United States or Puerto Rico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We know now how Wiley traced him and overcame that difficulty. "Wiley's efforts culminated in Arizona, but mine only began there. I traced him back step by step on the trail he had come, following Hillery, and in Missoula I learned more of Gentleman Geoff.
The story in its every detail was stamping itself indelibly upon her mind and for the moment even the presence of Starr Wiley was forgotten. "When he reached the trapper's cabin, Gentleman Geoff was blinded by the snow, delirious and half frozen. Hillery took him in, unwrapped the fur pack he carried on his back and discovered the body of little Willa. She had died from exposure."
Vernon uttered a sharp exclamation, and the girl seated before him clasped her hands tightly, but no other sign greeted Mason North's announcement. He passed his hand across his brow and drew a deep breath. "Hillery buried the child and nursed Gentleman Geoff through a long illness.
With that as a basis I went straight to Pima, in Graham County, Arizona, where Frank Hillery, the trapper, had died and Wiley professed to have run across his papers. Hillery died only seven or eight months ago, you know, and it wasn't difficult to find out all about him. "He landed there in the spring of nineteen four, and opened a little store with general merchandise.
Hillery deserted it the following summer and went southward to Arizona where he eventually died six months ago.
Was this latest revelation true, and had he actually stumbled upon authentic records, or manufactured them to avenge himself upon her and eliminate her from his path? Willa's mind still groped in a quandary, but every instinct within her arose to combat. "Why would Dad have mentioned Hillery at all, if he did not intend that I should ever learn the truth?" she asked quietly.
There were the two men and two little girls of the same age, isolated far from civilization for a long winter. One child dies, the other departs with Gentleman Geoff. What more simple than to arrange for a plausible substitution of the children? Gentleman Geoff being dead, the only possible obstacle could be in the person of the other member of that lonely quartette, Frank Hillery, the trapper.
"It was signed to the adoption agreement he and the trapper, Hillery, made out when he took her in place of the real Willa. The governor showed me the paper and there it was in black and white: Geoff Abercrombie." "Abercrombie!" Kearn Thode seized the other's arm in a convulsive grip which made the steering-wheel jerk. "You're sure you're sure of the name, Win?" "Dead sure!
However, Gentleman Geoff and the little Willa were lost in the blizzard, and, after suffering untold horrors, he finally made his way to the cabin of a trapper, named " he hesitated and glanced down at the papers beneath his hand "named Frank Hillery.
It consisted of the marriage-certificate of Frank Hillery and Louise Henson, dated December 12, 1895; the birth-certificate of Louise Francis Hillery, October 3, 1897, several maps of the Flathead Lake territory with trails marked upon them in red ink, the death-certificate of Frank Hillery, dated April 16, 1916, and a huge sheet of foolscap paper scrawled with labored characters in wavering lines.
Word Of The Day