Gun Gentlemen by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2019-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XII. — A WOMAN’S WAY

IT was nearly noon before Molly Aiken came down to them. They had left the house and walked through the wrecked environs of the place—among the rotten sheds and the tumbled barns which had once been mighty buildings.

A close feeling seemed to have grown up in the breast of the old man for his companion. He referred to it once or twice in actual words—more often Lucky was made to feel it by inference, as though he, Lucky, was the only man in the world who could come so close to the heart of Jefferson Taliaferro. And the reason was that he had been the bearer of good tidings—he had brought a story which restored to Jefferson good faith, pride in the memory of that other Taliaferro who had died in the arms of Lucky.

“Why,” said he, “I feel that you are almost a relation, Lucky. You have had the blood of our family on your clothes—on your hands, eh?”

The very name seemed to please Jefferson Taliaferro. Sometimes in a pause of the conversation he would begin to repeat softly, “Lucky! Lucky!” and then he would look askance at his companion and laugh with childish delight.

It was in the midst of one of these controlled bursts of mirth that another sound struck down at them from the upper part of the house—for they had come back into it and were sitting in the big library. It was the singing of Molly Aiken as she came down the stairs, running; it brought Jefferson Taliaferro out of his chair with a gasp, and he stood in a stiff posture—partly erect, partly stooped toward the chair. His eyes were the eyes of one who sees a ghost.

“The girl!” he exclaimed suddenly, as one painfully relieved. “I forgot her. For a moment I thought—”

Whatever his thought was, he brushed it away by passing his hand across his eyes; and he and Lucky went to meet her. It was the first time that the latter had seen her in the daylight, and he started at the change in her. The moon had whitened her, made her more statuesque, more reserved, and there had been about her a harmonious air of melancholy romance—the girl, helpless, fleeing from her family to her lover.

Keen daylight brushed these illusions away. She was not lovely in the true sense of the word, but she was charmingly pretty. So far from being a crystal white, her skin was richly colored olive—the clear olive of the outdoors. More than beauty of features her charm was her manner, her inexhaustible spirit. There was something about her walk that expressed a keen delight in living; and in an hour of talk her face was never twice the same, but passed through an infinity of moods.

As she ran down the last of the stairs and came across the dusty old hall toward them Lucky had a different thought for every step she took, until when she paused before them she had stepped into her new character, in his eyes, and he had adjusted himself to her.

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