FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140  
141   >>  
h bedstead had been displaced for a small wrought-iron ascetic-looking couch covered with a gorgeously striped Mexican blanket. The fireplace had been dismantled of its steel grate, and the hearth extended so as to allow a pile of symmetrically heaped moss-covered hickory logs to take its place. The walls were covered with trophies of the chase, buck-horns and deer-heads, and a number of Indian arrows stood in a sheaf in the corners beside a few modern guns and rifles. "Perfectly lovely," said Marie, "but"--with a slight shiver of her expressive shoulders--"a little cold and outdoorish, eh?" "Nonsense," returned Kitty dictatorially, "and if he IS cold, he can easily light those logs. They always build their open fires under a tree. Why, even Mr. Gunn used to do that when he was camping out in the Adirondacks last summer. I call it perfectly comfortable and SO natural." Nevertheless, they had both tucked their chilly hands under the fleecy shawls they had snatched from the hall for this hyperborean expedition. "You have taken much pains for him, Kaitee," said Marie, with her faintest foreign intonation. "You will like this strange uncle--you?" "He is a wonderful man, Marie; he's been everywhere, seen everything, and done everything out there. He's fought duels, been captured by Indians and tied to a stake to be tortured. He's been leader of a Vigilance Committee, and they say that he has often shot and killed men himself. I'm afraid he's been rather wicked, you know. He's lived alone in the woods like a hermit without seeing a soul, and then, again, he's been a chief among the Indians, with Heaven knows how many Indian wives! They called him 'The Pale-faced Thunderbolt,' my dear, and 'The Young Man who Swallows the Lightning,' or something like that." "And what can he want here?" asked Marie. "To see us, my dear," said Kitty loftily; "and then, too, he has to settle something about HIS share of the property; for you know grandpa left a share of it to him. Not that he's ever bothered himself about it, for he's rich,--a kind of Monte Cristo, you know,--with a gold mine and an island off the coast, to say nothing of a whole county that he owns, that is called after him, and millions of wild cattle that he rides among and lassos! It's dreadfully hard to do. You know you take a long rope with a slipknot, and you throw it around your head so, and"-- "Hark!" said Marie, with a dramatic start, and her finger on her
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140  
141   >>  



Top keywords:
covered
 

Indians

 

called

 

Indian

 

hermit

 
Heaven
 
wicked
 

tortured

 
leader
 

Vigilance


captured

 

fought

 
Committee
 

finger

 
afraid
 

Thunderbolt

 
dramatic
 
killed
 

bothered

 

grandpa


millions

 

property

 

Cristo

 

county

 

island

 

cattle

 

settle

 

Lightning

 

Swallows

 

dreadfully


loftily

 
lassos
 

slipknot

 

striped

 

slight

 
shiver
 

gorgeously

 
Mexican
 

lovely

 
modern

rifles
 

Perfectly

 
expressive
 
shoulders
 

easily

 

dictatorially

 
outdoorish
 

Nonsense

 
returned
 

corners