Her Prairie Knight, Lonesome Land & The Uphill Climb: Complete Western Trilogy by B. M. Bower

Author:B. M. Bower [Bower, B. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027220571
Publisher: Musaicum Press
Published: 2017-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XIV. A Wedding Present

Table of Contents

Sunday it was, and Val had insisted stubbornly upon going back to the ranch; somewhat to her surprise, if one might judge by her face, Arline Hawley no longer demurred, but put up lunch enough for a week almost, and announced that she was going along. Hank would have to drive out, to bring back the team, and she said she needed a rest, after all the work and worry of that dance. Manley, upon whose account it was that Val was so anxious, seemed to have nothing whatever to say about it. He was sullenly acquiescent—as was perhaps to be expected of a man who had slipped into his old habits and despised himself for doing so, and almost hated his wife because she had discovered it and said nothing. Val was thankful, during that long, bleak ride over the prairie, for Arline’s incessant chatter. It was better than silence, when the silence means bitter thoughts.

“Now,” said Arline, moving excitedly in her seat when they neared Cold Spring Coulee, “maybe I better tell you that the folks round here has kinda planned a little su’prise for you. They don’t make much of a showin’ about bein’ neighborly—not when things go smooth—but they’re right there when trouble comes. It’s jest a little weddin’ present—and if it comes kinda late in the day, why, you don’t want to mind that. My dance that I gave was a weddin’ party, too, if you care to call it that. Anyway, it was to raise the money to pay for our present, as far as it went—and I want to tell you right now, Val, that you was sure the queen of the ball; everybody said you looked jest like a queen in a picture, and I never heard a word ag’inst your low-neck dress. It looked all right on you, don’t you see? On me, for instance, it woulda been something fierce. And I’m real glad you took a hold and danced like you did, and never passed nobody up, like some woulda done. You’ll be glad you did, now you know what it was for. Even danced with Polycarp Jenks—and there ain’t hardly any woman but what’ll turn him down; I’ll bet he tromped all over your toes, didn’t he?”

“Sometimes,” Val admitted. “What about the surprise you were speaking of, Mrs. Hawley?”

“It does seem as if you might call me Arline,” she complained irrelevantly. “We’re comin’ to that—don’t you worry.”

“Is it—a piano?”

“My lands, no! You don’t need a fiddle and a piano both, do you? Man, what’d you rather have for a weddin’ present?”

Manley, upon the front seat beside Hank, gave his shoulders an impatient twitch. “Fifty thousand dollars,” he replied glumly.

“I’m glad you’re real modest about it,” Arline retorted sharply. She was beginning to tell herself quite frequently that she “didn’t have no time for Man Fleetwood, seeing he wouldn’t brace up and quit drinkin.”

Val’s lips curled as she looked at Manley’s back. “What I

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