Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1917 — Then I'll Come Back to you [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I'll Come Back to you

By Larry Evans

A U T H OR OF ONCE TO EVERY MAhT

SYNOPSIS Caleb Hunter and his sister Sarah welcome to their home Stephen O’Mara, a homeless and friendless boy, starting from the wilderness to see the city. Stephen O’Mara catches a glimpse of Barbara Allison. The girl is'rich. The O’Mara boy falls in love with her. She la ten, he fourteen. ine boy and girl are in a party mat go to town. The old people watch with concern the youth’s growing attachment for the girl. Caleb is much impressed with the boy's Meas on the moving of timber. He predicts a great future for the lad. O ; Mara whips Archibald Wickersham in a boyhood fight over Barbara. She takes Wickersham’s side, and Sfephen leaves for parts unknown, saying, “I’ll come back to you.” Years later the boy returns as a man. He is a contractor. Sarah welcomes him. Barbara is a beautiful woman. CHAPTER VIII. “I Mean to Marry Him.” "AJ w T turned much colder with 1 nightfall on the day of the party . A shar p wind with aSvSKJ the tang of autumn was blowing in off the river when Barbara, muffled from throat to ankle in a sapphire fur edged wrap, slipped in at the door of the Hunter home, having stolen awdy ostensibly to display to the in-

mates her costume. It was after the hour of 10, but the girl lingered a little after she had executed that mission. “We are very sorry that Mr. O'Mara could not come.” she hesitated. “I had promised both Garry and Archie Wickersham that he would be down.” “We haven’t heard from him since he went back into camp,” Sarah an swered. “He. no doubt, has been unable to get away.” Barbara Allison recrossed the lawn very slowly that night. She retraced her steps with head bent, the fall of her slippered feet muffled by the car pet of thick, unfrosted grass. Vaguely troubled, vaguely disturbed at herself, she >was within arm's length of a dark figure in the hedge gap through which she had just come before she was aware of its presence. Stephen O’Mara, weather beaten hat in hand was standing there in her path, peer ing steadily at the stucco and timber lodge alight from end to end like a huge and sprawling glowworm. An insistent desire again to meet the Honorable Archibald Wickersham, had led him to request Fat Joe to hook up the team that day at noon for the long drive down the river. With Steve himself handling the reins they had rolled the thirty miles at a speed which might have mildly surprised Fat Joe had he not been accustomed to putting two and two together to make six or eight or more. And Fat Joe’s thin tenor was just drifting”faintly off down the hillfl mournful rendition of “Home, Sweet Home” —when the girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather light, upon the-man's arm. - ■ . i Again she felt the swift tensing of the flesh beneath; she fell back a step before the startling abruptness with which Steve whirled. She even threw up one small hand, as if to shield her face And then, the cloak falling open at her throat, a slender, swaying figure in blue and shimmering white, she stood arid flung a little laugh at him—a laugh a little unsteady, a bit tinged with mockery and as untroubled as the spirit of youth itself. “Is that the way you always prepare to greet your friends?” she asked. - The man just stood and Stared at her—stared much as if he mistrusted his own ears and eyes. “Not all my friends,” bis slow voice drawled at last, but even the words were tinged with doubt. “Not all my friends,” he said. Silently the man reached out and found the hand which had lain for a moment iipon his arm. “So you are —you,” he murmured, when bis fingers touched hers. “I wasn’t—just sure.” Suddenly unable to think quite clearly, Barbara wondered at the new pulse tn her throat, which beat and beat un-

til it seemed not easy even to speak. “Then it —must be you too,” she faltered. *’l wasn’t sure,, either, even when I knew it must be. I’d begun to believe that you hadn’t forgotten—that you didn't care to ♦ * * Will you please say that you forgive me—please —for something over which I have been sorrier than you can know?” His eyes clung to the velvety face of that slim girl decked as Cinderella in bits of transparent slippers and shimmering. star edged white, until even in spite of the gloom the girl recognized the change which had come creeping over his face. She’saw Jt surge up fn his eyes—the old undisguised wonder of the boy of ten years before, for which, until that instant, she had looked in vain—but it was a man's wonder of woman now, utter and absolute and all enveloping. She caught her breath I then. She touched her lips with a . dainty tongue as though they had gone I dry of a sudden. Involuntarily she stepped toward him. that single pace ' which she had fallen away. And above the tumult of her own senses ehe heard herself trying to laugh and realized how unsteady the effort was. |

“Then you do forgive .me?” she breathed. ‘.Do I—pass inspection? Do you like me—in my masquerade?" “There was never need of a fairy godmother for you,” he told her, his voice grave., “There was never need of a transforming miracle. You have been that always yourself. And you are not permitted to ask forgiveness from me nor pardon. Men do not admit that there can be need of that where they have worshiped as long as I have worshiped you. You knew I was coming. I've been coming ten years now. But you can never know either how long ten years can be.” The words were blurred as a far off echo in her ears. She started to speak, but all that she would have said caught in her throat and hurt her. and only her unsteady breath came from parted lips. But when at her inarticulate effort at speech he bent his head to her swiftly up flu ng face her whole slender body tightened at the rough contact of blue flannel against her cheek. Almost before they held her she struggled, madly from the circle of bis arms. White of face, white of lip. she broke aWay from him and darted through the gap in the hedge only to shrink back against him in panic the next instant before the black shape upon a blacker horse between her and the lights. He was gazing in their direction—the man upon the horse. He was laughing softly. And when he thrust back the black cowl that hid his face and began to speak Stephen O'Mara recognized that terribly pale, terribly drawn face. Garry Devereau rocked a little in the saddle and waved a gracefully unsteady hand. “Blessings, my children,” he called to the two in the shadow, and his tongue was not thick, but only wavering. "My felicitations. And, e'en though I know hot your identity, still I may sense your fond confusion. And yet why blush, dear unknowns? 'Tis in the air tonight. Even I myself haye yielded to spirit of frivolity. Two hours ago I appeared masked in these dingy vestments as Love’s Young Dream, but with me the mood has passed. Fellow romancers, you have witnessed a metamorphosis. You are now gazing ujron the Wrath of God about to thunder forth upon a coal black charger. I merely paused to bid you haste inside lest you miss the ernx of the evening. When I withdrew the Hon. Archie was already searching with bravely concealed distraction for the fair daughter of the house. The hour has struck. It’s masks off—masks off from eyes and hearts.”

lie laughed again. White face whiter still against the background of his somber vestments, debonair and drunk iily insc ure in the saddle. Garret Devereau tore out into the main road and thundered off into the night, “Is that true?” Steve asked q’uietly. She made no move to answer. “Is that true?” his low and gentle voice commanded this time. "You still mean to—marry—him?” . “What I hate done tonight I can never hope to explain.” she answered, recovering hersdlfT “I can Ohly hope that spine day I may cease to despise myself as utterly as you hare taught me to at this minute. And since yon choose to regard it now as your right to ask that question TH answer it for you. I mean to marry' him. I shall be proud to be his wife.” Tire light that streamed over her shoulder fell full upon his face. She saw the blood pour up, staining throat and -cheek and brow, and then ebb away. She gave him time to answer, but he did .not speak, and suddenly she knew what scene of another day he was remembering, Her eyes dropped' to her imprisoned hand, “You are detaining me,” she said.He released ber immediately, and yet she did not move. And while she waited he turned and stooped and turned to her again. She stood like stone while he wrapped her fur edged sappphire cloak about her and fasr

renea it close beneath her—v.ptiltea chin. He waited, bare of head, in the hedge gap until she had crossed - the lawn to the house that lay a sprawling glowworm in the darkness. A tumult of voices leaped out to him when he opened the door—a lilting crash of syncopated melody. And then it was quiet again. After a glimpse of his Chief’s eyes that night Fat Joe essayed not so much as one 'facetious protest against turning the fagged team homeward with scarcely any rest at all. He remained as quiet as that too quiet man beside h’ui. He fell to whistling later, and -almost immediately his thin tenor was rolling ahead of them through the black alley between the> pines, to continue in soulful reiteration until the construction camp clearing loomed up ahead. Suddenly Fat Joe tightened the reins above the fagged team: then he shot fdrward and laid the whip across their tired flanks as they cleared the breastwork of trees. " Steve's bead was jerked backward by the abruptness of their first plunge, and then he saw what Fat Joe had seen a second before. High up on the hillside there was a light glowing from the windows of the shack which served the chief engineer of the East Coast job as office and domicile too. While Kat Joe laid on the whip a man came hurtling past the outflung door, sprang to his feet and. running low to the ground, disappeared into the blackness of the brush. Joe swuner the horses tin In a galloping curve and with one catlike leap, incredibly light for a man of his chunky build, was down from the seat and crashing through the bushes off the trail of that fugitive whose noisy flight had already become a faint crackle in the distance.

Flame poured from Fat Joe’s revolver. Two whiplike reports shattered the night quiet before Stephen O’Mara moved. Then he lifted himseif heavily from the seat. Something nuzzled his shoulder while he stood listening to the diminishing tumult of the pursuit, and even before he turned be knew what it was. lie paused a moment to stroke the soft nose of the black horse standing there with reins a-trail. It was Ragtime, wet with lather and caked with dust. But even then he was not prepared for the sight which met him when he entered the shack. Seconds must have passed while he stood staring from the threshold, for Fat Joe came pulfin” back from his fruitless chase in time to see him bend and lift a black robed, lifelessly limp body from the floor and stagger with it toward a bunk. Fat Joe’s steady flow of profanity, oddly, double vicious in his thin, complaining voice, was checked short. He, too, stood and stared from the doorway—stood and lifted his nose and sniffed.

"Seems to be our night for callers,” he remarked, with bad mildness, "and, say, this one’s got a peach of a load.” Then Garry Devereau’s head rolled over, ghastly loose and slack, and the plump one caught sight of a ragged gash in the senseless man’s temple. - “So-o. he droned, and his complaining voice was deadly again. “So that’s it! But he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t put up a tidy little battle, was he? Funny abouM that, too. but I could always do my best little jobs of man han Hing when 1 was about half over myself.” His jiale eyes swept the floor. He pounced forward and recovered a sheaf of blue prints from a corner. “This. I take it,” he muttered, “was what they was arguing about when we busted in. Steve, them’s our bridge estimates—and there wa’n’t no copies of ’em either. It Wouldn’t take us more’n two weeks to replace ’em neither—not more’n two precious, priceless weeks. I’m only hopin’ nOw that when our other caller, who seems to want them more than we do, calls again, I’ll be here myself to entertain him with tea or somethin'. I'd plumb hate to seem so inhospitable as not to be home, twice hand runnin’, to visitors.’’ “Maybe that was a tidy little battle while it lasted.” Fat Joe continued, “but it ain’t' deuce high alongside this fight we’ve got on our hands right now. For he’s just as near over as I’d care«to see a man, unless it was some one I’d a little prefer dead! It ain't that scratch on the head that's got him slippin’, either.” Joe paused and turned to address Garry Devereau’s

still white face itself. "You sat in an' backed my game like a gentleman bom,*’ he said, “arid now I’m a-goin’ to play yourn, blue chips aud white r And while be talked be worked, for

It was Fat Joe who gave the orders that flight. He called for ammonia, for brandy, for a half dozen drugs from the camp hospital chest,> and each of them Steve brought in an automatic fashion that finally penetrated even Fat Joe’s professional pleasure iu the struggle. "Friend of yourn?” he asked in an interval while they rested. "A friend,” Steve repeated with a tightening of his jaws, and Joe knew what that tone meant. Before daybreak there came an hour* when Garry Devereau lifted himself upon one elbow and opened his eyes to stare half wildly, but very sanely, about the room, tlis gaze flitted wonderingly from wall to wall before it rested, fearfully fixed, upon Steve's brown face. Instantly he looked away, flinchingly, and met Fat Joe’s voluminous grin—and looked back again, cunningly cautious. Finally he reached out a timid, blue veined, pitifully unsteady hand and plucked at Steve’s blue flannel, sleeve. And his words were an echo of those which Stephen O’Mara had heard before that night from other lips. “Then you—are. you,” he framed the words laboriously. “I wasn’t sureeven when I knew it must be.” And Garry Devereau tried to smile his slow smile of sophistry. “Greetings, Sir Galahad!” he faltered. “And how are you, Steve —and who might your—fat friend be?” V (To be continued.)

“So you are —you,” he murmured.

"Blessings, my children,” he-called to, the two in the shadow.