"Curse you and curse you and curse you! I hate you! You've robbed me of
the happiness that belonged to my youth. You've destroyed my faith in
human kind. Whatever of sweetness there was in my nature you have
turned to gall. When my Day comes I'll strike you without mercy--I'll
beat you to the earth if it's in my power!"
It was fully night before they were able to get right-of-way into the
yards, and Kate drew a deep breath of relief when the grinding wheels
finally stopped. She and Bowers swung down together from the high step
to the cinder path which lay between their own cars and a train of
cattle bawling on a parallel track. As they stumbled along in the
darkness toward the engine they heard brisk footsteps coming from that
direction.
"Low bridge!" Bowers warned jocularly as they drew close.
In stepping aside to avoid Bowers the pedestrian bumped into Kate.
"I beg your pardon!" The voice was pleasant--deep.
Kate murmured a commonplace.
At the instant a brakeman hung out from the handrail of a car of the
cattle train and swung his lantern. Instinctively Kate and the man with
whom she had collided looked at each other in the arc of light. In their
haste they had scarcely slackened their steps, and it was only a
second's glimpse that each had of the other's face, but it was long
enough to give to each a sense of bewildered surprise. The look they had
exchanged was the look one man gives to another--level, fearless--for
there never was anything of coquetry in Kate's gaze, and the impression
she had received was of poise, patience and worldly wisdom tinged with a
sadness in which there was no bitterness.
The man walked on a pace, stopped and swung about abruptly. Evidently
he could see nothing in the darkness--he could hear only the retreating
footsteps on the cinder path. Then suddenly, aloud, sharply, out of his
bewilderment he cried:
"By God! That woman looks like me!"
Kate and Bowers walked on without comment upon the incident, but when
they had reached the yard, Bowers detached himself from Kate's side and
made a rush to the nearest light where, turning his back with a
secretive air, he took from the inner pocket of his inside coat the worn
and yellowed photograph that Mullendore had recognized in Bowers's
wagon. He looked at it long and hard.
Kate was too engrossed in directing and helping with the work of
unloading, counting the sheep that had smothered, looking after those
that had been injured in transit, feeding, watering, to be conscious of
the attention she attracted among the helpers and others in the yards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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