forks streams lay harnessed
at last, after years of labor and an expenditure of millions.  For
twenty miles there lay a lake where once a clear, gravel-bottomed
stream had flowed above the gorge of the mountain canyon.  The gray
face of a man-made wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original
bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier
checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire
mountain range had proved inefficient.  Presently for hundreds of miles
each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking
light, to those employing labor; and the used water would irrigate
lands far below.

Allied with this unit of the great dam was a lesser dam operating a
mill plant on the other Fork.  Down this stream ship timbers once had
come.  The camp of the reclamation engineers and construction men lay
upon a bench or plateau which once formed the bank of the stream upon
that side, now about half way up to the top of the great dam.  The road
running up and down the valley ascended from this plateau to a
sufficient elevation to surmount the permanent water level above the
upper dam.  On the opposite side rose a sheer and bare rock running
two-thirds up to the top of the mountain peak which here had shouldered
its way down as though in curiosity to look at the bottom of the gorge
itself.  The great dam was anchored to the rock face on that side, and
it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located,
as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service.  A wide
roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top
of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face.
Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream
level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care
for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the
National Government.

Here and there were stationed the armed guards, in the uniform of the
Army.  They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched
the lower levels of the works below the dam.  They patrolled also the
street and the road above and below the camp.

Well paid human labor had erected this great dam, mixed with the
returned soldiers and a small per cent of labor sometimes sullen, with
no affection for its work.  In time among such as these came agents of
a new and vast discontent, some who spoke of a "rule of reason,"
meaning thereby the crazed European rule of ignorant selfishness,
others who spoke of "violence" as the only remedy for labor against
capital.  With what promises they deluded labor, with what hopes of any
change, with what possibilities of later benefits, with what chimeras
of an easier, unearned day, it matters not.  They found listeners.

Against these covert forces working for the destruction of our
civilization, our Government developed an unsuspected efficiency,
sometimes through its department of justice, sometimes through a vast
and silent civilian body of detectives working all over the country and
again through its franker agencies of the military arm.  Thus that able
engineer who had built the great power dam here at the Two Forks--a man
who had built a half score of railroads and laid piers for bridges
without number, and planned city monuments, with the boldest and most
fertile of imaginations, Friedrich Waldhorn his name, was a graduate of
our best institutions and those of Germany--long since had been watched
as closely as many another of less importance in charge of work
remotely or intimately concerned with the country's public resources.

Waldhorn--before the war an outspoken Socialist and free-thinker--may
have known that he was watched--must have known it when a young medical
officer given military duties quite outside his own profession, was put
over him in authority at the scene of his engineering triumph, and at
precisely the time of its climax.  But the situation for Waldhorn was
this, that if he resigned and left the place he would only come the
more closely under immediate espionage.  Whatever his motives, he
remained, sullen and uncommunicative.

Meanwhile the little camp sprawled in the sun, scattered along the
plateau on the side of the mountain gorge.  Crude, unpainted, built of
logs or raw boards, it lay in the shadow for the greater part of the
day, deep down in the narrow cleft of the mountains, far out in the
wilderness.  The great forest deepened and thickened, back of it, forty
miles into the high country.

Those who lived here in the canyon could not as yet understand the
nature of the thin blue veil which today obscured their scanty
sunlight, did not know that each minute of day was destroying trees
which had cost a thousand years to grow, which never in the knowledge
of man might be replaced.  But when the party of Major Barnes came down
from Sim Gage's ranch, questions were answered.  The forest had been
fired again.  The soldiers swore the silent soldier oath of revenge.

Doctor Barnes did not pause even to help the women out of the car.  He
hurried to the long, screened gallery in front of the residence and
office of Waldhorn, chief engineer.

Waldhorn met him at the door, well-fed, suave, polite, a burly man,
well-clad and bearing the marks of alertness and success.  Always of
few words, he scarcely more than spoke at present, his mildly elevated
eyebrows making inquiry of the dusty man before him.

"Yes, Doctor, or--ah, Major?" he said, smilingly, insulting.

"Call it Major!" snapped Barnes.  "I've come to tell you that I want
your house."

"Yes?  When?"

"In two minutes."

"Why?"

"I want it for Government uses.  A patient of mine has come down here
to stay a while--wife of one of my scouts."

"Well, now, my dear Major, I would not like to interfere with your
private graft in the practice of medicine in any way.  But I'm engineer
in charge of this work, I fancy."

"Fancy something else while the fancying's good.  Go on over to that
little log house, Waldhorn.  You'll live there until we send you out."

"Send me out!  What do you mean, sir?"

"This camp is under martial law.  You're under arrest, if you like to
call it that way."

"You're going to arrest me?  Why--what do you mean?"

"Call it what you like.  But move, now, and don't waste my time."

"I beg pardon," drawled Waldhorn, smiling with a well-concealed sneer,
"but isn't this a trifle sudden?  I'm willing to give up my place to
the ladies, of course, my dear Major, but I must ask some sort of
explanation as to this other procedure.  Martial law?  What is your
authority?"

"Call it Jehovah and the Continental Congress, my dear chap," said
Doctor Barnes, likewise drawling.  "I'll take that up after a while.
I'm in charge here.  If you go over there quietly to that other house
it may look like an act of courtesy.  If you don't--it might be called
an act of God.  Come, hurry--I can't talk here any longer."

Waldhorn saw two troopers coming at a fast walk from across the street,
saw that the eyes of Doctor Barnes watched his hand carefully.
Therefore, as though easily and naturally, he leaned with both his own
hands above his head resting against the jamb of the door.

"I suppose I'll have to charge this up to the fact that I'm of German
descent," said he.  "I can't help that.  I've lived here thirty years.
I'm as good a citizen as you, but I'll have to submit.  Be sure I'm
going to take this up in the courts."

"Old stuff.  Take it up where you damn please," said Barnes sharply.
"I'm as good an American as you are, too, even if my parents were _not_
born in Germany.  Step outside."

He motioned to his men.  "McQueston," he said, "watch him until I come
out."

"You're not going into my private rooms?--I forbid that.  I'll never
forget that, you upstart!"

Doctor Barnes smiled.  "I'll try to fix it so you won't."  He stepped
on in across the gallery.

Waldhorn looked from the face of one to that of the other private
soldier who stood before him, and saw the cold mask not only of
discipline, but of more.  Under their charge he marched over to the log
building indicated, and slammed the door behind him.  The men stood one
on each side, out of range of the window.

Doctor Barnes was angry and frowning when he went back to the car to
drive it down to the door of the new quarters which had just been
vacated.

"Gee, Doc, you look sore," said Annie Squires casually.  "Say, where do
you get the stuff you're pulling in here, anyway?"

"Never mind!  You go in there and clean up the rooms and make a place
for Mrs. Gage.  You'll find everything for cooking and housekeeping.
Don't touch anything else.  I'm taking his Chink over to my place."

"Are you going there with the women?" he inquired, turning to Sim Gage.

Sim colored.  "No.  Wid and me'll be over with the soldiers.  We're
going to stick together."

"Better bunk in my shack, then.  Go over to the barracks, both of you,
and get rifles and an extra pistol each.  I want both of you on patrol."

"You see," he explained, as he drew the two apart, "we don't know what
those anarchist ruffians up there may do.  They may drop down here by
either fork any time, day or night."

He spoke briefly also to Mary Gage before he handed her in at the door
of her new domicile:

"Sim and Wid both think that only one car went back up the road above
the ranch.  That means that the other car is up in the mountains
between the Two Forks, probably in the Reserve.  For a time there
probably won't anything happen.  You mustn't be scared--we're just
taking the proper precautions now.  This is very valuable Government
property."

"Are we at the dam here?" asked Mary Gage.  "I can hear the water--it's
very heavy, isn't it?"

"It never stops.  We don't hear it, because we're used to it--I don't
think it will bother you very long.  We'll try to make you comfortable."

He turned, offering her his arm, on which he placed her hand.  He was a
trifle surprised to see that Sim Gage without a word had passed to the
other side of his wife, also giving her an arm.  He walked along slowly
and gravely, limping, silent as he had been all the afternoon, but made
no sign of his own discomfort, indeed did not speak at all.

"Both of you are fit for the hospital.  Well, all right, it may be a
good place for you after all."  As he spoke, frowning, Doctor Barnes
stood back and allowed Annie to lead Mary Gage into the vacated rooms
of the chief engineer.

"Doc, what did you mean when you said that there just now?" asked Sim
Gage, when they turned back from the door.  "About her and the
hospital?"

"I've brought her down here, Sim," said Doctor Barnes directly,
"principally because, with her consent and yours, I want to see if I
can't do something for her eyes."

"Her eyes!  Why--what do you mean?"

"There's one chance in a hundred that she'll see again."

Doctor Allen Barnes, his face unshaven, dirty, haggard, a man looking
neither major nor physician now, turned squarely to the man whom he
addressed.  "I don't know for sure," said he, "but then, it may be
true."

"Her eyes?--  Her eyes!"

Doctor Barnes felt on his arm as savage a grip as he ever had known.
Sim Gage's face changed as he turned away.

"Good God A'mighty!  If she could _see_!"  His own face seemed suddenly
pale beneath its grime.




CHAPTER XXX

BEFORE DAWN

A day passed, two, and three.  Nothing came to break the monotony at
the big dam.  Donkey engines screamed intermittently.  Workmen still
passed here or there with their barrows.  Teams strained at heavy loads
of gravel and cement.  The general labor in the way of finishing
touches on the undertaking still went on under the care of the foremen,
monotonously regular.  No one knew that Waldhorn, chief engineer, was a
prisoner under guard.

Mary Gage was more ignorant than any prisoner of what went on about
her.  A hard lot, that of waiting at any time, but the waiting of the
newly blind--there is no human misery to equal it.  It seemed at times
to her she must go mad.

She recognized the footfall of Doctor Barnes when one morning she heard
it on the gallery floor inside the slamming screen door.  "Come in,"
she said, meeting him.  "What is it?"

He entered without any speech, cast himself into a chair.  She knew he
was looking at her steadfastly.

"Well," said she, feeling herself color slightly.  Still he did not
answer.  She shifted uneasily.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, just a trace of the personal in her
tone.

"Eavesdropping again.  Staring.  This is the day when I say good-by to
you.  I've come to say my good-by now."

"Why should it be like that?" she asked after a time.

"Will you be happy?"

She did not answer, and he leaned forward as he spoke.

"You left a happy world behind you.  Do you want to see this world now,
this sordid, bloody, torn and worn old world, so full of everything but
joy and justice?  Do you want to see it any more?  Why?"

"It is my right to see the world," said Mary Gage simply.  "I want to
see life.  There's not much risk left for me.  But you talk as though
things were final."

"I'm going away.  Let's not talk at all."

For a long time she sat silent.

"Don't you think that in time we forget things?"

"I suppose in ten years I will forget things--in part."

"Nonsense!  In five years--two--you'll be married."

"So you think that of me?" said he after a time.  "Fine!"

"But you have always told me that life is life, you know."

"Yes, sometimes I have tried my hand at scientific reasoning.  But when
I say ten years for forgetting anything, that's pathological diagnosis,
and not personal.  I try to reason that time will cure any inorganic
disease just as time cures the sting of death.  Otherwise the world
could not carry its grief and do its work.  The world is sick, near to
death.  It must have time.  So must I.  I can't stay here and work any
more.  If you can see--if you get well and normal again--I'll be here."

She looked at him steadily.  He wanted to take her face between his
hands.

"Oh, I'll not leave here until everything is right with your case.
There's good excuse for me to go out.  It will be for you the same as
though we had never met at all."

"That's fine of you!  So you believe that of me?"

"Why not?  I must.  You're married.  That's outside my province now.
I've just come to tell you now that I don't think we ought to wait any
longer about your eyes.  We'll try this afternoon, in our little
hospital here.  I wish my old preceptor were here; but Annie will help
me all she can, and I'll do my very best."

"I'm quite ready."

"I don't know whether or not to be glad that you have no curiosity
about your own case," he said presently.

"That only shows you how helpless I am.  I have no choice.  I have lost
my own identity."

"Didn't your doctor back in Cleveland tell you anything about what was
wrong with your eyes?"

"He said at first it was retinal; then he said it was iritis.  He
didn't like to answer any questions."

"The old way--adding to all the old mummeries of the most mumming of
all professions--medicine!  That dates back to bats' wings and toads'
livers as cure for the spleen.  But at least and at last he said it was
iritis?"

"Yes.  He told me that I might gradually lose one eye--which was true.
He thought the trouble might advance to the other eye.  It came out
that way.  He must have known."

"Perhaps he knew part," said Doctor Barnes.  "You had some pain?"

"Unbearable pain part of the time--over the eyes, in the front of the
head."

"Didn't your doctor tell you what iritis meant?"

"No.  I suppose inflammation of the eyes--the iris."

"Precisely.  Now, just because you're a woman of intelligence I'm going
to try to give you a little explanation of your trouble, so you will
know what you are facing."

"I wish you would."

"Very well.  Now, you must think of the eye as a lens, but one made up
of cells, of tissues.  It can know inflammation.  As a result of many
inflammations there is what we call an exudation--a liquid passes from
the tissues.  This may be thin or serum-like, or it may be heavier,
something like granulations.  The tissues are weak--they exude
something in their distress, in their attempt to correct this condition
when they have been inflamed.

"The pupil of your eye is the aperture, the stop of the lens.  That is
the hole through which the light passes.  Around it lie the tissues of
the iris.  In the back of the eye is the retina, which acts as a film
for the eye's picture.

"Now, it was the part of the eye around that opening which got inflamed
and began to exude.  Such inflammation may come from eye-strain,
sometimes from glare like furnace heat, or the reflection of the sun on
the snow.  Snow-blindness is sometimes painful.  Why?  Iritis.

"In any case, a chronic irritation came into your case some time.
Little by little there came a heavy exudation around the edges of the
inflamed iris.  It was so heavy that we call it a 'plastic' exudation.
Now, that was what was the technical trouble of your eye--plastic
exudation.

"This exudation, or growth, as we might call it, went on from the edges
of the iris until it met in the middle of the pupil.  Then there was
spread across the aperture of your lens an opaque granulated curtain
through which light could not pass.  Therefore you could not see.  The
plastic exudation had done its evil work as the result of the
iritis--that is to say, of the sufferings of the iris."

"I begin to understand," said Mary Gage.  "That covers what seemed to
happen."

"It covers it precisely, for that is precisely what did happen.  It was
not cataract.  I knew, or thought I knew, that it was not from retinal
scars due to inflammation in the back of the eye.  It was just a
filling up of the opening of the eye.

"So I know you lost sight in that last eye little by little, as you did
in the other.  You kept on knitting all the time.  On your way out you
struck the glare from the white sands of the plains in the dry country.
At once the inflammation finished its exudation--and you were blind."

She sat motionless.

"Sometimes we take off the film of a cataract from the eye; sometimes
even we can take out the crystalline lens and substitute a heavy lens
in glasses to be worn by the patient."

"But in my case you intend to cut out that exudation from the pupil?"

"No.  I wish we could.  What we do is to cut a little key-hole
aperture, not through the pupil, but at one side the pupil.  In other
words, I've got to make an artificial pupil--it will be just a little
at one side of the middle of the eye.  You will hardly notice it."

"But that will mean I cannot see!"

"On the contrary, it will mean that you can see.  Remember, your eye is
a lens.  Suppose you put a piece of black paper over a part of your
lens--paste it there.  You will find that you can still make pictures
with that lens, and that they will not be distorted.  Not quite so much
illumination will get into the lens, but the picture will be the same.
Therefore you will see, and see finely.

"Now, you must not be uneasy, and you must not think of this merely as
an interesting experiment just because you have not heard of it before.
My old preceptor, Fuller of Johns Hopkins, did this operation often,
and almost always with success.  He could do it better than I, but I am
the best that offers, and it must be done now.

"There is a very general human shrinking from the thought of any
operation on the eye--it is so delicate, so sensitive in every way, but
as a matter of fact, science can do many things by way of operation
upon the eye.  If I did not think I could give you back your sight, you
may be sure I should never undertake this work to-day.  The operation
is known technically as iridectomy.  That would mean nothing to you if
I had not tried to explain it.

"Of course there will be wounds in the tissues of the iris which must
be healed.  There must not be any more inflammation.  That means that
for some time after the operation your eyes must be bandaged, and you
will remain in absolute darkness.  You will have to keep on the
bandages for a week or more--you understand that.  If after hearing
this explanation you do not wish to go forward, this is the time to let
me know."

"I am quite ready," said Mary Gage.  "As though I could ever thank you
enough!"

"Let me remain in your memory, as a picturesque and noble figure, my
dear lady!  Think of me as a Sir Galahad, which I am not.  Picture me
of lofty carriage and beautiful countenance, which is not true.
Imagine me as a pleasing and masterful personality in every way--which
I am not.  You will not meet me face to face."

"I've been praying for my sight when it didn't seem to be any use to
have faith in God any more.  If I should get back my eyes I would
always have faith in prayer.  But--the other day you told me I'd not be
married, then!  May not a blind woman be a married woman also?"

"No!  Not if she never saw her husband.  How could she ever have
chosen, have selected?  How could either her body or her soul ever have
seen?"

She rose before him suddenly.  "You say that!"  She choked.  "You say
that, who helped put me where I am!  And now you say you are going
away--and you say that's all wrong, my being married!  What do you
mean?"

"If I gave you back your eyes and your life, isn't that something?"

"Why, no!  A fight which isn't fought is worse than defeat.  But you're
talking as though you really meant to go away and leave me--always!"

"Yes.  I've come to say good-by--and then to operate.  Two this
afternoon.  Annie will come for you.  I have told her what to do."

"And my husband?"

"Said he couldn't stand it to see you hurt.  Said he would stand
outside the door, but that he couldn't come in.  Said he would be right
there all the time.  There's a great man, Mrs. Gage."

"And you are a very wise man, are you not!" said she suddenly, smiling
at him slowly, her dark eyes full upon him.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, so much you know about life and duty and the rights of everybody
else!  If I had my eyes, I'd not be married!  Did you ever stop to
think what you have been taking into your own hands here?"

"Go on," said he.  "I've got it coming."

"Well, one thing you've forgotten.  I've been a problem and a trouble
and a nuisance--yes.  But I'm a woman!  You treat me as though I were a
pawn, a doll.  I'm tired of it.  I ought to tell you something, for
fear you'll really go away, and give me no chance."

"I ought to have as much courage as you're showing now."  He smiled,
wryly.

"Then, if you have courage, you ought to stay here and see things
through.  You tell me this is right and this is not right--how do you
know?  I owe you very much--but ought you to decide everything for me?
Let me also be the judge.  If there's any problem in these matters,
anything unsaid, let's face it _all_.  Cut into my eyes, but don't cut
into my soul any more.  If you gave me back my sight, and did not give
me back every unsettled problem, with all the facts before me to settle
it at last, you would leave me with unhappiness hanging over me as long
as ever I lived.  Not even my eyes would pay me for it."

She rose, stumbling, reaching out a hand to save herself; and he dared
not touch her hand even to aid her now.

"Oh, fine of you all," she said bitterly.  "Did the Emperor of Prussia
ever do more?  You, whom I have never seen in all my life!  Any
situation that is hard here for you--take it.  Haven't I done as much?
If there's any other fight on ahead unsettled for you, can't you fight
it out?  Can't you give me the privilege--since you've been talking of
a woman's rights and privileges--to fight out my own battles too--to
fight out all of life's fights, even to take all of its losses?  I'd
rather have it that way.  That means I want to see you, who you are,
what you are, whether you are good, whether you are just, whether you
are light, whether----"

"You have a keen mind," said he slowly.  "You're telling me to stay
here.  If we could meet face to face as though you never had been
blind--why, then--I might say something or do something which would
make you feel that I believed you never had been married.  I have told
you that already."

"Yes!  Then surely you will not go away.  Because you have brought up a
problem between you and me----  Aren't we big enough to fight that out
between us?  Ought we not?  Give me my eyes!  Give me my rights!

"Why, listen," she went on more gently, less argumentatively, "just the
other day, when we were talking over this question about my eyes, I
called out to you when you went away, and you did not hear me.  I said
No; I would not take my eyes from you and pay the price.  I said it
would be sweeter to be blind and remain deceived.  But that's gone by.
I've been thinking since then.  Now I want it all--all!  I want all the
fight of it, all the risk of it.  Then, after I've taken my chance and
made my fight, I want all the joy of it or all the sorrow of it at the
end!  I want life!  Don't you?  I've always had the feeling that you
were a strong man.  I don't want anything I haven't earned.  I'll never
give what hasn't been earned.  I won't ever pray for what isn't mine."

"Now I'm ready," she repeated simply.  "I can't talk any more, and you
mustn't.  Good-by."

She felt her hand caught tight in both of his, but he could not speak
to his hand clasp.  "At two!" was all he managed to say.

And so, in this far-off spot in the wilderness, the science of to-day,
not long after two by the clock, had done what it might to remedy
nature's unkindness, and to make Mary Gage as other women.  When the
sun had dropped back of its shielding mountain wall, Mary Gage lay
still asleep, her eyes bandaged, in her darkened room.  Whether at
length she would awaken to darkness or to light, none could tell.
Allen Barnes only knew that, tried as never he had been in all his life
before, he had done his surgeon's work unfalteringly.

"Doc," said Sim Gage tremblingly, when they met upon the gravel street
in the straggling little camp, each white-faced from fatigue, "tell me
how long before we'll know."

"Three or four days at least.  We'll have to wait."

"You're sure she'll see?"

"I hope so.  I think so."

"What'll she see first?"

"Light."

"Who'll she see first, Doc--Annie, you reckon?"

"If she asks for you, let her see you first," said Doctor Barnes.
"That's your right."

"No," said Sim Gage, "no, I don't think so.  I think she'd ought to see
you first, because you're the doctor.  A doctor, now, he ain't like
folks, you know.  He's just the doctor."

"Yes, he's just the doctor, Gage, that's all."

He left Sim Gage standing in the road, looking steadfastly at the door.




CHAPTER XXXI

THE BLIND SEE

To those waiting for the threatened attack upon the power dam, the mere
torment of continued inaction became intolerable, but as to material
danger, nothing definite came.  The keen-eyed young soldiers on their
beat night after night, day after day, caught no sight or sound of any
lurking enemy, and began to feel resentment at the arduous hours asked
of them.  Once in a while one trooper would say to another that he saw
no sense in people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land.  The
laborers of the camp were more or less incurious.  They did their
allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house,
and fell into a snake-like torpor.  Life seemed quiet and innocuous.
Liquor was prohibited.  The régime was military.  Soon after the bugle
had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became
silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters
chafing through the turbines continually moaned.  It was apparently a
place of peace.

Doctor Barnes felt reasonably sure that the attack, if any, would come
through the valley at the lower dam, for that would be the only
practical entry point of the marauders marooned somewhere back in the
hills.  The trail between these two dams lay almost wholly above the
rocky river bed.  It would have been difficult if not impossible to
patrol the bed of the river itself, for close to the water's edge there
were places where no foothold could have been obtained even now, low as
the water was.  Therefore it seemed most needful to watch the main
wagon trail along the canyon shelf.

It was sun-fall of the third day after Doctor Barnes had left Mary Gage
for her long wait in the dark.  The men had finished their work about
the great dam, and were on their way to their quarters.  Sim Gage,
scout, beginning his night's work and having ended his own attempt at
sleep during the daytime, was passing, hatted and belted, rifle in
hand, to the barracks, where he was to speak with the lieutenant in
charge.  The two men of the color guard stood at the foot of the great
staff, dressed out of a tall mountain spruce, at whose top fluttered
the flag of this republic.  The shrilling of the bugle's beautiful
salute to the flag was ringing far and near along the canyon walls.
The flag began to drop, slowly, into the arms of the waiting man who
had given oath of his life to protect it always, and to keep it still
full high advanced.  It must never touch the earth at all, but remain a
creature of the air--that is the tradition of our Army and all the
Army's proud color guards.

Sim Gage stopped now, as every man in that encampment, soldier or
laborer, had been trained punctiliously to do, at the evening gun.  He
stood at attention, like these others; for Sim Gage was a soldier, or
thought he was.  His eyes were fixed on this strange thing, this
creature called the Flag.  A strange, fierce jealousy arose in his
heart for it, a savage love, as though it were a thing that belonged to
him.  His chest heaved now in the feeling that he was identified with
this guard, waiting for the colors to come to rest and shelter after
the day of duty.  It stirred him in a way which he did not understand.
A simple, unintelligent man, of no great shrewdness, though free of any
maudlin sentiment, he stood fast in the mid-street and saluted the
flag, not because he was obliged to do so, but because he passionately
craved to do so.

He turned to meet Annie Squires, who was hurrying away from her own
quarters.  She held in her hand a letter which she waved at him as she
approach.

"Look-it here!" she exclaimed.  "Look what I found.  Where's the Doc?
I want to see him right away."

"He's like enough down at the lower dam by now," said Sim.

"Well, he'd ought to see this."

"What is it?" asked Sim, looking at it questioningly.  "Who's it to?"

"Who's it to?" said Annie Squires.  "Why, it's to Charlie Dorenwald,
that's who it's to!"

"What?  That feller that was up there--one you said you knew before you
come out here?"

"Yes.  But how does this Waldhorn chump in there know anything about
Charlie Dorenwald?  That's what I want to know."

"What chump?  Mr. Waldhorn?"

"I found this in his desk.  Well, I wasn't rummaging in his desk, but I
had to slick things up, and saw it.  I only run on it by accident."

"What's in it?" said Sim Gage.

"Well, now," said Annie, naïvely, "I only just steamed it a little.  It
rolled open easy with a pen-holder."

"Huh.  What you find in it?"

"Why, nothing but nonsense, that's what I found.  Listen here.  'Price
wheat next year two-nineteen sharp signal general satisfaction.'  Now,
what does that mean?  That's foolishness.  That man's a nut!  I bet he
gets alone up in here and smokes hop, that's what he does, all by
himself.  No one but a dope fiend would pull stuff like that.

"But still," she added, a finger at chin, "what bothers me is, how does
Charlie know Waldhorn?  Unless----"

"Unless what?" asked Sim Gage, his brows suddenly contracting.

"Unless they're both in on this deal!  What do you suppose the Doc
thinks?  What makes him keep this Waldhorn close as he does?  Is he a
prisoner?"

"No, I reckon not.  We all just got orders to shoot him if he tries to
get away.  I think Doc's holding him until he gets word in from
outside.  Things seems to me to move mighty slow."

"Well, this letter's addressed to Charlie Dorenwald, and anything
that's got Charlie Dorenwald's name on it is crooked, and you can
gamble on that.  Can't you find the Doc?"

As it happened, Doctor Barnes had not yet left his quarters for his
nightly trip to the lower canyon.  He had been trying to sleep.  He
rose now, full-clad and all awake, when he caught sight of Sim Gage's
face at his door.

"What's up?" he said.

"This here," said Sim, "is a letter that Annie brung me out of the
house where them two is living.  She says she found it in there.  We
can't make nothing out of it.  Seems like this Waldhorn here had
something to say to Charlie Dorenwald.  Annie says it's the same
Dorenwald that was up above, at the ranch, the one Wid didn't get.
Well, how come him and Waldhorn to know each other, that's what I want
to know.  So does Annie."

"What I want to know, too!" said Doctor Barnes, reaching out his hand.

"Annie says it's plumb nutty, the stuff in it," commented Sim.  The
other looked at him quizzically.

"She read it then?"

He read it now, himself, and stood stiff and straight at reading.
"This is a cypher--code stuff!  They know what it means, and we don't.
'Two-nineteen sharp'--I wonder what that means!  This is the nineteenth
day of the month, isn't it?  'Signal general satisfaction'--Lord!  I'd
give anything for a good night's sleep.  Gage, go on over and tell all
the men to keep full dressed, and with equipment handy all night long.
I don't have any clear guess what this is all about, but we can't take
any chances."

"Wid, he thinks them fellers ain't coming down here a-tall," said Sim
confidentially.

"He doesn't know anything more about it than I do or you do," said
Doctor Barnes somewhat testily.  "You go and tell Annie to shut that
desk up, and see that she keeps it shut.  I'm coming over to seal it
up."

Annie Squires meantime had hastened back to discuss these matters with
her patient in the hospital room.  It only added more to the nervous
strain that already tormented Mary Gage.

"Annie, I'm scared!" she whispered.  "Oh! if I could only take care of
myself.  Tell me, Annie--I'll get well, won't I?"

"Sure thing, Kid--it's a cinch."

"Where is he?" Mary demanded after some hesitation.

"Who?  Him?"  Annie employed her usual fashion of indicating the
identity of Sim Gage.

"No, I mean Doctor Barnes."

"He'll be going down below pretty soon.  He don't know anything more
than I do about what that fool stuff in the letter means."

"But say," she added after a time, "I been kind of looking around in
desks and places, you know--I have to red things up--and I run across
another thing, some more writing."

"You mustn't do these things, Annie!  It may be private."

"Oh, no, it ain't.  It's only some writing copied from a magazine, like
enough.  It was on one of the desks in this house--just in there."

"Copied?--What is it?"

"I don't know.  Poetry stuff--sounds mushy.  I didn't know men would do
things like copying out poetry from magazines.  Never heard of Mr.
Symonds--did you?"

"How can I tell, Annie?"

"I'll read it for you if you'll let me.  It's dark, in here--I'll just
go outside the door and read it through the crack at you, so's the
light won't hurt you anyways."

And so, faintly, as from a detached intelligence, there came into Mary
Gage's darkened room, her darkened life, some words well-written,
ill-read, which it seemed to her she might have dreamed:

  "As a perfume doth remain
  In the folds where it hath lain,
  So the thought of you, remaining
  Deeply folded in my brain,
  Will not leave me; all things leave me:
  You remain.

  "Other thoughts may come and go,
  Other moments I may know
  That shall waft me, in their going,
  As a breath blown to and fro.
  Fragrant memories; fragrant memories
  Come and go.

  "Only thoughts of you remain
  In my heart where they have lain,
  Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,
  A hid sweetness, in my brain.
  Others leave me; all things leave me:
  You remain."


"Read them over again!" said Mary Gage, sitting upon her couch.  "Read
them again, Annie!  I want to learn it all by heart."

And Annie, patient as ever, read the words over to her.  The keen
senses of Mary Gage recorded them.

"I can say them now!" said she, as much to herself as to her friend.
And she did say them, over and over again.

"Annie," she cried, as she sat up suddenly.  "I can't stand it any
more!  I can see!  I can see!"

She was tearing at the bandages about her head when Annie entered and
put down her hands, terrified at this disobedience of orders.

"Annie, I _know_ I can see!  It was light--at the door there!  I can
see.  I can _see_!"  She began to weep, trembling.

"Hush!" said Annie, frightened.  "It ain't possible!  It can't be true!
_What_ did you see?"

"Nothing!" said Mary Gage, half sobbing.  "Just the light.  Don't tell
him.  Put back the bandage.  But, oh, Annie, Annie, I can _see_!"

"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the
tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head.

"But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a
fellow felt that way about me--couldn't remember nobody but me that
way--why, me for him!  Mushy--but times comes when a girl falls strong
for the mushy, huh?

"Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll
never be seeing things again, sure enough.  I ain't going to read no
more of that strong-arm writing at all."

Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend
passing down the little hall.  She was alone again.  Her heart was
throbbing high.

What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his
recessional as well.  Now she knew that he was indeed going away from
her life forever.  Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision?




CHAPTER XXXII

THE ENEMY

The night wore on slowly.  Midnight struck, and the cold of the
mountain night had reached its maximum chill.  To the ears of the weary
patrols there came no sound save the continuous complaint of the
waters, a note rising and falling, increasing and decreasing in volume,
after the strange fashion of waters carried by the chance vagaries of
the air.  At times the sound of the river rose to great volume, again
it died down to a low murmur, the voice of a beaten giant protesting
against his shackles.  Came two o'clock in the morning, and the guards
walked their beats with the weariness of men who have fought off sleep
for hours.  Sim Gage, sleepless so long, was very weary, but he kept
about his work.

At intervals of half an hour he crunched down the gravel-faced slope of
the bank which ran from the bench level to the foot of the dam.  Here
he walked along the level of the great eddy, along the rocky shore,
examining the face of the vast concrete wall itself, gazing also as he
always did, with no special purpose, at the face of the wide and long
apron where the waters foamed over, a few inches deep, white as milk,
day and night.

Any attempt at the use of dynamite by any enemy naturally would be made
on this lower side of the dam.  There were different places which might
naturally be used by a criminal who had opportunity.  One of these,
concealed from the chance glance of any officer, was back under the
apron, behind the half-completed side columns of the spill gate, where
a great buttress came out to flank the apron.  A charge exploded here
would get at the very heart of the dam, for it would open the turbine
wells and the spillway passage which had been provided for the
controlled outlet.

Ragged heaps of native rock lay along the foot of the dam, flanking the
edge of the great eddy eastward of the apron.  Here often the laborers
stood and cast their lines for the leaping trout, which, wearied by
their fruitless fight at the apron, that carried them only up to the
insurmountable obstacle which reached a hundred feet above them,
sometimes were swept back to seek relief in the gentler waters of the
deep eddy, that swung inshore from the lower end of the apron.

Sim Gage saw all these scenes, so familiar by this time, as they lay
half revealed under the blaze of the great searchlight.  It all seemed
safe now, as it always had before.

But when at length he turned back to ascend to the upper level, he saw
something which caused him to stop for just an instant, and then to
spring into action.

The power plant proper of the dam was not yet wholly installed, only
the dam and turbine-ways being completed.  In the power house itself, a
sturdy building of rock which caught hold of the immemorial mountain
foot beneath it, only a single unit of the dynamos had been installed.
This unit had been hooked on, as the engineers phrased it, in order to
furnish electric light to the camp itself, for the telephone service of
the valley and for the minor machinery which was operated by this or
that machine shop along the side of the mountain.  A cable from the
power house ran up to another house known as the lighting plant, which
stood in the angle between the street level and the dam itself.  Here
was installed a giant searchlight which could be played at will along
the face of the dam, to make its examination the more easy and exact by
night.  The steady stream of this light was a fixed factor, being held
at such a position as would cover the greatest amount of the dam face.

Now, as Sim Gage topped the grade, gravel crunching under his feet, a
trifle out of breath with his climb, since the incline itself was a
thing of magnificent distances, he saw the searchlight of the power dam
begin a performance altogether new in his own experience.

The great shaft of light rose up abruptly to a position vertical, a
beam of light reaching up into the sky.  An instant, and it began to
swing from side to side.  It swung sharply clear against the bald face
of the mountain at the farther end of the dam.  It swept down the
canyon itself, or to its first great bend.  It rose again and swept
across the dark-fringed summit of the mountains on the hither side of
the stream.  Not once, but twice, this was done.

It was a splendid and magnificent thing itself, this giant eye,
illuminating and revealing, fit factor in a wild and imposing panorama
of the night.  But why?  No one ever had known the searchlight to be
used in this way.  What orders had been given?  What did these zig-zag
beams up and down the surface of the sky indicate?  Was it a signal, or
was some one playing with the property of the Company, there in the
cupola of the light station?

Sim Gage reached the side of the plant just as the light came down to
its original duty of watching the face of the dam.  At first there was
not any sound.

"Who's there?" he called out.  No answer came.  It seemed to him that
he heard some sort of movement in the little rock house.

"Halt!  Who goes there?" he called out in a formula he had learned.

He got no answer, but he heard a thud as of a body dropping out of the
window of the further side of the house, against the slope of the dam
which lay above it.

He ran around the corner of the little building, rifle at the ready,
only to see a scrambling figure, bent over, endeavoring to reach the
top of the dam, where the smooth roadway ran from side to side of the
great gorge.  That way lay no escape.  The sentry was across yonder,
and would soon return.  This way, toward the east, a fugitive must go
if he would seek any point of emergence from these surroundings.

"Halt!  Halt there!  Halt, or I'll fire!" cried Gage.  "Halt!"  He
called it out again, once, twice, three times.  But the figure, whoever
or whatever it was, ran on.  It now had reached the top of the dam, and
could be seen with more or less distinctness, sky-lined against the
starlight and the gray sky behind it.

Sim Gage, old-time hunter, used all his life to firearms, was used also
to firing at running game.  He drew down now deep into the rear sight
of his Springfield, allowing for the faint light, and held at the front
edge of the running figure as nearly as he could tell.  He fired once,
twice and three times--rap!--rap!--rap!--the echo came from the
concrete--at the figure as it crouched and stumbled on.  Then it
stopped.  There came a scrambling and a sliding of the object, which
fell at the top of the dam.  It slipped off the dam top and rolled and
slid almost at his feet.  He dragged it down into the edge of the beams
of the searchlight itself.

Up to this time he had not known or suspected who the man might be.  At
first he now thought it was a woman.  In reality it was a Chinaman, the
cook and body-servant of Waldhorn, engineer at the power operations!
He was dead.

Sim stood looking down at what he had done, trying in his slow fashion
of mind to puzzle out what this man had been doing here, and why he had
come.  He heard the sound of running feet above him, heard challenges,
shouts, every way.  Others had heard the shot.  "This way, fellers----
Come along!" he heard Wid Gardner call out, high and clear; for that
night Wid also was of the upper guard.

But they were not running in his direction.  They seemed to be back on
the street.  All at once Sim Gage solved his little problem.  This
Chinaman had been sent to do this work--sent by the owner of that house
yonder, the engineer, Waldhorn.  That prisoner must not escape now.  He
knew!  It was he who had given the searchlight signal!  Waldhorn--and
Dorenwald!  He coupled both names now again.

Sim Gage himself, having a shorter distance to go than his comrades,
left his dead Chinaman, and started after the man higher up.  He
reached the Waldhorn quarters slightly before the others.

He heard the screen door of the log house slam, saw a stout and burly
man step out, satchel in hand.  The man walked hurriedly toward a car
which Sim Gage had not noticed, since there was so much unused
machinery about, wheel scrapers, wagons, plows and the like.  Now he
saw that it was Waldhorn and Waldhorn's car.  He was taking advantage
of this confusion to make his own escape.

This hurrying figure halted for a half instant in the dim light, for he
heard footsteps on each side of him.  He knew the guard was coming.

Sim Gage's summons rang high and clear.  Yonder was the man--he was
going to escape.  He must not escape.  All these things came to Sim
Gage's mind as he half raised his weapon to his shoulder, challenging
again, "Halt!  Who goes there?  Halt!"  The bolt of his Springfield
clinked home once more.

The man turned away, toward the sound of the greater number of his
enemies, weapon in hand.  The patrol was closing in.  But before he
turned he both gave and received death in the last act he might offer
in treachery to this country, which had been generous and kind to him.

Sim Gage fired with close, sure aim, and cut his man through with the
blow of the Spitzer bullet of the Springfield piece.  But even as he
did so Waldhorn himself had fired with the heavy automatic pistol which
he carried.  The bullet caught Sim Gage high in the chest, and passed
through, missing the spine by but little.  He sprawled forward.

Waldhorn's body was no better than a sieve, for he received the fire of
the entire squad of riflemen who had approached from the other side,
and so many bullets struck him, again and again, that they actually
held him up from falling for an instant.

Now the entire street filled.  Foreign or half-foreign laboring folk
came out, soldiers and sailor boys came, jabbering in a score of
tongues.  None knew the plot of the drama which had been finished now.
All they knew was that the chief engineer had been killed by the guard.
Very well, but who had shot Scout Gage?

Sim Gage, looking up at the sky, felt the great arm of Flaherty, the
foreman, under his head.

"Easy now, lad," said the big man.  "Easy.  Lay down a bit, till I have
a look.  Where's the Docther, boys?--Get him quick."

"What's the matter?" said Sim Gage.  "Lemme up.  I fell down--Who hit
me?"

He felt something at his chest, raised a hand, and in turn passed it
before his face in wonderment.

"Well, look at that!" said he.  "Did that feller shoot me?  Say, did I
get him?"

"Sure, boy!" said Flaherty.  "You got him.  And so did a dozen more of
the fellies.  He's deader'n hell this minute, so don't you worry none
over that.  Don't worry over nothing," he added gently, folding his
coat to put under Sim's head.  He had seen gun shot wounds before in
his life on the rough jobs, and he knew.

"Get a board, or something, boys," he said.  So presently they brought
a plank, and eased Sim Gage gently to it, men at each end lifting him,
others steadying him as he was carried.  They took him into the house
which Waldhorn had just now left.

[Illustration: "Get a board, or something, boys"]

It was the turn of dawn now.  The soft light of day was filtering
through the air from somewhere up above, somewhere beyond the edge of
the canyon.

"Better tell those women to stay away," said Flaherty to the young
lieutenant.  The latter met Annie Squires at the door of her house,
ejaculating, demanding, questioning, weeping, all at once.  It was with
difficulty that she was induced to obey the general orders of getting
inside and keeping quiet.

Other men came now, telling of the discovery of the dead Chinaman near
the lighting station.  The bits of information were pieced together
hurriedly, this and that to the other.

Doctor Barnes had seen the light's play on the sky, had heard echoes in
the mountains.  He now reached the scene, coming at top speed up the
canyon trail in his car.  He met answers already formed for his
questions.

"They got Sim," said Wid Gardner.  "Waldhorn----"

He hurried into the room where they had carried the wounded man.  "Why,
of course," said Sim Gage dully, "I'll be all right.  After breakfast
I'll be out again all right.  I've got to go over and see--I've got to
go over to her house and see----"  But he never told what he planned.

Doctor Barnes shook his head to Flaherty after a time, when the latter
turned to him in the outer room.  The big foreman compressed his lips.

"He's done good work, the lad!" said Flaherty; and Wid Gardner, still
standing by, nodded his head.

"Mighty good.  It was him got the Chink all right--hit him twict out of
three, and creased him onct; and like enough this Dutchman first, too.
Tell me, Doc, ain't he got a chanct to come through?  Can't you make it
out that way for pore old Sim?"

"I'm afraid not," said Doctor Barnes.  "The shot's close to an artery,
and like enough he's bleeding internally, because he's coughing.  His
pulse is jumpy.  It's too bad--too damn bad.  He was--a good man, Sim
Gage!"

"What was it, Annie?" asked Mary Gage, over in their house.  "There was
shooting.  Was anybody hurt?"

"Some of the hands got to mixing it, like enough," said Annie, herself
pale and shaking.  "I don't know."

"Was anybody hurt?"

"I haven't had time to find out.  Oh, my God!  Sis, I wish't we'd never
come out here to this country at all.  I want my mother, that's what I
want!  I'm sick with all this."  She began to cry, sobbing openly.
Mary Gage, now the stronger, drew the girl's head down into her own
arms.

"You mustn't cry," said she.  "Annie, we've got to pull together."

"I guess so," said Annie, sobbing, "both of us.  But I'm so
lonesome--I'm so awful scared."

The morning came slowly, at length fully, cool and softly luminous.
The friends of Sim Gage, all men, stood near his bedside.  His eyes
opened sometimes, looking with curious languor around him, as though
some problem were troubling him.  At length he turned toward Wid, who
stood close to him.

"Hit!" said he.--"I know, now."

No one said anything to this.  After a time he reached out a hand and
touched almost timidly the arm of his friend.  His voice was laboring
and not strong.

"Where's--where's my hat?" he whispered at length.

"Your hat?" said Wid.  "Your hat?--Now, why--I reckon it's hanging
around somewheres here.  What makes you want it?"

But some one had heard the request and came through the little hallway
with Sim Gage's hat, brave green cord and all.

The wounded man looked at it and smiled, as sweet a smile as may come
to a man's face--the smile of a boy.  Indeed, he had lived a life that
had left him scarce more than a boy, all these years alone on outskirts
of the world.

He motioned to them to put the hat on the bed side him.  "I want it
here," he said after a time, moving restlessly when they undertook to
take it from him.

He touched it with his hand.  At length he reached out and dropped it
on the chair at the head of his bed, now and again turning and looking
at it the best he might, laboring as he did with his torn lungs;
looking at it with some strange sort of reverence in his gaze, some
tremendous significance.

"Ain't she _fine_?" he asked of his friend, again with his
astonishingly winsome smile; a smile they found hard to look upon.

A half hour later some man down the road said to another that the
sagebrusher had croaked too.

That is to say, Sim Gage, gentleman, soldier and patriot, had passed on
to the place where men find reward for doing the very best they know
with what God has seen fit to give them as their own.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE DAM

Doctor Allen Barnes turned slowly toward the house where the wife of
Sim Gage still lay.  His heart was heavy with the hardest duty he had
ever known in all his life.

But as he reached a point half way between the two houses he suddenly
stopped.  At that moment every man on the little street stopped also.

The routine of the patrol had been relaxed in the excitement of these
late events.  Indeed, it seemed tacitly agreed that the climax had
come, so that there was no need now for further guardianship of the
property.  It was not so.

The sound was a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described,
and not a sharp rending note; a vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in the
earth, as though a volcano were about to erupt.  It was not over in an
instant, but went on, like the suppressed lamentations of some creature
trying to break its chains.  It might have been some prehistoric,
tremendous creature, unknown to man, unknown to these times.  But it
was our creature.  It was of our day.  Else it could never have been.

Then the ground under the feet of every man on the little street
lifted, gently, slowly, and sank down again.  As it did so a tremendous
reverberation gathered and broke out, ran up and down the canyon, up
the opposite cliff face, echoing and rising as dense and thick as smoke
does.  The rack-rock charge, of no one may know how many hundreds of
pounds, had done its work.

And then all earth went back to chaos.  A new world was in the making.
There arose in that narrow, iron-sided gorge a havoc such as belike
surpassed that of the original breaking through of the waters.  That
first slow work of nature might have been done drop by drop, a little
at a time.  But now all the outraged river was venting itself in one
epochal instant.  Its accumulated power was rushing through the wall
that held it back from the seas--the vast vengeance of the waters,
which they had sought covertly all this time, now was theirs.

An uncontrollable and immeasurable force was set loose.  No man may
measure the actual horse power that lay above the great dam of the Two
Forks--it never was a comprehensible thing.  A hundred Johnstown
reservoirs lay penned there.  That there was so little actual loss of
life was due to the fact that there were few settlements in the sixty
miles below the mouth of the great canyon itself.  A few scattered dry
farms, edging up close to the river in the valley far below, were
caught and buried.  Hours later, under the advancing flood, all the
live stock of the valley was swept away, all the houses and all the
fences and roads and bridges were wiped out as though they had never
been.  But this was fifty, sixty, seventy miles away, and much later in
the morning.  Those below could only guess what had happened far up in
the great Two Forks canyon.  The big dam was broken!

The face of the giant dam, more solidly coherent than granite itself,
slowly, grandiose even in its ruin, passed out and down in a hundred
foot crevasse where the spill gates were widened by the high explosive.
A vast land slip, jarred from the cut-face mountain side above,
thundered down and aided in the crumbling of the dam.  A disintegrated
mass of powdered concrete fell out, was blown apart.  The face of the
dam on that part slowly settled down into a vast U.  Then the waters
came through, leaping--a solid face of water such as no man may
comprehend.

An instant, and the canyon below the dam was fifty feet deep with a
substance which seemed not water, but a mass of shrieking and screaming
demons set loose under the name of no known element.  There came a vast
roar, but with it a number of smaller sounds, as of voices deep down
under the flood, glass splintering, rocks rumbling.  The gorge seemed
inhabited by furies.  And back of this came the pressure of twenty
miles of water, a hundred feet deep, which would come through.  The
river had its way again, raving and roaring in an anvil chorus of its
own, knocking the great bowlders together, shrieking its glee.  The Two
Forks river came through the Two Forks canyon once more!  Against it
there stood only the fragmental ruin of the great, gray face,
buttressed with concrete more coherent than granite itself, but all
useless here.

The tide rose very rapidly.  The canyon was too crooked to carry off
the flood.  The lower part of the town, where the street grade sank
rapidly, went under water almost at once.  Horses, cows, sheep,
chickens, the odds and ends of such an encampment, gathered by vagrant
laborers, were swept down before opportunity could be found to save
them.  Men and the few women in that part of town, employees of the
cook camp, abandoned their possessions and ran straight up the mountain
side, seeking only to get above the tide.  Their houses were swept away
like cheese boxes.  Logs were crushed together like straws.  The sound
of it all made human speech inaudible anywhere close to the water's
edge.

The east half of the dam, that closer to the camp, still held.  The
buildings here were still under the dam--a mass of water fifty feet in
height rose above them, would come through if that portion of the dam
broke.  But at the time only the suction of the farther U, where the
break was made, caused a gentle current to be visible at this side of
the backwater.  If the dam held, it would be quite a time before the
level of the lake above would be appreciably altered.  Slowly, inch by
inch, each inch representing none might say how much in power of ruin,
it would sink, and in time reveal the ancient bed of the river.  If the
remnant of the dam held, that would be true.  Happy the human race
aspiring to erect such a barrier, that so few suffered in this rebirth
of the wilderness.  Had the settlements been thick below, all must have
perished.  The telephone was out, there was no way for a messenger to
get out ahead of the flood.  Only the quick widening of the valley,
below the canyon's lower end, eased down the volume of the flood so
that it was less destructive.  There was no settlement at all in the
canyon proper.

After the first pause of horror men here at the broken dam began to
bestir themselves.  Discipline was a thing forgotten, and _sauve qui
peut_ was the law.  It was some time before Doctor Barnes pulled
himself together and began to try to get his men in hand.  He ordered
them to the lower end of the street, to drive the people out of their
houses without an instant's delay; for none might say at what time the
break in the dam would increase, in which case it soon would be too
late for any hope.  He himself hastened at last to the house where the
two women were, Wid Gardner with him, after he had issued general
orders for all the men to get up the trail above the dam as soon as
possible.

"Come out!" he cried as he opened the door.  Mary Gage and Annie came
arm in arm, both of them hysterical now.

"It's all gone," said Doctor Barnes, not even bitterly, but calmly
after all.  "It's out.  The dam's gone."

"Gone?  What does it mean?  Where shall we go?  Is there danger?"
These questions came all at once from the two women.  The roar of the
waters drowned their voices.

"Come quick!  Get into my car.  It's only a step up the grade--we'll be
safe on the upper level."

They came, Mary Gage still with her bandages in place, stumbling,
terrified, but leading the little dog, Tim, who cringed down in curious
terror of his own.  Doctor Barnes hurried them, guided them, and the
little car quickly carried them up the incline above the top of the dam.

They paused here at the first sharp curve under the lee of the cut
bank, where they might take breath and look down.  There came up and
grouped themselves near them and beyond them now several of the people
of the camp, and practically all of the soldiers from the barracks, who
fell into a stiff, silent line, looking down.  It was a scene singular
enough which lay before them, this wild remaking of the wilderness.

There came another cosmic cry from the chaos below them, more
terrifying than anything yet had been.  Two Forks was throwing in the
reserves.  The enemy was breaking!  Doctor Barnes knew what this meant.
The break was widening.  He stood looking down.  And then he heard a
human voice cry out, a voice he knew.

He turned--and saw Mary Gage fall as though in a faint upon the ground.
Her eye-bandages were off, her eyes wholly uncovered to the light.

"Well, it's over now," said he quietly to Annie Squires.  "One way or
the other, it's done."

He lifted her gently, attended her until at length she moved,
stood--until at length he knew that she saw!

She turned her face back from the ruin which had been her first vision
of her new world, and looked into the eyes of the man who had given
back to her eyes with which to see.  And he looked deep, deep into her
own, grave and unsmiling.

She spoke to him at last.  "I can see," said she simply.

"I'm very glad," said he, trying to be as simple.  But he turned her
away, giving her into Annie's arms.

"Look!" cried other voices.

A section of the side of the great U, running clear back to a seam
which had formed in the dam face, slowly broke out and went down.  The
water rose like a tide now, very rapidly, because the canyon itself, so
narrow and so full of abrupt curves, made no adequate outlet for this
augmented flood.  The entire lower part of the camp was covered, and
the flood, eddying back from the mountain wall, came creeping up toward
the top of the grade, covering now this and now that portion of the
settlement.  One house after another was swept away before their eyes.

Doctor Barnes stood looking out over it all moodily.  He did not go
back to Mary Gage.  Back beyond a few of the soldiers were chattering
idly, but no one paid attention to them, for not even they themselves
knew that they were talking.  But at length a voice, clear and
distinct, did come to Doctor Barnes' ears.

"Where is my husband!" cried Mary Gage, breaking away from Annie.
"Which is he?"

He turned to her silently.  He shook his head.

"I want to see him!  I've got to see him.  Who's that man?"  She
pointed.

"That's Wid Gardner," said Doctor Barnes, slowly and gently as he could.

"Those men yonder--those soldiers--is one of them my husband?  You said
he was a soldier."

"Yes," said Doctor Barnes, "he was a soldier."

Then she guessed at last.

"He _was_ a soldier?  Where is he _now_?"  She turned upon him, laying
her hands upon his arms.  "Where is he now?" she demanded.

But Doctor Barnes was looking at the foam-flecked surface of the water,
eddying against the mountain side, crawling up and up.  The little log
house where Sim Gage's soul had passed was no more to be seen.  It had
gone.  The house where the women had stopped was swept down but a short
time later.  Doctor Barnes could not speak the cruel truth.

"Annie!" called out Mary Gage, sobbing openly, imploringly.  "Tell me,
won't I _ever_ see him?  You said he was a good soldier."

"One of the best," said Doctor Barnes at last.  "Listen to me, please.
Your husband died believing he had saved the dam.  And so he had, so
far as his work was concerned.  It was he who discovered their work
last night.  He took care of two of them--it makes three for him.  It
was he that killed Big Aleck, up on the reserve, and avenged you, and
never told you.  He was shot--you heard the firing.  He died before we
came up here.  I couldn't bring his body till you were cared for.  Now
it's too late.  He's gone.  Well, it's as good a way for a good man to
go."

"Blow 'Taps,'" he ordered of the bugler near by.  It was done.  And
then, at his order, the rifles spoke in unison over a soldier's grave.

"But I've never _seen_ him!" she said to him piteously, after the
echoes of the salutes had passed.  It was as though she was unable to
comprehend.

"No," said Allen Barnes.  "But keep this picture of him--think that he
died like a gentleman and a soldier.  A good man, Sim Gage."

He turned away and walked down the grade apart from them, hardly seeing
what lay before him, hardly hearing the rush of the waters down the
canyon.

When men began to question as to the cause of the disaster, it became
plain that some man, whose name no one will ever know, must have crept
along the side of the river bank below the road grade, and have fired
the fuse of a heavy charge of rack-rock, which, none might know how
long, had been hid between the buttresses and back of the apron of the
dam.

Doctor Barnes reasoned now that that man in all likelihood had come
from below.  If so, in all likelihood he was one of the Dorenwald
party.  His face lighted grimly.  There were but few places where they
could have found a place in the canyon for an encampment.  If they had
found one of these places--where were they now?  Their fate could now
be read in this flood forcing its way down through the crooked gorge of
the mountain range.  The flag staff had not been swept down--the flag
still fluttered now, triumphant over the attempted ruin--the answer of
America to Anarchy!  And the flag had been avenged.  Dorenwald and his
"free brothers," leaders of the "world's revolt," would revolt no more.
The sponge of the slate had wiped off their little marks.  No one would
ever trace them.  They would find no confessional and no shriving, for
their way back to that underworld of devil-fed minds, out of which they
had emerged to do ruin in a country which had never harmed them, but
which on the contrary had welcomed them and fed them in their want.




CHAPTER XXXIV

AFTER THE DELUGE

In one elemental instant there was loosed in the soul of Mary Gage a
pent flood of emotion.  She let her heart go, let in the wilderness of
primitive things again.  She was alive!  She could see!  She could be
as other women!

The flood of relief, of joy, of yearning, was a thing cosmic, so strong
that regret and grief were for the time swept on and buried in the
welter of emotions running free.

It was as though she had stepped absolutely from one world into
another.  Suddenly, the people of her old world were gone.  There had
been a shadow, a strange, magnified shadow of a soul, this man who had
been called her husband.  But now with astonishing swiftness and
clarity of vision she knew that he never had been a husband to her.
What another had told her was the truth.  He never had allowed her to
touch his hand, his face, he never had laid a hand on hers, never had
called her by any name of love, never had kissed her or sought to do
so.  And he was gone now, so absolutely that not even the image of him
could remain had she ever owned an image of him.  She never had known
him, and now never could.

Alas!  Sim Gage, shall we say?  By no means.  Happy Sim Gage!  For he
passed at the climax of his life and took with him forever all he ever
could have gained of delight and comfort.  Happy Sim Gage! to have a
woman like Mary, his wife, stand and weep for him now.  He had lost her
had she ever seen his face, and now, at least, he owned her tears.  A
vast and noble flood carried happy Sim Gage out to the ocean at the end
of all, to the rest and the absorption and the peace.

Mary Gage pushed back the bandage from her eyes furtively, unable to
obey longer any command which cut her off from this new world to which
she had come.  Before she dropped the bandage once more she had caught
sight of a figure not looking toward her at the moment.

Allen Barnes was standing with his head up, his eyes looking out over
the abysmal scene below.  Behind his back he had gripped tight together
his long and sinewy hands.  He was a lean and broad man, so she
thought.  He stood in the uniform of his country, made for manly men,
and beseeming only such.  The neatness of good rearing even now was
apparent in every line of him.  Dust seemed not to have touched him.
He was clean and trim and fine, a picture of an officer and a gentleman.

Light, and the new music of the spheres--to whom did she owe those
things?  It was to this man standing yonder.

"McQueston," she heard a sharp voice command, "take your men and go
down to the lower dam--any way you can get across the mountains.  Bring
your report up by one of these cars when you get back here.  I'll go up
above to the upper station with these people.  It's going to rain.
That will end the fire."

He saluted sharply in return, and turned again to those under his
personal charge.

"Get into the car," he said.  Mary Gage felt his hand steadying her
arm.  He took his place at the steering wheel, Wid Gardner alongside,
Annie and herself being left to the rear seat of the tonneau.  It was
reckless driving that Doctor Allen Barnes did once more.  They out-ran
the approaching valley storm, and so presently came into the gate of
that place where once had lived Sim Gage.  They dismounted from the car
and stood, a forlorn group, looking at the scene before them as funeral
mourners returning, not liking the thought of going into a deserted
home from which a man is gone never to return.




CHAPTER XXXV

ANNIE ANSWERS

All at once Annie Squires, usually stolid, now overstrained, gave way
to a wild sobbing.  "I can't go in there," said she.  "I'm scared.  I
want to go home!  I want my mother, that's what I want."

"Where is your mother?" asked Wid Gardner.  He had come over near to
her when Doctor Barnes was helping Mary into the house.

"Dead--dead long ago," wept Annie.  "When I was a little girl.  Like
her, Mary, there--we didn't neither of us ever have a mother.  We done
just the best we could, both of us.  We've tried and tried to find some
sort of place where we belonged, and we couldn't.  We haven't got any
place to go to.  I haven't got a place on earth to call my home.

"And it's something a woman wants sometimes," she added after a while,
dabbing her wet handkerchief against her eyes.  "That's the Gawd's
truth."

Wid approached more closely the weeping girl, touching her arm with a
brown hand now gentle as a child's.

"Now look-a-here," said he.  "I can't stand to hear you go on that way.
Do you reckon you was ever any lonesomer fer a home than what I am,
living out here all my life?"

"And now I'm worse off than I ever was before," he went on frowningly.
"I didn't know nothing before you come out here.  But now I do.  I
can't think of your going back, Annie."

She did not answer him, but went on weeping.

"What's more, I ain't _a-going_ to stand it," he added savagely.  "I
ain't _a-going_ to let you go back a-tall.  Talk about home!--there's a
home right acrosst the fence.  We can make it any way we like.  It'll
do to start with, anyhow.  Here's where you belong--you don't belong
back there in them dirty cities.  You belong right out here--with me."

"I couldn't--I can't," said Annie.  "I couldn't let her go back alone.
I got to take care of that kid."

"She ain't blind no more," said Wid.  "But she don't have to go back!
This here place where we stand is hers, ain't it?  What more does she
want?  And we'd be right here, too, all the time, to help her and watch
her, wouldn't we, now?"

"You don't know her," said Annie Squires.  "I do."

"But, Annie," he went on, "you'd ought to see this out here in the
valley when the spring comes!  It's green, all green!  The sage has got
five different colors of green in it--you wouldn't think that, would
you?  And some blue.  And you ain't seen the mountains yet when they're
white with snow on them--that's something you got to see fer to know
what a mountain is.  And look at that little creek--it's plumb gentle
up here, ain't it?  It's pretty, here.  You ought to see the moonlight
on the meadows when the moon is full,--I was telling you about that,
Annie."

"I ain't never been married in my life," he went on, arguing now.  "I
ain't never seen a woman that I loved or looked at twicet but you.  I
was too damn lazy to care anyway about anything till I seen you.  I
just been drifting and fooling along.  But now I ain't.  I want to go
to work.  I want to be somebody.  Why, Annie, I reckon all the time I
was homesick, and didn't know it.  But I tell you it wouldn't be no
home unless you was in it with me.  I ain't fit to ask you to run it
fer me.  But I do!"

It was the ancient story, even told direct in the open, unwhispered,
even told now, at such an hour and place.  She did not answer at all,
but her sobbing had ceased.  He stood still frowning, looking at her,
his hat pushed back from his forehead.

"I can't say no more'n I have," he concluded.  "Years and years, Annie.
Wouldn't it settle a heap of things?"

"I got to have some sort of time to think things over, haven't I,
then?"  She spoke with apparent venom, as though this were an affront
that had been offered her.

"All you want," said Wid Gardner gently.  "I've done my own thinking.
I know."

"I've got to go in and get them folks something to eat, haven't I?"
said Annie, using her apron on her eyes.  "It's going to be about the
last time all of us'll ever eat together any more."

"Well, we can invite them over, sometimes, can't we, Annie?" said Wid
Gardner calmly.  And he kissed her brazenly and in the open.




CHAPTER XXXVI

MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE

It was fall, and the flame of the frost had fallen on the aspen and the
cottonwoods, and shorn the willows of most of their leaves.  A hundred
thousand wild fowl honked their way across the meadows toward the black
flats where once had been a lake, and where now was immeasurable food
for them.  Up in the mountains the elk were braying.  The voice of the
coyotes at the pink of dawn seemed shriller now, as speaking of the
coming days of want.  But the sun still was kind, the midday hour still
was one of warmth.  A strange, keen value, immeasurably exalting, was
in the air.  All nature was afoot, questioning of what was to come.

Mary Gage came in from the stream side that afternoon, the strap of her
trout creel cutting deep into the shoulder of her sweater.  She placed
the basket down under the shadow of the willow trees, and hung up a
certain rod on certain nails under the eaves of the cabin.  Her little
dog, Tim, soberly marched in front of her, still guiding her, as he
supposed; but she no longer had a cord upon his neck, a staff in her
hand.  A hundred chickens, well grown now, followed her about, vocal of
their desire for attention.  She turned to them, taking down the little
sack which contained the leavings of the wheat that had been threshed
not so long ago here.

"Chick, chick, chick!" she called gently--"_chick_ee, _chick_ee!"  So
she stood, Lady Bountiful for them as they swarmed about her feet in
the dooryard.

She heard the clang of the new gate, and turned, her hand shading her
eyes to see who was coming.

As she stood she made a splendid picture of young womanhood, ruddy and
brown, clear of skin and eye, very fair indeed to look upon.  The droop
of the corners of her mouth was gone.  Her gaze was direct and free.
She walked easily, strong and straight and deep of bosom, erect of
head, flat of back, as fit for love as any woman of ancient Greece.
Such had been the ministrations of the sagebrush land for Mary Gage,
that once was the weakling, Mary Warren.

She saw two figures coming slowly along the well-worn track from the
gate.  She could not hear the comment the one made to the other as they
both advanced slowly, leaning together as gossiping women will, like
two tired oxen returning from the field.

"Is that her?" asked one of the newcomers, a ponderous sort of woman,
whose feet turned out alarmingly as she walked.

"Sure it's her," said Karen Jensen.  "Who's it going to be if it ain't
her?  Ain't she nice-looking, sort of, after all?  And to think she can
see now as good as anybody!  Yes, that's her.

"How do you do, Mis' Gage?"

She spoke now aloud as Mary came toward them smiling.  The dimples in
her cheek, resurrected of late, gave a girlishness and tenderness to
her face that it once had lacked in her illness.

"I'm well, thank you, Mrs. Jensen.  It's a glorious day, isn't it?
I've got some fish for you.  I was going to tell Minna to take them
down to you when she went home.  She's a dear, your Minna."

"Well, it's right fine you should catch fish for us now," said Mrs.
Jensen.  "I'll be obliged for some--my man don't seem to get time to go
fishing."

"Make you acquainted with Mis' Davidson, Mis' Gage," she continued.
"This is the school teacher.  She comes every fall to teach up above,
when she's done living on her Idaho homestead, summers."

"How do you do, Miss--Mrs. Davidson," began Mary, offering her hand.
"If you know Mrs. Jensen I ought to know you--she's been very good to
me.  Come in, won't you?  Sit down on the gallery."

"Yes, this new porch is about as good as anywheres right now,"
commented Mrs. Jensen.  "It's a little hot, ain't it?"  They found
seats of boxes and ends of logs.

Mrs. Davidson cast a glance into the open door.  It included the
spectacle of a neat, white-covered bed, a table with a clean white
oil-cloth cover, a series of covered and screened receptacles such as
the place might best afford out of its resources.  She saw a floor
immaculately clean.  She spoke after a time ending a silence which was
unusual with her.

"The latter title that you gave me, Mrs. Gage, is correct," said she.
"I am a widow, having never encountered the oppor-r-r-tunity but once."
It was worth going miles out of one's way to hear her say
"opportunity"--or to see her wide-mouthed smile.

"As a widow," she resumed with orotundity not lessened by her absence
from her own accustomed dais, "as a widow yourself, you are arranged
here with a fair degree of comfort, as I am disposed to believe, Mrs.
Gage."

"I cannot complain," said Mary Gage simply.

"A great trait in life, my dear madam; resignation!  I endeavor to
inculcate in my pupils the virtue of stoicism.  I tell them of the
Spartan boy, Mrs. Gage.  Perhaps you have heard of the Spartan boy?"

"Yes," said Mary.  "I know something about stoicism, I hope.  But now
I'm going to get you some berries--I picked some, up beyond, on the
meadows."  She rose now and passed into that part of her cabin which
constituted the kitchen.

"An extr-r-r-aordinary young woman!" said Mrs. Davidson to Karen
Jensen.  "An extra_or_dinary person to be here.  Why, she is a person
of culture, like myself.  And once married--married to that man!"

Mrs. Davidson's lips were tight pursed now.

"I don't reckon she ever was, real," said Karen Jensen, simply.  "I
don't hardly believe they _was_."

Mrs. Davidson showed herself disposed to regard all the proprieties,
hence she but coughed ponderously and shook her head ponderously,
turning from side to side two or three times in her chair ponderously
also.

"For what has happened here," said she at last, "I thank God.  If
things had happened worse it would have been my fault.  Never again
shall I address myself to the task of writing advertisements for men in
search of wives.  Great Providence!  An extraordinary woman like this!
To-night I shall pray on my two knees for forgiveness for what I did,
and what it might have meant.  When I consider how near I came
to--to----"

"To raising hell?" inquired Karen Jensen sympathetically, seeing that
her companion lacked the proper word at the time.

The other woman nodded in emphatic though unconscious assent.  Always
there was present before her mind her own part in the little drama of
this place.  It was she who had helped to bring this woman here--who
had helped to deceive her.  She thanked Providence that perhaps fate
itself sometimes saves us from the full fruit of our follies, after all.

"Just a little sugar, thank you, Mrs. Gage," said she as Mary offered
her some of the fresh whortle berries.  "And these little cakes--you
made them?"

"Oh, yes--I do most of my cooking, when I can keep Annie away.  You
know about Annie, of course.  And Minna, Mrs. Jensen's little, girl,
who is my companion here most of the time--as I said, she's a dear.
I've been teaching her to read all summer--spoiling your work, Mrs.
Davidson!"

"I wish more and more that I might have aid in that undertaking in this
valley," said Sarah Davidson, herself a great soul in her way, and
Covenanter when it came to duty.  "It is perhaps primitive here, more
so than elsewhere, but the people--the people--they need so much, and
they--they----"

"They _are_ so much," said Mary Gage gently.  "They _are_ so much.  I
never knew before what real people were.  I'm so glad."

Mrs. Davidson's face worked strangely, very strangely, Mary thought, so
that she believed her to be afflicted with some nervous disease of the
facial muscles.  But in truth Sarah Davidson was only endeavoring to
get under control her own emotions, which, like all else about her,
were ponderous and slow.

"Then, my dear--you will let me say 'my dear,' won't you?  It's
becoming such a habit with me at my time of life--you will permit me to
inquire if that is an actual expression of your attitude toward the
people here?  You say you are glad?  Do you mean that, or is it a mere
conventionality with you?"

Mary turned toward her with that gravity which quite commonly marked
her face when all her features were at rest.

"I quite mean it all, Mrs. Davidson," said she.  "I'm thankful with all
my heart that I came out here.  It's a great place to fight things out.
I'd never have been happy in all my life if I had not come here.  I'm
really glad, and you may believe that, because I do--now."

"You would forgive--you would cherish no malice against any who acted
as the ah--instigators--of your original journey here?"

A sudden question arose in Mrs. Davidson's mind as to whether or not
any of Mary Gage's associates and neighbors ever had told her all the
story of that original endeavor, whose object was matrimony.  Whereupon
she concluded now to let sleeping dogs lie, and not to urge the matter.
Nor was Mary herself the more disposed at the moment to speak of the
past.  She only looked out across the valley, as was her custom.

They passed on to some talk of the peace news, and demobilization plans
for the men still abroad, for the visitors had brought the latest paper
with them.

"Our men!" exclaimed Mary Gage as she read the headlines.  "They're
fine.  They are always fine, everywhere, all of them.  I'd have liked
to see them in the great parades, in the cities."

"'Twould be a gr-r-r-and sight," said Mrs. Davidson, "for women who
have had no oppor-r-r-tunity!"

"Ah?  Women who haven't had what women wish?" said Mary Gage, a strange
confidence in her own tones.  "Don't you suppose God knows the way?
Why be trying to change----"  The word did not come at first.

"The plan?" suggested Mrs. Davidson.

"The plan!" said Mary.

"I must be going before long," said Karen Jensen, having finished her
saucer of berries, and caring little for philosophizing.  "I've got to
milk seven cows yet."

"I will come often, if I may, Mrs. Gage, now that I am again located in
this valley," said her companion, rising also.

"Oh, won't you, please!" said Mary Gage.  "And--won't you do me a
little favor now?  I have a letter--I was just going up to the corner
to put it in the box.  If you're going that way, will you drop it in
for me?"

Karen Jensen hesitated, looking across at the shortcut across the
fields, but Mrs. Davidson, not being well organized for barbed wire
entanglements, offered for the errand, which would take her around by
the road.

"Surely, I shall be most happy," said she.  "I will walk around by the
box and drop your letter very gladly.  No, no, don't mind coming.  It's
nothing--I always go home that way."

But Sarah Davidson after all was the school teacher when she had passed
beyond the gate in the willow lane.  She felt that in her were
represented all the privileges of what priesthood might be claimed in
this valley.  She felt that her judgment was large enough to be
infallible, since she so long had been arbiter here in all mooted
matters.  It was, therefore, surely her right to have intelligence as
to the plans, the emotions, the mental process of all these people,
including all newcomers.  Were they not indeed in her charge?

Her right?  Indeed, was it not her duty to know what there was in this
letter from the woman whom she herself had brought out here not so long
ago?  It caused her vast perturbation, for she had a conscience which
dated back to ages of Scottish blood, but she was not one to deviate
from her duty once she had established it!  This letter--to Major Allen
Barnes, in yonder city--what was in it?

It was a letter going to that outer world, from the very person whom
she, Sarah Davidson, had brought into this sagebrush world and had set
down among these neighbors.  Just now she had confessed herself to be
happy here.  Why?  Could it be a violation of confidence--an
eavesdropping--opening this letter?  Not in the least!  It was only
oppor-r-r-tunity!  As to that, who did not know that for years every
letter to a soldier was opened and censored?  Obviously it was her duty
as social censor of Two Forks also to open and read this letter.

Therefore, looking behind her cautiously to see she was not observed,
she stepped behind the cover of the willows and ran the point of her
pencil along the edge of the sealed envelope--it had been sealed
thoroughly.  Still, she tore it but very little in the process.

There came out into her hand a single sheet of paper.  It bore no
address and no signature.  It showed a handwriting evidently that of a
lady of culture, of education.  There was nothing to show that it was
an answer--an answer long deferred but not now to be changed, a woman's
answer to the great question.

Mrs. Davidson was standing in a sort of consternation, the two parts of
the letter in her two hands, when she nearly sprang into the wire fence
at the sudden voice she heard, the voice of a man speaking close at
hand.

"Good Lord, Mr. Gardner!" said she, "you gave me a turn.  I wasn't
thinking of you."

"What was you thinking of, Mis' Davidson?" asked Wid, smiling.  "You
was all in a trance.  Something on your mind, huh?  I bet I know.
You're sending out a ad on your own account--'object, matrimony!'"

"Sir-r-r!" said Sarah Davidson, flushing red for the first time Wid
Gardner had ever seen it occur, "such conver-r-r-sation is not welcome
on your part, not in the least!  I prefer-r-r that you shall not again
mention that act which I have so long regretted.  The past is past.  A
woman's real love is for to-day and to-morrow, when with her own eyes
and her own hear-r-rt she has chosen honorably, sir-r--honor-r-ably!  I
bid you good evening, Mr. Gar-r-r-dner.  I request you never to speak
of that incident again!"

Nor did he, so far as known.

But when Wid himself, chuckling innocently, had passed on down toward
the gate with the loaf of bread which Annie was sending over to Mary
Gage for her evening meal, Sarah Davidson was passing up the road
toward the school house--entirely forgetting to turn to the left toward
Nels Jensen's, where she boarded.

She was wiping away large, ponderous tears--tears of joy that the world
had in it love of men and women--that God, after all, did know--that
the world still was as it was in the beginning, incapable of
destruction even by war, incapable of diversion from the plan of peace
and hope.  She guessed so much--and guessed the future of Mary Gage's
life--from data meager enough, but which may have served.

What she saw on the single, unsigned page, and what opened all the
fountains of emotion in her own really gentle soul, was a part of what
Mary once had heard come to her in a world of darkness.  The words now
were written by herself in a world of light.

She had promised him when he went away that, if ever everything was
clear in her own mind regarding what was past, she might write to him
one day.  So now she had written:

  "Only thoughts of you remain
  In my heart where they have lain;
  Perfumed thoughts of you, remaining,
  A hid sweetness, in my brain.
  Others leave me; all things leave me:
  You remain."