Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 10, 2025
He went limp suddenly and slid out of Hollister's grasp. And they let him lie, a dead man beside the dead woman on the floor. They stood up themselves and stared at the bodies with that strange incredulity men sometimes feel in the face of sudden death. Both Lawanne and Hollister were familiar with death, death by the sniper's bullet, by machine gun and shell, by bayonet and poison gas.
His fingers, the brown, muscular, heavy fingers of a strong-handed man, shook slightly. "You know, it's good to be back in this old valley," Lawanne said. "I have half a notion to become a settler. A fellow could build up quite an estate on one of these big flats. He could grow almost anything here that will grow in this latitude.
The house was as still as the surrounding woods when Hollister stepped across the threshold. Bland stood just within the doorway, erect, his feet a little apart, like a man bracing himself against some shock. He seemed frozen in this tense attitude, so that he did not alter the rigid line of his body or shift a single immobile muscle when Hollister and Lawanne stepped in.
"This man Bland is the dizzy limit," Lawanne observed, when the tea and some excellent sandwiches presently appeared. "He bought another rifle the other day paid forty-five bones for it. That makes four he has now. And they have to manage like the deuce to keep themselves in grub from one remittance day to the next. He's a study.
Lawanne had been thumping a typewriter for hours, he told Hollister, until his fingers ached. He was almost through with this task, which for months had been a curious mixture of drudgery and pleasure. "I'm through all but typing the last two chapters. It's been a fierce grind." "You'll be on the wing soon, then", Hollister observed. "That depends," Lawanne said absently.
He knew nothing about him, who he was, where he came from, what he did. Nevertheless there had arisen between them a curious fellowship. There seemed to reside in the man a natural quality of uprightness, a moral stoutness of soul that lifted him above petty judgments. One did not like or dislike Lawanne for what he did or said so much as for what he suggested as being inherent within himself.
The last five years had not strengthened his belief in friendships. He had seen too many fail under stress. But he liked this man. They sat outside after supper and Doris joined them there. Lawanne was not talkative. He was given to long silences in which he sat with eyes fixed on river or valley or the hills above, in mute appreciation.
He got me right through the middle. And I wouldn't live if I could. Not now. "Don't touch me," he protested, as they bent over him. "You can't do anything. There's a hole in me you could put your hand in. But it don't hurt. I won't last more than a minute or two, anyway." "How did it happen?" Lawanne asked. "I was sitting here talking to her," Mills said.
Hollister looked after him curiously. There was strong meat in Lawanne's book. He wondered if Mills would digest it. And he wondered a little if Mills regarded Lawanne as a rival, if he were trying to test the other man's strength by his work. Away down the river, now that dark had fallen, the light in Bland's house shone yellow. There was a red, glowing spot on the river bank.
Hollister and Mills went back to their work on the boom. When they finished their day's work, Lawanne had gone down to the Blands' with Myra. After supper, as Mills rose to leave for the upper camp, he said to Doris: "Have you got that book of his about the fellow that couldn't die? I'd like to read it." Doris gave him the book. He went away with it in his hand.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking