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"I'm not likely to need it myself to-night. Come, Sonny." The child shrank in the corner, his pudgy hands raised defensively. "It's only a little ways, and Sonny can run home fast," his mother coaxed. Against his ineffective reluctance she put on his coat and hat. Tolliver took the child by the hand and led him, sobbing unevenly, into the wind-haunted darkness.
And so another sensation spread through the hills and a superstitious awe of this strange new power that had come into the hills went with it hand in hand. Only while the doubting ones knew that nothing could save the Red Fox they would wait to see if that power could really avail against the Tolliver clan.
"Singular thing that. What paralysed him, do you think?" "Heavens knows. He might just as well have been killed as poor Tolliver was, for he'll never be any use again, the doctors say. Some injury to the spinal column, and with it a curious affection of the throat and tongue. He can neither swallow nor speak. Nourishment has to be administered by tube, and the tongue is horribly swollen."
'Uncle Ansel, says she, 'I must tell you somethin'. I should have preferred tellin' you privately, she puts in, glarin' at Nate, 'but it seems I can't. Mr. Tolliver and I are engaged to be married. "Old Whiskers didn't seem to care a continental. All he had in his addled head was that flyin' contraption. "'All right, all right, he snaps, fretty, 'I'm satisfied.
And the Falins climbed, too, farther along the mountains, and at the same hour were waiting in the woods a mile to the south. Back in Lonesome Cove June Tolliver sat alone her soul shaken and terror-stricken to the depths and the misery that matched hers was in the heart of Hale as he paced to and fro at the county seat, on guard and forging out his plans for that day under the morning stars.
The color washed away beneath the tan of the father's face. "Where's she at?" "Here at the hotel. Mrs. Gillespie an' Doc Tuckerman are lookin' after her." "I'd like to go to her right away." "Sure. Dud, you know where the room is. Take Mr. Tolliver there." "Pete." Houck's voice was hoarse, but no longer defiant.
Tolliver came on up, set the child down, and took off his overcoat. "Fact is," he drawled, "I got held back a minute sort of unexpected." His eyes fixed the impatient man. "What you planning to do, Joe, between now and relieving me at midnight?" Joe shifted his feet. "Don't know," he said uncomfortably. "What you bring the kid for? Want me to drop him at the house?" Tolliver shook his head.
Was she really the June Tolliver who had gone out into the world and had held her place there; who had conquered birth and speech and customs and environment so that none could tell what they all once were; who had become the lady, the woman of the world, in manner, dress, and education: who had a gift of music and a voice that might enrich her life beyond any dream that had ever sprung from her own brain or any that she had ever caught from Hale's?
He had only a moment to see all of this. Ruth Tolliver, hooded in an evening cloak, but with the light gleaming in her coppery hair, was shaking him by the arm and leaning a white face close to him. "Hurry!" she was saying. "There isn't a minute to lose. You must start now, at once. They will find out they will guess and then " "John Mark?" he asked.
"Then he's a plumb fool. Why " "Hush, Bill," put in Caroline. "You mustn't say that," she added to Ruth. "Of course you have reason to be sad about it and angry, too." "Sad, perhaps, but not angry," said Ruth Tolliver. "How could I ever be really angry with Ronicky? Hasn't he given me a chance to live a clean life? Hasn't he given me this big free open West to live in?
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