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 canon, 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.