The Harvester Part 6

"Bill them!" he cried. "It's a rush order. I want it to go on the next express. Almost due I think. I'll help you and we can book them afterward."

The expressman ran for a truck and they hastily weighed and piled on boxes. When the last one was loaded from the wagon, a heap more lying in the office were added, pitched on indiscriminately as the train pulled under the sheds of the Union Station.

"I'll push," cried the Harvester, "and help you get them on."

Hurrying as fast as he could the expressman drew the heavy truck through the iron gates and started toward the train slowing to a stop, and the Harvester pushed. As they came down the platform they pa.s.sed the dining and sleeping cars of the long train and were several times delayed by descending pa.s.sengers. Just opposite the day coach the expressman narrowly missed running into several women leading small children and stopped abruptly. A toppling box threatened the head of the Harvester.

He peered around the truck and saw they must wait a few seconds. He put in the time watching the people. A gray-haired old man, travelling in a silk hat, wavered on the top step and went his way. A fat woman loaded with bundles puffed as she clung trembling a second in fear she would miss the step she could not see. A tall, slender girl with a face coldly white came next, and from the broken shoe she advanced, the bewildered fright of big, dark eyes glancing helplessly, the Harvester saw that she was poor, alone, ill, and in trouble. Pityingly he turned to watch her, and as he gauged her height, saw her figure, and a dark coronet of hair came into view, a ghastly pallor swept his face.

"Merciful G.o.d!" he breathed, "that's my Dream Girl!"

The truck started with a jerk. The toppling box fell, struck a pa.s.sing boy, and knocked him down. The mother screamed and the Harvester sprang to pick up the child and see that he was not dangerously hurt. Then he ran after the truck, pitched on the box, and whirling, sped beside the train toward the gates of exit. There was the usual crush, but he could see the tall figure pa.s.sing up the steps to the depot. He tried to force his way and was called a brute by a crowded woman. He ran down the platform to the gates he had entered with the truck. They were automatic and had locked. Then he became a primal creature being cheated of a lawful mate and climbed the high iron fence and ran for the waiting room.

He swept it at a glance, not forgetting the women's apartment and the side entrance. Then he hurried to the front exit. Up the street leading from the city there were few people and he could see no sign of the slight, white-faced girl. He crossed the sidewalk and ran down the gutter for a block and breathlessly waited the pa.s.sing crowd on the corner. She was not among it. He tried one more square. Still he could not see her. Then he ran back to the depot. He thought surely he must have missed her. He again searched the woman's and general waiting room and then he thought of the conductor. From him it could be learned where she entered the car. He ran for the station, bolted the gate while the official called to him, and reached the track in time to see the train pull out within a few yards of him.

"You blooming idiot!" cried the angry expressman as the Harvester ran against him, "where did you go? Why didn't you help me? You are white as a sheet! Have you lost your senses?"

"Worse!" groaned the Harvester. "Worse! I've lost what I prize most on earth. How could I reach the conductor of that train?"

"Telegraph him at the next station. You can have an answer in a half hour."

The Harvester ran to the office, and with shaking hand wrote this message:

"Where did a tall girl with big black eyes and wearing a gray dress take your train? Important."

Then he went out and minutely searched the depot and streets. He hired an automobile to drive him over the business part of Onabasha for three quarters of an hour. Up one street and down another he went slowly where there were crowds, faster as he could, but never a sight of her. Then he returned to the depot and found his message. It read, "Transferred to me at Fort Wayne from Chicago."

"Chicago baggage!" he cried, and hurried to the check room. He had lost almost an hour. When he reached the room he found the officials busy and unwilling to be interrupted. Finally he learned there had been a half dozen trunks from Chicago. All were taken save two, and one glance at them told the Harvester that they did not belong to the girl in gray.

The others had been claimed by men having checks for them. If she had been there, the officials had not noticed a tall girl having a white face and dark eyes. When he could think of no further effort to make he drove to the hospital.

Doctor Carey was not in his office, and the Harvester sat in the revolving chair before the desk and gripped his head between his hands as he tried to think. He could not remember anything more he could have done, but since what he had done only ended in failure, he was reproaching himself wildly that he had taken his eyes from the Girl an instant after recognizing her. Yet it was in his blood to be decent and he could not have run away and left a frightened woman and a hurt child.

Trusting to his fleet feet and strength he had taken time to replace the box also, and then had met the crowd and delay. Just for the instant it appeared to him as if he had done all a man could, and he had not found her. If he allowed her to return to Chicago, probably he never would. He leaned his head on his hands and groaned in discouragement.

Doctor Carey whirled the chair so that it faced him before the Harvester realized that he was not alone.

"What's the trouble, David?" he asked tersely.

The Harvester lifted a strained face.

"I came for help," he said.

"Well you will get it! All you have to do is to state what you want."

That seemed simplicity itself to the doctor. But when it came to putting his case into words, it was not easy for the Harvester.

"Go on!" said the doctor.

"You'll think me a fool."

The doctor laughed heartily.

"No doubt!" he said soothingly. "No doubt, David! Probably you are; so why shouldn't I think so. But remember this, when we make the biggest fools of ourselves that is precisely the time when we need friends, and when they stick to us the tightest, if they are worth while. I've been waiting since latter February for you to tell me. We can fix it, of course; there's always a way. Go on!"

"Well I wasn't fooling about the dream and the vision I told you of then, Doc. I did have a dream--and it was a dream of love. I did see a vision--and it was a beautiful woman."

"I hope you are not nursing that experience as something exclusive and peculiar to you," said the doctor. "There is not a normal, sane man living who has not dreamed of love and the most exquisite woman who came from the clouds or anywhere and was gracious to him. That's a part of a man's experience in this world, and it happens to most of us, not once, but repeatedly. It's a case where the wish fathers the dream."

"Well it hasn't happened to me 'on repeated occasions,' but it did one night, and by dawn I was converted. How CAN a dream be so real, Doc?

How could I see as clearly as I ever saw in the daytime in my most alert moment, hear every step and garment rustle, scent the perfume of hair, and feel warm breath strike my face? I don't understand it!"

"Neither does any one else! All you need say is that your dream was real as life. Go on!"

"I built a new cabin and pretty well overturned the place and I've been making furniture I thought a woman would like, and carrying things from town ever since."

"Gee! It was reality to you, lad!"

"Nothing ever more so," said the Harvester.

"And of course, you have been looking for her?"

"And this morning I saw her!"

"David!"

"Not the ghost of a chance for a mistake. Her height, her eyes, her hair, her walk, her face; only something terrible has happened since she came to me. It was the same girl, but she is ill and in trouble now."

"Where is she?"

"Do you suppose I'd be here if I knew?"

"David, are you dreaming in daytime?"

"She got off the Chicago train this morning while I was helping Daniels load a big truck of express matter. Some of it was mine, and it was important. Just at the wrong instant a box fell and knocked down a child and I got in a jam----"

"And as it was you, of course you stopped to pick up the child and do everything decent for other folks, before you thought of yourself, and so you lost her. You needn't tell me anything more. David, if I find her, and prove to you that she has been married ten years and has an interesting family, will you thank me?"

"Can't be done!" said the Harvester calmly. "She has been married only since she gave herself to me in February, and she is not a mother. You needn't bank on that."

"You are mighty sure!"

"Why not? I told you the dream was real, and now that I have seen her, and she is in this very town, why shouldn't I be sure?"

"What have you done?"

The Harvester told him.

"What are you going to do next?"

"Talk it over with you and decide."