So Dies the Dreamer by Ursula Curtiss

Author:Ursula Curtiss [Curtiss, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-16T14:00:00+00:00

For some reason, perhaps because he had always kept so brusquely to himself, Sarah had never thought of Hunter as a source of information. It had come as a shock to her that he knew, from that unexpected question in the car, exactly what she was about here. Charles had never said much about him, but she had put that down to the fact that men took each other more for granted than women did, or perhaps there just wasn’t much to say. Now she wondered.

Bess was at the far side of the barn, collecting quail eggs like a croupier from the tiered cages that were built shallow so that the quail, who flew straight up at the slightest alarm, could not gain enough momentum to knock themselves senseless. She said over her shoulder that she had put the feeders in the stable; Sarah could fill those with turkey pellets and, in this cold, add a sprinkle of corn. Bess herself would replace the feeders; she didn’t trust the Silver with strangers, or even the Reeves.

Reeves. . .

Sarah took her time with the turkey pellets, examining these three enclosed pens with a more careful eye than before. They had originally been stalls, and the small windows high up under the slanting roof left the rear part in shadow except for the white snow-light that streamed through the small exists to the outside runs. At the moment, the only tenant in occupancy was the mild ungainly Silver hen, hiding from her warlike mate and listening hopefully to the rattle of the turkey pellets.

Bess had stood the water-holders in a row to be thawed at leisure as the pheasants would eat the fresh-fallen snow. With the feeders also out, the pens were empty except for the Reeves’; this held a propped hickory branch where they could roost and dispose their sweeping tails without damage. That left only the long, narrow nesting boxes and the litter covering the planked floor, but the nesting boxes were cleaned regularly and the litter swept out and replaced from the bale in the corner. So that whatever Charles had thought was here—the thing so important that he had broken a self-imposed rule by writing a private memo in his office engagement book—could hardly be here any longer.

Or could it? Was it coincidence that two of the three names had been the doubtful-tempered breeds which Bess insisted on caring for herself? The illegibly crossed-out name might have been Amherst or Copper; on the other hand it might have been Silver, which would confine his interest to the stable area.

What had Hunter said about the Silvers in the car driving home? “A tremendous wing span, and spurs like knives . . . Long John had lost his bit.”

How big Long John was, three times the size of the Amherst cock, twice the size of the Reeves. The Manchurians seemed to wear their weight comfortably; Long John’s was all power and alertness. Sarah’s eye left him and went probingly around the stable.

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