The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ directly to the mirror. "That is a mark of Mr. Woolfridge's affection, Jim. I suppose I should feel honored that he wished to kidnap me. Where is he now?"

      "In jail."

      She turned and came over. "My poor man! They have hurt you so much more than they've hurt me. Is it all done?"

      "All but the judge and the jury."

      She made a queer little gesture with her hand. "Then there is nothing for me to do but pack."

      "Pack for what? Where are you going?"

      "Back home," said she in a rather small voice.

      He shook his head. "Not now. Nor any other time without me. Gay—"

      Her fine rounding features were pale. One hand crept to her breast, and she seemed profoundly disturbed. He caught the changing expression had came nearer.

      "I can only bring you a bad name," said she quietly. "Only a bad name."

      "I ain't interested in that, Gay."

      "Oh, you have always been that way! Why don't you ask me about myself? Why won't you let me tell you? Do you think I'd ever come to you with all that's behind me—you not knowing?"

      "I know."

      "You can't know. How could you?"

      "Folks took plenty of pains to tell me during those days in Bannock City."

      "Well?"

      "They're a bunch of blind fools," he grunted. "Do you figure I believe it? The first time I saw you I knew the kind of a woman you were. I—"

      "I ran away," said she, the words rushing out of her, "because home meant only a dad who worked me from daylight to dark and sent me to bed hungry. I ran away because the only man who was ever kind to me in those years helped me to do it. Whatever I am, Jim, I have made myself. That man was nothing but kind. Never anything but that from the time he took me in his rig until the time he put me on a train going east. I have never seen him again. Nobody else ever has. And so the story about me was carried on. Jim, I have been decent—I—"

      "Don't need to tell me that, Gay," was his gruff reply. "I don't like to hear you defending yourself. You don't need to. Seems to me I need to do the explainin'. I'm white and twenty- eight. Sound of limb and busted flat. But I think, now that the fighting is over, I can get a job. Always some kind of a job. Some kind of shelter."

      "Shelter—Jim I have never known the security of a home of my own. Never. Pillar to post is the way I have lived. I washed dishes to go to school. Always wandering. Wherever you want to take me—if you want me at all—"

      Somebody came up the stairway and turned at the door. Craib's bald head glistened on them as he ducked.

      "Oh, Jim."

      "Come in, Craib."

      But Craib stopped on the doorsill. "Man that rented your place from Woolfridge came to me to-night. I took it over. You're free to go back, Jim. I'll take care of all the details. It ain't mine yet and it ain't yours. But you go back. We'll straighten it out and we'll stock it up. I want no money from you till everything's back to normal. It's just a personal affair between the both of us and I wanted to come and tell you soon's I could. I would like—" and the heavy face changed a trifle, as much as it ever would—"I would like you to consider me a friend."

      "Well," began Jim, and found himself looking at an empty opening. Craib had gone.

      "There's shelter, Gay," he drawled.

      She smiled, and the color came back to her as he closed in.

      Presently she looked up, the film of tears in her eyes, but still smiling. "You take care of the outside of that cabin, Jim, and I'll take care of the inside."

      "Put on a hat," said Chaffee with already that touch of proprietorship which comes to a married man, "and let's go down for a cup of coffee."

      SON OF THE WEST

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Chapter I

       Chapter II

       Chapter III

       Chapter IV

       Chapter V

       Chapter VI

       Chapter VII

       Chapter VIII

       Chapter IX

       Chapter X

       Chapter XI

       Chapter XII

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      The sprawling, haze-dimmed outline of Angels, Casabella County's official seat and only town, had been in front of Clint Charterhouse all during the last five miles riding across the undulating prairie. And because many days and weeks of lonely traveling had taught this tall, hazel-eyed man the value of keeping his mind always occupied he had been speculating on the nature of this remote and isolated place. Experience told him it would be just another double row of sun-baked, paint-peeled buildings with a dusty sweltering street between; and since it was just past noon the citizens would be indoors dawdling. Clint Charterhouse, footloose and fancy free, had entered into and departed from a hundred such habitations of man and found none of them different.

      But as he checked his horse at the very limits of Angels, he discovered all his guesses wrong. This town was different and, with a quick interest breaking through the long saddle drowse, he swept the scene. There indeed lay the double row of paint-peeled buildings, perhaps fifteen on a side, and along the fronts of all ran second story porches that made of each sidewalk a long and shaded gallery. But Angels itself was far from being asleep on this sultry, droning day. The town СКАЧАТЬ