Louisiana Lou by Winter William West

Author:Winter, William West [West, Winter, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2009-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XIII

AT WALLACE’S RANCH

The efficient Sucatash reported back to Solange the details of De Launay’s escape, making them characteristically brief and colorful. Then, with the effective aid of MacKay, he set out to prepare for the expedition in search of the mine.

Neither Sucatash nor Dave actually had any real conviction that Solange would venture into the Esmeraldas at this time of year to look for a mine whose very existence they doubted as being legendary. Yet neither tried to dissuade her from the rash adventure—as yet. In this attitude they were each governed by like feelings. Both of them were curious and sentimental. Each secretly wondered what the slender, rather silent young woman looked like, and each was beginning to imagine that the veil hid some extreme loveliness. Each felt himself handicapped in the unwonted atmosphere of the town and each imagined that, once he got on his own preserves, he would show to much better advantage in her eyes.

Sucatash was quite confident that, once they got Solange at his father’s ranch, they would be able to persuade her to stay there for the winter. Dave also had about the same idea. Each reasoned that, in an indeterminate stay at the ranch, she would certainly, in time, show her countenance. Neither of them figured De Launay as anything but some assistant, more or less familiar with the West, whom she had engaged and who had been automatically eliminated by virtue of his latest escapade.

Solange, however, developed a disposition to arrange her own fate. She smiled politely when the young men gave awkward advice as to her costuming and equipment, but paid little heed to it. She allowed them to select the small portion of her camping outfit that they thought necessary at this stage, and to arrange for a car to take it and them to Wallace’s ranch. They took their saddles in the car and sent their horses out by such chance riders as happened to be going that way.

The journey to Wallace’s ranch was uneventful except for a stop at the former Brandon ranch at Twin Forks, where Solange met the Basco proprietors, and gave her cow-puncher henchmen further cause for wonder by conversing fluently with them in a language which bore no resemblance to any they had ever heard before. They noted an unusual deference which the shy mountaineers extended toward her.

There was a pause of some time while Solange visited the almost obliterated mound marking the grave of her father. But she did not pray over it or manifest any great emotion. She simply stood there for some time, lost in thought, or else mentally renewing her vow of vengeance on his murderer. Then, after discovering that the sheepmen knew nothing of consequence concerning these long-past events, she came quietly back to the car and they resumed the journey.

Finally they passed a camp fire set back from the road at some distance and the cow-punchers pointed out the figure of Banker crouched above it, apparently oblivious of them.

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