Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
"You can go back to the boys now and tell them that you're boss when I'm not on hand. Before they go to work in the morning you show up here again and we'll talk a lot of things over." Barbee ducked his head in token of acquiescence and perhaps to hide the glitter in his eyes, and walked on his heels to the door. Packard's voice arrested him there.
A voluble answer from the woman at my side, but not the wink of an eye from the one whose attention I had endeavored to attract. "I live in the house opposite," I carelessly went on, taking in every detail of the strange being I was secretly addressing. "Oh!" she exclaimed in startled tones, roused into speech at last. "You live opposite; in Mayor Packard's house?" I approached her, smiling.
Then Packard had spoken a little about Red Creek, asking his few questions and had learned that Blenham had his friends in "Packard's Town" where Dan Hodges of the Ace of Diamonds saloon was an old pal, that "Whitey" Wimble of the Old Trusty saloon across the street hated both Hodges and Blenham like poison. "Us boys," added Barbee, "always hung out at the Ace of Diamonds, bein' Packard's men.
I was conscious of flushing slightly, but she was not looking my way, and the betrayal cost me only a passing uneasiness. She had, quite without realizing it, offered me the one opportunity I most desired. In my search for a new explanation of Mrs. Packard's rapidly changing moods, I had returned to my first suspicion the attraction and possibly the passion of the handsome secretary for herself.
From the little brass bedstead curtained with cretonne, to the tiny desk filled with everything needful for immediate use, I saw evidences of the most careful housekeeping, and was vainly asking myself what could have come into Mrs. Packard's life to disturb so wholesome a nature, when my attention was arrested by a picture hanging at the right of the window overlooking the next house.
A few words would have saved the complete history of a beautiful moth, to secure which no second opportunity was presented for five years. Several works I consulted united in the simple statement that certain caterpillars pupate in the ground. In Packard's "Guide", you will find this "Lepidopterous pupae should be...kept moist in mould until the image appears."
Clicking up the receiver he went out on the street again, giving no heed to the many glances which followed him. They knew who he was; they were speculating on him. "Ol' man Packard's gran'son," he heard one man say. In the thick darkness lying under the poplar tree it was several minutes before he was certain that his horse was gone.
Granting that he was mistaken, would an interference of so direct and unmistakable a character be wise in the present highly strung condition of her nerves? I doubted it. It would show too plainly the light in which we regarded her. I dared not undertake the responsibility of such a course in Mayor Packard's absence.
Then again Hell-Fire Packard's voice burst out violently and Terry stopped short, her hands going suddenly to her breast. Her face, could they have noted in the pale light, was flaming scarlet. "That hussy, that jade, that Jezebel!" came the ringing denunciation. "The tricky, shameless, penurious, graspin' unprincipled little she-devil! She's after you, my boy, after you hard.
While Steve was turning down into Packard's Grab from the foot-hills the men working for Ranch Number Ten, having eaten their supper, were celebrating the end of a hard day's work with tobacco smoke and desultory talk. There were a dozen of them, clear-eyed, iron-muscled, quick-footed to the last man of them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking