The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-15

nfm were dor,e ana gone. Nov sh dM not need uch reassurancA wba her lips were ,emulous.
 Ehe grew pensfve at times. At times h an abandon of gayety she chattered back tt Quarrelsolne squirrel in the thicket. She could rest later. and if she could not go to him immediately at least every step the horse. took was bringing them for little while closer together. And her tomorrow was only one twilight and one dawn away. Her tomorrow would be his as utterly as was she herself.
 Dusk came, and regretfuAy she told herself that she must be turning back home. Two rife shots, sharp and star tlinsly close, whipped through the quiet of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare strayed of while she sat incoming on log. She was holding out both arms toward tho apot where the valley of Thirty Mile must lie when a tean of heavy horses broke around a turn in tho roe I. slowef to a trot at tho sight of her a.id4 came to an abrupt standsti1l When the girl rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at f3rst they snorted and show ied the whites of their aDcs and shied hack nsrvously.
 Something chill clutched at Barbara's heart while sho spoke peremptorfly to Ragt1me who was dancing in sym pathetic panic. There was nothing to tell her, but she knew that these were Big Louie's horses. And Big Louie was . dreamy incompetent. He had left them for moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But Big Louie never neglected his team they were not wet-they had not been running far. And their friGht became less when she dismount- ed and approached them, soothing them with her voice until they let her touch their sleek sides without rearing away,
 Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and more unnerved as she stood and gazed 1t the forbidding, black shadowed ridges beyond her. the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and horne. Even then the rine shots meant nothing to her sand pride would not let her run She Temounted and rode on a rod or two and stopped to look back at the team
 which was watching her. She pressed on and rounded the curve. Ragtimo reared and snorted there, and she bare ly stifed the cry whicA his strange be-
 havior brought to her lips. Because of
 her senseless panic she punished hin
 the more severely and sent him on.
 And then she saw what the horse had
 already seen.
 A blue shirted figure lay half in the road, half in the undergrowth that
 fringed 1t, one arm crooked under him and his face prone in the dust. A
 bulkier mass was stretched wholly
 within the trail-and she recognized
 him too. Big Louie's face was up-
 turned, and the explanation of the two
 rifle reports and the driverless team
 was here, for Big Louie's hand stfll
 clutched the handle of q canvas pail.
 They had stopped to water. the horses;
 they had been shot down from behind. And first of all, unable, to move, while horror parched her lips, the girl re- membered words which the limp one, half in the road and half in the under brush, had spoken to her in a moment of sternness.,
 He has fired upon me from cover ? the man who loved her had said. "He has been taking money. from a man who was bent on beating me at any pricev'
 "Blood sickens me!' she whimpered aloud. Blood sickens mer But she
 managed to turn him over upon his back. With brown head against his l heart she listened listened and would not believe that her tomorrow might l come teos late. And then she caught
 the slack pound of his pulse.
 From there on she was less panic stricken. She gained control of facm. l ties shocked for time into useless ness. Method marked her acts -delib- efation mechanical, but sure. She was
 horribly afraid of Big Louie, but she
 finally disentangled the handle of the l pail from these loose fingers and ran to the brook which babbled near at
 hand, Returning, she drenched Steve's
 face with icy water She lifted his r head and propped it as comfortably as 1 she might upon enc thigh and opened his dannsl shirt. The ball had passed l through, for back and front the shirt became immediately wetter with fresh 1 blood. Blood sickened her, but she whipped or the coat of her boyish rid
 ing habit and wrenched. the sleeves | from her linen blouse. They were des perately scant, yet they provided pads with which to check that dreadful ooz
 ing. And when they were in place |. she turned again to bathing his fore had.
 A folded sheet of paper came to view | when she tried once to ease his heavy
 body from. the position which was
 numbing her leg, and she seized upor
 it fercely. It was only q brief line
 bidding him come to her, but it bort
 her name. With instant, bodiless clari
 ty which had marked all her menta l processes so far, it's pTrport was hers