The Garden of Eden by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2013-05-12T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Ruth Manning read the note through for the first time she raised her glance to the bearer. The boy was so sun-blackened that the paler skin of the eyelids made his eyes seem supremely large. He was now poised accurately on one foot, rubbing his calloused heel up and down his shin, while he drank in the particulars of the telegraph office. He could hardly be a party to a deception. She looked over the note again, and read:

DEAR MISS MANNING:

I am a couple of miles out of Lukin, in a place to which the bearer of this note will bring you. I am sure you will come, for I am in trouble, out of which you can very easily help me. It is a matter which I cannot confide to any other person in Lukin. I am impatiently expecting you.

BEN CONNOR.

She crumpled the note in her hand thoughtfully, but, on the verge of dropping it in the waste basket, she smoothed it again, and for the third time went over the contents. Then she rose abruptly and confided her place to the lad who idled at the counter.

“The wire’s dead,” she told him. “Besides, I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

And she rode off a moment later with the boy. He had a blanket-pad without stirrups, and he kept prodding the sliding elbows of the horse with his bare toes while he chattered at Ruth, for the drum of the sounder had fascinated him and he wanted it explained. She listened to him with a smile of inattention, for she was thinking busily of Connor. Those thoughts made her look down to the dust that puffed up from the feet of the horses and became a light mist behind them; then, raising her head, she saw the blue ravines of the farther mountains and the sun haze about the crests. Connor had always been to her as the ship is to a traveler; the glamour of strange places was about him.

Presently they left the trail, and passing about a hillside, came to an old shack whose unpainted wood had blackened with time.

“There he is,” said the boy, and waving his hand to her, turned his pony on the back trail at a gallop.

Connor called to her from the shack and came to meet her, but she had dismounted before he could reach the stirrup. He kept her hand in his for a moment as he greeted her. It surprised him to find how glad he was to see her. He told her so frankly.

“After the mountains and all that,” he said cheerfully, “it’s like meeting an old chum again to see you. How have things been going?”

This direct friendliness in a young man was something new to the girl. The youths who came in to the dances at Lukin were an embarrassed lot who kept a sulky distance, as though they made it a matter of pride to show they were able to resist the attraction of a pretty girl.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.