Part 13 (2/2)

Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other feeling than perfect love and happiness.

When the ceremony was over and Anson looked around for Bert, he was gone. He couldn't stand the pressure of the crowd and the whispered comments, and had slipped away early in the evening.

Among the presents which were laid on the table in the dining-room was a long envelope addressed to Mrs. Will Kendall. It contained a deed for a house and lot in one of the most desirable parts of the suburbs. It was from Gearheart, but there was no other written word. This gift meant the sale of his claim in Dakota.

When Anson got back to the hotel that night, wondering and alarmed at his partner's absence, he found a letter from him. It was savage and hopeless.

This climate is getting too frigid for my lungs. I'm going to emigrate to California. I made a mistake: I ought to have gone in for stand-up collars, s.h.i.+ny hair, and bow-legs. You'd better skip back to Dakota and sell your claim. Keep my share of the stock and tools; it ain't worth bothering about. Don't try to live there alone, old man. If you can't sell, marry. Don't let that girl break you all up too. We are all fools, but some can get over it quicker than others.

If that little bow-legged thing gets under your feet or abuses her, jest get your toe under him and hoist him over into the alley.

Good-bye and good luck, old man.

BERT.

And the next day the doubly bereaved man started on his lonely journey back to the Dakota claim, back to an empty house, with a gnawing pain in his heart and a constriction like an iron band about his throat; back to his broad fields to plod to and fro alone.

As he began to realize it all and to think how terrible was this loss, he laid his head down on the car-seat before him and cried. His first great trial had come to him, and meeting it like a man, he must now weep like a woman.

CHAPTER XIII.

FLAXEN'S GREAT NEED.

Flaxen wrote occasionally, during the next year, letters all too short and too far between for the lonely man toiling away on his brown farm.

These letters were very much alike, telling mainly of how happy she was, and of what she was going to do by and by, on Christmas or Thanksgiving. Once she sent a photograph of herself and husband, and Anson, after studying it for a long time, took a pair of shears and cut the husband off, and threw him into the fire.

”That fellow gives me the ague,” he muttered.

Bert did not write, and there was hardly a night that Ans lay down on his bed that he did not wonder where his chum was, especially as the winter came on unusually severe, reminding him of that first winter in the Territory. Day after day he spent alone in his house, going out only to feed the cattle or to get the mail. The sad wind was always in his ears. But with the pa.s.sage of time the pain in his heart lost its intensity.

One day he got a letter from Flaxen that startled and puzzled him. It was like a cry for help, somehow.

”Dear old pap, I wish you was here,” and then in another place came the piteous cry, ”Oh, I wish I had some folks!”

All night long that cry rang in the man's head with a wailing, falling cadence like the note of a lost little prairie-chicken.

”I wonder what that whelp has been doin' now. If he's begun to abuse her I'll wring his neck. She wants me an' da'sn't ask me to come. Poor chick, I'll be pap an' mam to ye, both,” he said at last, with sudden resolution.

The day after the receipt of this letter a telegram was handed to him at the post-office, which he opened with trembling hands:

ANSON WOOD: Your daughter is ill. Wants you. Come at once.

DR. DIETRICH.

He got into his wagon mechanically and lashed his horses into a run. He must get home and arrange about his stock and catch the seven o'clock train. His mind ran the round of the possibilities in the case until it ached with the hopeless fatigue of it. When he got upon the train for an all-night ride, he looked like a man suffering some great physical pain.

He sat there all night in a common seat--he could not afford to pay for a sleeper; sat and suffered the honest torture that can come to a man--to sit and think the same dread, apprehensive wondering thoughts; to strain at the seat as if to push the train faster, and to ache with the desire to fly like the eagle. He tried to be patient, but he could only grow numb with the effort.

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