Ladies and GentlemenCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
Ladies and Gentlemen
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Fiction; Short stories, American
"Just as soon as they felt the quake down on the river, this here
brother, name Sherman Hurley, he took a notion into his head that
something was wrong up in the mountains with his brother, the one that
had hired out to guide you. It was almost like as if he'd got a message
from his brother's spirit. So nothin' would do but what he must start
right in and make sure, one way or the other. So he lit out and he
traveled all that night, him knowin' all the trails and the lay of the
land, and by movin' about as fast over them ridges as his pony could
take him he made the trip in four or five hours less time than 'twould
take doin' it the regular easy way.
"By daylight next mornin' he was there and he took one look around
him and didn't see hide nor hair of you two nor of the horses, but he
did see that slide where it had come down right square on top of the
camp-ground along the creek, and he decided to himself, the same as
anybody else with good sense would, that the whole outfit of you was
under that mess of truck. He didn't waste no time foolin' around. If he
went in there fast, he came out still faster. It wasn't noon yet when
he got back to Polebridge with the news. His pony had went lame and
he'd finished the trip, jumpin' and runnin'.
"Well, they telephoned down to Kalispel and the sheriff sent me on up
by automobile to sort of represent the county, and he sent word on
ahead for the gang that was goin' in to wait till I got there. Well,
I burnt up the road gettin' through. They had quite a posse organized
when I pulled in--rangers and several kinfolks of the Hurleys and some
neighbors and part of a road crew out of the Park. This young Sherm
Hurley was practically all in from what he'd been through with and
mighty near grieved to death besides--he took on worse than any of his
family did--but he was still bent and determined on goin' back the
second time. He just would go, takin' the lead, tired as he was.
"Somehow him and me was ahead of the rest when we hit the rim and purty
soon after that I seen somethin' that set me to thinkin'. I always did
have kind of a turn for the detectin' business; that was partly what
induced me to be a deputy sheriff. Yes, sir, I seen something. Guess
what it was I seen?"
Chaney shook his head.
"Tracks, that's what. But I seen something a heap more significant
right shortly after that. But these first things were tracks. I didn't
tell nobody what was sproutin' in my mind, but I motioned everybody to
stay where they was for a minute and then I got down off the plug I was
ridin' and made one or two rough measurements and sized up things. Then
I holloed back to the others to come ahead and we went on down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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