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

"We must be in a hurry or that woman will catch you"
"We must be in a hurry or that woman will catch you"

At the same moment two men sprang out of the second car and rushed at Archie. One of them flung a carriage robe over his head and twisted it round his throat, then they gathered him up, head and heels, and tossed him over the fence. The thing could not have been managed more neatly if it had been rehearsed. The Governor leaned over the fence and gazing upon Archie, wriggling in a patch of briars, unconcernedly recited:

"'She who comes to me and pleadeth In the lovely name of Edith Shall not fail of what was wanted; Edith means the blessed, therefore All that she may wish or care for, Shall, when best for her, be granted!'"

The two cars were enveloped in a cloud of dust when Archie, tearing the blanket from his head, rose to confront the screaming woman. Twice he had seen the child stolen, and the first occasion had not been without its drama, but the Governor had made of the second the sheerest farce. The woman berated him roughly for his stupidity while he attempted to explain.

"The man who talked to the little girl knew her—called her by name. They've probably just gone for a ride."

This only increased the woman's indignation and he roused himself to placate her.

"I had better run to the house and telephone to the Tiffin police," he suggested.

To his infinite surprise she declared in alarm that this must not be done; she would go herself and tell the child's father what had occurred and let him deal with the matter. This was wholly beyond his comprehension and to conceal his emotions he fell back heavily upon his rôle of the country bumpkin, complaining of imaginary injuries and vowing that he would have the law on the men who assaulted him. The woman glanced carefully about, as though to make sure they had not been observed and then set off for the house. She took several steps and then turned to say:

"Don't talk about this—do you understand? You're not to say a word about it. I'll see Mr. Putney Congdon and tell him just how it happened."

"But if the police should ask me—"

"Don't be a fool! The police are not going to know about this. Those were Mr. Putney Congdon's orders in case anything like this happened. And you needn't talk to the other hands about it either. I'll fix the foreman; all you've got to do is to keep your mouth shut."

Her assumption that Mr. Putney Congdon would not be greatly aroused by the abduction of his daughter was anything but clarifying. Archie returned the pony to the barn and was sitting in the door brooding upon the prevailing madness of the human race when Grubbs found him.

"Well, it certainly beats hell!" the man remarked, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

"There's a good deal in what you say," Archie mournfully assented. "I want you to know that it wasn't my fault. Those fellows—there were about six of 'em—jumped on me and tried to choke me to death and then pitched me over the fence and it was all over in half a second. I apologize if that's what you expect."

"I don't expect a damned thing! That fool woman said I wasn't to pester you about it as you wasn't to blame, which makes me sore, for at the first jump I was goin' to call the sheriff and turn y' over. But from what she says we're not to say a word—not a word, mind y'! Y' can't beat it!"

"I certainly shan't attempt to beat it," replied Archie sadly. "I'd like to catch a March hare just to tell him that some human beings are a lot crazier than he is. We haven't done justice to the intellectual powers of the rabbit."

The foreman blinked but the remark penetrated and he burst into a loud guffaw. That a child should be picked up in the road and carried away was startling enough but that nothing was to be done about it was so egregious that words failed to do justice to it. It was only eleven o'clock and he told Archie that he might spend an hour at the woodpile, even guiding him to that unromantic spot and initiating him into the uses of saw and ax.

V

Three days in the harvest field brought Archie to a new respect for his daily bread. He found joy in the discovery that he had strength to throw into the scale against man's necessities. He was taking a holiday from life itself; and he was content to bide his time until the vacation ended. He was passing through an ordeal and if he emerged alive he would be a wiser and better man. He planned a life with Isabel that should be spent wholly in the open. Cities should never know him again. Isabel lived now so vividly in his mind that trifles he had not thought of in their meetings became of tremendous importance; foolish things, lover's fatuities. There was a certain grave deliberation of speech, more deliberate when the sentence was to end in laughter; this he knew to be adorable. There was the tiniest little scar, almost imperceptible, over one of her temples; it was the right one, he remembered. An injury in childhood, perhaps; he grieved over it as though he had seen the cruel wound inflicted. And she had a way of laying her hand against her cheek that touched him deeply as he thought of it. Her hands were the most wonderful he had ever seen; useful, capable hands, slim and long.

When he thought of the castigation she had given him in those dark days when they so miserably misunderstood each other, it helped to remember her hands; they were hands that could be only the accompaniment of a kind and generous heart. There was the troublesome cousin who loved her; but he consoled himself with the reflection that she would not have mentioned the man if she had really cared for him; and yet this might be only a blind. He would have an eye to that cousin. The buried treasure he hadn't taken very seriously. In spite of all the remarkable things that had happened to him he still had moments of incredulity, and in the midst of an Ohio wheatfield, with the click and clatter of the reapers in his ears and the dry scent of the wheat in his nostrils, to dream of buried gold was transcendent folly.

Gossip from the farmhouse reached him at the back door and he was alert for any sign that Putney Congdon meditated leaving. Eliphalet had not returned; he judged that Perky, probably inspired by the Governor, had frightened the old man into taking a long journey. The woman who had cared for Edith had left; he got that direct from Grubbs, who poured out confidences freely as they smoked together after the twilight supper.

"Say, I guess I sized you up all wrong. You don't act like a bum at all; I guess you and me might rent a farm round here somewhere and make some money out of it next year. You're the first hobo I ever saw who could do a day's work without cryin'."

The queer ways of the Congdons had not been referred to between them until the third evening, when they took counsel of their tobacco apart from the other men, sprawling on the grass in a friendly intimacy that Archie found flattering. A plain, hard-fisted farmer liked him and showed a preference for his society; the thing was unbelievable.

"I get it through the kitchen that the old man's son's goin' to clear out tonight. Orders was sent to have a machine ready to take him to town at eleven o'clock. Guess there was nothing the matter with him nohow—y' know what these rich young fellas are, and they say the old man's worth a mint. The idea of a big grown man havin' a nurse take care of him makes me sick. I ain't seen that fella since he came. Telegram phoned out this evenin' made 'im jump out o' bed, they say, and he's off for somewhere tonight. Sees a chance to make a lot of money most likely."

Archie cautiously changed the subject, but he was already planning his departure. The Governor had bidden him follow Congdon and here were his marching orders. The prospect of playing the spy upon Congdon had grown no less disagreeable since the Governor had told him that this was to be his next duty. The only thing that reconciled him to the unattractive task was the assurance that Congdon would set out at once for Heart o' Dreams Camp, where Isabel presumably was now established. To bother himself further with the Congdons was not to his liking; he had ceased wishing that he had killed Putney; he wished now that the whole family were at the other side of the world where they wouldn't so persistently interfere with his affairs.

Grubbs complained bitterly because upon him fell the duty of getting Putney into town to catch a west-bound train at midnight.

"You'd think we run a taxi joint here! Where am I goin' to get a night's rest, I'd like to know!"

With the seven-mile tramp to town before him Archie was unable to sympathize with Grubbs' longing for slumber. He left the foreman tinkering the machine in which Putney was to be borne to the station, changed his hat for his cap and stole out of the sleeping quarters to the road.

The thought that he was on his way to Isabel lightened his step, and he trudged along with frequent invocations of the stars. He carried nothing in his pockets but the sealed address the Governor's sister had given him; the verse in Isabel's writing, and a roll of bills the Governor had pressed upon him when they parted.

Reaching town, he found himself with an hour to spare. He got his bag from the station and bought a ticket. There was only one upper available, said the agent with the usual optimistic suggestion of ticket agents that something better might be found when the train came in. He spent half an hour at a hotel cleaning up and changing to the clothing he had discarded at Cleveland.

... Grubbs carried Putney's luggage across the platform with dogged stride, passing Archie without a sign of recognition. He was followed by a tall man in a gray suit whose left arm was supported by a sling. Grubbs took hasty leave and the two travelers were left alone.

"A warm night," Congdon remarked.

Archie agreed to this, a trifle huskily. Congdon was not a bad looking fellow; his tone and manner, and