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"Did he learn of the cruel deception of which she was the victim?" "Yes, I told him that, and of her approaching marriage and intended removal to Kentucky. "This," said Abner, "explains Andrew Hite's will.
For several years after the tract came into Hite's possession, my father had considerable difficulty with rival claimants squatters, you know, who claimed it by right of first settlement; but all such difficulties were adjusted long before the agency fell into my hands, and now I can foresee no trouble, nor any very great delay, in establishing you in your rights to this part of your inheritance, at least.
But the poor creature was so cowed by her habitual awe of her lord and master, and by his present irascible temper, as well as by the burden of her own yet unconfessed secret, that the stammering, incoherent tale she told of the two John Logans, of the time and place of Mary Hollis' death, and of Abner's being Andrew Hite's legal heir, was anything but convincing.
Jimmy heard Hite's voice faintly; the city editor was giving orders to the pressroom that would stop the presses. For the next fifteen minutes there would be feverish but orderly activity. "All right, Jimmy, just gimme the flash so I'll have enough for a head; the copy desk's all gone. Then I'll put you on Roy's wire and you can give him the story."
"Have you ever been in this cave hereabout?" he had asked, to Hite's delighted amazement at this brilliant feat of mental jugglery, as it seemed to him. Even the ground, when the repetitious woods held no new revelation of tree or flower, or hazy, flickering insect dandering through the yellow sunshine and the olive-tinted shadow and the vivid green foliage, the very ground had a word for him.
Jimmy jerked the instrument away from his ear. The explosion kept ringing in his ear painfully. Hale repeated slowly: "One, perhaps three of the Tontine group were murdered during the past twenty-four hours." The growl that now answered him was Hite's normal voice, with the tense undertone it held when he had a big story.
The skin on the city editor's gaunt features wrinkled. He yelled: "Hey Jimmy!" As Jimmy left his typewriter he said to the old man: "I see Jimmy is in the throes of a literary composition. He seems all het up. But he can probably go with you right away. The plane is still at your disposal." When Hale explained what he was writing, Hite's eyes glinted.
It's got point about it that makes it a swell feature story, mebbe a fine human interest yarn, see. And it won't interfere with you at all." "But " Hite's strong teeth clenched his corn cob pipe, his jaw jutted out like a crag; his eyebrows bristled. "Say, what the hell is all this yappin' about. You pampered pets give me a large pain. I'm askin' you to do somethin'. Either you do it or you don't.
Sneed's critter bein' gone too mought make folks lay it ter ye fur sure," persisted Hite. "I ain't seen Mr. Sneed's horse. Mr. Sneed ye wouldn't b'lieve it ter look at him, but he's a ransomed saint! ha! ha! The money fur him will be fotched hyar ter yer still. I sent fur it ter kem by Jake Glenn; he knows ye, an' ye know him." Con Hite's open brow did not cloud.
"And," added the doctor, "even should the will not stand, you, the only child of your mother, are justly entitled to this bequest; for all that Andrew Hite possessed, save that Kentucky land which he in my presence promised your mother at his death, came through his father, your great-grandfather, Abner Hite; and Sarah Jane Pepper is connected only through her mother, Andrew Hite's half-sister, Sarah Thornton, who was not a descendant of old Abner Hite.
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