United States or Benin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Jake was holding a gun thrust forward. "Boss, he's goin' to kill Glidden!" said the cowboy, in a low tone. Anderson's reply was incoherent, but its meaning was plain. Lenore's lips and tongue almost denied her utterance. "Oh!... Don't let him!" The crowd behind the wrestling couple swayed back and forth, and men changed places here and there. Bill strode across the space, guns leveled.
With one swift lunge Kurt knocked the man flat and then leaped to stand over him, watching for a move to draw a weapon. The little foreigner slunk back out of reach. "I'll start a little marking myself," grimly said Kurt. "Get up!" Slowly Glidden moved from elbow to knees, and then to his feet. His cheek was puffing out and his nose was bleeding. The light-gray eyes were lurid.
"What're you going to do with this young fellow?" queried Bradford, curiously. "That's none of your business," returned Glidden. "Maybe not. But I reckon I'll ask, anyhow. You want me to join your I.W.W., and I'm asking questions. Labor strikes standing up for your rights is one thing, and burning wheat or slugging young farmers is another. Are you going to let this Dorn go?"
"He won't," pronounced the veteran with finality. "They never do. They chafe. They strain. They curse out the job and themselves. They say it isn't fit for any white man. So it isn't, the worst of it. But they stick. If they're marked for it, they stick." "Marked for it?" murmured Glidden. "The ink-spot. The mark of the beast. I've got it. You've got it, Glidden, and you, McHale.
This fiendish work, as had been forecast, was the work of the I.W.W. Behind it was Glidden and perhaps behind him was the grasping, black lust of German might. Kurt's loss was no longer abstract or problematical. It was a loss so real and terrible that it confounded him. He shook and gasped and reeled.
He's shorely doin' well, I reckons, when mebby it's a week later he comes chargin' over to a passel of us an' allows he wants the committee to settle some trouble which has cut his trail. ""It's about the debts of this yere Glidden, deceased," says Cimmaron. "I succeeds to the business of course; which it's little enough for departed ropin' my pony that time.
Feeling in his pocket for his gun, he was disturbed to find that it had been taken. He had no weapon. But he did not hesitate. Bounding up, he rushed like a hurricane upon the unprepared group. He saw Glidden's pale face upheld to the light of the stars, and by it saw that Glidden was recovering.
"I've never seen him around," remarked Glidden. "What does he do with himself besides work?" "Nothing, I imagine," answered Mallory. "One of the cubs reports finding him at the Public Library, before ten o'clock in the morning, surrounded by books on journalism. He's a serious young owl." "It doesn't get into his copy, then," asserted "Parson" Gale, political expert for The Ledger.
And that exchange showed these two of the same breed and sure of each other. "Nawthin' come off, boss," he drawled, "but I'm glad you're home." "Did Nash leave the place?" queried Anderson. "Twice, at night, an' he was gone long. I didn't foller him because I seen he didn't take no luggage, an' thet boy has some sporty clothes. He was sure comin' back." "Any sign of his pard that Glidden?" "Nope.
Word Of The Day