Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/290

 an old sad gray sod house with narrow windows, when he looked far away with that dream-cast in his eyes. There it was standing, weathered and tattered and worn, jagged glass in its broken frames, open doors choked by brown tumble-weed, its footpath guttered to a rivulet by rain, as the old buffalo trails were guttered, the feet that traced it far away, as they were far away to-day.

Elizabeth would not come back.

Nance came out of his office into the blue-hot sun, in his oversleeves and green eyeshade, bareheaded, indecisive, looking up and down the track as if he had lost a train. Still looking around in his shadow-pursued way, he advanced toward Dr. Hall, as he commonly came when he had prize-fight news, or something equally important that he had caught from the wire.

"Say, Doc," said Nance, cautiously, like a man feeling ahead with his foot in the dark, "say, have you heard the news?"

"No, I haven't got my finger on the pulse of the world like you. What news is that?"

"Burnett," said Nance, spying around with his timid, distrustful look.

"Burnett?"

"Skipped," said Nance.

"The devil you say!"

"It's been goin' over the wire for an hour, shootin' it out to sheriffs and police all over the country to grab him."

"Is that so? What's he done?"

"The tip's comin' from Kansas City—they say to hold him for fraud. That's what the tip to the sheriffs is. I got in on a press wire a little while ago and copped some