With the Girl out of the way, the Harvester pottered over the fire, and
when the flame leaped he lifted a stick of wood, hesitated as if it were
too small, and laying it down, started to bring a larger one. In the
dining-room he caught a small stick from the wood box, softly stepped
from the door, and ran around the house. But he awakened Belshazzar on
the kitchen floor, and the dog barked and ran after him. By the time the
Harvester reached the corner of his room the man leaped upon a horse and
went racing down the drive. The Harvester flung the stick of wood, but
missed the man and hit the horse. The dog sprang past the Harvester and
vanished. There was the sound and flash of a revolver, and the rattle
of the bridge as the horse crossed it. The dog came back unharmed. The
Harvester ran to the telephone, called the Onabasha police, and asked
them to send a mounted man to meet the intruder before he could reach a
cross road; but they were too slow and missed him. However, the Girl was
certain she had recognized her uncle, and was extremely nervous; but the
Harvester only laughed and told her it was a trip made out of curiosity.
Her uncle wanted to see if he could learn if she were well and happy,
and he finally convinced her that this was the case, although he was not
very sanguine himself.
For the next three days the Harvester worked in the woods and he kept
the Girl with him every minute. By the end of that time he really had
persuaded himself that it was merely curiosity. So through the cooling
fall days they worked together. They were very happy. Before her
wondering eyes the Harvester hung queer branches, burs, nuts, berries,
and trailing vines with curious seed pods. There were masses of
brilliant flowers, most of them strange to the Girl, many to the great
average of humanity. While she sat bending over them, beside her the
Harvester delved in the black earth of the woods, or the clay and sand
of the open hillside, or the muck of the lake shore, and lifted large
bagfuls of roots that he later drenched on the floating raft on the
lake, and when they had drained he dried them. Some of them he did not
wet, but scraped and wiped clean and dry. Often after she was sleeping,
and long before she awoke in the morning, he was at work carry-ing
heaped trays from the evaporator to the store-room, and tying the roots,
leaves, bark, and seeds into packages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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