Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 5 (1925-11).djvu/68

642 long, long after I heard their train whistle for the crossing. By and by I heard a horse come galloping wildly down the road. I sat up in the grass."

The man straightened in his chair. The sun was setting out by the point of the Waianae Range and the water had turned to orange and crimson, and there were orange and crimson flecks in the clear sky above the gray-black streak on the horizon, and on the woman's white dress, and in her eyes as she bent forward.

"The rider said that there had been an accident to the morning train. Some of the cars were burned. They were sending a wrecking train.

"I ran to the station and flung myself aboard just as the train pulled out. There was no time to stop to put me off." The man waited a moment. "There had been a collision with a freight train. The cars had all burned but one, the passenger car, and that had been wrecked. Those who had been taken out were lying on the smooth grass along the side of the right-of-way. I found Uncle Joseph propped against a big rock and Jennie was half leaning, half lying against him. There were three red gashes across her throat, and she was trying to wipe the spots from the shoulder of her traveling frock, with her handkerchief—weak, ineffectual, artificial little movements,—with no expression in her eyes."

The sun had gone down, and the early gray twilight lent to the scarlet hibiscus blossoms behind the hau tree that strange, innate red glow of scarlet at early twilight; lent it to them, and to the lines of scarlet wili-wili beads across the white throat, dripping down into the pool of scarlet in the folds of her white dress. The man's eyes rested upon them, fascinated. "She made only a few movements after I came, such poor little useless movements—and then—it was over."

"You mean that she died?" said the woman, in a strained voice.

"Yes, she died then."

"And the man?"

"Uncle Joseph was leaning back against the rock and breathing only once in a great while, and looking at her—just looking at her. And when the little movements stopped, he looked up at me; he hadn’t looked at me before, but he knew that I was there. He spoke just once before he died."

The woman leaned nearer and the loop of red beads dripped from her neck. "And he said?"

"He said, with a little half smile and a movement of his finger against her cheek:—'It—it isn't the end. I—I've got to begin all over again somewhere—somehow—but—I'm going to take Jennie around the world yet'."

The woman shivered. The man drew out his watch and opened the back of the case. "The picture was taken on the way to the station on their wedding day," he said. "The photographer turned it over to me."

The woman bent forward and took the watch and turned it to the last gleam of the afterglow. The loop of cold scarlet beads fell against his hand and he drew it away sharply.

Presently the woman laid the watch on the arm of the chair and glanced about quickly at the gathering shadows in the twisted trunk of the hau tree and along the wet sand. "Let us go in," she said, breathlessly; "let us go in where the lights are."