United States or Sudan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With laboring, dripping chest, and pain as of a knife thrust in his side, he stopped to regain his breath, and while resting his eyes roved around in search of a horse. Doors and windows of the stable were open wide and had a deserted look. One dejected, lonely burro stood in the near corral. Strange indeed was the silence brooding over the once happy, noisy home of Jane Withersteen's pets.
There's that unseen hand of power, an' Tull's black hand, an' my red one, an' your indifferent one, an' the girl's little brown, helpless one. An', Venters there's another one that's all-wise an' all-wonderful. That's the hand guidin' Jane Withersteen's game of life!... Your story's one to daze a far clearer head than mine. I can't offer no advice, even if you asked for it. Mebbe I can help you.
The day, you remember, when that fat party throwed a gun on me in your court, an' " "Oh! Hush!" whispered Jane, blindly holding up her hands. "I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who ruined Milly Erne." For an instant Jane Withersteen's brain was a whirling chaos and she recovered to find herself grasping at Lassiter like one drowning.
So I'm preparin' you." "For what?" "I didn't tell you why I jest had to go after them fellers. I couldn't tell you. I believe you'd have died. But I can tell you now if you'll bear up under a shock?" "Go on, my friend." "I've got little Fay! Alive bad hurt but she'll live!" Jane Withersteen's dead-locked feeling, rent by Lassiter's deep, quivering voice, leaped into an agony of sensitive life.
Afraid of the long rifle a burdensome weapon seldom carried by rustlers or riders they had been put to rout. Suddenly Venters discovered that one of the two men last noted was riding Jane Withersteen's horse Bells the beautiful bay racer she had given to Lassiter. Venters uttered a savage outcry.
Venters marked the smooth gait, and understood it when Wrangle galloped out of the sage into the broad cattle trail, down which Venters had once tracked Jane Withersteen's red herd. This hard-packed trail, from years of use, was as clean and smooth as a road. Venters saw Jerry Card look back over his shoulder, the other rider did likewise.
After his first burst of surprise and rapid calculation Venters lost no time there, but slunk again into the sage on his back trail. With the discovery of Oldring's hidden cattle-range had come enlightenment on several problems. Here the rustler kept his stock, here was Jane Withersteen's red herd; here were the few cattle that had disappeared from the Cottonwoods slopes during the last two years.
All of them knew him, most were inimical, but there were few who were not burning with curiosity and wonder in regard to the return of Jane Withersteen's racers. Yet all were silent. Here were the familiar characteristics masked feeling strange secretiveness expressionless expression of mystery and hidden power. "Has anybody here seen Jerry Card?" queried Venters, in a loud voice.
Some of the men and boys had a few stray cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment as the Mormons reluctantly tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous, many were very poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen's beneficence. As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to come in contact with these Gentiles.
As well as if it had been spoken, Venters read in the faces of men the intelligence that Jane Withersteen's Arabians had been known to have been stolen. Venters reined in and halted before Dyer's residence. It was a low, long, stone structure resembling Withersteen House.
Word Of The Day