Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
She had thought that Seabeck would be merciful, if she told him in the right way; but now, when she stole a glance at his bent, brooding face, she was frightened. He did not look merciful, but stern and angry. She remembered then that stealing cattle is the one crime a cattleman finds it hard to forgive.
Well, old man, you're here to colleck, I s'pose. Take what's in sight; 'tain't none of it yourn, far's I know, but anything you claim you kin have, fer all me. I've lived honest all my days an' worked fer what I got. I've harbored thieves in my old age and trusted them that wa'n't fit to be trusted. I've allus paid my debts, Seabeck. I'm willin' to pay now fer bein' a fool." "W-where's Charlie?"
Never once did he dream that she had suspected him and wrung her heart because of her suspicions and in that I think she was wise and kind. They found Seabeck and Floyd Carson and another cowboy at the Cove, just preparing to leave. Marthy, it transpired, had wanted to make her will, so that Billy Louise would have the Cove when Marthy was done with it.
You believe too that tears are a necessary kind of weakness for a woman, like smoking tobacco is for a man or swearing. Well, I can just tell you, Mr. Seabeck, that some tears pull the very soul out of a person; they're the red-hot pinchers of the torture-chamber of life, Mr. Seabeck. Every single, slow tear that Marthy sheds right now is taking that much away from her life.
Billy Louise waited, too depressed to wonder greatly who they were. Seabeck riders, probably; and so they proved. At least one of them was a Seabeck man Floyd Carson, who had talked with her at her own gate and had told her of the suspected cattle-stealing. The other man was a stranger whom Floyd introduced as Mr. Birken.
Ward spilled two papers of tobacco before he got a cigarette rolled and lighted. He wondered a little at the physical reaction from his outburst, but he wondered more at Buck Olney sitting alive and unhurt on the horse before him a Seabeck horse which Ward had seen Floyd Carson riding once or twice. He wondered what Floyd would do if he saw Buck now and the use to which the horse was being put.
Billy Louise, her hands clenched upon the gate, stared up wide-eyed into his face. And this was the real Seabeck, whom she had known impersonally all her life! This was the real man of him, whom she had never known; a flawless diamond of a soul behind those bright blue eyes and that pointed, graying beard; poet, philosopher, gentleman to the bone. "Oh! You saw that, too!
For some reason she wanted the comfort of his presence. She waited until he came up to her tall, straight like a soldier, and silent as the Cove itself. "I'm scared," said Billy Louise. She did not smile either when she said it. "I hate empty-feeling places. I'm afraid of emptiness." "Yet you are always riding alone in the hills." Seabeck looked down at her with a puzzled expression in his eyes.
Nor did he know that the two had ridden past the cabin on the other side of the creek and had seen how deserted the place looked; had ridden to the stable, noted there the unmistakable and permanent air of emptiness, and had gone on. Floyd Carson alone might have prowled through both buildings, but Seabeck was a slow-going man of sober justice.
Seabeck?" she asked sharply, just because she felt the imperative need of facts she who had struggled so long in the quicksands of suspicion and doubts and fears and suspense. "Hmm-mm how bad is it in the house?" he countered. "The real crime has been committed there, it seems to me. A few head of cattle, more or less, don't count for much against the broken heart of an old woman." "Oh!"
Word Of The Day
Others Looking