United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Marjie had not heeded my words "there's a stick partly burned, and these ashes look fresh." She was bending over the big stone hearth. As I started forward, my eye caught a bit of color behind the chair by the table. I stooped to see a purple bow of ribbon, tied butterfly fashion Lettie Conlow's ribbon. I put it in my pocket, determined to find out how it had found its way here. "Ugh!
Awful busy man, that Cam Gentry." O'mie smiled at the remembrance. He knew why tender-hearted Cam had fled from a good-bye scene. "Dave Mead's goin' to start to California in a few days." He rattled on, "The church supper in October was the biggest they've had yet. Dever's got a boil on the back of his neck, and Jim Conlow's drivin' stage for him.
Tell Mapleson, the proprietor of the "Last Chance," was a tall, slight, restless man, quick-witted, with somewhat polished manners and a gift of persuasion in his speech. Near this store was Conlow's blacksmith shop, where the low-browed, black-eyed Conlow family have shod horses and mended wagons since anybody can remember.
It was blotted out for a time, then it glowed again, as if there were many passing and re-passing. I wondered what it could all mean in such an hour, on such a night as this. Then I thought of old Conlow's children, of "Possum" in his weak, good-natured homeliness, and of Lettie. How I disliked her, and wished she would keep out of my way, which she never would do.
Go in and let Dollie give you some hot berry pie." "To cool 'em off," O'mie whispered in my ear. "Nothin' so coolin' as a hot berry pie in July. Let's you and me go to the creek an' thaw out." That evening Jean Pahusca found the jug supposed to be locked in Conlow's chest of tools inside his shop. I had found where that red forge light came from, and had watched it from my window many a night.
Them two strangers, Yeager and his pal, that's s'posed to be sleepin' now to get an airly start, put out 'fore midnight for a prowl an' found theirsilves right up to Conlow's. An' I wint along behind 'em respectful," O'mie grinned; "an' there was Mapleson an' Conlow an' the holy Dodd, mind ye. M. E. South's his rock o' defence. An' Jean was there too.
But she is old Conlow's own child, and she has a bitter, jealous nature." "Well, what took her to the to the old cabin out there?" "I do not know. She may have been hidden out there to spy what we I was doing." "Did she have on a red blanket too, Saturday afternoon?" "Well, now I wonder ." My mind was in a whirl. Could she be in league against me? What did it mean? I sat down to think.
You'll find it at 'Rockport' to-morrow." She smiled up at me brightly, saying contentedly, "Oh, you are always all right, Phil." As we trailed into the kitchen from the water melon feast, Lettie Conlow's dress caught on a nail in the floor. These blooms were the kind Marjie had sent me in her letter to Topeka. They grew only in the crevices about the cliff.
In all the southwest there was only one light, a sullen red bar of flame that came up from Conlow's forge fire. I watched it indifferently at first because it was there. Then I began to wonder why it should gleam there red and angry at this dead hour of darkness. As I watched, the light flared up as though it were fanned into a blaze. Then it began to blink and I knew some one was inside the shop.
When it had spent itself and roared off down the valley, the rain still fell in torrents, and O'mie's clothes were dripping when he rushed into Le Claire's room. "For the love av Heaven," he cried, "they's a plot so pizen I must git out of me constitution quick. They're tellin' it up to Conlow's shop.
Word Of The Day