United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
An unpleasant thought came to him and nagged at him, though he tried to push it from him; the thought that it would be Sudden's security that he would be risking that the Thunder Bird was not really his until he had paid that note. The thought troubled him. He got up and moved restlessly along the base of the towering rock, when something whined past his ear and spatted against a bowlder beyond.
Of what use would it be to protest that he was sorry? Bad enough to rob a man, without insulting him with puerile regrets. "Now let's get this thing straight." Sudden's voice when it came was fuller than ever, smoother than ever. It was a bad sign. "You say about half of the horses on that range have been stolen? Have you counted them?" "No. I'm just guessing.
When he was merely one of the men on the payroll he had stood just a bit in awe of old Sudden, and he could not all at once throw off the feeling, even though Sudden had willingly enough acknowledged him as a prospective son-in-law. He allowed a blob of black paint to place a period where no period should be while he stared after Sudden's bulky form in the dust-covered car.
Already the shadows were deep against the hill, and in the deepest stood the Thunder Bird, slim, delicately sturdy, every wire taut, every bit of aluminum in her motor clean and shining, a gracefully potent creature of the air. Across her back her name was lettered crudely, blatantly, with the blobbed period where Johnny had his first mental shock of Sudden's changed attitude toward him.
But so had Tom Hagard, the faro-dealer, and Frank Sauter, who played poker over Sudden's, and Dick Bander, who got his money from Madame Blank because he happened to be a swashing slugger, and many another Tom, Dick, and Harry whose reputations were, to say the least, questionable.
Did you notice any signs of any one being there while you were gone?" "N-no, I can't say I did. Well, the string was tied different on the door, but I didn't think much about that." "No you wouldn't think much about that." Sudden's tone made a mental lash of the words. "You had your own affairs to think about. You were merely being paid to think of my affairs."
Sudden's tone was drawling and comfortable, but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather disappointed in Johnny's lack of appreciation. "Well, but what's he going to do with it, dad?" "He didn't say, kitten." "Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn't he say anything, for gracious sake?"
The tradesmen refused him credit, and the carpets and furniture of their little cottage grew old and thread-bare and were not replaced. I have seen him play pool at Sudden's for half a day at a dollar a game, and perhaps lose his week's wages.
And he gave a résumé of the colonel's laughable sophistry for George's benefit, and for mine as well, for I had paid no attention to the old toper's remarks. We could see the glimmer of lights behind the shutters of the faro-room over Sudden's saloon and hear the rattle of the ivory counters as we passed. "Do you ever go up there?" asked George, interrupting Perry.
But it was the Rolling R, where the profits were smaller, that stood closest to Sudden's heart. There was not so much money in horses as there was in sheep; Sudden admitted it readily enough. But he hated sheep; hated the sound of them and the smell of them and the insipid, questioning faces of them.
Word Of The Day