Firebrand Trevison by Seltzer Charles Alden

Author:Seltzer, Charles Alden [Seltzer, Charles Alden]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-28T00:56:40.203000+00:00

"CAUTION. DYNAMITE."

"Do you keep much of it there?"

"Enough for anny blastin' we have to do. There's plenty--half a ton, mebbe."

"Who's got the key?"

"Meself."

Corrigan returned to town, breakfasted, mounted a horse and rode out to the dam, where he gave orders for some laborers to be sent to Carson. At nine o'clock he was back in Manti talking with Pickand, and watching the dinky engine as it pulled the loaded flat-cars westward over the tracks. He left Pickand and went to his office in the bank building, where he conferred with some men regarding various buildings and improvements in contemplation, and shortly after ten, glancing out of a window, he saw a buckboard stop in front of the Castle hotel. Corrigan waited a little, then closed his desk and walked across the street. Shortly he confronted Hester Harvey in her room. He saw from her downcast manner that she had failed. His face darkened.

"Wouldn't work, eh? What did he say?"

The woman was hunched down in her chair, still wearing the cloak that she had worn in Trevison's office; the collar still up, the front thrown open. Her hair was disheveled; dark lines were under her eyes; she glared at Corrigan in an abandon of savage dejection.

"He turned me down--cold." Her laugh held the bitterness of self-derision. "I'm through, there, Jeff."

"Hell!" cursed the man. She looked at him, her lips curving with amused contempt.

"Oh, you're all right--don't worry. That's all you care about, isn't it?" She laughed harshly at the quickened light in his eyes. "You'd see me sacrifice myself; you wouldn't give me a word of sympathy. That's you! That's the way of all men. Give, give, give! That's the masculine chorus--the hunting-song of the human wolf-pack!"

"Don't talk like that--it ain't like you, kid. You were always the gamest little dame I ever knew." He essayed to take the hand that was twisted in the folds of her cloak, but she drew it away from him in a fury. And the eagerness in his eyes betrayed the insincerity of his attempt at consolation; she saw it--the naked selfishness of his look--and sneered at him.

"You want the good news, eh? The good for you? That's all you care about. After you get it, I'll get the husks of your pity. Well, here it is. I've poisoned them both--against each other. I told him she was against him in this land business. And it hurt me to see how gamely he took it, Jeff!" her voice broke, but she choked back the sob and went on, hoarsely: "He didn't make a whimper. Not even when I told him you were going to marry her--that you were engaged. But there was a fire in those eyes of his that I would give my soul to see there for me!"

"Yes--yes," said the man, impatiently.

"Oh, you devil!" she railed at him. "I've made him think it was a frame-up between you and her--to get information out of him; I told him that she had strung him along for a month or so--amusing herself.

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