The Hills of Desire

by Richard Aumerle Maher

Where could she have gone for all this time? She would not be fishing. It was too cold to sit holding a pole. Then where could she be, and why?

He lighted the fire and thought of cooking some bacon. But even the warmth of the fire did not drive away his discontent about Augusta. Suddenly he did not care for bacon. He put it back, and, just to prove that he was miserable, he beat up a bowl of the hated milk and eggs and forced himself to drink it.

He went out to the barn to see Donahue. The horse was not there. Augusta must have hitched up and gone down to Jethniah Gamblin's for provisions. Strange that she should not have told him. He had not heard that they were needing things. He went around to the shed, for confirmation of the obvious. Yes, the wagon was gone.

The utter desolation of the place fell upon him like a physical chill. Everything that was his was gone. He felt depressed and deserted. And there came upon him a cold foreboding that some day, through his own fault, Augusta would go and leave him thus alone, his lips dry and cracking with the caking ashes of dreams.

"Hills of Desire!" he growled, looking around in mockery at the bare trees and the rocky, storm gashed hillsides.

He got the axe and went at his woodpile, not with enthusiasm but with hatred. He had some good sized limbs of trees which had been broken off in a recent heavy storm, and it would have been less wasteful and far more easy to have cut them into proper lengths with a saw. But that would by no means have fitted the frame of his temper at that time. He wanted to hack and hew and destroy. And the vicious, swinging axe spoke his mind, while he grumblingly wondered what Augusta could be talking to Jethniah Gamblin about all this time, anyway. And it was a wonder that that bitter tongued old woman in the window had not put a stop to it before now.

Several times he dropped the axe to go out through the fringe of trees to watch for the wagon returning along the track that came up by the brook. Finally when the early dusk was beginning to fall, he gave up the pretense at the wood pile and went out and watched eagerly and frankly for Augusta. Could anything have happened to her? In fact, he would long ago have started down the track to meet her, but he knew how Augusta hated even the appearance of being followed. She had made a point of pride of her independence and her ability to take care of herself and to do things in her own way, and he knew it would only hurt her if he made any show of anxiety. So he waited, watching and nervously pacing about along the edge of the trees.

When, at last, she did come into sight over a rise in the path Jimmie could scarcely recognize her.

There was no wagon, nor did Donahue appear ambling along intent upon his own thoughts. Instead, there was just the lonely figure of a little girl, unbelievably little and pitifully alone in the dusk and the big stretches of the darkening hills, trudging uncertainly along a twisting path.

Jimmie could hardly persuade himself that it was really Augusta, for the little figure walked heavily and was disguised with an ugly, oddly hanging bundle that threw it out of all likeness to his Augusta with her free swinging, high hearted step. Altogether there was a look of defeat, of heartbreak about the little figure that caught Wardwell by the throat. For he knew that it was Augusta. And he guessed at what she had done and what she was feeling.