Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1916-12-28
CHAPTER xi.

clear stream between yellow cliffs,
stood d small deserted shack Of cover
ed mesquite poles. It had been made
long ago, but was well preserved. i
door faced the OvergrOWn trail, and
another faced down into a gorge of
dense thickets. On the border fugi-
tiyes from law and men who hid in
fear of someone they had wronged
never lived in houses with only one
door
1t was a Wild spot, lonely, not fit
for human habitatiOn except for the
Outcast.
On clear days-and rare indeed were
cloudy days-with the subsiding of the
wind at sunset hush seemed to fall
around the little hut. Far-distant dim
blue mountains stood gold-rimmed
gradually to fade with the shading Of
light
At this quiet hour a man climbed
up out of the gorge and sat in the
westward door of the hut. This lonely
watcher of the west and listener to the
silence was Duane. And this hut was
the one where, three years before,
Jennie had nursed him back to life.
The killing of a man named Sellers,
and the combination of circumstances
that had made the tragedy a memoir
able regret, had marked, if not a
change, at least a cessation in Duane'S
activities. He had trailed Sellers to
kill him for the supposed abducting
of Jennie. Vague rumors, few words
here and there, unauthenticated stor-
les were all that Duane had gathered
in years to substantiate his belief
that Jennie died shortly after the be-
ginning of her second captivity.
Sellers might have told him. Duane
expected, if not to force it from him
at the end, to read it in his eyes. But
the bullet went too unerringly; it
locked his lips and fixed his eyes.
After that meeting Duane lay long
at the ranch-houSe of friend, and
when he recovered from the wound
Sellers had given him he started with
two horses and a pack for the lonely
gorge on the Nueces. There he had
been hidden for months, a prey to re-
morse. a dreamer, a victim Of
phantoms.
1t took work for him to find sub
sistence in that rocky fastness. And
work, action, helped to pass the hours.
But he could not work all the time,
even if he had found it to do. Then
in his idle moments and at night his
task was to live with the hell in his
mind.
The sunset and the twilight hour
made all the rest bearable. The little
hut on the rim of the gorge seemed to
hold Jennie'S presence. 1t was not
as if he felt her spirit. If it had been
he would have been sure of her death.
He hoped Jennie had not survived her
second misfortune; and that intense
hope had burned into belief, if not
surety.
A strange feature of this memory
of Jennie was the freshness of 1.-THE
failure of years, toll, strife, death
dealing to dim ito deaden the
thought of what might have been He
had a marvellous gift of INSTALLATION.
He could shut his eyes and see Jennie
before him just as clearly as if she
had stood there in the flesh. For
hours he did that, dreaming, dreaming
of life he had never tasted and now
never would taste. He thought Of her
ac I,n
thiI,gs which had come TO mean to
him that she must have loved him !;
and he trained himself TO think of
these in preference to her life at
BANDS, the escape with him, and
then her recapture, because such men,
cries led to bitter, fruitless pain. He
had to fight suffering because it was
eating out his heart.
Sitting there, eyes wide open, he
dreamed of the old homestead and his
white-haired mother. He saw the old
home-life, sweetened and filled by dear
new faces and added joys, go OH be-
fore his eyes with him a part of it.
Then in the inevitable reaction, in
the refiux of bitter reality, he would
send out a yoiceless cry no less
poignant because it was silent
Poor fool No, I shall never see
mother again-neyer go home-never
have home. l am Duane, the Lone
| Wolf !"
A group of specters trooped out of
the shadows of dusk and, gathering
round him. escorted him to his bed.
Every one OF his victims, singly and
collectively, returned to him for ever,
| it seemed, in cold, passionless, accus-
ing domination. They did not accuse
! him of diShOnor or cOwardice or brutal
| ity or murder; they only accused him
of death. 1t was as if they knew more
/ than when they were alive, had learn
| ed that life was a divine mysterious
| gift not to be taken. They thrOnged
about him with their yoiceless clamor-
| ing, drifted around him with their
| fading eyes.
! After nearly six months IN the
! Nueces gorge the loneliness and mac
! ton of his life drove Duane out upon
the trails seeking anything rather
than to hide longer alone q prev &c