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Updated: May 17, 2025
A few more steps would have made Harry sure that Miss Stratton's paper fell every night squarely on the broad front path, but he "fired the paper at her," as he expressed it, and the result was Miss Stratton's otherwise unnecessary number of steps hunting after her paper. Yet Harry would have scorned to cheat any customer. He fulfilled the letter of the law. He delivered the paper.
Archer released her spasmodic grip on Stratton's flannel shirt and fumbled for her handkerchief. "I'm a fool to to waste time like this," she faltered, dabbing her eyes with the crumpled square of cambric. "I think you're rather wonderful," returned Buck gently. He helped her to a chair. "Sit down here, and when you're able, tell us just what happened."
There were other little things Lynch thought of from time to time to make Buck's life miserable, and he quite succeeded, though it must be said that Stratton's hard-won self-control prevented the foreman from enjoying the full measure of his triumph.
"If the Lord Jesus were here on earth, Harry," went on the minister in a very grave, tender tone, "and if he wanted a little service from you, you wouldn't render it in the way you deliver Miss Stratton's paper, would you? Yet she is his child, one of his representatives on earth, and as you treat her you treat him. 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, you know, Harry."
"Besides, I don't guess any of us would of thought to look in that loft." "Maybe not. It doesn't matter. We didn't." Stratton's voice was brittle. "But if anything happens " "Have they locked up the whole house?" Jessup asked as Stratton paused. "Yes, but what good'll that do with two able-bodied men set on getting in? There isn't a door or shutter that wouldn't " "Two!" gasped Bud.
After giving instructions about nailing up the fence, Tex Lynch joined the girl, who sat her horse at a little distance, and the two rode off together. For a moment or two Stratton's frowning glance followed them. Then of a sudden he realized that Slim McCabe's shrewd eyes were fixed curiously on him, and the discovery brought him abruptly to his senses.
Over and over on the narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold to gain a momentary advantage.
Buck learned that the visitors were from Chicago, where they had been close friends of the Thorne family for years, and then he managed to break away and join the fellows in the kitchen. During the meal there was a lot of more or less quiet joking on the subject of Stratton's acquaintance with the lady, which he managed to parry rather cleverly.
Humanity in the valley passed before them in forms as interesting and as alien as the brother beasts to Adam: the handsome driver of the jerky, Joe Stratton's successor, who sat at dinner opposite and combed his flowing mustache with his fork in a lazy, dandified way; the darkened faces of sheep-herders enameled by sun and wind, their hair like the winter coats of animals; the slow-eyed farmers with the appetites of horses; the spring recruits for the ranks of labor footing it to distant ranches, each with his back-load of bedding, and the dust of three counties on his garments.
From his point of vantage at the summit of a steep grade, Buck halted and stared ahead with a restless, keen eagerness. He could see the trail curving over the next rise, and farther still he glimpsed a tiny patch of it rounding the shoulder of a hill. But it was empty, lifeless; and as he loosed the reins and touched the roan lightly with a spur, Stratton's face grew blank and hard again.
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