Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1917 — Page 7

Then I’ll Come Back to You

By LARRY EVANS

Author of "Once to Every Man” ’ Q—D Copyright, 1915, by the H. K. Fly Company :

SYNOPSIS Caleb Hunter and his sister Sarah weleome 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 fails in love with her. She la ten, he fourteen. Tne boy and girl are in a party that go to town. The old people watch with conoern 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 Wlckershaih In • boyhood fight over Barbara. She takes. ■Wickersham’s side, and Stephen leaves tor parts unknown, saying, “I’ll come back to you.’* Tears later the boy returns as a man. Ke is a contractor. Sarah welcomes him. Barbara is a beautiful woman. O'Mara suspects, there is a plot to prevent his successful completion of a railroad and that Barbara Allison’s father and Wickersham are in it O’Mara meets Garry Devereau, with Whom Barbara’s closest friend is in love. O’Mara starts to reform him. O’Mara meets Barbara Allison on the road. There is a play of words in which both seek to conceal their feeling. Wickersham notices that Barbara and Stephen are together a great deal. Mir4am Burrell, Barbara’s friend, sees and understands the black rage that his face. , O’Mara daily becomes more -convinced that some one is trying to stir up trouble among his men, Wickersham and Allison have a conference. They agree that Harrigan, their tool, has messed, things trying to stir up trouble among the men. > O’Mara assures the men that as long as •they work for him they need have no rear. He checks an incipient strike.

O’Mara cheers Devereau with the information that Miriam-Burrell cares for him despite his unhappy past. O’Mara arranges a meeting between Garry and Miriam. Garry no longer is a drunkard. O’Mara has worked wonders With him. O’Mara returns to find the reconciliation of Garry and Miriam. Barbara is present, and her comments puzzle Stephen. CHAPTER XVIII. Blue Flannel and Corduroy. HE world was snowbound—all I < that Small world which Idy between the hills in the valley at Thirty-Mile. For two days it snowed so heavily that all work moved but ‘ intermittently at the up river camp, and then, two days before ■Christmas, the mercury dropped sharply into the bulbs and the weather cleared. *

From his window Stephen O’Mara watched the heavy loads crawd up to the storehouse door. He watched the drivers throw tarpaulins over the boxes and knew that they were too weary to unload that night. And he was still there at the frosted pane when the three men, Big Louie still plowing ahead, hove into view again from the direction of the stables and came «traight toward his own. shack. He .opened the door and bade them enter (before they’had had a chance to knock. The swagger in the shoulders of two of them told him what to expect Big Louie was only clumsy, as usual. “You did well to make it,” he told the latter kindly, as he always addressed him. His nod to the others, who reeked of white whisky, was in part a question, in no wise a welcome. “Well?” he asked. Apparently there had been a conference beforehand, for there was no hesitancy on the part of Fallon, who had .been ordained spokesman. “We’ve come for our time,” he growled. Steve nodded gravely. “I see,” he murmured. “May I ask what’s your grievance this time?” They were satellites of Harrigan. Because of that he had kept them all where his eyes could And them at times. And, even though their arch leader in discontent had not crossed his path in many days, he listened now to an echo of Harrigan’s activities.

■ “They’re offering’three a day in the reserve camps.” Fallon should not have gloated. “Three a day and a bonus for the high week cut “We’re going back to the river.” “I see,” again observed Steve.. “Are they guaranteeing this wage for as long as you want to work?” Apparently they had decided, too, that there should be no bargaining. “We want our time,”’ Fallon reiterated. “This Is going to be a man’s year on the river!” “You also?” Steve inquired of Shayne. “Yes, me also,” he came back, “an’ a hundred others before the ice goes out.” Big Louie he had given up for lost before that, and yet it was with Big Louie that Steve made a sincere effort. “I'd’like to have you stay, Louie.” He faced the third, man. “I need you, for you can do more with horses than any man I know. You are worth three a day to me. Do you- care to think it over?” Big Louie’s eyes had been mournful when he stumbled in out of the cold. They were that now. He started to turn toward the window" for a look at

the stables and then thought betteroi It. Resolutely, for him, he shook his head... “I am done —me,”- he muttered. “I work for no company that will leave honest men to starve-” It was hopeless from the start, yet Steve tried again. “I can promise you work as long as you are, able to hold a rein, he offered, but he moved nearer the door while he was speaking. “That is all I can premise.” Perhaps Fallon believed that Big Louie was weakening. Perhaps he felt that the situation was too highly dramatic to be wasted, for he made a wide flourish with one hand. “We want our time, and we want It now/fhe threatened. “We’re going to show you who bosses this river before we’re done with you!” Fallon shouldn’t have gloated; he shouldn’t have threatened. And Shayne shouldn’t have smiled. Steve had slipped the latch loose. Now he swung open the door. , “Call for your time at the Morrison office,” he said evenly, “and if you’re going—why, go!” By collar and belt he swung him back and drove him sprawling into a drift.

“Are you in a hurry, too, Shayne?” he asked pleasantly, and Shayne buried his head beside Fallon’s in the snow. Then Steve closed the door carefully and turned again to B|g, Louie. ‘fLouie,” he,said, *T make it a rule to urge no man who does not wish to stay. If it needs persuasion to keep you I do not want you here. But you are running with the wrong crowd, Louie. You’ll learn it some day, but some day may be too late.” The big, dreamy eyed man was hardly listening, but he gestured toward the door. And Steve treated his departure kindly, as he had always treated his presence. Outside where Shayne and Fallon bad picked themselves up Big Louie hesitated and fumbled in his pocket with a cold cramped hand. lie delivered the letter for Stephen which had been intrusted to him by Miss Sarah. There Are many men like Big Louie who are pitifully faithful until events outstrip their intellects. Steve was sorry for him, and a half hour later, after he had read Miss Sarah’s prim n«H< requesting his presence at dinner at 7!30 Christmas-.eve, he grew sorrier still while he watched the ill assorted trio meet once more, blanket packs upon their backs and snowshoes on their feet. Big Louie had joined the other two from the direction of the stables. There were words between them, for Steve saw the huge man’s arm lift to strike Shayne to the ground and then drop harmlessly back to his side. And Steve knew what that bit of pantomime meant. Big Louie had been to bid his team goodby. There was a smudge of brown sugar across his coat, though the watcher was too far away to see that. But he knew that Big Louie had been crying, knew that Shayne had smiled. It was the second time that Shayne had smiled that evening—his second bad mistake. Long after they had disappeared into the north toward the Reserve company’s camps Steve wondered that it had not cost him his life. Miss Sarah’s note which had been almost a week on the way was very primly correct, but the inevitable postscript which underran it sounded a more intimate note.

“We are not excessively formal as a rule, Stephen,” she wrote, “so a dinner jacket will be adequate. As I am expecting two other guests besides your friends, Mr. Morgan and Garrett Devereau, I must ask you to let no business matters interfere with your promptness.” Steve not let himself wonder who those other guests would prove to be. Miriam Burrell, he knew, had already written Garry that this was to

"And if you’re going—why, go!”

be the saddest Christmas and the merriest that she had ever known, giving as respective reasons her inability to be with him and the fact that she was so entirely his. Because he would not let himself hope this time he was not disappointed, or at least so he told himself, when he found only Dexter Allison with Caleb the next afternoon near 6. And on a sudden thought his eyes went roving around the room then, looking for Archibald Wickersham. But Miss Sarah gave him no time for a protracted scrutiny. “Your room is ready, Stephen,” she told him and steered him toward, the stairs. “You have an hour in which to dress, and you know already that I am old maidenlshly strict.” And then, three-quarters of an hour

later, wnen he had dressed and turned to the stairway Barbara was there at the foot of the flight waiting for him to appear. In a little low pink satin gown that made rounded her slenderness —made her appear even smaller than she was—she gave him an elaborate courtesy from the main floor and flung up at him her laughter. “Merry Christmas. Sir Galahad!” she called. Steve, who was only dimly aware of the fact that Garry and Fat Joe had arrived, the latter guilty of his first dinner jacket and enormously/proud of his guilt, stood looking at Barbard while she was chattering at him without hearing distinctly a word she spoke. ~~ . “You look as though I were a wraith,” the girl accused him. “Am I so pale after a few weeks of sophisticated city air?” . “I thought you looked like —shall 1 tell you what I thought?” * “Most certainly,” she was forced to insist. “Wasn't it a bald enough invitation for a pretty speech?” “I thought you looked like a small pink bonbon.” responded Steve leisurely, and. While the rest laughed at her discomfiture. Fat Joe leaned over and nudged Garry.

“What’d 1 tell you?” he demanded. “What’d I tell you? Say, ain’t he working weir tonight ?” There was no keeping the girl within doors after dinner was over. She ran upstairs and changed into moccasins and white blanket coat and skirt that barely met the moccasin tops halfway. And Steve, who had changed, too, and was waiting for her w’hen she came down, had "knotted a crimson scarf about the middle of his belted jacket to match the white one twisted about her throat. The man and girl climbed far that night in quite unbroken silence. They had reached the (rest of the first hill and stopped with the higher ridges In front of them, black bulks filigreed with white, before Barbara decided that she would have to make him talk. From the first he talked fitfully that night. On other occasions she had noticed how his mind seemed to veer, whimsically, from one topic to another with little apparent continuity of thought, only to swing back again just when she was beginning to feel that she had lost the thread of inference to point his argument with parallels that were new and delightful wisdoms to her ears. But tonight his grave voiced divergences oftener than not left her thoughts behind his thoughts. “It is a very easy country to get lost in,” he remarked When he had had to Insist that his sense of direction and not hers should be the one to be trusted. “It doesn’t seem complicated.” he pondered. “To a man who has come into the world with his sense of north ana south and east and west all safely relegated to his backbone instead of having to depend upon the flighty functions of his brain for his guide it’s about the simplest thing there is. He finds his way without thinking about the lay of the land or moss on the trees or the sun or stars. But the other one—the one who has to stop and reason that he must travel so many miles to the west to reach home in the afternoon because he came that many in the morning—Why. he even gets to doubting his compass, until night catches him without a roof over his head and no wood collected for a campfire.”

“I shall try to remember that,” she answered soberly. “If ever I am lost I—l shall try to wait confidently for daylight and keep my eyes to the fore.” She was near to tears when he stooped and knelt in the snow to tighten a thong slipping from one webbed foot Below them stretched a plain of shimmering frost points', bounded by inscrutable walls of black timber. Somewhere within the warmer heart of a swamp a fox yapped hungrily; somewhere within her own heart his whimsical discourse had awakened a sense of the mystery of his wilderness—its friendship for those who love it—its Implacable enmity for those who do not understand. And he looked up just when that emotion came flooding into her face.. “It is wonderful—wonderful —wonderful!” she breathed, throwing out both arms with that ecstatic impulsiveness which he knew so well. “Now I know why you said men always return to it once they have felt its spell.” “You are lovelier than yon know!” came from him, almost gruffly again, and she could not parry with lightness so swift and strained a speech. “You always tell me very pretty things,” was all she could think of to say in reply. But then, rising, he flung back his head and shook himself as if throwim; off a burden too restraining and irksome. He laughed aloud, and from that minute until he loosed her feet from the snowshoes he was more like her “blue flannel and corduroy” lover again. But his attack no longer made her fear herself. “If I cared for you, yes,” he made her admit before he would let her go in that night “If I cared for you my engagement to no man could stand in the way. But that is the reason I know I do not care.”

She had seen him grave with doubt that night; seen him fight to shake it off. There was doubt in his answer now. “Because I am not” — But he could not forte himself to ask it “Because I could never care as you would demand the woman should care who marries you.” She wanted to help him a little, she didn’t know just why. Pity is a very dangerous emotion when pity is not sought. “You are loving ine that way this minute,” he said, but his words were dogged. “Loving me more than you know"

There was neither reference to Tier letter nor mehtion of that night at Thirty Mile when she had stolen out to bld him goodby.' Other long tramps followed on other pale and zero nights, but his attitude remained much the same. "You will be coming back,” he told her again the day he put her on the train. “You will be back in the spring?” It was bis old. hopeful challenge, with all the hope left out. “I think so,” she faltered in return. “I mean to come-and see the completion of your work if father will let me.” She knew a moment of confusion. “I wonder many nights if you are safe up here in the hills.” Indeed. Miss Sarah had made progress, though ’the surface indications were small The girl would never think of him again simply in terms of blue flannel and corduroy. But that was not the most disturbingly vivid memory which she carried away with her. love you.” He framed the words silently as the train was pulling out. and, although their positions were reversed. the moment was so retniniscent of that day when he had leaned out of her father’s switch engine cab and asked if she wanted a ride that it made her throat ache. She waved a small gloved hand to him on the platform. She did not want to go. (To be continued.)

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LIVES CLOSE TO THE PEOPLE

(Continued from page six)

patriotic respectability eitner a private interest that can no longer loot the public treasury at will, or one of its hired pensmen.' Behind the mask of the politician who damns him are the leering features of the power trust which charged the people of this country 80 Cents a pound for powder until Daniels proved that it can be produced for 34 and now these delectable patriots have found that they can reduce their price from 80 to 53 cents and still make a handsome profit. “Josephus Daniels made it difficult

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for the powder trust to steal—that is his crime. “Before Josephus Daniels’ time the manufacturers of armor plate were submitting exorbitant bias without competition and through the good old pirate rule of addition, division, and substruction. He had the honesty and courage to reject the bids and force a competition which saved the nation on three ships more than a million dob lars. And even then the profit was sufficient to permit them to hire men to poison with their pen the public mind against the man who wrung from them'their million dollar graft and restored it to the public treasury. “Josephus Daniels has made it harder for the manufacturers of armor plate to steal—that is his crime. “Ah, but they say the navy has retrograded under Daniels. Let’s see: Under Long and Moody $83,000,000 were spent in the building of new ships; under von Moyer $128,000,000 were spent; under Josephus Daniels more than $655,000,000. Let’s see: Where We had a shortage of torpedo boats before Daniels’ time, and had 100 when lie went in, we had 158 more at the beginning of the war and these constructed in a governmental plant at a saving of SJ,OOO on each one. “Let’s see: When Daniels took the reins we were 5,000 short in the number of enlisted men allowed by law. He raised the standard of admission and added more than 6,000 more. “Let’s see: The number of re-en-listments under Daniels has increased from 53 to 90 per cent; the number of desertions has fallen off from an average of 216 a month to 90 a month; and the number of prisoners has decreased from an average of 1,800 to 700. “With millions of dollars in loot chopped off by the common honesty of Daniels, with more ships, better and bigger guns, greater efficiency in the general staff, the finest record in target practice ever made upon the sea, and more men better satisfied anti more efficient than ever before in the history of the navy—with more brain and brawn and less booze —more liberty for the men and less loot for the interests—Josephus Daniels will go down in history as one of the great constructive minds of' the Wilson administration.

“If he can fight Germans as well as he has fought greed, if he can fight ruthlessness as successfully as he has fought rapacity, his position in history is assured. “When Admiral Dewey, after sixty years of service, wrote the private letter to his wife which she has given to the pul lie to proclaim to Josephus Daniels the greatest secretary of his time, he tore the mask of. patriotism and respectability from the repulsive face of cupidity ;>jid greed and placed a weapon in the hands of honest men with which to crush the foul conspiracy against an efficient and an able servant of the state. The moment the roll call in congress ended on the declaration of war, the navy, under Josephus Daniels, was ready to respond. It cleared the decks immedm+elv for action. And while

the peanut politicians and the carping critics of the flesh pots clamored against the navy and its chief, their sneers and snarls were drowned in the frenzied shduts of enthusiastic welcome from Queenstown’s crowded wharves as America’s flotilla of destroyers sailed in from the open sea and reported ready for instant action. ‘“When will you be ready?’ asked the British commander, ‘“We are ready now,’ was the proud response. " ‘ “The record of Daniels was known to Woodrow Wilson—that’s the reason he called him to his side for four years more. “The record.of Daniels is known to Col. George Harvey, of the North American Review—and that’s the reason he assails him, for it has been written that the ass knoweth his master’s crib. “The armor plate grafters hate him, the powder trust hates him, all the gluttons of greed hate him, and their hirelings of the pen hate him to the jingle of the coin. And because they hate him the republic, when it comes to know him, will love him for the enemies he has made and the manner that he made them. Honest, energetic, wonderfully efficient—a constructor and a creator—with a record never equaled in the history of the navy, we send our ships into the smoke of battle with a Supreme faith in the wisdom of Josephus Daniels.

Wilson and Mankind. “And now let us immolate all party thought upon the altar of the common good, and granting full meed of praise to the patriotism of Roosevelt, Taft, arid Root, let us rally ’round the standard the genius that we gave the nation as a leader in this the mightiest war in all the tide of time. I cannot think of Lincoln and Wilson without the firm conviction that there is a divine direction in the destiny of the republic. The plain, homely, comparatively obscure lawyer of Illinois, who reached the pinnacle of power by passing by the seasoned politicians of his time, now h:£6& his- counterpart in the polished scholar who emerged, comnartively Unknown, from the classic- shades of a university to pass the idols of a- party by and grasp the sceptre of the state. As Lincoln startled Seward by his prescience and grasp, so has this scholar amazed mankind by the superb capacity with which he has met the problems of the nation’s life—-the greatest and the gravest that we have “ever known. “And I am so firmly anchored to the faith that the blessings of liberty and democracy will always follow the fluttering of the flag that I like to picture to myself the day, perhaps far off, when the man on horseback rides no more, and autocracy is but a hateful memory in the twilight land of kings, when in a Germany no longer blighted by the Shadow of the Junker’s sword,” the German people so beautifully and brilliantly exemplified by Maximilian Harden will sit down in a German garden and lift their steins in a grateful toast to the immortal memory of Woodrow Wilson.**