Adventure, August 1917 — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Little Song That He Knew to a State prison for a life-term so long as he had the alternative of dying in his boots. Quite naturally, he wanted to see his sweetheart Sadie first. So. when the cool October darkness had fallen, he stole at a long angle down the side of Blazed Pine Mountain, and halted on an almost level spot midway between the camp boarding- house and the ‘cabin of old Johnse Flowers. There were lights, he noted, in both the cabin and the boarding-house. He smiled softly and turned toward Sadie’s home— . and came near to falling over a flat slab of sandstone that had been set upright in the. ground. It was a crudely-shaped and un- lettered gravestone. “Kid. My little buddy,” Hanson said to himself, with a tightening of the throat. While he had not cherished even the shadow of a hope that he would find Minton alive, this was grief such as he had never known before. He sank to his knees in the leaves, and made out the dim outline of the other and smaller marker. “Kid. My little buddy,” he repeated thickly. Tears that were bitter streamed down his lean, sunburned cheeks. And kneeling there his mind went back over the days, the days of gold, that they had spent together. Surely, no other man ever had such a friend as that. And then he remembered—he had promised Minton that he would play that sad, simple little tune that had brought them together—it was the only burial service that Minton had wanted. Wardlaw Hanson thumbed the strings of his violin, for now it was not a fiddle, and put them ‘where he wanted them. Then he rose, lifted the instrument into place under his chin, and played there in the still, dark mountain night that which was the tribute, the prayer, the benediction, and the doxol- ogy of his love, the air of that little song that Minton and his mother before him had known: Somebody’s darling long ago: _Nobody’s darling now! You do not like the song, perhaps, and, perhaps, I do not like it—but we have not 107 been through the shadows. that Minton and his mother went through. Over and over he sent it into the night, the tribute and the prayer, the benediction and the doxology of his love. He had never played like that before. They heard it at the boarding-house, its mellow, tremulous, soulful strains reached to the ears of those in the cabin of old Johnse Flowers—dark figures, those of men and women who knew who it was that tore at the violin’s heart like that, began to move through the laurels toward the lonesome tomb on the mountainside, and the fore- most one of them all was a very pretty young woman who was half broken-hearted with waiting and longing. | When Hanson lowered his violin, she was kneeling before him, a lover who loved well enough to worship the object of her love. Though he could not see her face, Hanson knew her at once. He took her by an arm and lifted her to her feet, and kissed her on the forehead after the fashion of mountain men. “It was my cousin, Nathan Flowers, that. killed him,” whispered Sadie. “N athan. He told me and pap, and then he took two shots at the sheriff and left ina hurry. But you was already gone, and we couldn’t find you. And it 's—Wardlaw, honey, it’s all right with pap now.’ His arms tightened about her shoulders. There were rapid footsteps in the leaves be- hind him, and he turned his head to see the slim figure of a man in boots and corduroys hastening toward him. ‘“‘Hansy,” cried the slim figure, with the joy of ages in his boyish voice. He did not see the girl. “Hansy. What in -’s name are you playing my pet song over the grave of that —— Gudridge for? See how I can cuss? I’m a timber-jack now.” “Kid!” gasped Wardlaw Hanson of the fiddling Hansons. ‘Kid Minton, my buddy —and alive!”’ } Not only was Minton alive, he was almost well of his malady. He groped, because of the dimness of his eyes and the darkness, for the hand of his friend—and he found it, Comiclsoo CO S|