United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Breifogle was no fool, as Graham remembered, and a fireman's black cap and sooty shirt and overalls would be but scant disguise. And to carry out his plan it was essential that he should pass through Argenta, reach Hatch's Cove and eventually the Silver Shield mine, and reach this latter unknown and unsuspected. Toomey and he had hit on a plan once Toomey could succeed in getting word to Nolan.

After some embarrassed uncertainty as to who was to conduct whom, and which arm should be used, the guests filed into the dining room at an hour when, commonly, they were preparing to retire. In the confusion Mrs. Toomey found the opportunity to say: "Jap, our goose is cooked!"

"Even in a small community one must keep up the social bars and preserve the traditions of one's up-bringing, mustn't one?" "One is apt to become lax, too democratic it's the tendency of this western country," Mrs. Toomey assented. She felt very exclusive and elegant at the moment. Mrs. Pantin's eyes had been upon her work, now she raised them and looked at Mrs. Toomey squarely.

It had been done elsewhere successfully, and there was no dearth of accommodations on the place, since there was nothing much to the ranch but the buildings, as Toomey had fenced and broken up only enough land to patent the homestead. Although Teeters was now the ostensible owner, in reality the place belonged to Hughie Disston's father, who had been the heaviest loser in the cattle company.

Toomey experienced when she saw her trunk going was surpassed only by the astonishment of the neighbors, who all but broke the glass in their various windows as they pressed against it to convince themselves that the sight was not an optical illusion. The Toomeys had traveled in a stateroom, over Mrs.

Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs. Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs.

Toomey excelled at this, forgetting, as is frequently the case, that no one of those whom he lampooned was as fitting a subject for ridicule as himself. During a pause he observed: "By the way, there's a woman of your name living about here." "So I've heard." "No connection, of course different spelling, but not apt to be in any case." There was a covert sneer in his voice.

They had gone there to get out of the wind and it was by only a chance that I rode down into it. "She was in the bottom, huddled against a rock, and didn't see me until I was nearly on her. I thought she was sick she looked terrible." "And was she?" "No she was worried." "Naturally. Any woman would be who married Toomey." "About money." "Indeed." His tone and smile were ironic.

There had been a ridge or two and some sharp curves just west of town, and now, as they rounded the last of these and flew out upon an almost level track, the bottom of some prehistoric mountain lake, the eyes of two of the three silent occupants of the cab were strained along the gleaming rails ahead, and almost at the same instant the same thought sprang to the lips of each Big Ben, with his left hand at the throttle, hunched up on his shelf, his cap pulled down over the bushy brows, and Geordie, across the cab on the fireman's seat, clinging to the window-frame to withstand the lurching of the throbbing monster, while between them, on the coal-blackened floor, Toomey, with his big shovel flinging open the iron gate to the blazing furnace for every new mouthful he fed it, and snapping it shut when he turned away for another, for not a whiff of the draught could be wasted.

The form was slender and sinewy. Hands, face, and dress were black with soot, but the young voice was deep and the ring of accustomed command was in every word. "That's your cue, Mr. Cullin. Arrest him and fetch him along." Then turning to Toomey: "There's no one at the cab. Better get back, quick!" he added. And Toomey went. Big Ben gave one look and, without a word, waddled after his fireman.