Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
If I'll help you to get hold of this land, you'll pay the settlers more than the claims are worth and you'll pay me more than they are worth. A pretty good price for worthless ground." "Well, look at the landscape and tell me what you see." Darley Champers flung his hand out toward the sweep of brown prairie with the dry river bed and the brazen sands beyond it.
He's well fixed," Champers declared, peering into the stable, where it was too dark to discover that the third horse was Dr. Carey's. "Let's hike off for some deserted shack for the night and get an early start for the Crossing in the morning. Easy trick, this, gettin' in and out of here unseen. And it's one of the best claims on Grass River." "Couldn't we slip into the cabin?"
"I may as well let you know now why I can't be known in this," Thomas Smith said smoothly, even if the same gray hue did flit like a shadow a second time across his countenance a thing that did not escape the shrewd eye of Darley Champers this time. "Wyker is pitted against Jacobs. You are after Asher Aydelot's scalp, if you can get it. I must get Jim Shirley, fair or foul."
"Yes, I will," Leigh replied, "but will you tell me what you know about him; you must know something?" It was Champers' turn to start now. "N-not much; not as much as I'm goin' to know, and it's not for my profit, neither. I don't make money out of women's needs. I never made a cent on this sale to you, but it was worth it to get to do that agent once," Champers declared. Leigh waited quietly.
"Champers would pull up another man's stakes and drive them into his own ground if he wanted them, but that Thomas Smith would drive them through the other fellow's body if nobody else was around," was the doctor's mental comment as he went outside and watched the course of the two men till the twilight gathered them in.
He run me off my saloon in ol' Carey Crossin'; my prewery goin' smash mit der damned prohibittery law; he growin' rich in Careyville, an' me!" His voice rose to a shriek and he stamped his foot in rage. "Hold your noise, Wyker!" Champers growled. "Don't you know who's on the other side of that partition?" "I built that partition mineself. It's von dead noise-breaker," Wyker began.
Meanwhile the early dusk found Champers and Smith approaching Shirley's premises. "I don't know about Aydelot," Champers declared as they lariated their ponies beyond the corral. "He's one of the clear-eyed fellows who sees a good thing about as soon as you sight it yourself, and then he turns clam and leach and you won't move him nor get nothin' out of him, and that's all there is to it."
This from a large man who held the door open long enough to stare up the open street for the sign of the coming stage and to let in a surge of cold air at the same time. "Well, shut the door, Champers. The stage doesn't come inside. It stops at Hans Wyker's saloon first, anyhow," one of the men behind a counter declared.
Finding the new town of Careyville a strategic point, it headed straight thither, built through it, marked it for a future division point, and forged onward toward the sunset. Dr. Carey had located an office on his claim when there were only four other buildings on the Careyville townsite. Darley Champers opened a branch office there about the same time, although he did not leave Wykerton.
Remember, when we met down by the bend here, one winter day?" "Yes, I remember," Asher replied. "Well, I just come by there and there ain't a drop of water in that deep bend, no more'n in my hat." Champers plumped his hat down on the floor with the words. "And the creek, on Stewart's testimony, is a blasted fissure in the earth."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking