United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Closely as Van Horn, while speaking, watched the effect of his words, it was impossible to gather from Laramie's face the slightest clue as to the impression they were making. Laramie sat quite relaxed, his back to the corner, his legs crossed, listening. He looked straight ahead without so much as blinking. Van Horn, nervous and impatient, scrutinized him: "That's my hand, Jim," he said flatly.
Van Horn will swear everything in this Falling Wall raid on old Barb to make feeling against him it'll be a mess." Laramie's eyes were fixed on the floor. When he raised them he spoke thoughtfully: "I see what you mean, Doctor. I'll talk plain, too as you'd want me to, I know. No one can tell till it's over how a man hunt is going to work out.
And a democratic one, for despite feminine protests it numbered at the different tables pretty much every friend of Laramie's, in the high country, including John Frying Pan only the blanket men from the Reservation were excluded. Lefever acted as toastmaster.
The drunken foreman's brow contracted in irresolute perplexity: "What do you say?" urged Laramie. Vacillating, Stone let down the hammer to talk it over. It went up again almost instantly. There may in that last brief instant have flashed across his muddled consciousness a realization of his fatal mistake; perhaps he saw in the wicked flash of Laramie's glazed eyes a warning of blunder.
Nothing, in the circumstances, could have been less welcome than any sort of an intrusion. But a knock at the door, almost violent, and coming three times, stirred even Laramie's temper. The door was not locked. Laramie rose, his fingers resting on the butt of his revolver, and stepping lightly into the dining-room, turned down the lamp. He stood in the shadow and beckoned Kate to him.
Stunned by the fire of Belle's wrath, Kate, breathless, tried to collect her senses. It was only her anger at the final implication that cleared them. But even as her words of indignant denial reached her lips, her utterance was paralyzed by the recollection that unwittingly she had told her father of the night she was thrown into Laramie's retreat. Yet even this did not check her resentment.
I'm going to try to live the life of a small but dishonest rancher, Barb." "You ought to do well at that, eh?" "Why, yes and no. But I'm thinking, if I can't figure out the game, some of my neighbors can help me catch on what?" Barb's retort if he had one to Lefever's continued laugh, was cut off by Laramie's entrance with Kate.
"Said he was going up into the mountains but he's comin' over again before he starts. I knowed he helped you track them wire scouts over to Barb's. The blame critters tore off all the wire t'other side the creek, too. Get any track of 'em?" he asked, sympathetically alive to what had been most on Laramie's mind when he had started from home.
Knowing the value of every moment in a long chase, and working with all possible haste, Laramie had to throw out his dragnet carefully before he could get away himself. He had told Kate to prepare at Belle's for a hard ride and he would get her to the ranch. With every minute lingering like an hour, both women, nervously expectant, waited, talked, and watched for Laramie's return.
But he was swiftly up and firing persistently almost outlined with bullets Laramie's figure against the rock wall. He splintered the grip of Laramie's revolver in its holster, he cut the sleeve from his wrist, and tore hair from the right side of his head; but he could not stop him.
Word Of The Day