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Page 57
"But I want a home of my own, like this," said Polly.
"Then you'd better shake Bud and give Slim a chance."
Polly was too disgusted to answer at once. "Slim Hoover, shucks!
Slim doesn't care for girls--he's afraid of 'em," she said at
length. "I like Bud, with all his orneriness," she declared.
"Why doesn't he come to see you more often?"
"I don't know, maybe it's because he's never forgiven you for
marryin' Jack."
"Why should he mind that?" she asked, startled.
"Well, you know," she answered between stitches, drawing the
needle through the cloth with angry little jerks, "Bud, he never
quite believed Dick was dead."
Echo rose hastily. The vague, haunting half-thoughts of weeks
were crystallized on the instant. She felt as if Dick was trying
to speak to her from out of the great beyond. With a shudder she
into a chair at the table opposite Polly.
"Don't," she said, her voice scarcely above a whisper, "I can't
bear to hear him spoken of. I dreamed of him the other night--a
dreadful dream."
Polly was delighted with this new mystery. It was all so
romantic.
"Did you? let's hear it."
With unseeing eyes Echo gazed straight ahead rebuilding from her
dream fabric a tragedy of the desert, in which the two men who
had played so great a part in her life were the actors.
"It seems," she told, "that I was in the desert, such a vast,
terrible desert, where the little dust devils eddied and swirled,
and the merciless sun beat down until it shriveled up every
growing thing."
Polly nodded her head sagely.
"That's the way the desert looks--and no water."
Echo paid no heed to the interruption. Her face became wan and
haggard, as in her mind's eye she saw the weary waste of
waterless land quiver and swim under the merciless sun. Not a
tree, not a blade of grass, not a sign of life broke the monotony
of crumbling cliffs and pinnacled rocks. Onward and ever onward
stretched yellow ridges and alkali-whitened ravines, blinding the
eye and parching the throat.
"Then I saw a man staggering toward me," she continued; "his face
was white and drawn, his lips cracked and parched--now and then
he would stumble and fall, and lie there on his face in the hot
sand, digging into it with his bony fingers seeking for water."
Echo shut her eyes as if to blot out the picture. Its reality
almost overpowered her.
"Suddenly he raised his eyes to mine," she resumed, after a
pause. "It was Dick."
In her excitement she had arisen, stretching out her arms as if
to ward off an apparition.
"He tried to call me. I saw his lips move, framing my name.
Dragging himself to his feet, he came toward me with his arms
outstretched. Then another form appeared between us fighting to
keep him back. They fought there under the burning sun in the
hot dust of the desert until at last one was crushed to earth.
The victor raised his face to mine, and--it was Jack."
Echo buried her face in her hands. Dry sobs shook her bosom.
Awe-stricken, Polly gazed at the over-wrought wife.
"PFEW!" she laughed, to shake off her fright. "That was a sure
enough nightmare. If I'd a dream like that I'd wake up the whole
house yapping like a coyote."
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