Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1917 — Then I'll Come Back to you [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I'll Come Back to you

By Larrg Evans

of ONCE TO EVERY

We are sure you will like the story of Stephen O’Mara, a poor little fatherless, motherless boy from the heart of the Big Woods. He had never seen more ’than three houses together in a clearing in all his young life until the call of The Land Beyond the Hills came to him. Then came the greatest joy and sorrow of his life — he met The Girl. And then —but why spoil the story?

CHAPTER I. I Don’t Mind if I Do!

TYIIAT year no rain had fallen I for a score of days in the ESSpgjl hill country. The valley road ■i ■ ■■■■ J that wound upward and still

upward from the town of Morrison ran a ribbon of puffy yellow dust between sun baked, brown sodded dunes; ran north and north, a tortuous Series of loops on loops, to lose Itself at last in the cooler promise of the first bulwark of the mountains.

Since early afternoon Caleb Hunter had been sitting almost Immobile in the shade of the trellis which flanked the deep verandas of his huge white, thick pillared house on the hill above the river. It was reminiscent of another locality—the old Hunter place on the valley road. Morrison had changed since Caleb Hunter’s father topped with the white columned house that hill above the river. In those days it had been little more than a sleepy if conservatively prosperous and self sufficient community, without industry of any sort, or, it might be added, ambition or seeming need of one. From the Hunter verandas a half dozen red roofed, brown shingled “bungalows, half camps and half castles, were visible across the land stretches where the cattle had grazed before. And just beyond Hunter’s own high box hedge Dexter Allison’s enormous stucco and timber "summer lodge” sprawled amid a f*und dozen acres of green lawn and landscape gardening, its front to the river. The fishing was still far above reproach a little farther back country, and Dexter Allison owned the sawmills that droned in the valley. His men drove his timber down from the hills In the north; his men piled the yellow planks upon his flat cars which ran In over his spur line that had crept up from the south. His hundreds and hundreds of rivermen already trod the sawdust padded streets of the newer Morrison that had sprung into being beyond the bend; they swarmed in on the drives, a hard faced, hard shouldered horde, picturesque, proficient and profane. They brought with them color and care free prodigality and a capacity for abandonment to pleasure that ran the whole gamut of_emotions, from raucous roared chanties to sudden, swift encounters which were as silent as they were deadly.. And they spent their money without stopping to count It.

The younger generation of the older Morrison was quick to point out the virtues of this vice. And after a time, when the older generation found that the rivermen preferred their own section of the town, ignoring as though they had never existed the staid and sleepy residential streets above, they heaved a sigh of partial relief and tried to forget their proximity: It was the hottest day of the hottest fortnight that the hill country had known in years. The very temperature gave color to Allison’s statement that the heat had driven them north from the shore—him and his wife and Barbara, their daughter of ten. and the half dozen or more guests whose trunks, coming on the next day. made an even more Imposing sight than had Allison's own. And yet as he sat there in the shadow, methodically pulling upon his pipe, Caleb Hunfer smiled from time to time reminiscently. He was nodding his head drowsily when a haze of dust to the north caught his vagrant attention. Quite ' apparently it was raised by a foot traveler and the latter were not frequent upon that road, especially foot travelers who came from that direction. Trivial as it was, it piqued his interest, and he lay back and followed It from lazily half closed eyes. It topped a rise and disappeared, the dust cloud and reappeared in turn, but not

until it had advanced to within a scant hundred yards of him could he make out the figure which raised it. And then, after one sharp glance, with a quick intake of breath, he rose and went a trifle hastily out across his own lawn toward the iron picket fence that bordered the goadside. He went almost hurriedly to Intercept the boy who came marching over the brow of the last low hill. Caleb Hunter, particularly in the last year or so, had seen many a strange and brilliant costume pass along that wilderness highway, but as he hung over the front gate .he remembered that none of them had ever before drawn him from his deep chair

in the shadow. For him none of them had ever approached in sensationalism the quite unbelievable garb of the boy who came steadily on and on, who came steadily nearer and nearer. With a little closer view of him the watching man understood the reason for the dense cloud of dust above the lone pedestrian, for when the boy raised his feet with each stride the man sized hobnailed boots which i incased them failed to lift in turn. Indeed, the toes did clear the ground, but the heels, slipping away from the lean gnkles, dragged in the follow througli?! And the boy’s other garments, save for his flannel shirt and flapping felt hat, were of a size in keeping with the boots.

For aiime Caleb had been at a loss to make out the object which the boy carried npon one shoulder, balanced above a blanket tight rolled and tied with a string. Not until the grotesque little figure was within a dozen paces of him did he recognize it. and then at the same moment that he caught a glimpse of an old and rusted revolver strapped to the boy’s narrow waist he realized what it was. The boy was toting a double springed steel trap, big enough it. seemed to take all four feet of any bear that ever walked—and it was beautifully dull with oil! Caleb stood and stared, mouth agape. A moment or two earlier he had had to fight off an almost uncontrollable desire to roar with laughter, but that mood bad passed somehow as the boy came nearer, for the latter was not even aware of his presence there behind the iron fence. He was walking with his head up, thin face thrust forward like that of a young and overly eager setter with the bird in plain Sight, The world of hunger in that strained and staring visage helped Ca leb to master his mirth, and whpn at a tentative cough from him the small figure halted dead in his tracks and wheeled even the vestige of a smile left the wide waisted watcher's lips. Then Caleb had his first full vleW of the. boy’s features. There were wide, deep shadows beneath the gray eyes, doubly noticeable because of the heavy fringe of the lashes that swept above them; there was a pallid, bluish circle around the thin and tight set lips. And the lean cheeks -were very, very pale, both with the heat of the sun and a fatigue now close to exhaustion. But the eyes themselves as they met Caleb’s were alight with a fire which afterward, when he had had more time to ponder It, made him remember the pictured eyes of the children of the crusades. They fairly burned into his own. and they checked the first half jocular Words of greeting which had been

tremblingTipon, hfe lips. His voice was only grave and kindly when he began to speak. r ■ “You—you’ look a trifle tired, young man.’’ he said then'. “Are you—going far?” The boy touched his lips delicately with the point of his tongue. Hjs gravity more than matched that of his questioner. “Air—air thet the—city?” The words were soft of accent and a little drawling. There was an accompanying gesture of one thumb thrown backward over a thin shoulder. But Caleb had to smile a little at the breathless note in the query. “The city!” he echoed, a little puzzled. “The city! Well, now, I” And he chuckled a bit. The boy caught him up swiftly, almost sharply. “Thet’s—ain’t thet Morrison?” he demanded. r . And then Caleb”liad a glimmer of comprehension. He n°dded. “Wes.” he answered quietly, “that’s the city. That’s Morrison down there.” “I thought it war,” he murmured, and a thread of awe wave through the Words. “I thought it est nachelly hed to be! Haow—haow many houses would you reckon they might be daown —daoWn in thet there holler?” The owner of the white columned house gave the question its meed of reflection. “Well, I—l’d say quite a few hundred at least.” The odd little figure bobbed kis head. “Thet’s what old Tom always sed,” he muttered, 'more to himself than to his hearer. “An'—an’ I guess 1. ain’t never rightly believed him till naow.” And then, “Is—is New Yor-rk any bigger?” he asked. < The man at the picket fence smiled again, but the smile was without offense. “Well, yes,” he answered; “yes, considerably bigger, I should judge—twice as large at least, and maybe more than that.”

The boy did not answer. He just faced about to stare once more. And then the miracle came to pass. Around a far bend in Dexter Allison’s single spur track there came careening an asthmatic switch engine with a half dozen empty- flats in tow. With a brave puffing and blowing of leaky cylinder heads, it rattled across an open space between piles-of timber in the mill yard and disappeared with a shrill toot of warning for unseen workmen upon the tracks ahead. The boy froze to granite-like immobility as it flashed into view. Long after it had passed from sight he stood like a bit of a fantastic figure cut from stone. Then a tremor shook him from head to foot, and when it came slowly about Caleb saw that his small face was even whiter than it had been before beneath its coqt of tan and powdery dust. He swallowed hard and tried to speak and had to swallow’ again before the words would come. “Oh, I —may—die!” he broke out faltering] y then. “There goes a Injine! A steam injine. wa’n’t it?” Long afterward, when he had realized that the boy’s life ■. as to bring again and again a repetition of that sublime moment of realization—a moment of fulfillment unspoiled by surfeit or sophistication or a blunted capacity to marvel, which Caleb had seen grow old and stale even in the children he knew —he wondered and wished that he might have known it himself, once at least. Years of waiting, starved years of anticipation, he felt after all must have been a very little price to pay for that great, blinding, gasping moment. But at the time, amazed at the bqy’s white face, amazed at the hushed fervor in the words he forgot, he spoke before he thought “But haven’t you ever seen an engine before?” he asked.

As soon as the question had left his lips he would have given much to have had it back again. But at that it failed to have the effect which he feared too late to check: Instead of coloring with hurt and shame, Instead of subterfuge or evasion, the boy sim-. ply lifted his eyes levelly to Caleb’s face. , “I ain't never seed nuthin’,” he stated patiently. “I ain’t never seed more’n three houses together in a clearin’ before, I—l ain’t never been outen the timber—till today. But I aim to see more naow—before I git done!” “The view is excellent from my veranda,” said Caleb as he waved a hand behind him. “And—you look a little warm and tired. If your business is not of too pressing a naturehave you”—he broke off, amazed at his helpless formality in the matter—“have you come far?” And he wondered immediately how the boy would receive that suggestion that he hesitate, there with thfe “city” in front of him, a fairy tale to be explored. And again he was allowed to catch a glimpse of age' old spirit—a glimpse of a man sized self discipline—beneath the childish exterior. The boy hesitated a moment, but it was his uncertainty as to just what Caleb’s invitation had offered and not the lure of the town which made him pause. He took one step forward. “I been cornin’ since last Friday,” he explained. “I been cornin’ daown river for three days naow, and,l been cornin’ fast!” * Again that’measuring, level glance. “An' I ain’t got no business—yit.” he went on. “Thet’s what I aim to locate after I’ve bed a chance to look around a trifle. But lam tired a little, an' so if you mean thet you're askin’ me to stop for a min,it—if you mean thet you’re askin’ me that—why, then I guess I don’t mind if I do.” “That’s what I mean,” said Caleb.

And the little figure preceded him across his soft, cropped lawn. , Caleb Hunter had never married, and even now at the age of forty and odd in particularly mellow moments he was liable to confess that, while matrimony no doubt offered a far wider field for both general excitement and variety, as far as he himself was concerned he felt that his bachelor condition had ppints of excellence too obvious to be treated with contumely. Perhaps the fact that Sarah Hunter, soup years his senior, had kept so well oiled the cogs of the domestic machinery of the white place on the hilL that their churnings had never been evidenced may have been in part an answer to his contentment. ■ For Sarah Hunter, too- had never married. To the townspeople, who had never dared to try 1 ' to storm the wall of her apparent frigidity or been able .quite to understand her aloof austerity, she was little more than a weekly occurrence as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun Itself. Every Sunday morning a rare vision of stately dignity for all her tininess, assisted by Caleb, she descended from the Hunter equipage to enter the portals of the Morrison Baptist church. After the service she reappeared and. having complimented the minister upon the sagacity of his discourse, again assisted by Caleb she mounted to the rear seat of the surrey and rolled back up the hill.

That was as much as the townspeople ever saw of Cal Hunter's maiden sister unless there happened to be a prolonged siege of sickness in the village or a worse accident than usual. Then she caine and camped on the scene until the crisis was over, soft veiced, soft fingered and serenely sure of herself. Sarah had never married, and even though she had in the long interval which year by year had brought to Caleb a more. placid rotundity grown slender and slenderer still and flat chested andtshnrp angled In face and figure Caleb knew that underneath it all there had been no shrinkage in her soul—knew that there were no bleak expanses in her heart or edges to her pity. They often joked each other about their state of single blessedness, did Caleb and his sister. Often; hard upon his easy boast of satisfaction with things as they were, she would quote the fable Of the fox and the high hanging grapes, only to be taunted a moment later with her own celibacy. But the taunt and the fable had long been stingless. For Sarah Hunter knew that one end of Caleb's heavy gold watch chain still carried a bit of a gold coin worn smooth and thin from years of handling; she knew that the single word across its trick, even though it had long ago been es faced so far as other eyes were con cerned, was still there for him to see And Caleb, rummaging one day for some lost article or other in a pigeonhole in Sarah's desk, in which be had no license to look, had come across a picture of a tall and bla< k haired lad brave In white trousers and an amazing waistcoat. Caleb remembered having been told that he had died for another with that same smile which the picture had preserved—the tall and jaunty youngster. And so their com prehension was mutual. They under stood, did Caleb and his sister. But sure as he was of Sarah's fupdamen'al kindness Caleb experienced a twinge of guilty uncertainty that August afternoon as he closed- the Iron gate behind .the grotesque little figure which had already started across his lawn. For the moment he had forgotten that the sun Was low in the west. He had overlooked the fact that it was customary for the Hunter establishment to sup early during the

warm summer months. But when he turned to find Sarah watching, stiff and uncompromising, from the doorway he remembered with painful certainty her attitude toward his propensity to pick up any stray that might catch him in a moment of too pronounced mellowness—stray human or feline? or lost yellow dog. “Supper is served. Cal,’’ she drawled in .her gentle, almost lisping, voice. Caleb received the statement as If it were aii astounding bit of hitherto undreamed of news-. “Cornin’ Sarah!” he chirped briskly. “Cornin’ this blessed minute!” -- \ \ ? (To be continued. 1

“Air —air thet the—city?”

“I’m just Stephen O'Mars.”