United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"By the way, when you had your glove off a while ago I seen something on your wrist that looked like a rope gall, Kern. If I was to tell the boys that, what d'you figure they'd think about their sheriff?" It was Kern's turn to change color. For a moment he hesitated, and then he dropped a hand lightly on Arizona's shoulder.
Then his eyes rested on Kern across the table, and the light of enterprise died out of them.... To take this child away from the Heth Works would be easy, indeed, but what to do with her then? That was a question which money could not answer. Kern's education had stopped at twelve. She was nineteen years old, born to work, and qualified to do nothing in the world but make cheroots.
The tall young man came to earth with a thud. A startled frown gathered quickly on his brow. "What?... Then I'm late indeed. Nine o'clock! I don't see how it's possible...." He seized Commissioner O'Neill's suitcase from the operating-table, with a panic show of hurry. Kern's voice took on a cheering inflection. "Don't you mind, Mr. V.V. All the swells'll be late. D'you want me to help you, sir?
And next morning, when Kern's temperature stood down a whole degree at nine o'clock, these great plans seemed to come nearer at a bound. That day the Dabney House drew a long breath and smiled. Miss Masters was even more confident than Vivian that the hard corner had been turned.
Kern's Pennsylvania Battery, Martin's Massachusetts, and Carlisle's and Tidball's Regular Batteries, were on the ground. They moved up nearer the front than they had before been lying, the Regular Batteries in the main road and upon an eminence to the right. Kern took position near the edge of the swamp on the left; and Martin found post in a wheat-field to the right.
However, Kern's note arrived in the office an hour later, through the Kindness of Miss Masters, as the envelope advised. Mr. V.V. suspended a sentence to one of his sick in the middle to read it: MY DEAR DR. VIVIAN: Oh, Mr. V.V., how can I ever thank you for given me this lovely Writen Desk. I greatly appreciate your kind gift.
"I'd like to see Sinclair," she said. Kern's amiability increased. "The best thing I know about you, Jig, is that you ain't turning Sinclair down, now that he's in trouble. Go right back in the jail. Him and Arizona is chinning. Wait a minute. I guess I got to keep an eye on you to see you don't pass nothing through the bars. Keep clean back from them bars, Jig, and then you can talk all you want.
With a bang the screen door of Sheriff Kern's office had creaked open and shut four times at intervals, and each man, entering in turn with a "Howdy" to the sheriff, had stamped the dust out of the wrinkles of his riding boots, hitched up his trousers carefully, and slumped into a chair. Not until the last of his handpicked posse had taken his place did the sheriff begin his speech.
For the present there did not lack a sense of economic precariousness: it was he and these trousers against the world.... While brushing his hat in the bedroom, Vivian wondered if Mister had yet donned the gift articles, and how he looked in them. He fell to musing about Kern's erring parent, thinking what a strange life he led.
The first excitement gradually subsided, and the Dabney House settled to the long pull. Days slipped by, all just alike. Kern's malady discouraged reading aloud. It discouraged conversation. Visitors were not allowed.
Word Of The Day