Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1917 — Then I'll Come Back to You [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I'll Come Back to You

By LARRY EVANS

Author of v 1 "Once to Every Mui” CL9 Copyright, 1915. by the H. K. Fly Company y '

SYNOPSIS Caleb Hunter and his sister Sarah wetIgome to their home Stephen G 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 to rich. The O'Hara boy falls In’ love with her. She la ten. he fourteen. ■me boy and girl are in a parry tc*£ sc to town. The old people watch with coreera the youth's growing attachment for the girl. Caleb la much Impressed with the boy's Ideas on the moving of timber. He predicts a great future for the lad. O'Hara whips Archibald Wickers? - am in a boyhood fight over Barter*. She takes Wickersham’s Bide, and Stephen leaves tor parts unknown, saying. “I’ll come back to you.” Tears later the boy returns as a mu. He la a contractor. Sarah welcomes him. Barbara Is a beautiful woman. traiara suspects there is a plot to proVent his successful completion of a rail* rotd and that Barbara Alltoon's father and Wlckersham are. to it O’Hara meets Garry Deveneau. with Whom Barbara's closest friend is In love. O’Hara starts to reform him. O’Hara meets Barbara Allison on the road. There is a play of words In which both seek to conceal their feeling. ■Wlckersham notices that Barbara and Stephen are together a great deal Miriam Burrell, Barbara's frieijd, sees and understands the black rage that shadows hU face. O’Hara daily becomes more coEvhaeed that some one is trying to stir up trou t ,e among his men. ) « ' . Wlckersham and Allison have a coat France. They agree that Harrigar. ’their tool, has messed things trying to stir u; trouble among the men. O’Hara assures tbs' men that as b-rg as they work for him they need Lave no fear He checks an incipient strike. O’Hara cheers Devereau with the Information that Miriam Burred cares far hah despite his unhappS’ past- \ . O’Hara arranges a meeting' berweer Garry and Miriam. Garry n a ,or.ger is a drunkard. O’Hara has worked wonders With him. ° O’Hara returns to find the reconcii iat ior of Garry and Miriam. Barbara, is present, ■nd her comments puzzle Stephen. - n&ran says -_r.-? »ne regerwanon ui Garry is set r-- things thst. made her life most happy. \ Sarah plans a meeting betweea Stephen and Barbara. Womanlike, afce la comvlnced that, despite her engagement to Wlckersham, Barbara cares far •’Mars. CHAPTER XIXI Setting the Stage. T""| HERE are two interviews which should be mentioned here if for no other reason BBi than merely because they were both so entirely the outcome of Miss Sarah’s Chrtotma®.party. Neither of them was long. The last one which took place between Wickers ham and the girl he was to marry was the briefer of the two. But her prettily serf ous argument that the Ist of May was too early a date for their wedding la view of the work which he had to do and her own state of unpreparedness left him so white of face that she felt guiltily sorry for him for many days to follow—felt guiltier still at the relief she experienced when she had established that reprieve. The other inter view was longer and took place days earlier, but it was no more of a deligh; to Archibald Wickersham. Dexter Allison had returned home al most a week in advance of his daisgh ter, pleading stress of business, but in spite of the demands npon his time and attention he had found it impossible to forget the night of the dinner, when ho had watched his daughter's eyes upon Stephen O’Mara's face. He had been troubled more than little since his Christmas trip io Mar rlson. The night before New Year's Wlckersham was announced at 9. He was thinking of Barbara's mother when he beckoned his guest to a chair, shook his head over his red cheeks and offered a cigar. V, “Devilish cold weather,” he grunted none too graciously, for he had not wanted to be disturbed just then. The yonnger man admitted that it Was. His mind plainly was not upon the weather, but he found difficulty in Introducing a topic of his okn choosing. Outspokenness had never been one of Archie Wickersham’s boldest characteristics, so Allison assisted him now. Allison liked a man to be outspoken. “Well,” he demanded, “let's hear it What’s on your mind?” / There are times when hatred will betray almost any man. Hatred now led Wlckersham to speak not wisely, but with venom. ’ “I want yon to refuse to renew your name on the East Coast notes.” he said. “They are dues on the second.” Few men had ever said *T want you to” to, Dexter Allison and, as be put It. “got away with it to any great extent.” And of all nights this one In particular was the least likely to prove propitious for such an attempt. That was Wickersham's oversight. “So!” said Dexter. “So! Well, now for your reason.” Wlckersham had not learned until after Barbara’s departure that she was spending the holidays in Morrison, for he had himself expected to be away. And it Is only fair to the girl to say that she had honestly forgotten to apprise him of her plan, hi her real ex-

citement at going, but finding ft out for himself had not made the fact any pleasanter to Wlckersham. “It should be clear enough without explanation”—he enunciated each word nicely—“lf you want that road they are building.” Allison glanced up, surprised at the tone employed. “Mining of course I do,” he mused. “And yet—and yet I don’t know!” Fear burned in the tall, thin man's eyes that night—fear that made his hatred for the absent; man who was teaching him fear anything but a pretty thing to watch. ‘'l've tried to buy off their men.” He was holding himself with an effort that made him tremble. “I’ve held up tlieir supplies on every track that we control, but they've had the luck with them. They've made up lost time by working day and night. I've” — “You've set a drunken fool to steal his plans,drawled the other with deadly sarcasm, “like a second rate one night stand villain. Don’t forget to mention that too!” His lounging body shifted a little. “Archie, do you remember what I told you about that woods rat, as you called him once? Did I tell you that he 'Would fight? Well, listen, and listen closely, while I repeat it. for you. He hasn't even warmed to it yet!” Wlckersham went yellow at that, but his lev self control held firm. lie did not break into vituperation this nightHe smiled, though his voice was only a whisper. “Men have dropped out of sight before now in those woods,” he husked. “I’ll win or I’ll see that be lies and rots in one of his own sink holes.” A big yoice is a wonderful weapon at times. Allison’s booming bass made Wlckersham’s threat seem only mean and hollow when the heavy man leaped to his feet and shook a finger under that high bridged nose. “No, you won't!” he snapped. “No, you won’t! And if I didn't know, after hearing you talk, that you haven’t stuff

enough in you to be dangerous I’d fix you so you’d be in no condition to bashwhack anybody for the next six months. I’m in a bad mood tonight Drop out of sight, eh? You’ll play this fair—fair .at least as I see it by my standards, and they are better standards than yours. You’ve come dictating to me, ordering me to slip a knife into their backs. Are you that kind of a sneak? Did you think I was? Now. listen again, and listen well, for I mean What I say! “I want that railroad if the man who is building it is too weak to keep me from taking it away from him. But if I don’t get it on such a basis I’ll know that there is a man at the head of it who is big enough to take care of my share of it Have you got that? Very welt And now go back to your melodrama if you want to. Steal his men if he will let you. Fight him every inch of his construction—that is your, job—and I’ll still insist that It is his fault if he is tardy on the Ist of May. But it’s you and O’Mara from now on. Archie. I'll be a spectator now. And. by gad, don't you ever c»:cne, near me again with a request that I—don’t you ever let me bear you threaten that you”— Allison's face was suffused before he. finished, and Wickersham, astounded past utterance; slid from" his chair away from that flourishing band which had become a fist. It was ho scene to take place between a man and bis pnjspective son-in-law. Realizing that, Allison tried to laugh deprecatingly at his temper. »“Go out and get him. Archie,” he invited. “I’ll be watching, don’t doubt that. And I know how much you want to win. It’s a bigger stake than most folks realize!” The same day that more than half of O'Mara’s men went on strike and deserted to the reserve company’s payroll the news reached Allison that a trainload of laborers had been shot In to take their places— very types of laborers which Steve himself had warned Elliott would not last an hour in the event of trouble. For a week Allison wondered that there was no clash ■ between the displaced men who believed that the river was theirs alone and this new corps which Garry Devereau was handling at the lower end of construction, not by physical prowess, as Fat Joe had ruled, but just as surely and all because, as Joe himself put it, he could damn a

man merely by bidding him good morning. -’*• . “Honey crossed north today to have a look at his winter cut,” Joe would observe to his chief at supper at Thirty Mile, and before the night was many hours older Allison, too, in Manhattan, would have learned by wire in less picturesque phraseology that Archie, Wlckersham was missing no chances. “They have’ now finished hauling thpir logs to the river,” Joe told Steve one night after a prolonged scouting trip. “They are turning their attention to their float dams now.” And when that news was relayed to the big man who never ceased to watch he understood why there had been no violence when the rivermeil went on strike. It was the bitterest January that the hill country had known in twenty Jrears, but mile by mile that month the twin lino of steel crept steadily into the north under the urgings of Carry’s smooth voice. The snowfall for February broke all records for half that period, but Steve, with ills handful of men at Thirty Mile, put his piling down. And then it rained—it rained until small brooks ran torrents and the river tumbled white and thunderous its entire length. The snow went off the last of March that spring, and the gorges could not carry away the water. The sun turned summer hot. It burned the higher ridges dry while the valleys still lay hidden in flood. <• It was August temperature the third Sunday in April, when Stephen O’Mara stood ami watched beneath the gljjro of kerosene torches his bridge at Thirty Mile go Into position between dark and dawn. There was no man among them that day who did not show upon his face the strain they had been under. They were few, they were unsbpven and dirty and lean as hungry hounds, but they were the men whom Steve had ■once bidden Hardwick Elliott to tvatch, once they had begun to scent combat. Fat Joe was no longer plump. Steve was worn down to actual thinness. And it would have taken a careful eye to have selected the chief from their ranks that Sunday. The huge timbers had dropped into plaCe like bits of jig sawed puzzle. At 3 in the afternoon, too tired both in body and soul for elation, Steve watched them drive home the last spike and heard their hoarse effort at a cheer. He had turned to start toward his shack, not like a man who knows that the end of, a well nigh 'hopeless task is in sigtitTbut like a beaten man. The Ist of May meant Steve than any clause of the East Coast company's contract could convey. He had not had even one letter since be put her upon her train. Wickersham’s appearance on horseback at the bead of the valley, picking his way around the flooded meadow, halted him in his heavy footed climb. A whistle shrilled far to the south of them, down the completed track. And then, after ten years and more, they were face to face again. “That bridge will have to go down!” Wickersham Vas breathing hard, for all that he had been riding. “I am going through with my drive today!” He had dismounted. Steve smiled at him. “You’re a whole week previous, Wickersham,” he said wearily. “I’ll be signaling for your first load of logs in less than sixty hours.” Archibald Wickersham wished that he could have believed it impossible, for it would have given him courage and lent conviction to bis stand. But he knew just how fast those few remaining miles of open roadbed would be spanned. His eyes Were furtive. There was no body to his voice. “My men are on the banks,” he blustered. “My first head of logs has started down. It’s too late to argue how—too late for your promises that none but fools ever believed.” The sure irrevocability of what he was saying blanched his cheeks. “I cannot wait for a rpiracle to be performed. My timber must come out on this flood.” Stephen O’Mara had whipped him once, but men had interfered. This day chance or destiny or fate—what ever you may choose to call it—saved him from destruction. The lean and weary man who had not been out of hiS clothes for three days and three nights, save for a plunge in the icy river, had taken his first step forward when the whistle screamed a nearer warning. She had told him that she would come to see the finish of his race, but he had long since stopped believing that. And now, when she stood and waved her hand at him from the brass railed observation platform of AIII son’s private car which a switch engine, out of patience with the grade, was shunting across the IoWeF end of the clearing he could only stand ana stare dully, no faith in his eyes. The loud plaid of her father’s garb flashed behind her in the doorway. Hardwick Elliott’s fine face peered over his shoulder. And Wickersham, who had not , seen his fiancee in a month, had started toward them, stiffly erect in his immaculate habit. “You should not be here,” was all Steve said to her. “This is no place for you.” He shook hands with the men, mechanically. Allison quizzical, Elliott concerned. He went back to his bridge. The water had come up a half foot In the last few minutes some one—Fat Joe, perhaps—told him. It was suck ing greedily at the piles. And Iff the north the ominous murmflr had become a rhythmic roar. - Wickersham’s men were driving tha river. They were singing “Harrigan, That’s Me!” 4^ (To be continued.)

“It is wonderful—wonderful—wonderful!”