The Sagebrusher

The Sagebrusher, by Emerson
Hough

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Title: The Sagebrusher A Story of the West
Author: Emerson Hough
Illustrator: J. Henry
Release Date: September 26, 2006 [EBook #19388]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SAGEBRUSHER ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "You're a good sport," said Major Barnes]

THE SAGEBRUSHER
A STORY OF THE WEST

BY
EMERSON HOUGH

AUTHOR OF THE COVERED WAGON, THE BROKEN GATE,
ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
J. HENRY

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
EMERSON HOUGH

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.

SIM GAGE AT HOME II. WANTED: A WIFE III. FIFTY-FIFTY IV.
HEARTS AFLAME V. BEGGAR MAN--THIEF VI. RICH
MAN--POOR MAN VII. CHIVALROUS; AND OF ABUNDANT
MEANS VIII. RIVAL CONSCIENCES IX. THE HALT AND THE
BLIND X. NEIGHBORS XI. THE COMPANY DOCTOR XII. LEFT
ALONE XIII. THE SABCAT CAMP XIV. THE MAN TRAIL XV.
THE SPECIES XVI. THE REBIRTH OF SIM GAGE XVII.
SAGEBRUSHERS XVIII. DONNA QUIXOTE XIX. THE PLEDGE
XX. MAJOR ALLEN BARNES, M.D., PH.D.--AND SIM GAGE XXI.
WITH THIS RING XXII. MRS. GAGE XXIII. THE OUTLOOK
XXIV. ANNIE MOVES IN XXV. ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE XXVI.
THE WAYS OF MR. GARDNER XXVII. DORENWALD, CHIEF
XXVIII. A CHANGE OF BASE XXIX. MARTIAL LAW XXX.
BEFORE DAWN XXXI. THE BLIND SEE XXXII. THE ENEMY
XXXIII. THE DAM XXXIV. AFTER THE DELUGE XXXV. ANNIE
ANSWERS XXXVI. MRS. DAVIDSON'S CONSCIENCE

ILLUSTRATIONS
"You're a good sport," said Major Barnes . . . Frontispiece
"You ought to hang!" said she
"You say I shall be able to see him--my husband?"
"Get a board, or something, boys"

THE SAGEBRUSHER
CHAPTER I
SIM GAGE AT HOME
"Sim," said Wid Gardner, as he cast a frowning glance around him,
"take it one way with another, and I expect this is a leetle the dirtiest

place in the Two-Forks Valley."
The man accosted did no more than turn a mild blue eye toward the
speaker and resume his whittling. He smiled faintly, with a sort of
apology, as the other went on.
"I'll say more'n that, Sim. It's the blamedest, dirtiest hole in the whole
state of Montany--yes, or in the whole wide world. Lookit!"
He swept a hand around, indicating the interior of the single-room log
cabin in which they sat.
"Well," commented Sim Gage after a time, taking a meditative but
wholly unagitated tobacco shot at the cook stove, "I ain't saying she is
and I ain't saying she ain't. But I never did say I was a perfessional
housekeeper, did I now?"
"Well, some folks has more sense of what's right, anyways," grumbled
Wid Gardner, shifting his position on one of the two insecure cracker
boxes which made the only chairs, and resting an elbow on the oil cloth
table cover, where stood a few broken dishes, showing no signs of any
ablution in all their hopeless lives. "My own self, I'm a bachelor man,
too--been batching for twenty years, one place and another--but by God!
Sim, this here is the human limit. Look at that bed."
He kicked a foot toward a heap of dirty fabrics which lay upon the floor,
a bed which might once have been devised for a man, but long since
had fallen below that rank. It had a breadth of dirty canvas thrown
across it, from under which the occupant had crawled out. Beneath
might be seen the edges of two or three worn and dirty cotton quilts and
a pair of blankets of like dinginess. Below this lay a worn elk hide, and
under all a lower-breadth of the over-lapping canvas. It was such a bed
as primarily a cow-puncher might have had, but fallen into such
condition that no cow camp would have tolerated it.
Sim Gage looked at the heap of bedding for a time gravely and
carefully, as though trying to find some reason for his friend's
dissatisfaction. His mouth began to work as it always did when he was

engaged in some severe mental problem, but he frowned apologetically
once more as he spoke.
"Well, Wid, I know, I know. It ain't maybe just the thing to sleep on the
floor all the time, noways. You see, I got a bunk frame made for her
over there, and it's all tight and strong--it was there when I took this
cabin over from the Swede. But I ain't never just got around to moving
my bed offen the floor onto the bedstead. I may do