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Twice masses of fallen rock blocked the way, and the horses had to be unhitched and the wagons dragged into the stream bed. It was heavy work, and when they camped, ferociously hungry, no fire could be kindled, and there was nothing for it but to eat the hard-tack damp and bacon raw. Leff cursed and threw his piece away.
The steps drew near her, she noted that they lagged as they approached, finally stopped. She gave her work a last, lingering glance and raised her eyes slowly as if politeness warred with disinclination, Leff was standing before her, scowling at her as at an object of especial enmity. He carried a small tin pail full of wild strawberries.
Naow, I says, an I ain't the on'y one in the caounty as says it, nuther, ez debts orter run daown same ez bills does, reglar, so much a month, till they ain't nuthin leff," said Ezra Phelps, setting down his mug with an emphatic thud. "S'poosn I borrers money of yew, Abner, an built a haouse, that haouse is boun tew run daown in vally, I callate, 'long from year tew year.
"Maybe you can have one too," said Bleak, and turned to where Quimbleton had been standing. But the mysterious visitor had leff the room. "You're too late, Bill," said the city editor genially. "There was a kind of Messiah here, but he's gone. Tough luck." "Say, boss," suggested one of the reporters. "There's a story in this. May I interview that guy?"
If he did not talk much to his "Missy" he kept a vigilant eye upon her, and to-day he squatted in the shade beside her because the doctor and David had gone after antelope and Leff was off somewhere on an excursion of his own. Susan, sewing, her face grave above her work, was not as pretty as Susan smiling.
Leff was of the outer world to which he relegated all men who showed fear or lied. He turned to Susan: "Go back in the wagon and lie down. Here comes Leff and I don't want him to see you." The young girl thought no better of Leff than he did. The thought of being viewed in her abandonment by the despised youth made her scramble into the back of the wagon where she lay concealed on a pile of sacks.
"It's Bess," said David, his face pallid with contrition. "I hope to God she's not hurt. Up, Bess, there! Up on your feet, old girl!" At her master's voice the docile brute made a second attempt to rise, but again sank down, her sides panting, her head strained up. Leff leaped off his horse. "Damn her, I'll make her get up," he said, and gave her a violent kick on the ribs.
I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures. One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards, "We didn't look to de right nor to de leff.
I hev been kinder cocky, an I hev put on some airs, ez these fellers says, fer I callated ye'd kinder washed yer hands o' this business, an leff me tew be capin, but arter this ye'll fine Abner Rathbun knows his place." "You were quite right about it, Abner. I have washed my hands of the business. I am going to take my folks out to York State. I meant to start this morning.
"Shiver my timbers if 'tain't my old sea-kit," interrupted the sailor, rearing himself aloft in the water like a spaniel in search of wounded waterfowl. "Sure as my name's Ben Brace it be that, an' nothing else!" "Your sea-chess?" interrogated Snowball, elevating his woolly cranium above the water, so as also to command a view. "Golly! I b'lieve it am. How he come dar? You leff 'im on de raff?"
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