United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I'll agree Leff's bad when he's drinkin'," answered the fur-trader, and to Joe he added, "He's liable to look you up when he comes around." "Tell him if I am here when he gets sober, I'll kill him," Joe cried in a sharp voice. His gaze rested once more on the fallen teamster, and again an odd contraction of his eyes was noticeable. The glance was cutting, as if with the flash of cold gray steel.
In the forward opening where the canvas was drawn in a circle round a segment of sky, Daddy John's figure fitted like a picture in a circular frame. As a step paused at the wheel she saw him lean forward and heard his rough tones. "Yes, she's here, asleep in the back of the wagon." Then Leff's voice, surprised: "Asleep? Why, it ain't an hour since we started."
It shone between Susan and Leff, standing forth as a survival of a pampered past. Susan's eye shifted toward it, fastened on it, waiting for Leff's hand to come and bear it away. But the hand executed no such expected maneuver. It planted the needle deliberately, pushed it through, drew it out with its long tail of thread. Surprise began to dispel her lethargy.
"Rubbish!" she said pettishly. "You'll be saying Leff's a gentleman next." From which it will be seen that Low Courant had not been communicative about himself. Such broken scraps of information as he had dropped, when pieced together made a scanty narrative. His grandfather had been one of the early French settlers of St. Louis, and his father a prosperous fur trader there.
But on such matters he had no intuitions, was a mere, unenlightened male trying to win a woman by standing at a distance and kneeling in timid worship. Now sitting, sewing on the log, Susan heard a step on the gravel, and without looking up gave it a moment's attention and knew it was Leff's. She began to sing softly, with an air of abstraction.
She gave a jerk of her head toward his horse, a movement of contemptuous command, and obeying it he mounted and rode away. She joined the two men, who were examining Bess, now stretched motionless and uttering pitiful sounds. David had the head, bruised and torn by Leff's kicks, on his knees, while Courant with expert hands searched for her hurt. It was not hard to find.
As the train took the road for the second stage, she drew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pass her. She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance, then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David was hunting in the hills with Courant, Zavier driving in his stead.
She stopped speaking as he emerged from the trees, and Leff's stammering answer held her in a riveted stare of attention. Then she looked up and saw David. "Oh," she said, and transferred the stare to him. "Is this he?" Leff was obviously relieved: "Oh, David, I ain't known what to say to this lady and her father. They think some of joining us. They've been waiting for quite a spell to see you.
Each was pale and short of breath, and it was difficult for the young girl to force her stiffened lips into a smile. The sunset struck with fierce brilliancy across the endless plain, and against it, the Indians bending low, fled in a streak of broken color. In the other direction Leff's running figure sped toward the camp. From the distance a rifle shot again sundered the quiet.
Word Of The Day