The Wrong Woman Read Free Page B

occasions when she discovered that she had been a "silly
coward" or a "perfect fool." After all, she considered, a woman is n't much
loss.
    "And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said.
Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain;
escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. But his wife looked back from
behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." It was an old Sunday-school
lesson. And Janet had to think something.
     
     
     
CHAPTER II
    While Janet was determinedly putting her foot down on pain and keeping up the
light of faith on the distant sky-line, another and quite separate horizon was
witnessing a little incident of its own. On a spot on the prairie which was no
more a particular place than any other part of it, a lamb was born. The two
occupants of those parts, a man and a dog (not to mention a flock of sheep),
were soon at the spot where it lay, its small body marking down in white the
beginning of the Season. Nature had thus dropped her card announcing that
lambing-time was now here; and so the little white form in the grass, meaning so
much, claimed all the attention due to an important messagealbeit the message
was delivered with somewhat the carelessness of a handbill. The man stooped over
and looked straight down with an expression at once pleased and perplexed. As
coming troubles cast their shadows before, this little memento, coming on ahead
of a gay and giddy throng, raised visions of troublous and erratic times. The
dog, a genteel, white-ruffed collie, sat down and viewed the infant with a fine
look of high-browed intelligence, as if he were the physician in the case. The
lamb was an old friend of hisjust back from nature's laundry. The newcomer,
about a minute of age and not yet fully aware of itself, raised its round white
poll and looked forthwith a fixed gaze as foolishly irresponsible as if it were
a lamb that had just fallen off a Christmas tree.
    The man turned and strode away, leaving the dog on watch to mark the place.
Just below a water-hole near by was a place thickly covered with dry marsh
grass, all combed over by the wind and matted down like a thatched roof, beneath
which shelter opossums and rabbits ran about in tunnels of their own making. To
this place he went, and having grabbed a handful of hay from the convenient
mouth of a burrow, he returned to the lamb, and kneeling down beside it he
rubbed it into a comfortable warmth and dryness. Not quite satisfied with the
results (there was a touch of chill in the air), he produced a white pocket
handkerchief which had not yet been unfolded, and he used this to perfect the
work.
    This latter touch was more than a Texas lamb can reasonably expect; but there
were distant circumstances which prompted the act, and the sentimental effects
of these were much augmented by the fact that the first and only lamb was
disowned by its mother. She had given it a cold-eyed look and walked away
without even the formality of taking its scent. As she was now back at her
grazing again, it was plain to be seen that she was going to give herself no
further concern in the matter; indeed, it was likely that when the lamb should
come forward to make his claims upon her, she would resent and oppose such
intimacy, sheep being different from other animals in this regard. The man felt,
naturally enough, that the first-born of such a host, and the representative of
so many idiots, mothered and motherless, who were soon to arrive, deserved a
better reception. The lamb spelled Duty as plain as chalk; and so he rubbed
away, with a look of weighty concern which almost obliterated the smile with
which he began. When the fleece was perfectly dry and warm he stood up to await
developments.
    By this time the lamb, which had already tried to stand up, decided to do it.
It got part-way up and fell. Again it came up on its stilts, wavered drunkenly
and collapsed. It