Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1917 — Then I’ll Come Back to You [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I’ll Come Back to You

By LARRY EVANS

Author of "Opce to Every Man” Copyright, a 1915, by the H. K. Fly Company

SYNOPSIS Cft’eb Hunter and his sister Sarah weiOMne to their homo 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. Shots ten. he fourteen. m® boy and girl are in a puny that go to town. The old people watch with contorn the youth’s growing attachment for the girt Caleb Is much impressed with the boy's Ideas on the moving of timber. Ha predicts a great future for the lad. O'Mara meets Barbara Allison on the oad. 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. Miriam Burrell, Barbara’s friend, sees and understands the black rage that shadows bis face. O’Mara dally 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 fear. He checks an Incipient strike. O’Mara cheers Devereau with the Information that Miriam Burrell cares lor him despite his unhappy past. O’Mara arranges a meeting between Garry and Miriam. Garry mo 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. Mid her comments puzzle Stephen. naran says w-.it' ’he regeneration oi, Garry is onr of rho things tiiat has made 1 her life most happy, Barah plans a meeting between Stephen and Barbara. Womanlike, ehe is convinced that, despite her engagement to Wickersham, Barbara cares for •'Mara. Wickersham and Allison begin to realize that O’Mara cannoU be defeated Sarah’s plan to unite Barbara and O’Mara seems to be working smoothly. Stephen gives Harrigan a beating. Wtekersham sees the fight. O’Mara then challenges Wlekersham to fight. Wickersham refuses. Barbara disappears. Steve rescues her. She sends Wickersham his ring and Wlekersham orders Harrigan to kill his rival. Harrigan kills Big Boule and wounds Steve.

CHAPTER XXII.

And Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

IHEY carried him into the house and bore him upstairs and laid him. quiet now and alI most pulseless, upon the bed.

They stood there dumfounded at the bedside until Miss Sarah, re-entering the room, coolly ordered them from underfoot and sent them bark downstairs. And at that their unprotesting obedience was of greater assistance than their hands could have been. But when, after one glance at the girl’s stricken face, she tried the next Instant to dismiss Barbara for once Miss Sarah’s will alone proved The girl refused, point blank, to go. “He half undressed me and put me to bed,’’ Barbara flung back in reply to the spinster’s final objection, “and If that did not shock you, surely my staying now need not!” The refusal itself brought a glint to the older woman's eyes and the phrasing thereof a flush to her cheeks, but she wasted no more words in what she knew to be useless argument. And though the girl grew sick and sicker still while Miss Sarah cut away the sodden shirt and started, with competent skill, to cleanse the wound, the latter let her remain and hold a basin of antiseptic and replenish it when necessary.

Miss Sarah knew what to do, and she worked with unhurried thorough; ness. They had sent for the doctor, and after ages had passed for the girl, maddeningly cool and unruffled, he arrived. But his first words, too, were an order that she leave the room, and unable to combat his professional bleakness, meekly she had to obey. Little and wholly hopeless she stole downstairs. ... Caleb and her father were confronting _£aeh other before the fireplace when she reached the lower floor, but the queer note of restraint in their voices meant nothing to her, until she heard her father cry out in sudden anguish. “Cal,” he cried, “Cal, you don’t think I was a party to this attempt at murder?” ky Then, at Caleb’s reply, which went hurtling back at him, the girl was crouching, white and still, and clutching at the stair rail. "Party! Attempt! Because you did not pull the trigger are you any the less guilty?” “Dq you believe that I would murder the man my girl loves?” Dexter Allison moaned now. Barbara gasped at the deadly anger which crossed Caleb Hunter’s face. Caleb had lifted a hand in righteous accusation. “You have dealt in crookedness,” he thundered., "You have thrived on cunning. And, being a law unto yourself in this country, you have gone unpunished until now. You aided and abetted a vicious and unscrupulous scoundrel in his villainy, and how you have

looked upon tne resun or your works. Law has never touched you, sir—reprisal has passed you by. But, by God, str, I warn you that If that boy dies—if he dies—l shall see that you meet me at thirty paces the next And I shall ( not miss—l shall be your law!” They had been friends for close to forty years, yet they were worse than strangers now. Dexter Allison could not answer. He could not speak aloud. Caleb’s finger had swung toward the door in a gesture unmistakable. Allison turned, and, ghastly of face, met the eyes of his daughter. “Barbara," he appealed to her frantically. “Baby”— ' But she shrank, a huddled heap of misery, away from him. “You—too?” she whispered. “Your* And then, dully: “And you're my father!”

The shoulders beneath the garish plaid rose and fell pitifully. This,, then, was the moment which he feared. lie gulped aloud and hung his head and turned his feet toward home. Barbara rose after he' had gone and crept into a chair. One after another -they tried to persuade the girl to rest. Miriam came and talked to her, and Caleb, and even Miss Sarah p.sslng through the room stopped to urge her again to go to bed. But she met them all with the same wordless refusal. She was waiting for him when the doctor, descending in the morning, tried to combine, diplomatically,'praise for what she had done with disapproval of her obstinacy. v “My dear child, this insubordination will help no one,” he said, “and It may end in your collapse at Just the moment whim you are needed most.” “Will he live?” was all she would say. “Will he live?" And before such hopelessness the doctor could not lie. “He is hard hit and very, very weak,” he had to admit “The shock is great and the tissue damage—unpromising. It Is far worse than 1 expected, but he Is still alive, and most men would have been already dead. And his vitality is a marvel, even to me.”

lie rijteht have comforted her, but with no other statement could he have told the truth. He failed also in his effort to persuade her tQ go to bed; he had breakfast with Caleb, mid she refused to eat. And she was still there In her chair, asking be let alone, when Garry Devereau and Fat Joe arrived. She rose and ran to. meet the latter, but the doctor who knew how many such situations the pudgy riverman had weathered, summoned him immediately, and Barbara had to wait an hour before Joe came back downstairs. By the lapels of his coat she clung to him then. “He’s mighty sick.” reluctantly Joe, too, told the truth. “The doctor said that It was worse than he expected,” she droned. “They sent me away, but If he isn’t going to live I won’t let them keep me from him!” Joe’s sympathy was unspoiled by professionalism. “Sick Is one thing”—his confidence was almost convincing—“and dyln’ is another. And- Shucks! I ain’t going to let no book taught medico worry me yet! Men get well because they are bound to get well, or they die because It’s their time to die—and he’s got too much to live for now!" Iler hopeless face made deception Impossible, but Joe comforted her, just the same. lie persuaded her to eat with him. and when he found that his conversation made the waiting easier for her, he waxed quite garrulous. “Why, he’s been hurt almost as bad as tills, once before,” he rambled on. “but he’s still alive, ain’t he?” The girl’s eyes livened at that. “Once down on the Island, he mixed in an affair in which most men would not have meddled. And he got it from behind that time, too, only it was with a knife.” “He never told me,” murmured the girl.

“It ain’t likely he would,” the other stated with finality. “It was over a woman, and not a particularly pretty story, any way you look at it.” Her dark eyes widened. She bit her lip. It came to her how little of his life she had shared. “Oh!” she barely breathed. And again, falteringly, "Oh!” From that halting monosyllable Joe judged that something was amiss. Observation had never been a slow or painful process of concentration with him. “He didn’t even know who she was. He'd never seen her before,” quickly he put her right. “She was just a public dancer, that was all. But a man — mistreated her, and Steve, he just interfered”— Indeed, Joe had found the way to comfort her and still tell the truth, even though he found it foolishly difficult to swallow food and watch at the same time the warmth which his Words kindled. So for an hour he lingered at table and told her many things concerning the man she loved which she would never have learned from his own lips. And it was Joe’s Jocularity which in the end subdued her rebel spirit. She yielded at last and promised to go home and rest, but only after he had promised first, in a fashion which could leave no doubt in her beait, that he would come for her if things grew worse. Before she left him that morning she told Joe of Big Louie, whom she had had to leave in the road, bbt he interrupted her before she could finish. They had already found Big Louie. Then she gave him the note which she had discovered crushed under Steve’s body. This Joe scanned ferociously; he flashed a strange glance at her from bleached blue »»■- (To be continued.)