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Updated: June 24, 2025
"Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too," said Aunt Kate. "That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly in the morning?" "Oh, I don't mind that," Nan declared. "I'm used to getting up early."
Uncle Henry had been up some time, and now he came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitched in and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to the pung. "We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie," he said. "The boys have to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven." They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then sallied forth.
If it's only a week you've got to be close an' near by Mis' Joanne. I'll find out what Quade an' Rann are doing, and what they're goin' to do. I've got a scheme. Will you leave 'em to me?" Aldous nodded, and in the same breath informed MacDonald of Peggy Blackton's invitation. The old hunter chuckled exultantly. He stopped his horse, and Aldous halted.
It was four o'clock when he rejoined the contractor in the lower room, freshly bathed and shaven and in a change of clothes. He had not seen Joanne, but half a dozen times he had heard her and Peggy Blackton laughing and talking in Mrs. Blackton's big room at the head of the stairs, and he heard them now as they sat down to smoke their cigars.
"One of Culver Rann's friends," said Blackton sotto voce, as he drove on. "She takes in a hundred a night if she makes a cent!" Blackton's big log bungalow was close to the engineers' camp half a mile distant from the one lighted street and the hundreds of tents and shacks that made up the residential part of the town.
He knew that Joanne would go walking with him that afternoon, and in spite of his most serious efforts to argue to the contrary he could not keep down the feeling that the event would mean a great deal for him. Almost feverishly he interested himself in Paul Blackton's work.
In a garish sort of way the woman was beautiful, and this night, as on all others, her beauty had nearly filled the silken coin-bag suspended from her neck. As she rode down the street Aldous recalled Blackton's words: She was a friend of Culver Rann's. He wondered if this fact accounted for the strangeness of the look she had given him. He passed on to the dance-hall.
His muscles cracked, he panted as he fought with the rock until his hands were torn and bleeding, and over and over again there ran through his head Blackton's last words Four o'clock this afternoon! Four o'clock this afternoon! Then he came to what he knew he would reach very soon, a solid wall! Rock and shale and earth were packed as if by battering rams.
But I've been wondering. Old Donald said he was careless with his own pistol. But the fact is, Aldous he was shot from behind!" "The deuce you say!" "There was no perforation except from behind. In some way the bullet had spent itself before it reached him. Otherwise it would have killed him." For a moment Aldous stared in speechless amazement into Blackton's face.
"Please, Ladygray!" "I may possibly think about it." With that she left him, and she did not look back as she and Peggy Blackton went into the house. But as they drove away they saw two faces at the window that overlooked the townward road, and two hands were waving good-bye. Both could not be Peggy Blackton's hands.
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