Anything Once

Excerpt

CHAPTER I
A Roadside Meeting

The white dust, which lay thick upon the wide road between rolling fields of ripened grain, rose in little spirals from beneath the heavy feet of the plodding farm-horses drawing the empty hay-wagon, and had scarcely settled again upon the browning goldenrod and fuzzy milkweed which bordered the rail fences on either side when Ebb Fischel’s itinerant butcher-jitney rattled past. Ebb Fischel’s eyes were usually as sharp as the bargains he drove, but the dust must have obscured his vision. Otherwise he would have seen the man lying motionless beside the road, with his cap in the ditch and the pitiless sun of harvest-time caking the blood which had streamed from an ugly cut upon his temple.

But the meat-cart jolted on and out of sight, and for a long time nothing disturbed the stillness except the distant whirring of a reaper and nearer buzzing of a fat, inquisitive bluebottle fly, which paused to see what this strange thing might be, and then zoomed off excitedly to tell his associates.

At length there came a dry rustling in the tall standing wheat in the field on the opposite side of the road, and a head and shoulders appeared above the topmost fence-rail. It was a small head covered with tow-colored hair, which had been slicked back and braided so tightly that the short, meager cue curled outward and up in a crescent, as though it were wired, and the shoulders beneath the coarse blue-and-white striped cotton gown were thin and peaked.

The girl darted a swift, furtive glance up and down the road, and suddenly thrust a bundle tied in a greasy apron between the rails, letting it fall in the high, dusty weeds by the roadside. Next she climbed to the top of the fence, and for a moment perched there, displaying a slim length of coarse black stocking above clumping, square-toed shoes at least two sizes too large for her.

She looked like a very forlorn, feminine Monte Cristo indeed, as she scanned the world from her vantage-point, and yet there was a look of quiet satisfaction and achievement in her incongruously dark eyes which told of a momentous object accomplished.

Then all at once they stared and softened as she caught sight of that still figure lying across the road, and in two bounds she was beside him and lifted his head against her sharp knees. She noted only casually that he was a clean-shaven, tanned young man with brown hair bleached by the sun to a warm gold, and that he wore shabby, weather-beaten clothes.

Had she realized that those same worn, faded garments bore the stamp of one of New York’s most exclusive tailors! that the boots were London-made, and the golf-stockings which met the corduroy knickerbockers came from one of Scotland’s famous mills, it would have meant just exactly nothing in her young life.

Her immediate attention was concentrated upon the jagged gash which ran unpleasantly close to his temple, and which had begun to bleed afresh as she raised his head.

The girl looked about her again and saw that a short distance ahead the road was bisected by a bridge of planks with willows bordering it at either side. She pulled at the strings which held a blue sunbonnet dangling between her narrow shoulder-blades, regarded the sleazy headgear ruefully, and then spying the cap in the ditch, she deposited her burden gently upon the grass once more and scrambled over to investigate her find.

The cap had an inner lining of something which seemed to be like rubber, and the girl flew off down the road to return with her improvised bowl filled with clear, cold spring water. Dropping on her knees beside the unconscious figure, she poured the contents of the cap over his face and head....