United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then she saw other horses, among them Lem Billings's bay mustang. Columbine faltered on, when suddenly she recognized the horse Jack had ridden a sorrel, spent and foam-covered, standing saddled, with bridle down and riderless then certainty of something awful clamped her with horror. Men's husky voices reached her throbbing ears. Some one was running. Footsteps thudded and died away.
The wind, beginning to grow cold as the sun declined, cooled her hot face. In the solitude of her room Columbine had cried enough that day to scald her cheeks. Presently, down the lane between the pastures, she saw a cowboy ride into view. Very slowly he came, leading another horse. Columbine recognized Lem a second before she saw that he was leading Pronto. That struck her as strange.
He had a letter of interducshun from his minister to home to the capt'in of the Columbine perleece they was related somehow and he would jest have them men arrested; an' then he happened ter think that 'twas gittin' late and time a'most for that train with them Sunday-school children to come, and it put him out awfully; but he said that he'd make it his bizness to see to that, and then he made a 'p'intment with Camp to meet him at half-past ten ter-day, an' they'd go tergether ter see the Columbine perleeceman. She paused, and uttered a cackling laugh.
When alone again Columbine reverted to a mood vastly removed from her apparent levity with the rancher and his son. A grave and inward-searching thought possessed her, and it had to do with the uplift, the spiritual advance, the rise above mere personal welfare, that had strangely come to her through Bent Wade.
An' here comes the reason," exclaimed Jim, in low, hoarse whisper. Columbine heard the whisper and at the same instant a sharp footfall on the gravel road. She quickly turned, almost losing her balance. And she recognized Jack Belllounds. The boy Buster Jack she remembered so well was approaching, now a young man, taller, heavier, older, with paler face and bolder look.
Do you remember the time I pushed you into the old mud-hole? And you lay in wait for me, behind the house, to hit me with a rotten cabbage?" "Yes, I remember," replied Columbine, dreamily. "It seems so long ago." "And the time you ate my pie, and how I got even by tearing off your little dress, so you had to run home almost without a stitch on?"
As an emblem of her royal prerogative, she held in her hand an enormous bouquet of flowers she had gathered on her way: honeysuckles, columbine, all sorts of grasses with shivering spikelets, black alder blossoms with their white centres, and a profusion of scarlet poppies.
Yet, on the other hand, the chances were that the approaching horse carried Wade. It was lucky that she was on Pronto, for he could be trusted to stand still and not neigh. Columbine rode into a thick clump of spruces that had long, shelving branches, reaching down. Here she hid, holding Pronto motionless. Presently the sound of hoofs denoted the approach of several horses.
You make no allowance for for some possible good in every one. Dad swears I can reform Jack. Maybe I can. I'll pray for it." "Reform Jack Belllounds! How can you save a bad egg? That damned coward! Didn't he prove to you what he was when he jumped on me and kicked my broken foot till I fainted?... What do you want?" "Don't say any more please," cried Columbine.
And, if by this weakening or heating system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you cause frightful and cruel sickness, if you bring to the tomb a woman who is dear to you; if, if, " This is our answer: Have you never noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and columbine change their little white hats?
Word Of The Day