The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ was here?"

      "She did so; but she couldn't tell me much more. Say, son, how on top of earth did you happen to blow in at midnight, with Jack Barto for your herd leader?"

      "It's a fairy tale, and you won't believe it—of a Blount," was the laughing reply. "I left Boston Monday, and should have reached the capital last night. But my train was laid out by a yard wreck at Twin Buttes just before dark, and I left it and took to the hills—horseback. Don't ask me why I did such a thing as that; I can only say that the smell of the sage-brush got into my blood and I simply had to do it."

      The old cattle-king was standing with his feet planted wide apart and his hands deep in his pockets. "You hired a horse!" he chuckled, with the humorous wrinkles coming and going at the corners of the kindly eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty miles from Twin Buttes to the capital the next?"

      "Oh, no; I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out—and that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in Twin Buttes, some way."

      "Never mind the cayuse. Shackford would have made you a present of it outright if you had told him who you were. Go on with your story. It listens like a novel."

      "I took the general direction all right on leaving Twin Buttes, and kept it until I got among the Lost River hogbacks. But after that I was pretty successfully lost. I'm ashamed to tell it, but about half of the time the moon didn't seem to be in the right place."

      "Lost, were you? And Jack Barto found you?" queried the father.

      "Barto hadn't lost me to any appreciable extent," was the half-humorous emendation. And then: "Who is this ubiquitous Barto who goes around playing the hold-up one minute and the good angel the next?"

      "He is a sort of general utility man for Hathaway, the head pusher of the Twin Buttes Lumber Company. He is supposed to be a timber-cruiser and log-sealer, but I reckon he doesn't work very hard at his trade. Down in the lower wards of New York they'd call him a boss heeler, maybe. But you say 'hold-up'; you don't mean to tell me that Jack Barto robbed you, son!"

      "Oh, no; he held me up with a gun while his helpers pulled me off the bronco and hog-tied me, and then fell to discussing with the other two the advisability of knocking me on the head and dropping me into Lost River Canyon—that's all. Of course, I knew they had stumbled upon the wrong man; and after a while I succeeded in making Barto accept that hypothesis; at least, he accepted it sufficiently to bring me here for identification. Since he wouldn't talk, and I didn't recognize the trail or the place, I hadn't the slightest notion of my whereabouts—not the least in the world; didn't know where he was taking me or where I had landed when we stopped here."

      The big man was leaning against the foot-rail of the bed and frowning thoughtfully. "Talked about dropping you into Lost River, did they? H'm. I reckon we'll have to look into that a little. Who set them on, son? Got any idea of that?"

      "I have a very clear idea: it was this man Hathaway you speak of—a big ranchman named Griggs told me his name. He came across in the Pullman with me from Omaha; middle-aged, tall, and slim, with a hatchet face and owlish eyes. Before I learned his name we had talked a bit—killing time in the smoking-room. He said he was interested in mines and timber. Along toward the last he got the notion into his head that I was a special agent of some kind, on a mission for the Bureau of Forestry, and I was foolish enough to let him escape with the impression uncorrected."

      "That was Pete Hathaway, all right," was the senator's comment. "His company has been cutting timber in the Lost River watershed reserves, and he probably thought you were aiming to get him. You say he sent Barto after you?"

      "I'm only guessing at that part of it. When I rode away from Twin Buttes he was standing on the porch of the tavern, talking to Barto and two others; and I'm pretty sure he pointed me out to them. An hour or so later, three horsemen passed me on the mesa, one after another. I couldn't see them, but I heard them. It might have been another hour or more past that when they potted me."

      "You gave them your name?"

      "Yes; and that seemed to tangle them a little. Barto said he believed I was lying, but, anyway, he'd give me a chance to 'prove up.' Then they brought me here, and your—er—Mrs. Blount kindly stepped into the breach for me."

      "You didn't know Honoria when you saw her?" queried the father.

      "No; I wasn't in the least expecting—that is, I—you may remember that I had never met her," stammered the young man, who had risen on his elbow among the pillows.

      The older man walked to the window and stood looking out upon the distant mountains for a full minute before he faced about to say: "We might as well run the boundary lines on this thing one time as another, son. You don't like Honoria; you've made up your mind you're not going to let yourself like her. I don't mean to make it hard for either of you if I can dodge it. This is her home; but it is also yours, my boy. Do you reckon you could—"

      Evan Blount made affectionate haste to stop the half-pathetic appeal.

      "Don't let that trouble you for a minute," he interposed. "I—Mrs. Blount is a very different person from the woman I have been picturing her to be; and if she were not, I should still try to believe that we are both sufficiently civilized not to quarrel." Then: "Have you breakfasted yet—you and Mrs. Blount? But of course you have, long ago."

      "Breakfasted?—without you? Not much, son! And that reminds me: I was to come up here and see if you were awake, and if you were, I was to send Barnabas up with your coffee."

      "You may tell Uncle Barnabas that I haven't acquired the coffee-in-bed habit yet," laughed the lazy one, sitting up. "Also, you may make my apologies to Mrs. Blount and tell her I'll be down pronto. There; doesn't that sound as if I were getting back to the good old sage-brush idiom? Great land! I haven't heard anybody say pronto since I was knee-high to a hop-toad!"

      Farther on, when he was no longer in the first lilting flush of the new impressions, Evan Blount was able to look back upon that first day at Wartrace Hall with keen regret; the regret that, in the nature of things, it could never be lived over again. In all his forecastings he had never pictured a homecoming remotely resembling the fact. In each succeeding hour of the long summer day the edges of the chasm of the years drew closer together; and when, in the afternoon, his father put him on a horse and rode with him to a corner of the vast home domain, a corner fenced off by sentinel cottonwoods and watered by the single small irrigation ditch of his childish recollections; rode with him through the screening cottonwoods and showed him, lying beyond them, the old ranch buildings of the "Circle-Bar," untouched and undisturbed; his heart was full and a sudden mist came before his eyes to dim the picture.

      "I've kept it all just as it used to be, Evan," the father said gently. "I thought maybe you'd come back some day and be sure-enough disappointed if it were gone."

      The younger man slipped from his saddle and went to look in at the open door of the old ranchhouse. Everything was precisely as he remembered it: the simple, old-fashioned furniture, the crossed quirts over the high wooden mantel, his mother's rocking-chair … that was the final touch; he sat down on the worn door-log and put his face in his hands. For now the gaping chasm of the years was quite closed and he was a boy again.

      Still later in this same first day there were ambling gallops along the country roads, and the father explained how the transformation from cattle-raising to agriculture and fruit-growing had СКАЧАТЬ