Blacksheep! Blacksheep! - Meredith Nicholson (freenovel24 .txt) 📗

sudden anxiety to depart out of Vermont with the utmost expedition. Archie had every intention of ordering as gorgeous a breakfast as Bennington's best hotel could provide, but Abijah promptly vetoed this suggestion and they ate at a lunch counter, which Archie found a most disagreeable proceeding. Abijah left Sally and Archie eating scrambled eggs while he set forth to acquire information about trains. He returned while they were still at the counter to report that a train was almost immediately available. His haste annoyed Archie, who hated being hurried at his meals. At the station Abijah hung about the baggage-room, where he had no business whatever, as though trying to create the impression that he was traveling alone. When the train came along he climbed into the smoker with his own bag, leaving Archie to assist Sally into the chair car.

"Abijah's just a little afraid pop might have telephoned, you know, or be coming after us. He'll move in here when the train starts."

"I don't like to leave you like this," said Archie mournfully.

"Oh, it will be all right," Sally answered bravely. "Abijah's nervous; that's all. That was certainly some ride we had last night. I hope you'll go up to the hotel now and get a good sleep."

"Oh, I'll look out for that," Archie replied.

His arrears of sleep did not trouble him; but the thought of losing Sally broke his heart. The hard night ride had left no traces on her face. Her cheeks were aglow and her eyes were bright. When he said again, a little tremulously, that he hated to leave her he had never made a more honest statement in his life.

"I suppose we'll hardly meet again," he said with a dejection which he hoped would elicit a promise of further meetings.

"I'm afraid it will be a long, long time before I see you," she said with a lingering tenderness and wistfulness.

"I hope you're going to be very happy, Sally. And I shall think of you always as you were last night. I shall never forget our talk by the brook."

"Neither shall I," she murmured. Her lashes were wonderful; not till that moment had he done justice to her lashes.

"I want to give you a little present—something you can hide away to make sure you are not embarrassed in any way until you get settled. I wish it were gold, but you won't mind. You understand, don't you, Sally?"

He always carried a five-hundred-dollar bill against emergencies and this he had clung to through all his adventures. He now produced it from his inner waistcoat pocket and slipped it into her hand.

Her brow clouded for an instant; then she smiled radiantly.

"I oughtn't to take it; but I know you mean it all right. It's dear of you," and her tone and the immeasurable kindness of her eyes were easily worth five hundred dollars.

Belated passengers were now brushing past them in the aisle. The conductor, walking briskly along the platform, shouted all aboard with heartless finality. It seemed like the voice of doom to Archie.

"Good-by, Sally!"

He put out his hand, but with a quickness that took his breath away she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. The touch of her hand by the brook under the stars was as nothing to this. Two young girls seeking seats giggled at the frankness and heartiness of the salutation. In old times Archie would have perished of humiliation; but an overwhelming joy filled his soul. The giggles of bread-and-butter misses who knew nothing of life and love were beneath his notice. Sally's arms were still about his neck, her lips were parted expectantly.

"You must go, honey," she whispered and his kiss fell like a punctuation upon her last delectable word.

If she hadn't given him a gentle push toward the door he might never have reached the vestibule. Another person who shared his haste to leave the train materially assisted him by gentle pressure to the platform. His brain whirled from the intoxication of Sally's kiss—indeed the two kisses, or specifically the kiss received and the kiss returned. But his exaltation was of brief duration, for there beside him stood Isabel like an accusing angel, severe and implacable. It was she whose gentle impulsion had facilitated his exit from the parlor car, and beyond question she had witnessed the kissing, a disagreeable circumstance that fell smotheringly upon his ecstatic mood.

"You were on that train!" he exclaimed;—the most fatuous of questions and the poorest possible opening for a conversation.

She ignored his inquiry. It was now her turn to give way under the stress of emotion and the indignant tears shone in her eyes.

"I thought I had made it sufficiently plain at Portsmouth that I resent your following me! The meeting there might have been by accident, but seeing you here I am convinced—I am convinced that you are spying upon me!"

"But, Miss Perry—"

"I should think," she interrupted, "that knowing or suspecting what I am trying to do you would show me some consideration!"

"But I can explain; really I can explain if you will give me a moment! It probably hasn't occurred to you that I'm a good deal mystified by these little journeys you are making over New England! My own dallying in these parts is due to circumstances I can easily explain. In fact, but for you I should not be here at all!"

This, uttered with a conciliatory smile and quite calmly, not only failed to mollify her anger but produced quite the opposite effect. Her agitation increased, and for the second time they presented the picture of a man and woman involved in a quarrel in a public place.

"I understand perfectly that but for me you shouldn't be loitering here! And you practically acknowledged at Portsmouth that you were interesting yourself in the affairs of the Congdons!"

"We are playing at cross purposes quite unnecessarily," protested Archie. "Why not confess just what your interest is in that family? I told you quite plainly at Portsmouth that I had reason to believe I had shot Putney Congdon at Bailey Harbor! But for the courage you put in my heart I should never have done that!"

"If you did that you have ruined everything! A dastardly act for which I hope you will pay the full penalty of the law!"

This was wholly unreasonable and quite beside himself he shook his finger in her face.

"You seem to forget that you advised me to flout the law; to do just the things I have been doing, roving the world, shooting and plundering! There's a policeman at the other end of the platform; call him and turn me over to the authorities!"

She glanced hurriedly in the direction of a policeman who had niched a banana from a bunch providentially exposed to his rapacity on a truck, and was hastily consuming it.

"Maybe he is watching me!" she gasped.

For a young woman who had prescribed outlawry as a cure for obstreperous nerves her alarm was astonishing.

"May I ask, Miss Perry, what reason you have for fearing the authorities?"

"That of course is what you would like to know!" she replied tearfully. "But you know too much! If you have told me the truth your meddlesomeness will have far-reaching consequences too dreadful to think about! Your assumed name tells its own story and convinces me that you have not told the truth. I went aboard that train to look for some one I hoped I might meet, and you know perfectly well why I am here."

He could only stammer a futile expostulation at the gross injustice of this.

"Everything has gone wrong," she continued, "and you may have all the satisfaction you can get out of your interference, your intrusion upon affairs of the greatest delicacy, in which my assistance and my honor are pledged. That car standing yonder belongs to me and before I leave I want you to walk away from here as rapidly as possible and not turn your head!"

He did not even confirm her statement as to the propinquity of the car but crossed the platform with the crestfallen air of a child in disgrace. She had loftily ignored the kissing of Mrs. Abijah Strong. The osculatory adventure with Sally shrank at once in importance from the fact that Isabel had not only ignored it but had made it wholly unnecessary for him to explain that transaction.

He knew nothing save that he was enormously tired and he went to the hotel and crawled wearily into bed.

IV

It was close upon six o'clock when a knock roused him from a sleep that had not been easily won.

"It's yo' baggage, boss!"

"Baggage?" repeated Archie.

He had told the clerk he had no baggage and had paid in advance for his room. His suitcase was at Walker's and it was hardly possible that Walker had forwarded his effects. He opened the door cautiously and saw at a glance that the bag was undeniably his. He groped for his trousers and gave the waiting porter half a dollar.

"How did it get here?" he asked with attempted indifference.

"Don't know nuffin' 'bout it, suh; gemmen tole me tote 'er up. If it ain't all right—"

"Oh, it's all right enough!" Archie exclaimed hastily, fearing to pursue the inquiry.

He opened the bag and found that it not only contained all his belongings but they had been packed neatly by an experienced hand. The unaccountable arrival of his luggage sent his thoughts flying to Walker's farm and the Governor.

Pleased as he was by the arrival of his effects, the reappearance of the bag brought him back to earth with a reverberating jar. He was confident that malevolent agencies were responsible; and to be reminded thus sharply of the powers of evil just when he craved nothing so much as slumber's oblivion was disturbing and ominous.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed idly smoothing the wrinkles out of a pet necktie when a gently insinuating knock unpreluded by a step in the hall caused him to start.

"Come!"

The door opened slowly, wide enough to permit a man's head to be thrust in. A face wearing an amused smile, a familiar face but the last he expected to see, met his gaze.

"Hist!"

The Governor widened the opening in the door and squeezed through.

"My dear Archie!" he exclaimed as he locked the door, "how infinitely relieved I am! I was afraid some harm had befallen you, but to find you here safe and sound fills my heart with gratitude."

He flung down his cap and linen duster, chose a chair by the window and seated himself with a little sigh.

"I hope," Archie ventured timidly, "that you came alone?"

"Oh, yes; I'm alone! Trust me for that; but my friend Walker was not easily shaken. A strong passionate nature, Walker; a man long habituated to the lethal knife, the unerring pistol. No easy task you may well believe to get rid of him. And his provocation! O my boy, his provocation to justifiable homicide and all that sort of thing!"

"Well, I only did what I thought was right," Archie declared doggedly. "I wasn't weighing the consequences."

The Governor, filling his pipe, lifted a hand to emphasize the "splendid" with which he received this statement.

"Splendid, my dear Archie, to see how beautifully you rose to the situation—a situation that spoke powerfully to your generous heart! If there has been any error it is mine. I should have known from the way you played up to the Seebrook girl that you were far too susceptible to be trusted with women. The error is mine; not yours, Archie; I don't blame you a particle. Indeed the incident warms my heart to you. Sally is a winsome lass; she has a way with her, that girl!"

"I would have done the same thing for any girl in like circumstances," Archie declared, pacing the floor with shoulders erect.

"I dare say you would! Your heart and