章节正文
from the heart of her; she had not yet looked upon the
possibility of absolute failure.
She was going to buy back the Lazy A from her
Uncle Carl, and she was going to tear away that
atmosphere of emptiness and desolation which it had worn
so long. She was going to prove to all men that her
father never had killed Johnny Croft. She was going
to do it! Then life would begin where it had left off
three years ago. And when this deadening load of
trouble was lifted, then perhaps she could do some of
the glorious, great things she had all of her life dreamed
of doing. Or, if she never did the glorious, great
things, she would at least have done something to justify
her existence. She would be content in her cage if she
could go round and round doing things for dad.
A level stretch of country lay at the foot of the long
bluff, which farther along held the Lazy A coulee close
against its rocky side. The high ridges stood out boldly
in the moonlight, so that she could see every rock and
the shadow that it cast upon the ground. Little, soothing
night noises fitted themselves into her thoughts and
changed them to waking dreams. Crickets that hushed
while she passed them by; the faint hissing of a half-
wakened breeze that straightway slept upon the grasses
it had stirred; the sleepy protest of some bird which
Pard's footsteps had startled.
She came into Lazy A coulee, half fancying that it
was a real home-coming. But when she reached the
gate and found it lying flat upon the ground away from
the broad tread of the picture-people's machine, her
mind jarred from dreams back to reality. From sheer
habit she dismounted, picked up the spineless thing of
stakes and barbed wire, dragged it into place across
the trail, and fastened it securely to the post. She
remounted and went on, and a little of the hopefulness
was gone from her face.
"I'll just about have to rob a bank, I guess," she told
herself with a grim humor at the tremendous undertaking
to which she had so calmly committed herself.
"This is what dad would call a man-sized job, I
reckon." She pulled up in the white-lighted trail and
stared along the empty, sagging-roofed sheds and stables,
and at the corral with its open gate and warped
rails and leaning posts. "I'll just about have to rob
a bank,--or write a book that will make me famous."
She touched Pard with a rein end and went on slowly.
"Robbing a bank would be the quickest and easiest,"
she decided whimsically, as she neared the place where
she always sheltered Pard. "But not so ladylike. I
guess I'll write a book. It should be something real
thrilly, so the people will rush madly to all the bookstores
to buy it. It should have a beautiful girl, and
at least two handsome men,--one with all the human
virtues, and the other with all the arts of the devil and
the cruel strength of the savage. And--I think some
Indians and outlaws would add several dollars' worth of
thrills; or else a ghost and a haunted house. I wonder
which would sell the best? Indians could steal the girl
and give her two handsome men a chance to do chapters
of stunts, and the wicked one could find her first
and carry her away in front of him on a horse (they
do those things in books!) and the hero could follow in
a mad chase for miles and miles--
"But then, ghosts can be made very creepy, with
tantalizing glimpses of them now and then in about every
other chapter, and mysterious hints here and there, and
characters coming down to breakfast with white, drawn
faces and haggard eyes. And the wicked one would
look over his shoulder and then utter a sardonic laugh. Sardonic
is such an effective word; I don't believe
Indians would give him any excuse for sardonic laughter."
She swung down from the saddle and led Pard into
his stall, that was very black next the manger and very
light where the moon shone in at the door. "I must
have lots of moonlight and several stormy sunsets, and
the wind soughing in the branches. I shall have to
buy a new dictionary,--a big, fat, heavy one with the
flags of all nations and how to measure the contents
of an empty hogshead, and the deaf and dumb alphabet,
and everything but the word you want to know the meaning
of and whether it begins with ph or an f."
She took the saddle off Pard and hung it up by a
stirrup on the rusty spike where she kept it, with the
bridle hung over the stirrup, and the saddle blanket
folded over the horn. She groped in the manger and
decided that there was hay enough to last him till morning,
and went out and closed the door. Her shadow
fell clean cut upon the rough planks, and she stood for a
minute looking at it as if it were a person. Her Stetson
hat tilted a little to one side, her hair fluffed loosely
at the sides, leaving her neck daintily slender where it
showed above the turned-back collar of her gray sweater;
her shoulders square and capable and yet not too heavy,
and the slim contour of her figure reaching down to
the ground. She studied it abstractedly, as she would
study herself in her mirror, conscious of the individuality,
its likeness to herself.
"I don't know what kind of a mess you'll make of it,"
she said to her shadow, "but you're going to tackle it,
just the same. You can't do a thing till you get some
money."
She turned then and went thoughtfully up to the
house and into her room, which had as yet been left
undisturbed behind the bars she had placed against idle
invasion.
The moon shone full into the window that faced the
coulee, and she sat down in the old, black wooden rocker
and gazed out upon the familiar, open stretch of sand
and scant grass-growth that lay between the house and
the corrals. She turned her eyes to the familiar bold
outline of the bluff that swung round in a crude oval
to the point where the trail turned into the coulee from
the southwest. Half-way between the base and the
ragged skyline, the boulder that looked like an
elephant's head stood out, white of profile, hooded with
black shade. Beyond was the fat shelf of ledge that
had a small cave beneath, where she had once found a
nest full of little, hungry birds and upon the slope
beneath the telltale, scattered wing-feathers, to show what
fate had fallen upon the mother. Those birds had died
also, and she had wept and given them Christian burial,
and had afterwards spent hours every day with her little
rifle hunting the destroyer of that small home. She
remembered the incident now as a small thread in the
memory-pattern she was weaving.
While the shadows shortened as the moon swung
high, she sat and looked out upon the coulee and the
bluff that sheltered it, and she saw the things that were
blended cunningly with the things that were not. After
a long while her hands unclasped themselves from behind
her head and dropped numbly to her lap. She
sighed and moved stiffly, and knew that she was tired
and that she must get some sleep, because she could not
sit down in one spot and think her way through the
problems she had taken it upon herself to solve. So she
got up and crept under the Navajo blanket upon the
couch, tucked it close about her shoulders, and shut her
eyes deliberately. Presently she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
JEAN LEARNS WHAT FEAR IS LIKE
Sometime in the still part of the night which
comes after midnight, Jean woke slowly from
dreaming of the old days that had been so vivid in her
mind when she went to sleep. Just at first she did not
know what it was that awakened her, though her eyes
were open and fixed upon the lighted square of the
window. She knew that she was in her room at the Lazy
A, but just at first it seemed to her that she was there
because she had always been sleeping in that room.
She sighed and turned her face away from the moonlight,
and closed her eyes again contentedly.
Half dreaming she opened them again and stared up
at the low ceiling. Somewhere in the house she heard
footsteps. Very slowly she wakened enough to listen.
They were footsteps,--the heavy, measured tread of
some man. They were in the room that had been her
father's bedroom, and at first they seemed perfectly
natural and right; they seemed to be her dad's footsteps,
and she wondered mildly what he was doing, up
at that time of night.
The footsteps passed from there into the kitchen and
stopped in the corner where stood the old-fashioned
cupboard with perforated tin panels in the doors and at the
sides, and the little drawers at the top,--the kind that
old people call a "safe." She heard a drawer pulled
out. Without giving any conscious thought to it, she
knew which drawer it was; it was the one next the wall,
--the one that did not pull out straight, and so had to
be jerked out. What was her dad . . . ?
Jean thrilled then with a tremor of fear. She had
wakened fully enough to remember. That was not her
dad, out there in the kitchen. She did not know who
it was; it was some strange man prowling through the
house, hunting for something. She felt again the
tremor of fear that is the heritage of womanhood alone
in the dark. She pulled the Navajo blanket up to her
ears with the instinct of the woman to hide, because
she is not strong enough to face and fight the danger
that comes in the dark. She listened to the sound of
that drawer being pushed back, and the other drawer
being pulled out, and she shivered under the blanket.
Then she reached out her hand and got hold of her
six-shooter which she had laid down unthinkingly upon a
chair near the couch. She wondered if she had locked
the outside door when she came in. She could not
remember having done so; probably she had not, since it is
not the habit of honest ranch-dwellers to lock their doors
at night. She wanted to get up and see, and fasten
it somehow; but she was afraid the man out there might
hear her. As it was, she reasoned nervously with herself,
he probably did not suspect that there was any
one in the house. It was an empty house. And unless
he had seen Pard in the closed stall. . . . She wondered
if he had heard Pard there, and had investigated and
found him. She wondered if he would come into this
room. She remembered how securely she had nailed
up the door from the kitchen, and she breathed freer.
She remembered also that she had her gun, there under
her hand. She closed her trembling fingers on the
familiar grip of it, and the feel of it comforted her and
steadied her.
possibility of absolute failure.
She was going to buy back the Lazy A from her
Uncle Carl, and she was going to tear away that
atmosphere of emptiness and desolation which it had worn
so long. She was going to prove to all men that her
father never had killed Johnny Croft. She was going
to do it! Then life would begin where it had left off
three years ago. And when this deadening load of
trouble was lifted, then perhaps she could do some of
the glorious, great things she had all of her life dreamed
of doing. Or, if she never did the glorious, great
things, she would at least have done something to justify
her existence. She would be content in her cage if she
could go round and round doing things for dad.
A level stretch of country lay at the foot of the long
bluff, which farther along held the Lazy A coulee close
against its rocky side. The high ridges stood out boldly
in the moonlight, so that she could see every rock and
the shadow that it cast upon the ground. Little, soothing
night noises fitted themselves into her thoughts and
changed them to waking dreams. Crickets that hushed
while she passed them by; the faint hissing of a half-
wakened breeze that straightway slept upon the grasses
it had stirred; the sleepy protest of some bird which
Pard's footsteps had startled.
She came into Lazy A coulee, half fancying that it
was a real home-coming. But when she reached the
gate and found it lying flat upon the ground away from
the broad tread of the picture-people's machine, her
mind jarred from dreams back to reality. From sheer
habit she dismounted, picked up the spineless thing of
stakes and barbed wire, dragged it into place across
the trail, and fastened it securely to the post. She
remounted and went on, and a little of the hopefulness
was gone from her face.
"I'll just about have to rob a bank, I guess," she told
herself with a grim humor at the tremendous undertaking
to which she had so calmly committed herself.
"This is what dad would call a man-sized job, I
reckon." She pulled up in the white-lighted trail and
stared along the empty, sagging-roofed sheds and stables,
and at the corral with its open gate and warped
rails and leaning posts. "I'll just about have to rob
a bank,--or write a book that will make me famous."
She touched Pard with a rein end and went on slowly.
"Robbing a bank would be the quickest and easiest,"
she decided whimsically, as she neared the place where
she always sheltered Pard. "But not so ladylike. I
guess I'll write a book. It should be something real
thrilly, so the people will rush madly to all the bookstores
to buy it. It should have a beautiful girl, and
at least two handsome men,--one with all the human
virtues, and the other with all the arts of the devil and
the cruel strength of the savage. And--I think some
Indians and outlaws would add several dollars' worth of
thrills; or else a ghost and a haunted house. I wonder
which would sell the best? Indians could steal the girl
and give her two handsome men a chance to do chapters
of stunts, and the wicked one could find her first
and carry her away in front of him on a horse (they
do those things in books!) and the hero could follow in
a mad chase for miles and miles--
"But then, ghosts can be made very creepy, with
tantalizing glimpses of them now and then in about every
other chapter, and mysterious hints here and there, and
characters coming down to breakfast with white, drawn
faces and haggard eyes. And the wicked one would
look over his shoulder and then utter a sardonic laugh. Sardonic
is such an effective word; I don't believe
Indians would give him any excuse for sardonic laughter."
She swung down from the saddle and led Pard into
his stall, that was very black next the manger and very
light where the moon shone in at the door. "I must
have lots of moonlight and several stormy sunsets, and
the wind soughing in the branches. I shall have to
buy a new dictionary,--a big, fat, heavy one with the
flags of all nations and how to measure the contents
of an empty hogshead, and the deaf and dumb alphabet,
and everything but the word you want to know the meaning
of and whether it begins with ph or an f."
She took the saddle off Pard and hung it up by a
stirrup on the rusty spike where she kept it, with the
bridle hung over the stirrup, and the saddle blanket
folded over the horn. She groped in the manger and
decided that there was hay enough to last him till morning,
and went out and closed the door. Her shadow
fell clean cut upon the rough planks, and she stood for a
minute looking at it as if it were a person. Her Stetson
hat tilted a little to one side, her hair fluffed loosely
at the sides, leaving her neck daintily slender where it
showed above the turned-back collar of her gray sweater;
her shoulders square and capable and yet not too heavy,
and the slim contour of her figure reaching down to
the ground. She studied it abstractedly, as she would
study herself in her mirror, conscious of the individuality,
its likeness to herself.
"I don't know what kind of a mess you'll make of it,"
she said to her shadow, "but you're going to tackle it,
just the same. You can't do a thing till you get some
money."
She turned then and went thoughtfully up to the
house and into her room, which had as yet been left
undisturbed behind the bars she had placed against idle
invasion.
The moon shone full into the window that faced the
coulee, and she sat down in the old, black wooden rocker
and gazed out upon the familiar, open stretch of sand
and scant grass-growth that lay between the house and
the corrals. She turned her eyes to the familiar bold
outline of the bluff that swung round in a crude oval
to the point where the trail turned into the coulee from
the southwest. Half-way between the base and the
ragged skyline, the boulder that looked like an
elephant's head stood out, white of profile, hooded with
black shade. Beyond was the fat shelf of ledge that
had a small cave beneath, where she had once found a
nest full of little, hungry birds and upon the slope
beneath the telltale, scattered wing-feathers, to show what
fate had fallen upon the mother. Those birds had died
also, and she had wept and given them Christian burial,
and had afterwards spent hours every day with her little
rifle hunting the destroyer of that small home. She
remembered the incident now as a small thread in the
memory-pattern she was weaving.
While the shadows shortened as the moon swung
high, she sat and looked out upon the coulee and the
bluff that sheltered it, and she saw the things that were
blended cunningly with the things that were not. After
a long while her hands unclasped themselves from behind
her head and dropped numbly to her lap. She
sighed and moved stiffly, and knew that she was tired
and that she must get some sleep, because she could not
sit down in one spot and think her way through the
problems she had taken it upon herself to solve. So she
got up and crept under the Navajo blanket upon the
couch, tucked it close about her shoulders, and shut her
eyes deliberately. Presently she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
JEAN LEARNS WHAT FEAR IS LIKE
Sometime in the still part of the night which
comes after midnight, Jean woke slowly from
dreaming of the old days that had been so vivid in her
mind when she went to sleep. Just at first she did not
know what it was that awakened her, though her eyes
were open and fixed upon the lighted square of the
window. She knew that she was in her room at the Lazy
A, but just at first it seemed to her that she was there
because she had always been sleeping in that room.
She sighed and turned her face away from the moonlight,
and closed her eyes again contentedly.
Half dreaming she opened them again and stared up
at the low ceiling. Somewhere in the house she heard
footsteps. Very slowly she wakened enough to listen.
They were footsteps,--the heavy, measured tread of
some man. They were in the room that had been her
father's bedroom, and at first they seemed perfectly
natural and right; they seemed to be her dad's footsteps,
and she wondered mildly what he was doing, up
at that time of night.
The footsteps passed from there into the kitchen and
stopped in the corner where stood the old-fashioned
cupboard with perforated tin panels in the doors and at the
sides, and the little drawers at the top,--the kind that
old people call a "safe." She heard a drawer pulled
out. Without giving any conscious thought to it, she
knew which drawer it was; it was the one next the wall,
--the one that did not pull out straight, and so had to
be jerked out. What was her dad . . . ?
Jean thrilled then with a tremor of fear. She had
wakened fully enough to remember. That was not her
dad, out there in the kitchen. She did not know who
it was; it was some strange man prowling through the
house, hunting for something. She felt again the
tremor of fear that is the heritage of womanhood alone
in the dark. She pulled the Navajo blanket up to her
ears with the instinct of the woman to hide, because
she is not strong enough to face and fight the danger
that comes in the dark. She listened to the sound of
that drawer being pushed back, and the other drawer
being pulled out, and she shivered under the blanket.
Then she reached out her hand and got hold of her
six-shooter which she had laid down unthinkingly upon a
chair near the couch. She wondered if she had locked
the outside door when she came in. She could not
remember having done so; probably she had not, since it is
not the habit of honest ranch-dwellers to lock their doors
at night. She wanted to get up and see, and fasten
it somehow; but she was afraid the man out there might
hear her. As it was, she reasoned nervously with herself,
he probably did not suspect that there was any
one in the house. It was an empty house. And unless
he had seen Pard in the closed stall. . . . She wondered
if he had heard Pard there, and had investigated and
found him. She wondered if he would come into this
room. She remembered how securely she had nailed
up the door from the kitchen, and she breathed freer.
She remembered also that she had her gun, there under
her hand. She closed her trembling fingers on the
familiar grip of it, and the feel of it comforted her and
steadied her.
- absolute [´æbsəlu:t]
a.绝对的 n.绝对 (初中英语单词) - glorious [´glɔ:riəs] a.光荣的；辉煌的 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- breeze [bri:z] n.微风；不费力的事 (初中英语单词)
- reality [ri´æliti] n.现实(性)；真实；逼真 (初中英语单词)
- tremendous [tri´mendəs] a.可怕的；巨大的 (初中英语单词)
- calmly [´kɑ:mli] ad.平静地；无风浪地 (初中英语单词)
- savage [´sævidʒ] a.野蛮的 n.蛮人 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- mysterious [mi´stiəriəs] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (初中英语单词)
- effective [i´fektiv] a.有效的；有力的 (初中英语单词)
- saddle [´sædl] n.鞍子 v.装鞍(于) (初中英语单词)
- measure [´meʒə] n.量度；范围 vt.测量 (初中英语单词)
- slender [´slendə] a.细长的；微薄的 (初中英语单词)
- collar [´kɔlə] n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词)
- capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- wooden [´wudn] a.木制的；呆板的 (初中英语单词)
- incident [´insidənt] n.小事件；事变 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- sleeping [´sli:piŋ] n.&a.睡着(的) (初中英语单词)
- drawer [drɔ:ə] n.抽屉 (初中英语单词)
- instinct [´instiŋkt] n.本能；直觉；天资 (初中英语单词)
- suspect [´sʌspekt, sə´spekt] v.怀疑；觉得 n.嫌疑犯 (初中英语单词)
- straightway [´streitwei] ad.立刻 (高中英语单词)
- sleepy [´sli:pi] a.困的，想睡的 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- studied [´stʌdid] a.故意的；有计划的 (高中英语单词)
- likeness [´laiknis] n.相似；肖像；外表 (高中英语单词)
- tackle [´tækəl] n.用具；装置 vt.处理 (高中英语单词)
- thoughtfully [´θɔ:tfuli] ad.深思地；体贴地 (高中英语单词)
- southwest [,sauθ´west] n.&a.西南(方)(的) (高中英语单词)
- half-way [´hɑ:fwei] ad.半途；几乎 (高中英语单词)
- cunningly [´kʌniŋli] ad.狡猾地；精巧地 (高中英语单词)
- stiffly [´stifli] ad.硬；顽固地 (高中英语单词)
- deliberately [di´libərətli] ad.故意地；慎重地 (高中英语单词)
- desolation [desə´leiʃ(ə)n] n.荒凉 (英语四级单词)
- haggard [´hægəd] a.憔悴的 (英语四级单词)
- manger [´meindʒə] n.槽；牛槽 (英语四级单词)
- stirrup [´stirəp] n.马蹬；镫形具 (英语四级单词)
- boulder [´bəuldə] n.大石头，卵石；巨砾 (英语四级单词)
- mildly [´maildli] ad.温和地；适度地 (英语四级单词)
- heritage [´heritidʒ] n.遗产，继承物 (英语四级单词)
- nervously [´nə:vəsli] ad.神经质地；胆怯地 (英语四级单词)
- securely [si´kjuəli] ad.安全地；无疑地 (英语六级单词)
- contour [´kɔntuə] n.外形 vt.描...的轮廓 (英语六级单词)
- profile [´prəufail] n.侧面 vt.画...侧面 (英语六级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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