AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER 16i
you got into that trouble is alive and well. You'd have got out of that scrape all right if you hadn't jumped your bail and left all the rest of us in the lurch. Why didn't you stand your trial, like a man?"
John Ranger's feelings overcame him, and he sank upon the ground, filled with old-time memories. He buried his face in his hands. Time and distance faded away, and he saw, with eyes of memory, the gentle, fading face of his toiling, uncomplaining wife, whose life had been for years a sacrifice to penury through the debt entailed by this brother's cowardice.
"Do you mean to tell me that Elmer Edson is not dead?"
The question called him back to present conditions with a sudden start.
"Elmer Edson is not dead, but Annie Ranger is!" he said hoarsely. "We had to leave her precious dust in the ground away back yonder in the Black Hills. We started together on this terrible journey, hoping to escape the consequences of that awful mortgage with which you left us in the lurch. She had denied herself many comforts and all the luxuries of life for a dozen years to^feed the ever-eating cankerworm of interest. No, Joe, you didn't kill Edson; but through my efforts to help you out of a trouble in which you should never have been entangled, you became accessory to the lingering death of my wife."
"Don't reproach me, John! I loved Annie like a sister. I did indeed. She was a sister to me from the day she became your wife. You don't or won't see how it grieves me to hear of her death."
"Why didn't you write to us, like a man?"
The brother had risen to his feet, and was pacing nervously to and fro, whittling aimlessly on a bit of sagebrush.
"I was afraid to write. There was a price upon my head, as you have no. need to be informed."
II
