| Show i 1 THE GIRL AT A S R y O 0 F T H E P L A I 1 N S BY E HOUGH AUTHOR OF THE STORY OF THE COWBOY if D Atit etan company new york CHAPTER XIV another hour but it seems as though I 1 had at ways known you bald franklin tiro ing again toward the tall figure at tie window there was no rep to this was there watering tte at of the head hose glossy back was turned to him at that moment it was like some forgotten strain of music he blundered on feeling how hopeless how distinctly absurd was all his speech I 1 surely must always have ou somewhere mary ellen still gazed out of the window in her mind there was a scene different from this which she beheld she recalled the green forests and the yellow farms of Louls burg the droning bees the broken flowers and all the details of that sodden stricken field with a shudder there came over her a swift resentment at meeting here near at hand one who had had a share in that scene of desolation she turned toward him slowly at length and so far from seeming se her features bore the traces of a smile do you know said she I 1 think I 1 heard of a stage driver gasn wasn t it somewhere out west who was taking a schoolteacher from the railroad to the schoolhouse and he well he said things you know no v he had never seen the schoolteacher before yes I 1 have heard of that story said franklin I 1 dont just recollect all about it it seems to me that the stage driver said something er like may be he said it was like forgotten mu sic to him franklin colored the story was an absurdity like many others about the west he said but he bright ened the stage driver had never seen the schoolteacher before I 1 don t quite understand eald mary ellen coldly in my country tt was not customary for gentlemen to tell ladies when they met for the farst time that it was like a strain of tor gotten music not the first time music never forgotten then said franklin impetuously this la at least not the first time we have met in any ordinary duel of small talk this had not been so bad an attack yet now the results were something which neither could have foreseen to the mind of the girl the words were shock ing rude brutal they brought up again the whole scene of the battlefield she shuddered and upon her face there fell the shadow of an ha bidual sadness you have spoken of this before captain franklin said she and it what you say is true and if indeed you did see me there at that place I 1 can see no significance in that ex capt the lesson that the world is a very small one I 1 have no alon of meeting you but captain franklin had we ever really met and if you really cared to bring up some pleasant thought about the meeting you surely would never recall the fact that you met me upon that day franklin felt his heart stop he looked aside his face paling as the even tones went on that was the day of all my life the saddest the most terrible I 1 have been trying ever since then to forget it I 1 dare not think of it it was the day when when my life ended when I 1 lost everything everything on earth I 1 had because of lounsburg louisburg Lou isburg why this this Is the re suit of that day and you refer to it with pa gerness poor franklin groaned at this I 1 know I 1 could have known he blun dered I 1 should not be so rude as to suppose that ah it was only you that I 1 remembered 1 the war Is past and gone the world as you say la ery small it was only that I 1 was glad ah sir said mary ellen and her voice now held a which was the stronger from the droop of the tenderly curving lips ah sir but you must remember to lose your relatives even in a war for right and principle and the south was right this with a flash of the eye late sive that is hard enough but tor me it was not one thing or another it wis the sum of a thousand mis fortunes I 1 wonder that I 1 am alive it Is no wonder that those of us left alive went away anywhere as far as WP that we gave up our coun try that we came even here you blame me as though it were personal broke in franklin but she ignored him my father my mother my two brothers nearly every relative I 1 had killed in the war or by the war our home destroyed our property taken by first one army and then the other you should not wonder it I 1 am bitter it was the field of lounsburg louisburg Lou isburg which cost me everything I 1 lost all all on that day which you wish ms to remember why sir if you wished me to hate you you could do no bettch and I 1 do not wish to hate any one I 1 wish to have as many friende as we ma here in this new country but for remembering why I 1 can remember nothing else day or night but louis burg you stood so said franklin dog gedly and fatuously j st as you did last night you leaning on the arm of our mother mary ellen eyes dilated it was not my mother she sa d we were seeking for my friend her on I 1 captain franklin I 1 know of no rea son why we should speak of such things at all b t it was my I 1 nas to have been married to the man foi v horn we were seel ing and whom we found that is what Louls burg means to me franklin bowed 1 is head between his hands and half groaned over the pain which he had cost then slow ly and crushingly his own hurt came home to him in his brain he could feel the parting one by one of the strings which but now aang in unison discord darkness dismay sat on all the world the leisurely foot of buford sound ed on the stair and he knocked gaily on the door jam as he entered well niece said he mrs buford thinks we ought to be starting back tor home right soon now mary ellen rose and bowed to frani lin as she passed to leave the room but perhaps neither she nor franklin was fully conscious of the leave taking buford saw nothing out of the way but turned and held out his hand by the way kaptain franklin said he I 1 m mighty glad to meet you sir mighty glad we shall want you to come down and see us often it isn t very far only about twenty alve miles south they call our place the halfway ranch and it s not a bad name for it s only about halt way as good a place as you and I 1 have always been used to but its ours and you will be welcome there we shall depend on seeing you now and then you blame me a thou gh it were personal I 1 trust we shall be friends mum bled franklin Friends 7 said buford cheer the smiling wrinkles of his own thin face signifying his sincerity why man here is a place where one needs friends and where he can hive friends there is time enough and room enough and well you 11 come won t yo 1 and franklin dazed and missing all the light which had recent ly made glad the earth was vaguely conscious that he had promised to visit the home of the girl who had certainly given him no invitation to come further into her life but for whose word of welcome he knew that he should always long BOOK III the day of the cattle CHAPTER XV ellisa lie the red ellisville Ellis ville grew up in a nigh it was not and lo 10 it was silently steadily the people came to this rallying place dropping in from every corner of the stars the long street spun out still longer its string of wooden houses the cot tage hotel had long since lost its key and day and night there went on vast revelry among the men of the wild wide west then seeing for the first time what seemed to them the joy and glory of life land and cattle cattle and land these themes were upon the lips of all and in those days were topics of peace and harmony the cattleman still stood for the nomadic and un trammeled west the west of wild and glorious tradition the man who sought for land was not yet lecog nihed as the homesteader the man of anchored craft of settled convictions of adventures ended for one brief glorious season the nomad and the home dweller shook hands in amity not pausing to consider wherein their interests might differ for both this was the west the free unbounded illimitable exhaustless west homer ic titanic scornful of metes and bounds having no scale of little things the horizon of life was wide there was no time for small exact ness A newspaper so called cost a quarter of a dollar the postmaster gave no change when one bought a postage stamp A shave was worth a quarter of a dollar or a halt or a dollar as that might be the price of a single drink was never dished since that was something never called tor by day and by night ceaseless crude barbaric there went on a continuous carousal which would have been joyless backed by a vitality less superb an experience legs young money and life these two things we guard most sacredly in the older societies the first most jealously the latter with a lesser care the transient population of bills valle the cattle sellers and cattle buy ers and land seekers outnumbered three to one the resident or perma nent population which catered to this floating trade and which supplied its commercial or professional wants the resident one third was the nu cleus of the real that was to be the social compact was still in embryo life was very simple it was the day of the individual the day before the law with this rude setting there was to be enacted a rapid drama of material progress such as the world has never elsewhere seen but first there must be played the wild prologue of the west never at any time to have a more lurid scene than here at the halfway house of a continent at the intersection of the grand trans conti cental trails the bloody angle 0 the plains eight men in a day a score in a week mt death by violence the street in th cemetery doubled before that of the town there were more graves than houses this su pebbly wasteful day how could it presage that which was to comee in this riotous army of invasion who could have foreseen the population which was to follow adventurous yet tenacious resolved first upon inde pend enre and next upon knowledge and the apon the fruits of knowl edged nay perhaps after all the prescience of this coming time lay over E lesville lis ville the red so that it roared the more tempestuously on through its brief brazen day to be continued |
