Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
"God above, you mean " The thought snapped in the old man's brain, the words stuck in his throat. "I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father. That's all I mean!" Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him damn' before he shall keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's arm in a grip that hurt.
There was a group already ranged at the door of the engine-room as the people came on. Bruce Steering and his wife, Old Bernique, and the tramp-boy were in the centre of the group. "We are all steamed up!" cried Bruce. "Make ready there, boys! Hurrah for the greatest zinc run in the greatest State in the Union! Now, Piney!"
Old Bernique called his little party to a halt at the bottommost dip of the Gulch, where a deep, clear and rock-bound spring wound murmurously over a rocky bed. Two red spots came out in the old man's cheeks, his eyes began fairly to flame again, his breath came in wheezy gasps, and his old face pinched up sharp and sensitive as a pointer's nose.
Bernique and he had been in the hills for two weeks, skirting the Grierson entail, picking, digging, sniffing for ore by day, sleeping long sleeps on forest leaves, heaped and aromatic, by night. He had that day ridden into Canaan for some clean clothes, and was beating back toward Old Bernique now, having picked up Piney down the river road.
The old man rode a little nearer Steering and regarded him searchingly. "Good-bye, sair," he said then, "it shall be what you say. I shall come back to you in Canaan." "Good-bye, Mr. Bernique. I'm glad to have you decide that way." Steering clung to his notion that he and Bernique were to know each other better. They shook hands under the cross-roads sign-post with understanding.
I think Bernique is getting restless, too. He will be drifting off soon on that tidal wave of ore fever that comes over him; Piney has been gone for a great while. It's pretty lonely. It's getting on my nerves. Of course I shouldn't pet my nerves if I had any hope about the run here, but I haven't. I think that the work we have carried on is fairly conclusive."
"Well, Piney, son," Steering invaded the rush of his own thoughts ruthlessly, "I expect I ought to be toddling. Going to ride part of the way with me? I think we shall fall in with Uncle Bernique up-stream a mile or so." "Why, yes," assented Piney, rising; he made a keen calculation of the time by the sun, as he got to his feet; "I'll go a-ways with you.
You return to Canaan and have your mawney ready for me, Mistaire Steering. That bat Grierson, Mistaire Steering! When I think " Old Bernique was still throwing out riches of castigation at Grierson, Madeira, himself, fate, still half incoherent, when the three friends at last got back to their horses, and separated.
"Uncle Bernique can hold the claim alone, you know. And I'm wasting hope and energy here. What's the use in staying longer?" She was very busy with the bacon now and he did not see her face. There was a wild quiver on it, of grief, fright, dismay. "You ought not to leave Uncle Bernique and Piney, I am sure of that," she said at last earnestly, almost commandingly. "Heigh-ho!
One day, not so very long after old Bernique's find in Choke Gulch, word had gone over Canaan like an eagle's scream that ore had been struck in the Canaan Tigmores. Old Bernique had wrung his hands, and Steering had gone grimly back to a little up-river shack, at Redbud, below Sowfoot Crossing, where he was spending a great deal of his time these later days.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking