gone!

What then was her footing here--a woman? Was God indeed asleep? She
heard her own soul begging for alleviating death.

Then came silence, except for the airs high up in the sobbing trees.
They were gone on their errand. After that,--what?

After a time she heard a sound of dread--the sliddering of a footfall
in the sand. She recognized the heavy, dragging stride of the man who
had brought her here. He had come back--alone.

Terror seized her, keen and clarifying terror. She screamed, again and
again, called aloud the only name that came to her mind.

"_Sim_!" she cried aloud again and again--"_Sim_! _Sim_!"

[1] Wheat clocks: Phosphorus bombs left in wheat or haystacks and fired
by the sun.

[2] Clothes: Argot terms for phosphorus, cyanide and other chemicals
used in destruction of property or life.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN TRAIL

"What do you think of him, Wid?" asked Sim Gage after a time, when they
were well on their way homeward in the late afternoon.

"Looks like a good doctor, all right," replied Wid. "Clean-cut and
strictly on to his game. I reckon he got plenty practice in the war.
I'm sorry neither of us was young enough to git into that war. Your
leg hurt much now?"

"Say yes!" replied Sim. "You know, I reckon we didn't get there any
too soon with that leg. Fine lot of us, up to my house, huh? Me laid
up, and her can't see a wink on earth."

"And yet you said I couldn't come over and see her. So there you are,
both alone."

"Well, it's this way, Wid, and you know it," insisted his friend. "The
girl is right strange there yet--it's a plumb hard thing to figure out.
We got to get her gentled down some. There's been a hell of a
misunderstanding all around, Wid, we got to admit that. And we're all
to blame for it."

"Well, she's to blame too, ain't she?"

"No, she _ain't_! I won't let no man say that. She's just done the
best she knew how. Women sometimes don't know which way to jump."

"She didn't make none too good a jump out here," commented his friend.
"Has she ever told you anything about herself yet?"

"Not to speak of none, no. She sets and cries a good deal. Says she's
broke and blind and all alone. She's got one friend back home--girl
she used to room with, but she's going to get married, and so she, this
lady, Miss Warren, comes out here plumb desperate, not knowing what
kind of a feller I am, or what kind of a place this is--which is both a
d