Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 201: what you’re looking at

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

A DREAM THAT WOULD. NOT FADE. Bent, raising the glass that had been set before him. “I have always felt that I would come back some time. I had to come back. I wonder if any of you who have lived here so long know how these prairies. get hold of a youngster?” They felt the tenseness of his gaze, which seemed to take in each of them except Si- mon Bent, ‘who was hunched in his chair, his wattled chin upon his breast, and his red-lidded eyes wandering from the speaker to the others, and back again, like one who struggles with a fascination. ~- “It gets hold of some old ones, too,” said the sheriff. He wondered why the boy did not smile, why there was no eagerness in his face when he spoke of ‘‘ God’s coun- “é Tt doesn’t get hold the way it does with youngsters. It got its grip on me when I first saw it—I couldn’t have been more than four, could I, Simone” - “ Jist about four when your father fetched ye.” ‘“T remember waking up one morning when the prairie-schooner was leaving the farmlands and striking across the unbroken prairie. There wasn’t a house in sight, and except for the trail we were following, not the faintest sign of a road. It must have been just about this time of the year— April, we'll say—for the willows and cot- tonwoods along the little creeks were just leafed out, and the grass was still short. It lay like a carpet on the miles and miles of level plain, rolling up here and there over long, low hills. It was a carpet, covered with flowers of every color of the rain- bow. | “T still think it was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. I dream of it yet, ‘sometimes, after listening to music. But even that didn’t sink into me as deeply as something else did. Strange dreams come to children out here in these beauti- ful, lonesome prairies. And because there isn’t much else to think about, they dream them all over again and again in the day- time. Sometimes when you’re following the herd on your pony, with nothing else in sight, you sort of lose track of yourself and don’t know whether you are asleep or awake.”’ §75 The sheriff, his mind slipping back to his cow-puncher days, nodded assent. “Well, about daylight of the morning after my father brought me to Simon’s, I woke up to find his arms around me. was telling me that he would come back after me pretty soon, and to be a good boy, so that my mother in heaven wouldn’t be worried. “For days I played on the prairies, and in the draw behind Simon’s house, where there seemed to be all the sand in the world. Mrs. Bent would -tuck me in at night—she was a very kind-hearted wo- man, Simon.” The speaker’s eyes turned suddenly— darted, it seemed—upon the ranchman. The sheriff, whose ability to sense impend- ing things while they yet brooded in the minds of other men had enabled him more than once to meet startling events half- way, looked from Bill Bent to Simon, who was straightening himself up in his chair, and then to the sack at Bill Bent’s feet. He shifted his chair a little so that he could look straight at the elder Bent. Then he unbuttoned the middle button of his coat, as if the room had suddenly become hot. “She was a kind-hearted woman, Bill,” said Simon with a sort of nasal whine. ‘‘ It was too bad she got so lonesome in this country. 2) ““She' may have been troubled by dreams, too, Simon—the kind of dreams that won't let you rest, but keep coming back to you every day out in the sunshine of the prairie. That was the kind of a dream I had, Simon. “It was quite a little while after my father had brought me to your place when I had this dream. on the front stoop of your ranch-house. I thought I was awakened by the sound of low voices, and saw you and my father sitting on the steps in the moonlight. ‘Because you were talking in low tones as if not to be overheard, I was afraid to interrupt you. I thought my father’s horse was grazing in the yard. It was saddled and was eating grass, with the rems thrown over its head. You got up and went into CONNICLOO© He — I thought I was sleeping » SS Colin