THE STORYTELLER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 210, 9 October 1909, Page 4

THE STORYTELLER.

ONS WOMAN. 1° For thirty-six hours the man had ridden through the bunch-grass beyond the last sign of human life; thirty-six hours of heat that sizzled the marrow in his bones; of cactus, vritU unwholesome fat. dropsical body, and yellow red eyes; of sage that crackled and beckoned like the withered hands of an old crone, and bunch-grass—always bunch-grass. Somewhere the sky dropped down, and there was an end of things; but ttie man had begun to doubt it. It seemed t'> him that he had been fighting to cross the Flat, as one lights vainly in a nightmare; but as he covered' eaeh mile, countless other miles of loneliness, absolute quiet, and of bunch-glass unrolled before him. I'hirty-six lours before he had hailed a sheep-man and his band. Now, iie tried the sound of his voice on the marc. The words thundered off towards infinity, gathering awfulness; then they fell back upon the man. lie shivered. When he looked up again there was an apparition. The towmuan wondered vaguely if the tiling wag a mirage or a highwayman. No, it was not a mirage, but a very real man. He- was tearing across the range on a cayuse aa mad as himself, waving a quirt in one hand and a good oilfashioned six-shooter in the other. ''Stop!" he yelled. As he hit the trail, the first rider sav a handsome, rough boy-face; but he heard—well, if fiends speak, they mustl have just such voices. The little mare,! hearing the Inhuman shriek, took fright and started to ,run. In an instant she lay a quivering brown heap. Her rider jerked out his watch and purse as he pulled his feet from the stirrups. "Here!" he said contemptuously. "I'd have given them to you without that!" The boy did not see. He had throni. himself from his own horse and stared!

with unblinking ieyes. "Talk!" he commanded. The older man stared back in surprise." "Say, what's this? New brand cf Grande Rounde joke?" "Talk!" the boy repeated. He stood perfectly still. The sunlig'at corkscrewed about his haie head. Coldly —slowly he raised his gun. It was still smoking. He brought it to a level with the other man's head. "11l give you one second to start talking." "And I used to laugh at these yarns about men getting locoed," the traveller commentedxoolly. "Talk, curse you!" Each word came with a click, as from chords long unused. They quivered on a high key and broke. The boy whipped a second gun from bis left liippocket. A duet of lead rang about the city mail's patent-leather ties. The face above the ties went white. '"I'll talk," he answered gravely. "What shall I talk about, neighbor*" At the slow, kind words, the highwayman flung his brace of guns into a bed of cactus. He swore the big black oath of the Flat, and disappeared. The sabe crackled under a heavy body and gave off fragrant puffs of smothered spice into the dancing air. But Dick Turpin, highwayman and bandit, was gone. In his place, face down in the grass, lay a miserable, 60bbing boy. The man bent over him. "What did you do that for, son?" n5 asked, gently. "Poor little man!" Xo answer. "Well, you don't seem keen on my money! What did you hold me up for?" The sobs seemed to have washed away the high, unnatural falsetto. It was a weak voice that stammered: "I held you up, stranger, to hear you speak." He raised a hot, shamed face, and braced himself on one elbow. "I did it—l did it because I ain't heard a human voice in seven months. That was a prospector. He was talking to his burro across the river. He didn't even see me, and I didn't get much of a look at him. But I heard him—heard a man speak. I've got the days marked on a rock near my sliaek. I got that day all fixed up fancy with red sandstone. That was the last time. I wis

eating the last batch of apple pies I made to celebrate Christmas. And now' it's July." | TKe man came close and laid a hand on the hot, curly head. ! "Poor boy," he said. j "You see, first I had a dog. Then it' wasn't go bad. He used to roll over on his back and beg. I filled cnipty tobacco- j sacks with dry pea's and we'd play beanbag. that dog and me. But after a while lie lost all them little puppy tricks. He'd sit and listen and listen, just he always was expecting to hear m:n talking and singing. At night he'd walk j up and down that shack. Sometimes I'dwhistle, and he'd nearly wag his tad off. But seemed like he could not stand the lonesomeness. Got off his feed finally. j "By an' bve a couple of Indian agents come along and camped in the gulcli over yonder. Them fellows set round the fire and spun yarns and played a mouth-organ. One fellow jigged. Sav! that dog went erazy. Thought he'd eat them two fellows up. Seemed just like he'd been hankering for men's voices. 7 «ays: 'Well, Billie, you got someone tf«iting that's going to make up to vpu for all this solitary confinement; but the dog, he ain't. You can't ask him to stand it no more, Billie.'" He tied the lace of his shoe-pack md stupidly pulled the knot to pieces again. "So—l let him go on with the agents, and faced it out by myself." 11. After a while the man spoke resentfully. "Well, you fixed that poor little tmarc." "Yes; I'm a cur. But you can't und** stand. Nobody can understand unless they live eight years on the Flat like me. I got near fifty head on the range here. You can take your pick. Some of them's devils, like'me; but most of them's pretty well broke. I ain't had nothing else to do. That's my shac£. ■Like some coffee and sour beans?" The two men plodded along the ashy trail towards the shack. • "My name's McFarland," the older man volunttued. "I'm. on the Gazette. Sent up here io get some stuff for a big number we've getting out for the Seattle Exposition." "Mine's Jackman—Billie Jackman." Thev Klinok hands solemnly. Still the boy seemed to long to right himself with his new friend. "I guess you think 1 am loeo, partner. But vou can't understand. You got to live li-vc on the Flat month after month to mil ■ understand. There ain't biit one utft:' Minn stuck it out this far. He stayed for his sheep. It's good range. So him and 111" got to be partners. 1 liked him and he liked me, and we juei about murdered each other.

"That's the way it gets into your brain. All tlie time so still, so'still! 1 You want to laugh and break some- i thing. If you can't break tlic quiet, i you want to break somebody's head, i We ised to sav Mother (loose things so I we wouldn't forget words. One night 'Little 80-lVep.' He said I was poking 1 fun at him." The boy held up a hand on which Ui3.l little finger was missing. The man : looked incredulous. ' "He did tlmt~your partner?" '-"Yes." "H« must have been a bad lot." "No, he wasn't. Out here men get all different. Some get drunk on Siwash wi'isky; him, he just got drunk, too, onl • on the stillness and lonMomeness of tv ■ l'lat. Yes, sir; after a while a man iii. -n plumb mad." Th ' i .nne into the shade of the I f/ittle 80-Peep' with the handy ' finger—am I to meet—?" "So; hp's gone. Went clean to Walls Walla to jet some dope for my finger. But.he left the Flat too late. Some fellows came for his sheep last year.'' "Why, what became of himt" "Medicine Lake I" "Medicine Lake!" "The 'sylum." In the shack it seemed cool, although the thermometer, hanging among the sides of bacon, over the bunk, said one hundred and eight. A water-barrel covered with jrnnny sacks stood on a fto-devil tlosc to the outer sill of the Bingle window. Between the window and the door, in a draught that w.is only half alive, stood a pine table and two soap boxes. Outside the window one lanky, mournful sunflower nodded dismally and regretted that she had ever been born. The boy moved his hand towards the sickly brown thing half in apology. Tf the fellows at the Crocker could know I cried one night, after a bad Chinook, because it looked like that beauty out there was killed." "The Crocker! Old Crocker Gram- ' mar? The dickens!". "Me? Sure! An 1 you're an old Crocker man, too? Honest? Say, shake. But yon went on, maybe? Haw- - fordt Gee! I wish I had. I never

got beyond the fifth reader. They made Us speak pieces Friday. Most always I'd hook. An old Crocker feller! Shake again!" Half an hour later, when the lids cf the stove still gleamed led, 1 and the mercury danced over tile bunk and tried to hit the roof, the two men ate sizzling bacon and beans a hit turned. Tile j city man could hardly answer fast .enough the bubbling (jllcstioiis of the ! boy. When he helped his guest to a , fifth plate of sorghum and hot biscuit the host seemed to be thinking about these ushingti.il tjwn-. S- it'tiuies —well, most of the time, it s.imiis like God didn't make but two places i always imagine He was sniatiug when Tic made 'Frisco, but I guess before He got around to make tno Flat, them bad angels had kicked up a rumpus and He was just naturally disgusted." In the time of day that Easterners call "the cool of the evening," the men sat outside the door and smoked. The boy drew in long, luxurious pulls of the other man's tobacco, so different from the dry leaves in the eannister that wis hidden away in the bunk. It was-like learning to smoke all over again. Always the boy's mind went back to the years of loneliness behind him. "Well, what makes you stay?" the man asked. "It's my claim. I'm proving up." "But you said eight years." "Yes, this is my second Ding. Got typhoid or some darn fool thins when • it came time to go to Walla Walla b»Then I began all over again. Eight years! I was twenty when 1 left 'Frisco." He rubbed back his hair above one car. It was streaked with white. "That's what the lont'somencss can dr.. A man's jjot to have something pretty good waiting for him, to stick it out here eight years. Sav, that's enough about me. Let's hear nbout MacFarland of the Gazette a while." I 111. I ''Oh! I'm no hero of romance like you, Billie. It's all cut and dried with I me. Newspaper work, three meals a i day, a flat with a phonograph, and whooping-cough occasionally. I used to tie quite a sport—honest, Billie. Never i

missed a round at the Pavilion. Now, the only sport I know is when sistershe's four—pulls out a handful of tile baby's hair, or my wife's clashes with the hired girl. I'm always umpire. "On Sunday mornings I hang pictures or take the kids to the park in the liaby-1 carriage. I kick like tile dickens if tin gas bill is two bits higher than last month, and I wjpy my feet on the doormat even when it's dry. But—well, I guess that's the only kind of life after all, Billie. All the rest is iqiitation. It's not so exciting—but a man knows c.\- ! actly where he stands. I make puns 1 jokes about it, but it's just sour grapes with me. Got a wile and kills waiting for me houie, mid when I wag packed off here by a chief, was as mad as a j -March hare. Thinks the Grande Rounde is good for a page story in the souvenir number! Oil, Heavens!" After groaning dismally, he looked up with a grin. Billie had the look of a man who h-id struck a mother-lode and couldn't wait to tell the news, "Out with it now, Billie! What is ii! Struck a ledge, or has wool gone up? Which is it?" "It's a girl!" The man iried to keep his thoughts away from the flat and the phonograph and the whooping-cough people, while Billie told his love-storv. : "After I had the fever I didn't seem strong enough to pull back any more, i So one Sunday night, without knowing I much how I got there. I found myself eating s|n:g,.'etd down at Sanganetti's. 1 hat's When I firs) met tier. She was , with a pretty sporty crowd. A lot of gjld braid from the Presidio and a nabob or two from .Mare Island. Armv anl tut v v and dugo red I "They got pretty hilarious. I hardly seen any of them. 1 couldn't get mV eves away from tliat girl. She looked like such a poor frightened little kid. Her eyes were big—like this. And such baby hands! By-and-bve they beenn lo urge her to do some stunt. "At "first I couldn't just catch on. Then mv blood all runs singing to one ear! That bunch Were urging that little girl thing tn dmce! ° "I guess you know Sanganetti's. The much used to dance on. Then someone lifted her on their table. She looked round the room quick, like a • little bird. Then her. eyes .ooked right [

, down at her toes. 1 thought she was i g.nng to cry. Kome Stanford boys in a ! u i n.r cheered. AfacFarl.md, I bet yo.i | . »->u't believe it! 'And me such an old duller! Ain't spoken ten words to a woman in seven years. Sometnln" 1 . pulled my feet over to that table. [ 6UVB: . i . "Little girl, this ain't no place for | J -0 "-' | "She reached her arms round my neck ; i,lr 'l 1 'iftcd her down. Thev all beo-an , y !lin» at me, but I didn't listen. And then her and me was standing out in the fug where it was ,jool and clean. I giies- I was patting her hair. It was nut like her, soft and silky; and when it 'jot eiirli-d round vour linger it coaxed you not to go 'way." Til' older man smiled indulgently. Tile riH'lll \v?« filling with tobacco-smoke. It ! f>".'.«.'ilt with the odour of burned bacon- : gn ic. The odds were about even. . "Well. 0 f course, there's only one end t" >1 yarn like that." "V"*' tluT "'s only one end." "Ho you're going to marry her and li'-r h ippy ovr after?" "She's wearing my riiif* now. Jlv time s here in -May. Alac, you can't understand what it meant for me to stick on here with lier waiting. It' 1 wouldn't matter if she was big and strong and able to take care of herself. | «hen we come to a mud-puddle I'd l c;i rry her across. | Do yon know, Jlue. when the papers come from Walla Waila, that little •'IH! ain't going to have to ever walk o°ver j no mud-puddles. She's going to ride. I: Going to have an automobile. What's : the use of me living eight years in hell if it don t put my little girl where she'll never know a want again?" I The boy had talked fast, inspired by I I the fine sympathetic face of the other 1 man. He laughed at his own enthu-1 siasm. "Well, 1 jness you'd like to turn 'n pretty soon':" He tried to say something else, but changed his mind, and, instead, took an empty tomato-can from the table and . filled it with water from the barrel ou'.- ■ side the window. The edge of the can j was rough as a saw, but the drink gave ! I him courage. j He wiped his mouth with unnecessary J .' | ' "You like to sec how she looks?" he I asked wistfully. "Most dark, ain't il?: 1 forgot all about time. I tell you, man, I I this here talk's been meat and drink to rae- , Standing near the bunk in tile sidc- , j wall, he fumbled with a long sharp cae- , tus-spine at his neck that did duty as ; a button. With all the unconsciousness . of the primal man, he flung back the front of his grey flannel shirt.

On the brown breast lay an Agnas Dei. The drops of blood gleamed ominuusly against tlic white heart. He "could not find the knot in the cord. Night falls as in the tropics on the Flat, lie took clown a lantern from a peg. A box of pitch-pine "lights" lay Behind the stnve, «acli whittled' and stacked with the pitiful precision in trifles of one isolated from his kind. lie selected a stick and rubbed its gummy surface absently. His face was shining. He lit the lantern and set it at the othor man's elbow on the table. When the brown tape finally came untied he held in his bis» alkali-burned palm a bit of gold. Reverently he handled it as he had touched the Agnas Dei itself. He was smiling a big, foolish toysmile, but hie voice trembled with happiness. "Well, here she is. Mac. Here's the little girl that's waiting for Blllie, back in God's country." The other man had slipped from a bill-fold a small something. It was a picture. "My wife," he: said, giving It to the rancher. The rancher's clumsy hand reached for the square of pasteboard. The manicured fingers of the city man i touched the spring of the gold locket. Each man looked into the face of the woman he loved.—By Florence Moloso Riis.