Bad Man's Gulch Read Free Page A

tonight.”
    Lazy Purdue shuddered. He could not meet Conover’s eye, but he spoke lowly: “I . . . I have no right to stay in this here house . . . least of all on
this
night.”
    â€œYou will hurt me, suh,” said Conover, “if you leave. His room is ready for you, suh . . . I beg you to use it. It’s a long walk to any other place, and the night is late. Come with me.”
    He led the way and Lazy Purdue, after a moment of hesitation, followed him with bowed head as the girl had gone a moment before. He followed up the stairs, and the old man opened a door and lighted him into the room.
    Old Conover pottered about the room, lowering window shades, drawing back the sheets of the bed, and turning on the water in the bathroom, and then he laid out a suit of clothes on a chair.
    â€œYou an’ George,” he muttered half musingly, “mus’ be about the same build. I reckon these will fit you tol’able well.”
    But Lazy Purdue could not answer for a strange choking in his throat.
    â€œGood night,” said Conover, “an’ God bless you for the kindness you done my boy when he was dyin’. Good night.”
    He closed the door softly, and Lazy Purdue looked grimly about the room. From every corner the thought of the dead boy looked out at him. Upon the wall hung brilliantly colored photographs of girls, evidently cut from calendars. Lazy Purdue recognized one of these as the inviting advertisement of a prominent breakfast food. Her hair fell down in two braids in front, and between her smiling lips lay a strand of heavily headed wheat straws. A brace of strong fishing rods stood slant in one corner of the room with a riding crop and two pairs of spurs near it. Another side of the wall bore a rack in which were three shotguns of the latest make, and below them the gray, shining barrel of a repeating rifle.
    It seemed to him that the boy had come back to life and was moving about the room with him as he made ready for bed. He could imagine the topics of the conversation from girls to hunting, and all in the whimsical drawl of the mountaineers, a remembered and delightful music to the ear of Lazy Purdue.
    The soothing touch of the warm water of the bath drew the ache from his body, and afterwards he sat a while near the window wrapped in a dressing gown and alive with thought. Then came a light tapping on the door. He opened the door cautiously and peeked out. Marion stood in the hallway. She was dressed in the robe still, and he glimpsed the white of her feet in their bedroom slippers.
    â€œI must speak to you,” she entreated. “Father and Mother have gone to bed, an’ I must speak with you for just a little minute. Will you let me in?”
    He opened the door silently, and she slipped pasthim. When he turned slowly from the closing of the door, he found her standing in the center of the room, facing him, her eyes wide with resolve and fear. They faced each other silently for a long moment; he with a certain sadness and she with a peculiar eagerness.
    â€œI have come on a strange errand,” she said somewhat breathlessly.
    He made no answer.
    â€œI have come on a strange errand,” she repeated, gathering courage and determination as she went on. “An’ when you hear what I ask, I’m only a-hopin’ that you won’t laugh. Oh, I
know
you won’t, for when I leaned over the rail o’ that stairs and looked down and met your eyes, I knew they was a man’s eyes, an’, when I went down an’ spoke to you, they was no waver in them and they looked through an’ through me. Will you-all hear me now?”
    He clenched his hand as the note of pleading came into her voice, and a shock of premonition as to the nature of her request made his forehead cold.
    â€œGo on,” he said somewhat hoarsely, “I’ll listen to the end.”
    â€œStranger,” she said, “you brought a death into this here