The Round-Up Part 21

"Did you? let's hear it."

With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead rebuilding from her dream fabric a tragedy of the desert, in which the two men who had played so great a part in her life were the actors.

"It seems," she told, "that I was in the desert, such a vast, terrible desert, where the little dust devils eddied and swirled, and the merciless sun beat down until it shriveled up every growing thing."

Polly nodded her head sagely.

"That's the way the desert looks--and no water."

Echo paid no heed to the interruption. Her face became wan and haggard, as in her mind's eye she saw the weary waste of waterless land quiver and swim under the merciless sun. Not a tree, not a blade of gra.s.s, not a sign of life broke the monotony of crumbling cliffs and pinnacled rocks. Onward and ever onward stretched yellow ridges and alkali-whitened ravines, blinding the eye and parching the throat.

"Then I saw a man staggering toward me," she continued; "his face was white and drawn, his lips cracked and parched--now and then he would stumble and fall, and lie there on his face in the hot sand, digging into it with his bony fingers seeking for water."

Echo shut her eyes as if to blot out the picture. Its reality almost overpowered her.

"Suddenly he raised his eyes to mine," she resumed, after a pause. "It was d.i.c.k."

In her excitement she had arisen, stretching out her arms as if to ward off an apparition.

"He tried to call me. I saw his lips move, framing my name. Dragging himself to his feet, he came toward me with his arms outstretched.

Then another form appeared between us fighting to keep him back. They fought there under the burning sun in the hot dust of the desert until at last one was crushed to earth. The victor raised his face to mine, and--it was Jack."

Echo buried her face in her hands. Dry sobs shook her bosom.

Awe-stricken, Polly gazed at the over-wrought wife.

"PFEW!" she laughed, to shake off her fright. "That was a sure enough nightmare. If I'd a dream like that I'd wake up the whole house yapping like a coyote."

As the commonplace ever intrudes upon the unusual, so a knock on the door relieved the tension of the situation. It was Slim. He did not wait for an invitation to enter, but, opening the door, asked: "Can I come in?"

"Sure, come in," cried Polly, glad to find any excuse to shake off the depression of Echo's dream.

"Howdy, Mrs. Payson, just come over to see Jack," was the jolly Sheriff's greeting.

"He's down at the corral," she informed him.

Mrs. Allen hurried in from the kitchen at this moment, calling: "Echo, come here, and look at this yere cake. It looks as if it had been sot upon."

Echo closed the lid of the piano and called her mother's attention to the presence of Slim Hoover.

"How d'ye do, Slim Hoover?--you might have left some of that dust outside."

The Sheriff was greatly embarra.s.sed by her chiding. In his ride from Florence to the Sweet.w.a.ter, the alkali and sand stirred up by the hoofs of the horses had settled on his hat and waistcoat so freely that his clothing had a.s.sumed a neutral, gray tone above which his sun-tanned face and red hair loomed like the moon in a fog. Josephine's scolding drove him to brush his shoulders with his hat, raising a cloud of dust about his head.

"Stop it!" Mrs. Allen shouted shrilly. "Slim Hoover, if your brains was dynamite you couldn't blow the top of your head off."

Polly was greatly amused by Slim's encounter with the cleanly Mrs.

Allen. Slim stood with open mouth, watching Mrs. Allen flounce out of the room after Polly, who was trying in vain to suppress her laughter.

Turning to the girl, he said: "Ain't seen you in some time."

Slim was thankful that the girl was seated at the table with her back to him. Somehow or other he found he could speak to her more freely when she was not looking at him.

"That so?" she challenged. "Come to the birthday?"

"Not regular," he answered.

Polly glanced at him over her shoulder. It was too much for Slim. He turned away to hide his embarra.s.sment. Partly recovering from his bashfulness, he coughed, preparatory to speaking. But Polly had vanished. As one looks sheepishly for the magician's disappearing coin, so Slim gazed at floor and ceiling as if the girl might pop up anywhere. Spying an empty chair behind him, he sank into it gingerly and awkwardly.

Meantime Polly returned with a broom and began sweeping out the evidences of Slim's visit. She spoke again:

"Get them hold-ups yet that killed 'Ole Man' Terrill?" she asked.

"Not yet. But we had a new shootin' over'n our town yesterday."

Slim was doing his best to make conversation. Polly did not help him out very freely.

"That so?" was her reply.

"Spotted Taylor shot two Chinamen."

Polly's curiosity was aroused.

"What for?" she asked, stopping her sweeping for a moment.

"Just to give the new graveyard a start," Slim chuckled.

Polly joined in his merriment.

"Spotted Taylor was always a public-spirited citizen," was her comment.

"He sure was," a.s.sented Slim.

"Get up there. I want to sweep under that chair." Polly brushed Slim's feet with the broom vigorously. With an elaborate "Excuse me,"

Slim arose, but re-seated himself in another chair directly in the pathway of Polly's broom.

"Get out of there, too," she cried.

"Shucks, there ain't any room for me nowhere," he muttered disgustedly.

"You shouldn't take up so much of it."

Slim attempted to take a seat on the small gilt chair which was Jack's wedding-present to Echo.

Polly caught sight of him in time. "Look out," she shouted. "That chair wasn't built for a full-grown man like you."

Slim nervously replaced the chair before a writing-desk. Polly wielded her broom about the feet of the Sheriff, who danced clumsily about, trying to avoid her.

"You're just trying to sweep me out of here," he complained.