Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

“I can't help it—I shall go crazy standing here. I've just got to see!” she panted.

For a moment he clung to the glasses and stared down at her. “You better not, sweetheart,” he urged gently, but when she still held fast he let them go. She raised them hurriedly to her eyes, and turned to the river with a shrinking impatience to know the worst and have it over with.

“E-everything j-joggles so,” she whimpered complainingly, trying vainly to steady the glasses. He slipped his arms around her, and let her lean against him; she did not even seem to realize it. Just then she had caught sight of something, and her intense interest steadied her so that she stood perfectly still.

“Why, your horse—” she gasped. “Michael—he's got his feet straight up in the air—oh, Kent, he's rolling over sad over! I can't see—” She held her breath.

The glasses sagged as if they had grown all at once too heavy to hold. “I—I thought I saw—” She shivered and hid her face upon one upflung arm.

Kent caught up the glasses and looked long at the river, unmindful of the girl sobbing wildly beside him. Finally he turned to her, hesitated, and then gathered her close in his arms. The glasses slid unheeded to the floor.

“Don't cry—it's better this way, though it's hard enough, God knows.” His voice was very gentle. “Think how awful it would have been, Val, if the law had got him. Don't cry like that! Such things are happening every day, somewhere—” He realized suddenly that this was no way to comfort her, and stopped. He patted her shoulder with a sense of blank helplessness. He could make love—but this was not the time for love-making; and since he was denied that outlet for his feelings, he did not know what to do, except that he led her to the couch, and settled her among the cushions so that she would be physically comfortable, at least. He turned restlessly to the window, looked; out, and then went to the couch and bent over her.

“I'm going out to the gate—I want to see Jake Bondy. He's coming up the coulee,” he said. “I won't be far. Poor little girl—poor little pal, I wish I could help you.” He touched his lips to her hair, so lightly she could not feel it, and left her.

At the gate he met, not the sheriff, who was riding slowly, and had just passed through the field gate, but Arline and Hank, rattling up in the Hawley buck-board.

“Thank the good Lord!” he exclaimed when he helped her from the rig. “I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. Go on in—she's in there crying her heart out. Man's dead—the sheriff shot him in the river—oh, there's been hell to pay out here!”

“My heavens above!” Arline stared up at him while she grasped the significance of his words. “I knowed he'd hit for here—I followed right out as quick as Hank could hitch up the team. Did you hear about Fred—”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it!” Kent was guilty of pulling her through the gate, and then pushing her toward the house. “You go and do something for that poor girl. Pack her up and take her to town as quick as God'll let you. There's been misery enough for her out here to kill a dozen women.”

He watched until she had reached the porch, and then swung back to Hank, sitting calmly in the buckboard, with the lines gripped between his knees while he filled his pipe.

“I can take care of the man's side of this business, fast enough,” Kent confessed whimsically, “but there's some things it takes a woman to handle.” He glanced again over his shoulder, gave a huge sigh of relief when he glimpsed Arline's thin face as she passed the window and knelt beside the couch, and turned with a lighter heart to meet the sheriff.