Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And it was like Jim Courtot's play, too, to clear out and leave his agents to deal with the man he hated. All in the world that Courtot ever wanted was to win; the means were nothing. If his enemy went down by another man's bullet than his own, so much the better for Jim Courtot, who had always enough to answer for as it was. 'This belongs to Helen Longstreet, Howard told himself steadily.
'You do not know what it has meant to me, your shooting those two men in papa's quarrel. But they lived and I have tried to forget it all. If they had died, then what? Her eyes widened. 'If you and Courtot meet, what will happen? If he kills you, there is an end. If if you kill him, there is an end! Call it what you please, if it is not murder, it is a man killing a man. And it is horrible!
From every boulder, from every bend in the trail, she feared to see the sinister face of Jim Courtot. In the Open There came that night a crisis. Half expected it had always been, and yet after the familiar fashion of supreme moments it burst upon them with the suddenness of an explosion. Howard and Helen were sitting silent upon the cabin doorstep, watching the first stars.
And he's a treacherous hound and a Jim Courtot man. 'You said it, boy, grunted Pony Lee. 'He's all of that. And he's no nickel shooter, either. If the game ain't big, he won't chip in. 'But, continued Howard, 'I guess you've doped it up wrong, Pony. Chances are they've got something else up their sleeves. They couldn't possibly have dropped on to Longstreet's find.
If Courtot were still in Las Palmas he would find him to-night. But again, at the end of a tedious ride, he learned that the man he sought had come and gone. No one knew just where, but at the one lodging-house which the little settlement possessed, it was hinted that Courtot had headed still further north, perhaps to Los Robles.
'Jim Courtot, he muttered under his breath, as though the man were with him, and as he saw fancied visions of things to be, 'I have it in my heart to be almost sorry for you. Then he shrugged, filled his lungs with the fresh clean cool air which rose up across the miles from his own pastures and set his feet into the trail that would lead home by way of the Longstreets. Now he walked eagerly.
At every swinging stride of Barbee's roan he grew but the more impatient for the end of the ride and the face of Jim Courtot. The broad sun flattened against the low hills and sank out of sight. Dusk came and thickened and the stars began to flare out. Against the darkening skyline before him the Last Ridge country reared itself sombrely.
There was bright bitter challenge in his eyes as he stared across the table at Courtot. 'Ten bucks to start her off, he said shortly. Longstreet had supposed it customary to begin with a dollar; in his mind, however, there was little difference between one and ten. Therefore he made no remark and placed his own money in the pot. The two Mexicans tossed their cards away.
To Howard it seemed a simple thing to imagine that Courtot had committed some deed which had brought after him the unsleeping vengeance of a desert Indian. In San Juan Howard found a representative of Doan, Rockwell and Haight, the cattle buyers, awaiting him; and the same day the deal was completed, a cheque placed in his hands and the cattle turned over to the buyers' drivers.
He had seen how she did without little things; he had felt that she was just exactly the finest girl in all of the world; it had seemed to him only the right and logical thing that she should own a gold mine. And now it was to go to Jim Courtot and Sanchia Murray. Sanchia instead of Helen! At the moment he felt that he could have choked the lying heart out of the woman's soft white throat.
Word Of The Day