Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 October 1901 — Salon? Jane’s Kiss. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Salon? Jane’s Kiss.

BY BRET HARTE.

[CONTINUED.] “But this yere boss thief got away arter all. and that’s a boss of a different color,” he said grimly. Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork. This was certainly a new and different phase of the situation. She had never thought of it before, and, strangely enough, for the first time she became Interested in the man. “Got away,” she repeated. “Did they let him off?” “Not much,” said her father briefly; “slipped his cords and, going down the grade, pulled up short, just like a vaquero ag’in a lassoed bull, almost draggin the man leadln him off his hoss, and they skyutted up the grade. For that matter, on that hoss of Judge Boompointer’s he moot have dragged the whole posse of ’em down on their knees es he liked. Sarved ’em right too. Instead of stringin him up afore the door or shootin him on sight, they must allow to take him down afore the hull committee for an example. ‘Example’ be Mowed! Thar’s example enough when some stranger coines unbeknownst slap onter a man hanged to a tree and plugged full of holes. That’s an example, and he knows wot it means. Wot more do you want? But then those vigilantes is alius clingln and haugin onter some mere scrap of the law they’re pretendln to despise. It makes me sick! Why, when Jake Myers shot your ole aunt Viney’s second husband and I laid in wait for Jake afterward in the Butternut hollow, did I tie him to his boss and fetch him down to your aunt Viney’s cabin for an example before I plugged him? No!” fn deep disgust. “No! Why, I just meandered through the wood, carelesslike, till he comes out, and I just rode up to him, and J said”— But Salomy Jane had heard her father’s story before. Even one’s dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. “I know, dad,” she interrupted, “but this yere man, this hoss thief, did he get clean away without gettin hurt at all?”

“He did, and unless he’s fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep away too. So, you see, you can’t ladle out that purp stuff about a dyin stranger to Rube. He won’t swaller it.” “All the same, dad,” returned the girl cheerfully, “I reckon to say It, and say more. J’ll tell him that es he manages to get away, too. I ll marry him—there! But you don’t ketch Rube takin any such risks in gettin ketched or in gettin away arter." Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a perfunctory kiss on his daughter’s hair and, taking his shotgun from the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow that had dropped a calf fn the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben’s wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clav ramny. tt certainly would be a kind of misalliance.

Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffeepot and then called the-two squaws who assisted her In her household duties to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness and on which she must lie in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of refined features, Reuben Waters, stuck in her window frame. Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed it, like your true humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face in the little mirror, smiled again. But wasn’t it funny about that horse thief getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben bearing he was alive and going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She laiighed again, a little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like a man, holding her tight arid almost breathless, and he going to be hanged the next minute! Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times by force, chance of stratagem. In a certain Ingenuous forfeit game of the locality, known as “I’m a-pinln,’’ many had pined for a sweet kiss from Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and fair play. She had never been kissed like this before —she would never again—and yet the man was alive! And, behold, she could see in the mirror that she was blushing! „

She should hardly know him again—a young man with very bright eyes, a flushed and sunburned cheek, a kind of fixed look in the face and no beard—no, none that she could feel. Yet he was not at all like Reuben, not a bit. She took Reuben’s picture from the window ana lain it on her workbox And to think she did not even know this young man’s name! That was queer—to be kissed by a man whom she might never know! Of course be knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and her. But of course he was so glad to get off with bls life that be never thought of anything else. Yet she did not give more than four or five minutes to these speculations and, like a sensible girl, thought of something else. Once again, however, in opening the closet she found the brown holland gown she had worn on the lay before, thought, it very unbecom-

•ngauu i-egi»iieu tnat sue had not war” her best gown on her visit to Bad reie s cottage. On such an occasion she really might have been more impressive. When her father came home that night, she asked him the news. No, they bad not captured the seeond horse thief, who was still at large. Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the despised law. It remained then to see whether the horse thief was fool enough to try to get rid of the animal. Red Pete’s body had been delivered to his widow. Perhaps it would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the funeral, but Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly, nor yet did she explain to her father that, as the other man was still living, she iid not care to undergo a second disciplining at. the widow’s hands. Nevertheless she- contrasted her situation with that of the widow with a new and singular satisfaction. It might have been Red Pete who had escaped, but he had not the grit of the nameless one. She had already settled his heroic quality. “You ain’t harkln to me, Salomy.” Salomy Jane started. “Yere I’m askln you if you’ve seen that hound, Phil Larrabee, sneakin by you today?” Salomy Jane had not. But she became interested and self reproachful, for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father’s enemies. “He wouldn’t dare to go by yere unless he knew you were out,” she said quickly.

“That’s what gets me,” he said, scratching his grizzled bead. “I’ve been kind of thinkin of him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyers Crossing. He was a kind of friend of Pete’s wife. That’s why I thought you might find out es he’d been there.” Salomy Jane grew more self reproachful at her father’s self interest In her neighborliness. “But that ain’t all,” continued Mr. Clay. “Thar was tracks over the far pasture that warn’t mine. I followed them, and they went round and round the bouse two or three times, as es they mout have prowlin, and then I lost ’em In the woods ag’in. It’s just like that sneakin hound Larrabee to have been lyin in wait for me and afraid to meet a man fair and square In the open.” “You just He low, dad, for a day or two more and let me do a little prowlin,” said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in her dark eyes. “Es it’s that skunk, I’ll spot him soon enough and let you know whar he’s bldin.” “You’ll just stay where you are, Salomy,” said her father decisively. “This ain’t no woman's work, though I ain’t sayln you haven’t got more head for it than some men I know.” CHAPTER 11.

Nevertheless that night, after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the open window of the sitting room In an apparent attitude of languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and ear. It was a fine moonlit night. Two pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage and sighed their spiced breath In the windows, for there was no frivolity of vine or flower round Salomy Jane’s bower. The clearing was too recent, the life too practical for vanities like these. But the moon added a vague elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds, gave shadows to the lidless windows and touched with merciful Indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the gaunt scars of burned vegetation before the door.. Even Salomy Jane was affected by it and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of the pines. Then she suddenly sat upright Her quick ear had caught a faint click, click, in the direction of the wood. Her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to determine that it was the ring of a horse’s shoe on flinty ground. Her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot

where the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile from where she sat and within the clearing. It was no errant stock, for

*ae toot was shod with iron, it was a mounted trespasser by night and boded no good to a man like Clay. She rose, threw her shawl over her head more for disguise than shelter and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made her seise her father’s shotgun from the corner where it stood —not that she feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse. She made directly for the wood, keeping In the shadow of the pines as long as she could. At the fringe she halted. Whoever was there must pass her before reaching the house. Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything was deadly still. Even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous. Then there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal the ferns, and then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight It was the horse thief, the man she had kissed!

For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect and stirred her temperate blood. The news they had told her was not true. He had been hung, and -this was his ghost! He looked as white and spiritlike in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching and moved quickly to meet her, but in his haste he stumbled slightly. She reflected suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling around, only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her cheek. Her coolness and hardihood returned. If was with a tinge of sauciness In her voice that she said: “I reckoned you were a ghost.” “It’s a little riskier comln back alive,” she said, with a levity that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness half fear and half expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of** moment ago. “Then it was you who was prowlin round and maklu tracks In the far pasture?” “Yes: I came straight yere when I got away.” [to be continued.)

"I reckoned you were a ghost.”