Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1917 — Then I’ll Come Back to You [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I’ll Come Back to You

By LARRY EVANS

SYNOPSIS Ca’eb Hunter and his sister Sarah weleocxe to their home Stephen O’Mara, a W r’‘-i and friendless boy, starting from C2to ; 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 is tan. he fourteen. use- boy and girl are in a party that go to tcrxx The old people watch with concern the youth’s growing attachment for tie girt Caleb !s much impressed with the boy’s Meas cs the moving of timber. He predicts a great futura for tha lad. OTMar* meets Barbara Allison on the cod. 'there Js a play of words in which both seek to conceal their feeling. Wlekersham notices that Barbara and Stephen are together a great deal. MirInn Burrell. Barbara’s friend, sees and nsderstands th* black rage that shadows tsls fare °. O’Mara daily becomes more convinced that erne one is trying to stir up trouble nmong his men. ■Wickersham and Allison have a confer-sE-ce. They agree that Harrigan, their tncl 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 fear. He checks an incipient strike. O'Mara cheers Devereau with the inforthat Miriam Burrell, cares, for him iie his unhappy vast • OTMara .arranges d meeting between Garry and Miriam. Garry nd tonger is a drunkard. O’Mara has worked wonders with him. O'!'-.-. returns to End the reconciliation Of Garry and Miriam. Barbara, is present, at; her dhmments puzzle Stephen. nsrs.!! snys at r he regeneration or Garr— is o— things tsat v 2s made her life-most happy. Sarah plans a meeting betweoa Stephen and Barbara-- Womanlike, ehe is conwinged that, despite her engagement to Wickers':. m. Barbara cares for ©’Mara. CHAPTER XXL “You Cannot Leave Me Now,” * " OR .two days and two nights J the girl fought on alone against the outcry of hei tow to heart until she recognized the futility of it. and then she ordered Ragtime to be saddled. And Miriam Buried, sighting Barbara’s face as the latter wheeled toward the hills, flew. from her window to scratch off a note to Garry—her tjlird note that day. for she seemed always omitting must im portant things which needed saying. “It’s wiae.” she scrawled in delight ed haste. * * » When are we going tv .be marrife»ir” - ■ ....-■ Once before Barbara had ridden that road with him alone in her thoughts Now she realized that she had loved him then as she must have loved him always and marveled at such blind isess. Once. on that other day, she had told herself that all ignoble and unworthy comparisons of herself and him were done and gone. Now she did not need such reassurance, when her lips were tremulous. grew pensive at times. At times tn an abandon of gayety she chattered back at a quarrelsome squirrel in the thicket. She could rest later, and if she could not go to him immediately at least every step the horse took was bringing them for a little while closer together. And her tomorrow was only one twilight and one dawn away. Her tomorrow would be his as utterly as ■was she herself. Dusk came, and regretfully she told herself that she must be turning back borne. Two rifle shots, sharp and startlingly close, whipped through the quiet of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare strayed off whLc she sat mooning on a log. She was holding out both arms toward the spot where the valley of Thirty Mile must lie when a team of heavy horses broke around a turn in the road, glowed to a trot at the sight of her and came to an abrupt standstill. When the girl rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at first, they snorted and showed the whites of their eyes and'shied hack nervously, j Something chill clutched at Barbara’s heart while she spoke peremptorily to Ragtime who was dancing in sympathetic panic. There was nothing to tell her. but she knew that these were Big Louie's horses. And Big Louie was a dreamy incompetent. He had left them for a moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But Big Louie never neglected his team —they were not wet—they had not been running far. And their fright became less when she dismounted and approached them, soothing them with her-voice until they let her touch their sleek sides without rearing away. Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and more unnerved as she stood and gazed at the forbidding, black shadowed ridges beyond her* the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and home. Even then the rifle shots meant nothing to her — and pride would not let her run. She remounted and rode on a rod or two aid stopped to look back at the team

wliiclr was watching her. She’pressed on and rounded the curve. Ragtime reared and snorted’there, and she barely stifled the cry which his strange behavior brought to her lips. Because of her senseless panic she punished him the more severely ana sent him on. And then she saw what the horse had already seen. A blue shirted figure lay half in the road, half in tstie undergrowth that fringed it, one arm crooked under him and his face prone in the dust. A bulkier mass was stretched wholly within the trail—and she recognized him too. Big Louie’s face was upturned, and the. explanation of the two rifle reports and the driverless team was here, for Big Louie's hand still clutched the handle of a canvas pail. They had stopped to water, horses; they had been shot down from behind. And first of all, unable to move, while horror parched her lips, the girl remembered words which the limp one, half in the road and half in the underbrush, had spoken to her in a moment of sternness. “He has fired upon me from cover,” the man who loved her had said, “He has been taking money from a man who was bent on beating me at any price!” “Blood sickens me!” she whimpered aloud. “Blood sickens me!” - But she managed to turn him over upon his back. With brown head against his heart she listened—listened and would not believe that her tomorrow might come too late. And then she caught the slack pound of his pulse. From there on she was less panic stricken. She gained control of faculties shocked for a time into uselessness. Method marked her acts—deliberation mechanical, but sure. She was horribly afraid of Big Louie, but she finally disentangled the handle of the pail from those loose fingers and ran to the brook which babbled near at hand. Returning, she drenched Steve’s face with icy water. She lifted his head and propped it as comfortably as she might upon one thigh and opened his flannel shirt. The ball had-passed through, for back and front the shirt became immediately wetter with fresh blood. Blood sickened her, but she whipped off the Coat Of lifer boyish riding habit and wrenched the sleeves from her linen blouse. They were des perately scant, yet they provided pads with which to check that dreadful oozing. And when they were in place 4 sbe-turned again to bathing his forehead. A folded.sheet of paper came to view when she tried once to ease his heavy body from the position which was numbing her leg, and she seized upon it fiercely. It was only a brief line, bidding him come to her, but it bore her name. With instant, bodiless clarity which had marked all her mental processes So far, its purport was hers. She had not written—the hand that had traced her signature had been unstrung for once. She understood, though such knowledge seemed of little moment now. She kept the pads cold and wet. She went for fresh water and stumbled and fell more than once because of the treacherous footing in the deepening shadows. But she was no longer afraid of the dark. She had grown to fear Big Louie less, even though there was no help for Big Louie any more.It was the first time that Barbara had looked upon the.face of a man who had died in violence. Big Louie's face was growing indistinct now, but she knew that he was smiling—knew’ that his eyes were dreamy and mild. Death, like life, had been a quite incomprehensible puzzle to that slow’ witted one who had no name. But he had smiled seldom in life. In death his smile was almost childish, almost sweet and questioning beyond all else. Alone with him who still lived, the pallid girl sat and waited and wondered how long—or how soon—it would be. When she bade him wait until she could bring the team he nodded his comprehension. He was watching for her return. And he came to his feet with a readiness that made her heart leap with hope. But he fell twice before she lifted him, half with her hands, half with her voice, to the seat. She crawled in beside him. and the next moment she had to struggle ma<& ly to prevent his returning to Big Louie. , , “He will wait quiet until we come for him.” she protested. “There isn’t room for Big Louie—and he won’t mind”— Her logic made an impression upon him. for he smiled. There was no sequence in his acquiescence, however. “Big Louie never could find his way alone.” he mused, “and that is strange, too. for he was born in these hills. He was always getting lost”— And with that he must not desert Louie! She had even more trouble with him this time. "He will lose his head,” he expostulated mildly—his old, unfailing attitude of gentleness toward her. “He will lose his head and waste his strength in.running from things which do not e.’dst.” “Big Louie will find his way this time.” She was whimpering again iu her helplessness. “He is—already home.” ■ , There she learned that her voice could control him when her arms availed not at -all against even his dead weight And so she talked as steadily as she was able while she drove. Once lie lurched against her. When he pulled himself together he was so .sanely apologetic of a sudden that she searched his face With hungry eyes. But he was talking now to himself. “I must ndt touch her!" he stated firmly: And then, drearily: “I am sick. I have never been so sick—before.” With that he subsided, but his silence was far more dreadful than his wanderings bad been, and as fast as she dared she pushed the *bcavy team on. with Ragtime following behind like a dpg. He slipped back against her al

most Immediately, and this time he had not the strength with which to apologize nor lift himself erect With his head heavy in the hollow of her arm, they came at length to the open pasture hills. They topped the rise and faced the loops on loops of highway that ran down to Morrison “at the river edge. And so she brought him home. At the sight of his “city” she sobbed aloud, but he, sunken and slack,

was conscious neither of distance cov cred nor change of country. He climbed down from the seat, however, in response to her urgings when the team halted before Caleb Hunter’s white columned house. He turned .and started stubbornly back the way they had (wte. T§he ran after him and clung to his arm.. “You promised that you would come back to me,” she cried up' at him. “Oh. you cannot leave me now!” That halted him momentarily. “I must go back to my bridge,” he explained, plainly nonplused. “Bus then I’ll surely come back to you.” She pleaded with him—raged at him. “I must go back to my bridge,” he reiterated, gruffly now.' Her arms went around him in desperation, and then, with one swing, he had swept her yards away, reeling before his blazing wrath. “Take your fingers from my eyes, Harrigan,” lie gasped In sudden agony. “I am going to kill you now, and she is looking on!” The girl was afraid of him. She dared not try to hold him. She screamed wildly for help and screamed again. And he had gone on and wavered and crashed over upon his face when Caleb Hunter and her father came running heavily across the lawn in answer to her shrieks. Between" them they lifted him and carried him into thejiouse. (To be continued.) ■

Alone With Hun Who Still Lived, the Pallid Girl Sat and Waited.