Then I'll Come Back to You

from the town of Morrison ran a ribbon of puffy yellow dust between sun-baked, brown-sodded dunes; ran north and north,

sentineled the ridges, they hinted at depths to which the sun's rays could not penetrate; they hinted at chasms padded with moss, shadowed and dim beneath chapel arches of spruce and h

his loyalty to a flag and his pity for a gaunt and lonely figure in the White House had been stronger than bonds of blood, he had left its counterpart down on the Tennessee. Afterward, with one empty sleeve pinned across his breast, he had directed with the other hand the placing of the columns. And finally, when he had had to l

south, tempered as it was by the distance to the drone of a surly bumble-bee, still vaguely annoyed him. Tiny dots of men in flannel shirts of brilliant hue, flashing from time to time out across the log-choked space between the booms, caught his eye whenever he lifted his head, dur

e added, ambition or seeming need of one. The Basin where the river widened and ran currentless a mile or two from bank to bank, in Caleb's father's time for weeks and weeks on end often had showed no more signs of activity than a dawdling fisherman or two who angled now

k of an invitation too long in the coming, had in the last year or so grown in to meet it more than half way. From the Hunter verandas a half-dozen red-roofed, brown-shingled bungalows, half camps and half castles, were visible across the land stre

rdrobe and the reputed size of his father's steadily accumulating resources. Since that time seven-figure fortunes such as the younger Allison had inherited, had become too general to be any longer spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the groun

had crept up from the south. His hundreds and hundreds of rivermen already trod the sawdust-padded streets of the newer Morrison that had sprung into being beyond the bend; they swarmed in on the drives, a hard-faced, hard-shouldered horde, picturesque, proficient and profane. They b

lder generation found that the rivermen preferred their own section of the town, ignoring as though they had never existed

ome into the hills to take up a transitory abode in the stucco house which had been quite six months in the building:-once, two years before, when he had disappeared into the mountains upon a pr

air; on Wednesday, from his point of vantage upon the porch, he had watched a rather astounding load of trunks careen in at the driveway, piloted by a mill teamster who had for two seasons held the record for a double-team load of logs and was making the mos

leb Hunter smiled from time to time, reminiscently. He last of all would have been the one to admit that the owner of the big stucco place and the mills, and-yes, of the newer Morrison itself-had not given a good account of the talents and tens of talents which had been passed down to him. But the use of so much evasion, where no evasion at all seemed necessary, rather puzzled as well as amused Caleb; and yet, after all, this merely branded him as old

ers who came from that direction. Trivial as it was, it piqued his interest, and he lay back and followed it from lazily half-closed eyes. It topped a rise and disappeared-the dust cloud-and reappeared in turn, but not until it had advanced to within a scant hundred yards of him could he make out the

e hung over the front gate he remembered that none of them had ever before drawn him from his deep chair in the shadow. For him none of them

each stride, the man-sized, hob-nailed boots which encased them failed to lift in turn. Indeed, the toes did clear the ground, but the heels, slipping away from the

as the coat he wore which held Caleb spellbound. It was of a style popularly known as a swallowtail, faced with satin as to lapels and once gracefully rounded to a long, bisected skirt in the rear. The satin facings were gone and the original color of the fabric, too, had faded to a shiny, bottle-green. But the long skirts-at least all that was

little figure was within a dozen paces of him did he recognize it, and then, at the same moment that he caught a glimpse of an old and rusted revolver strapped to the boy's narrow wais

resence there behind the iron fence; he was walking with his head up, thin face thrust forward like that of a young and overly eager setter with the bird in plain sight. The world of hunger in that strained and staring visage helped Caleb

y, very pale, both with the heat of the sun and a fatigue now close to exhaustion. But the eyes themselves, as they met Caleb's, were alight with a fire which afterward, when he had had more time to ponder it, made him remember the pi

red, young man," he said

h the point of his tongue. His gravity

thet th

companying gesture of one thumb thrown backward over a thin shoulder

le puzzled. "The city! Well,

him up swiftly,

thet Morrison?

a glimmer of compre

ly. "That's the city. Th

nslated that long-drawn breath correctly; without stopping to reason it out, he knew that it meant fulfillment of a dream most marvelous in anticipation, but even more wonderful in its coming true

he words. "I thought it est nachelly hed to be! Haow-haow many hous

umned house gave the quest

quite a few hun

le figure bo

an to his hearer. "An'-an' I guess I ain't never rightly believed

ce smiled again, but the

ably bigger, I should judge. Twice as la

owing of leaky cylinder heads, it rattled across an open space between piles of timber in the mill-yard and disappeared with a shrill toot of warning for unseen workmen upon the tracks ahead. The boy froze to granite-like immobility as it flashed into view. Long afte

o speak-and had to swallow aga

alteringly then. "There goes a i

ty to marvel, which Caleb had seen grow old and stale even in the children he knew, he wondered and wished that he might have known it himself, once at least. Years of waiting, starved years of anticipation, he felt aft

er seen an engine b

that it failed to have the effect which he feared too late to check. Instead of coloring with hurt

re'n three houses together in a clearin' before. I-I ain't never been out

ng, but a little and grave old man. And suddenly the desire seized him to hear more of that low, direct voice; the impulse came to him and Caleb, whose w

a little warm and tired. If your business is not of too pressing a nature-have you-

th the "city" in front of him, a fairy-tale to be explored. And again he was allowed to catch a

o just what Caleb's invitation had offered, and not the lur

plained. "I been comin' daown river for

measuring,

e to look around a trifle. But I am tired a little, an' so if you mean thet you're askin' me to sto

t I mean,"

preceded him across