The Sagebrusher A Story of the West   By: Emerson Hough (1857-1923)

THE SAGEBRUSHER

A STORY OF THE WEST

BY

EMERSON HOUGH

AUTHOR OF THE COVERED WAGON, THE BROKEN GATE, ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY

J. HENRY

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY

EMERSON HOUGH

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. SIM GAGE AT HOME II. WANTED: A WIFE III. FIFTY FIFTY IV. HEARTS AFLAME V. BEGGAR MAN THIEF VI. RICH MAN POOR MAN VII. CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT MEANS VIII. RIVAL CONSCIENCES IX. THE HALT AND THE BLIND X. NEIGHBORS XI. THE COMPANY DOCTOR XII. LEFT ALONE XIII. THE SABCAT CAMP XIV. THE MAN TRAIL XV. THE SPECIES XVI. THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE XVII. SAGEBRUSHERS XVIII. DONNA QUIXOTE XIX. THE PLEDGE XX. MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D. AND SIM GAGE XXI. WITH THIS RING XXII. MRS. GAGE XXIII. THE OUTLOOK XXIV. ANNIE MOVES IN XXV. ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE XXVI. THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER XXVII. DORENWALD, CHIEF XXVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE XXIX. MARTIAL LAW XXX. BEFORE DAWN XXXI. THE BLIND SEE XXXII. THE ENEMY XXXIII. THE DAM XXXIV. AFTER THE DELUGE XXXV. ANNIE ANSWERS XXXVI. MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE

ILLUSTRATIONS

"You're a good sport," said Major Barnes . . . Frontispiece

"You ought to hang!" said she

"You say I shall be able to see him my husband?"

"Get a board, or something, boys"

THE SAGEBRUSHER

CHAPTER I

SIM GAGE AT HOME

"Sim," said Wid Gardner, as he cast a frowning glance around him, "take it one way with another, and I expect this is a leetle the dirtiest place in the Two Forks Valley."

The man accosted did no more than turn a mild blue eye toward the speaker and resume his whittling. He smiled faintly, with a sort of apology, as the other went on.

"I'll say more'n that, Sim. It's the blamedest, dirtiest hole in the whole state of Montany yes, or in the whole wide world. Lookit!"

He swept a hand around, indicating the interior of the single room log cabin in which they sat.

"Well," commented Sim Gage after a time, taking a meditative but wholly unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is and I ain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessional housekeeper, did I now?"

"Well, some folks has more sense of what's right, anyways," grumbled Wid Gardner, shifting his position on one of the two insecure cracker boxes which made the only chairs, and resting an elbow on the oil cloth table cover, where stood a few broken dishes, showing no signs of any ablution in all their hopeless lives. "My own self, I'm a bachelor man, too been batching for twenty years, one place and another but by God! Sim, this here is the human limit. Look at that bed."

He kicked a foot toward a heap of dirty fabrics which lay upon the floor, a bed which might once have been devised for a man, but long since had fallen below that rank. It had a breadth of dirty canvas thrown across it, from under which the occupant had crawled out. Beneath might be seen the edges of two or three worn and dirty cotton quilts and a pair of blankets of like dinginess. Below this lay a worn elk hide, and under all a lower breadth of the over lapping canvas. It was such a bed as primarily a cow puncher might have had, but fallen into such condition that no cow camp would have tolerated it.

Sim Gage looked at the heap of bedding for a time gravely and carefully, as though trying to find some reason for his friend's dissatisfaction. His mouth began to work as it always did when he was engaged in some severe mental problem, but he frowned apologetically once more as he spoke.