The Harvester (Romance Classic). Stratton-Porter Gene

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СКАЧАТЬ went speeding down the street. A policeman beckoned and cried after it.

      “It won't do any good to get arrested, Doc,” cautioned the Harvester.

      “Now right along here,” panted Doctor Carey. “Watch both sides sharply. If I stop you jump out, and tell the blame policemen to get at their job. The party they are hired to find is right under their noses.”

      The Harvester began to perspire. “Doc, don't you think you should tell me? Maybe she is in some store. Maybe I could do better on foot.”

      “Shut up!” growled the doctor. “I am doing the best I know.”

      He hurried up the street for blocks and back again, and at last stopped before a large store and went in. When he returned he drove to the hospital and together they entered the office. There he turned to the Harvester.

      “It isn't so hard to understand you now, my boy,” he said. “Shades of Diana, but she'll be a beauty when she gets a little more flesh and colour. She came out of Whitlaw's and walked right to the crossing. I almost could have touched her, but I didn't notice. Two girls passed before me, and in hurrying, a tall, dark one knocked off one of your bunches of yellow violets. She glanced at it and laughed, but let it lay. Then your girl hesitated stooped and picked it up. The crazy policeman yelled at me to clear the crossing and it didn't hit me for a half block how tall and white she was and how dark her eyes were. I was just thinking about her picking up the flowers, and that it was queer for her to do it, when like a brick it hit me, THAT'S DAVID'S GIRL! I tried to turn around, but you know what Main Street is in the middle of the day. And those idiots of policemen! They ordered me on, and I couldn't turn for a street car coming, so I called to one of them that the girl we wanted was down the street, and he looked at me like an addle-pate and said, 'What girl? Move on or you'll get in a jam here.' You can use me for a football if I don't go back and smash him. Paid him five dollars myself less than two weeks ago to keep his eyes open. 'TO KEEP HIS EYES OPEN!'” panted the doctor, shaking his fist at David. “Yes sir! 'To keep his eyes open!' And he motioned for things to come along, and so I lost her too.”

      “I think we had better go back to the street,” said the Harvester.

      “Oh, I'd been back and forth along that street for nearly an hour before I gave up and came here to see if I could find you, and we've hunted it an hour more! What's the use? She's gone for this time, but by gum, I saw her! And she was worth seeing!”

      “Did she appear ill to you?”

      The doctor dropped on a chair and threw out his hands hopelessly.

      “This was awful sudden, David,” he said. “I was going along as I told you, and I noticed her stop and thought she had a good head to wait a second instead of running in before me, and there came those two girls right under the car from the other side. I only had a glimpse of her as she stooped for the flowers. I saw a big braid of hair, but I was half a block away before I got it all connected, and then came the crush in the street, and I was blocked.”

      The doctor broke down and wiped his face and expressed his feelings unrestrainedly.

      “Don't!” said the Harvester patiently. “It's no use to feel so badly, Doc. I know what you would give to have found her for me. I know you did all you could. I let her escape me. We will find her yet. It's glorious news that she's in the city. It gives me heart to hear that. Can't you just remember if she seemed ill?”

      The doctor meditated.

      “She wasn't the tallest girl I ever saw,” he said slowly, “but she was the tallest girl to be pretty. She had on a white waist and a gray skirt and black hat. Her eyes and hair were like you said, and she was plain, white faced, with a hue that might possibly be natural, and it might be confinement in bad light and air and poor food. She didn't seem sick, but she isn't well. There is something the matter with her, but it's not immediate or dangerous. She appeared like a flower that had got a little moisture and sprouted in a cellar.”

      “You saw her all right!” said the Harvester, “and I think your diagnosis is correct too. That's the way she seemed to me. I've thought she needed sun and air. I told the South Wind so the other day.”

      “Why you blame fool!” cried the doctor. “Is this thing going to your head? Say, I forgot! There is something else. I traced her in the store. She was at the embroidery counter and she bought some silk. If she ever comes again the clerk is going to hold her and telephone me or get her address if she has to steal it. Oh, we are getting there! We will have her pretty soon now. You ought to feel better just to know that she is in town and that I've seen her.”

      “I do!” said the Harvester. “Indeed I do!”

      “It can't be much longer,” said the doctor. “She's got to be located soon. But those policemen! I wouldn't give a nickel for the lot! I'll bet she's walked over them for two weeks. If I were you I'd discharge the bunch. They'd be peacefully asleep if she passed them. If they'd let me alone, I'd have had her. I could have turned around easily. I've been in dozens of closer places.”

      “Don't worry! This can't last much longer. She's of and in the city or she wouldn't have picked up the flowers. Doc, are you sure they were mine?”

      “Yes. Half the girls have been tricked out in yours the past two weeks. I can spot them as far as I can see.”

      “Dear Lord, that's getting close!” said the Harvester intensely. “Seems as if the violets would tell her.”

      “Now cut out flowers talking and the South Wind!” ordered the doctor. “This is business. The violets prove something all right, though. If she was in the country, she could gather plenty herself. She is working at sewing in some room in town, either over a store or in a house. If she hadn't been starved for flowers she never would have stopped for them on the street. I could see just a flash of hesitation, but she wanted them too much. David, one bouquet will go in water and be cared for a week. Man, it's getting close! This does seem like a link.”

      “Since you say it, possibly I dare agree with you,” said the Harvester.

      “How near are you through with that canvass of yours?”

      “About three fourths.”

      “Well I'd go on with it. After all we have got to find her ourselves. Those senile policemen!”

      “I am going on with it; you needn't worry about that. But I've got to change to other flowers. I've stripped the violet beds. There's quite a crop of berries coming, but they are not ripe yet, and a tragedy to pick. The pond lilies are just beginning to open by the thousand. The lake border is blue with sweet-flag that is lovely and the marsh pale gold with cowslips. The ferns are prime and the woods solid sheets of every colour of bloom. I believe I'll go ahead with the wild flowers.”

      “I would too! David, you do feel better, don't you?”

      “I certainly do, Doctor. Surely it won't be long now!”

      The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before he went to bed.

      The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture and candlesticks.

      Then he went back to flower gathering and every day offered bunches СКАЧАТЬ