Jewelweed

Abstract

ently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his playmate's chest, and the two lay thus asleep. And still Buck looked—his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips loosening under his stiff mustache—and kept looking until the door opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the appletree , and he saw her in the doorway—saw her look anxiously into the darkness—look and listen a long while. Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before morning. As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of metal down the road and the splash of a horse's hoofs in the soft mud, and he sank down behind a holly-bush. Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow. "That you, Jim?" "Yep!" And then the child's voice: "Has oo dot thum tandy?" "Yep!" The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck's ear, and Jim passed death waiting for him behind the bush which his left foot brushed, shaking the snow from the red berries down on the crouching figure beneath. Once only, far down the dark jungled way, with the underlying streak of yellow that was leading him whither, God only knew—once only Buck looked back. There was the red light gleaming faintly through the moonlit flakes of snow. Once more he thought of the Star, and once more the chaplain's voice came back to him. "Mine!" saith the Lord. Just how, Buck could not see with himself in the snow and him back there for life with her and the child, but some strange impulse made him bare his head. "Yourn," said Buck grimly. But nobody on Lonesome—not even Buck—knew that it was Christmas Eve. JEWELWEED cabin on a crooked river high stone hearth floorboards two hands wide forest coming in windows without hangings rough wool blankets pewter and new bread rich evening wine long-fingered hands making strong music Jeanne Kammer 15 ...