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The Mexican did not dare turn his back on the raving man. Again he started away, but this time he moved backward, keeping his eyes on Ridgeway, who came creeping after him, crouching a little and seeming ready to spring. Suddenly Ridgeway leaped. His arms shot out and his fingers closed on Del Norte's neck. "I must kill you!" he yelled. "I am the one chosen to do it! Your time has come!"
"I've heard that before," said Ridgeway Kelso, in that slightly explosive manner of his. "All sorts of people who don't usually read the Bible " "But Mr. Kelso!" protested their hostess with raised eyebrows. "I was thinking of Bent. But anyhow there's been a great wave of seriousness, a sudden turning to religion and religious things. I don't know if it comes your way, Bishop...."
Startled and almost completely prostrated, she fell back, where Veath found her when he went to announce the news. Finally, with throbbing heart, she crept to the curtain that hung in the door between the parlors and peered through at the two men. Ridgeway was standing in the centre of the room, nervously handling a book that lay on the table.
Her list of good English names for this utterly heathen community covered such places as Velvet Valley, Hamilton Hills, Shadburn Rapids, Ridgeway River, Veath Forest and others. Ridgeway gave name to the temple in which the natives paid homage to them. He called it Tennys Court. Her room in the remodelled temple was a source of great delight to Lady Tennys. It was furnished luxuriously.
They invaded the Dominion in 1866, property was destroyed, and a number of Canadian youth lost their lives near Ridgeway, in the Niagara district, but one O'Neil and his collection of disbanded soldiers and fugitives from justice were forced back by the Canadian forces to the country whose neutrality they had outraged.
It was at about this time also, and when Ridgeway was able to be brought out on the veranda in a chair, that, with great archness of manner, she introduced to him Miss Lucy Ashe, the sister of her betrothed, a flashing brunette, and terrible heart-breaker of Four Forks. And, in the midst of this gayety, she concluded that she would spend a week with the Robinsons, to whom she owed a visit.
"But this isn't all. At Newburg, I boarded the train, and happening to go through, I saw some one that I could have sworn was a Miss Vernon, whom I met when visiting Ridgeway in Chicago. I started to speak to her; but she gave me such a frigid stare that I sailed by, convinced that I was mistaken. Two such likenesses in one day beats my time.
With the last faint whirl of wakefulness came the suggestion of roaming wild beasts, creeping up to attack them in the night, but sleep greedily swallowed the half-formed fear. The sun was up hours before Ridgeway stretched his stiff arms, blinked his sleepy eyes and peered wonderingly about his strange apartment. Another and more rapid glance failed to reveal Lady Tennys.
"Hold on!" commanded Ridgeway, lifting himself on one hand and stretching the other out to the Mexican. "Don't you dare leave me! You're the man who brought this on me! Some one fired a bullet through your head, but it did not kill you. I wish it had! You thought you bore a charmed life; you thought nothing could kill you.
His shako and sword lay near him, but his sabertasche was under his head. Tom carefully withdrew the two former; and hastening to his friends without, proceeded to decorate the priest with them; expressing, at the same time, considerable regret that he feared it might wake Ridgeway, if he were to put the velvet skull-cap on him for a night-cap.
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