“I guess I could find yuh ag`in,” he had always said. But her cackling threat had always been:
“Yuh`ll not find me if I ever leave yuh. I guess I kin git some place where yuh can`t find me.”
This morning when he arose he did not think to build the fire in the customary way or to grind his coffee and cut his bread, as was his wont, but solely to meditate as to where he should search for her and how he should induce her to come back. Recently the one horse had been dispensed with because he found it cumbersome and beyond his needs.
Determination
He took down his soft crush hat after he had dressed himself, a new glint of interest and determination in his eye, and taking his black crook cane from behind the door, where he had always placed it, started out briskly to look for her among the nearest neighbors. His old shoes clumped soundly in the dust as he walked, and his gray-black locks, now grown rather long, straggled out in a dramatic fringe or halo from under his hat. His short coat stirred busily as he walked, and his hands and face were peaked and pale.
“Why, hello, Henry! Where`s yuh goin` this mornin`?” inquired Farmer Dodge, who, hauling a load of wheat to market, encountered him on the public road. He had not seen the aged farmer in months, not since his wife`s death, and he wondered now, seeing him looking so spry.
“Yuh ain`t seen Phoebe, have yuh?” inquired the old man, looking up quizzically.
“Phoebe who?” inquired Farmer Dodge, not for the moment connecting the name with Henry`s dead wife.
“Why, my wife Phoebe o` course. Who do yuh s`pose I mean?” He stared up with a pathetic sharpness of glance from under his shaggy, gray eyebrows.
“Wall, I`ll swan, Henry, yuh ain`t jokin`, are yuh?” said the solid Dodge, a pursy man, with a smooth, hard red face. “It can`t be your wife yuh`re talkin` about. She`s dead.”
“Dead! Shucks!” retorted the demented Reifsneider. “She left me early this mornin`, while I was sleepin`. She alius got up to build the fire, but she`s gone now. We had a little spat last night, an` I guess that`s the reason. But I guess I kin find her. She`s gone over to Matilda Race`s; that`s where she`s gone.”
He started briskly up the road, leaving the amazed Dodge to stare in wonder after him.
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