The Desert of Wheat Part 22

"Oh, don't kill him! Please don't kill him!" she was crying. "Kurt!--for my sake, don't kill him!"

That last poignant appeal brought Kurt to his senses. He let go of Nash.

He allowed the girl to lead him back. Panting hard, he tried to draw a deep, full breath.

"Oh, he doesn't move!" whispered Lenore, with wide eyes on Nash.

"Miss Anderson--he's not--even insensible," panted Kurt. "But he's licked--good and hard."

The girl leaned against the side of the car, with a hand buried in her heaving breast. She was recovering. The gray shade left her face. Her eyes, still wide and dark and beginning to glow with softer emotions, were upon Kurt.

"You--you were the one to come," she murmured. "I prayed. I was terribly frightened. Ruenke was taking me--to the I.W.W. camp, up in the hills."

"Ruenke?" queried Kurt.

"Yes, that's his German name."

Kurt awoke to the exigencies of the situation. Searching in the car, he found a leather belt. With this he securely bound Ruenke's hands behind his back, then rolled him down into the road.

"My first German prisoner," said Kurt, half seriously. "Now, Miss Anderson, we must be doing things. We don't want to meet a lot of I.W.W.'s out here. My car is out of commission. I hope yours is not broken."

Kurt got into the car and found, to his satisfaction, that it was not damaged so far as running-gear was concerned. After changing the ruined tire he backed down the road and turned to stop near where Ruenke lay.

Opening the rear door, Kurt picked him up as if he had been a sack of wheat and threw him into the car. Next he secured the rifle that had been such a burden and had served him so well in the end.

"Get in, Miss Anderson," he said, "and show me where to drive you home."

She got in beside him, making a grimace as she saw Ruenke lying behind her. Kurt started and ran slowly by the damaged car.

"He knocked a wheel off. I'll have to send back."

"Oh, I thought it was all over when we hit!" said the girl.

Kurt experienced a relaxation that was weakening. He could hardly hold the wheel and his mood became one of exaltation.

"Father suspected this Ruenke," went on Lenore. "But he wanted to find out things from him. And I--I undertook--to twist Mr. Germany round my finger. I made a mess of it.... He lied. I didn't make love to him. But I listened to his love-making, and arrogant German love-making it was!

I'm afraid I made eyes at him and let him believe I was smitten.... Oh, and all for nothing! I'm ashamed... But he lied!"

Her confidence, at once pathetic and humorous and contemptuous, augmented Kurt's Homeric mood. He understood that she would not even let him, for a moment, have a wrong impression of her.

"It must have been hard," agreed Kurt. "Didn't you find out anything at all?"

"Not much," she replied. Then she put a hand on his sleeve. "Your knuckles are all b.l.o.o.d.y."

"So they are. I got that punching our German friend."

"Oh, how you did beat him!" she cried. "I had to look. My ire was up, too!... It wasn't very womanly--of me--that I gloried in the sight."

"But you cried out--you pulled me away!" exclaimed Kurt.

"That was because I was afraid you'd kill him," she replied.

Kurt swerved his glance, for an instant, to her face. It was at once flushed and pale, with the deep blue of downcast eyes shadowy through her long lashes, exceedingly sweet and beautiful to Kurt's sight. He bent his glance again to the road ahead. Miss Anderson felt kindly and gratefully toward him, as was, of course, natural. But she was somehow different from what she had seemed upon the other occasions he had seen her. Kurt's heart was full to bursting.

"I might have killed him," he said. "I'm glad--you stopped me.

That--that frenzy of mine seemed to be the breaking of a dam. I have been dammed up within. Something had to break. I've been unhappy for a long time."

"I saw that. What about?" she replied.

"The war, and what it's done to father. We're estranged. I hate everything German. I loved the farm. My chance in life is gone. The wheat debt--the worry about the I.W.W.--and that's not all."

Again she put a gentle hand on his sleeve and left it there for a moment. The touch thrilled all through Kurt.

"I'm sorry. Your position is sad. But maybe it is not utterly hopeless.

You--you'll come back after the war."

"I don't know that I want to come back," he said. "For then--it'd be just as bad--worse.... Miss Anderson, it won't hurt to tell you the truth.... A year ago--that first time I saw you--I fell in love with you. I think--when I'm away--over in France--I'd like to feel that you know. It can't hurt you. And it'll be sweet to me.... I fought against the--the madness. But fate was against me.... I saw you again.... And it was all over with me!"

He paused, catching his breath. She was perfectly quiet. He looked on down the winding road. There were dust-clouds in the distance.

"I'm afraid I grew bitter and moody," he went on. "But the last forty-eight hours have changed me forever... I found that my poor old dad had been won over by these unscrupulous German agents of the I.W.W.

But I saved his name.... I've got the money he took for the wheat we may never harvest. But if we do harvest I can pay all our debt.... Then I learned of a plot to ruin your father--to kill him!... I was on my way to 'Many Waters.' I can warn him.... Last of all I have saved you."

The little hand dropped away from his coat sleeve. A soft, half-smothered cry escaped her. It seemed to him she was about to weep in her exceeding pity.

"Miss Anderson, I--I'd rather not have--you pity me."

"Mr. Dorn, I certainly don't pity you," she replied, with an unexpected, strange tone. It was full. It seemed to ring in his ears.

"I know there never was and never could be any hope for me. I--I--"

"Oh, you know that!" murmured the soft, strange voice.

But Kurt could not trust his ears and he had to make haste to terminate the confession into which his folly and emotion had betrayed him. He scarcely heard her words.

"Yes.... I told you why I wanted you to know.... And now forget that--and when I'm gone--if you think of me ever, let it be about how much better it made me--to have all this good luck--to help your father and to save you!"

The dust-cloud down the road came from a string of automobiles, flying along at express speed. Kurt saw them with relief.

"Here come the cars on your trail," he called out. "Your father will be in one of them."

Kurt opened the door of the car and stepped down. He could not help his importance or his pride. Anderson, who came running between two cars that had stopped abreast, was coatless and hatless, covered with dust, pale and fire-eyed.

"Mr. Anderson, your daughter is safe--unharmed," Kurt a.s.sured him.

"My girl!" cried the father, huskily, and hurried to where she leaned out of her seat.

"All right, dad," she cried, as she embraced him. "Only a little shaky yet."