Adam Steele 40 The Sunset Ride by George G. Gilman

Author:George G. Gilman [Gilman, George G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

Adam Steele quickly revised his first impression of Providence as a town like many he had seen in his younger days in a state on the far side of the country from this California community.

It was the white-painted clapboard church and the other timber-construction buildings beside the church and across the street from it which had sparked his nostalgia. These were a half dozen houses, one and two storied, which were also white painted. Set back from the un-sidewalked dirt street behind fenced gardens. Beyond this strip of straight street that cut into the southern fringe of the trees, Providence seemed to be not so much a town as a number of relatively isolated buildings erected on sites scattered throughout the stand of timber. The street sometimes seemed to revert to a trail as it meandered among the pines and live oaks, birches and maples, spruces and willows: when no buildings were in sight and just spurs at either side indicated there were places far back in the timber. Houses probably, like those that could be seen from the slow-rolling wagon. These mostly of a single story, built of various materials that ranged from simple split logs to bricks of red or yellow or grey. Some of them as well maintained in neatly tended gardens as those in the area of the church. Others rundown, standing directly at the side of the trail-like street, or a few set back behind hard-packed front yards or weed-choked plots that had maybe started out as gardens.

Smoke curled up from every visible chimney, rising toward a sky that was in large part obscured by the timber: the fragrances of woodsmoke and cooking food almost masking the unsavoury aroma that emanated from the baby in the makeshift crib. Apart from the pair of men in the cemetery who had attempted to conceal their keen interest in the passing hay wagon, the smoke from the house chimneys was the only sign of life to be seen in Providence. Until a small girl of six or seven appeared at the open doorway of a stone and timber house to gaze at the early morning passersby with the guileless frankness of childhood. A few moments later, obviously drawn to take a look outside the house by the sounds of the wagon's progress, a middle-aged woman stepped into the doorway at the side of the child. She stared hard for a stretched second, then jerked the girl backwards and slammed the door closed with a crash that put a flock of birds to startled flight.

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