The Sagebrusher: A Story of the West

  CHAPTER XXXV

  ANNIE ANSWERS

  All at once Annie Squires, usually stolid, now overstrained, gave wayto a wild sobbing. "I can't go in there," said she. "I'm scared. Iwant to go home! I want my mother, that's what I want."

  "Where is your mother?" asked Wid Gardner. He had come over near toher when Doctor Barnes was helping Mary into the house.

  "Dead--dead long ago," wept Annie. "When I was a little girl. Likeher, Mary, there--we didn't neither of us ever have a mother. We donejust the best we could, both of us. We've tried and tried to find somesort of place where we belonged, and we couldn't. We haven't got anyplace to go to. I haven't got a place on earth to call my home.

  "And it's something a woman wants sometimes," she added after a while,dabbing her wet handkerchief against her eyes. "That's the Gawd'struth."

  Wid approached more closely the weeping girl, touching her arm with abrown hand now gentle as a child's.

  "Now look-a-here," said he. "I can't stand to hear you go on that way.Do you reckon you was ever any lonesomer fer a home than what I am,living out here all my life?"

  "And now I'm worse off than I ever was before," he went on frowningly."I didn't know nothing before you come out here. But now I do. Ican't think of your going back, Annie."

  She did not answer him, but went on weeping.

  "What's more, I ain't _a-going_ to stand it," he added savagely. "Iain't _a-going_ to let you go back a-tall. Talk about home!--there's ahome right acrosst the fence. We can make it any way we like. It'lldo to start with, anyhow. Here's where you belong--you don't belongback there in them dirty cities. You belong right out here--with me."

  "I couldn't--I can't," said Annie. "I couldn't let her go back alone.I got to take care of that kid."

  "She ain't blind no more," said Wid. "But she don't have to go back!This here place where we stand is hers, ain't it? What more does shewant? And we'd be right here, too, all the time, to help her and watchher, wouldn't we, now?"

  "You don't know her," said Annie Squires. "I do."

  "But, Annie," he went on, "you'd ought to see this out here in thevalley when the spring comes! It's green, all green! The sage has gotfive different colors of green in it--you wouldn't think that, wouldyou? And some blue. And you ain't seen the mountains yet when they'rewhite with snow on them--that's something you got to see fer to knowwhat a mountain is. And look at that little creek--it's plumb gentleup here, ain't it? It's pretty, here. You ought to see the moonlighton the meadows when the moon is full,--I was telling you about that,Annie."

  "I ain't never been married in my life," he went on, arguing now. "Iain't never seen a woman that I loved or looked at twicet but you. Iwas too damn lazy to care anyway about anything till I seen you. Ijust been drifting and fooling along. But now I ain't. I want to goto work. I want to be somebody. Why, Annie, I reckon all the time Iwas homesick, and didn't know it. But I tell you it wouldn't be nohome unless you was in it with me. I ain't fit to ask you to run itfer me. But I do!"

  It was the ancient story, even told direct in the open, unwhispered,even told now, at such an hour and place. She did not answer at all,but her sobbing had ceased. He stood still frowning, looking at her,his hat pushed back from his forehead.

  "I can't say no more'n I have," he concluded. "Years and years, Annie.Wouldn't it settle a heap of things?"

  "I got to have some sort of time to think things over, haven't I,then?" She spoke with apparent venom, as though this were an affrontthat had been offered her.

  "All you want," said Wid Gardner gently. "I've done my own thinking.I know."

  "I've got to go in and get them folks something to eat, haven't I?"said Annie, using her apron on her eyes. "It's going to be about thelast time all of us'll ever eat together any more."

  "Well, we can invite them over, sometimes, can't we, Annie?" said WidGardner calmly. And he kissed her brazenly and in the open.