One, the one who came on slightly in front of his companion, was very
broad and heavy and thick. Thick of arm, of thigh, of neck. He was not
short, standing close to six feet, and yet his bigness of girth made him
seem of low, squat stature as she looked down upon him. She did not see
his face under the wide, soft hat but guessed it to be heavy like the
rest of him, square jawed and massive. She noted curiously that his
tread was light, that his whole being spoke of energy and swift
initiative, that the alertness of his carriage was an incongruity in a
man so heavily built from the great, monster shoulders of him to the
bulging calves.
The face of the other man she saw. His hat was far back upon his head
and as he come on his dark features fascinated her. He was tall, as tall
or nearly as tall as the Kid or Buck Thornton, she thought, slender,
full of the grace of perfect physical manhood. There was a dash to him
that, to the girl, was not without its charm. It spoke from the finely
chiselled lips, curved to a still, contemptuous smile, from the eyes,
long lashed, well set far apart, from the swinging careless stride. A
handsome devil, as handsome in his own way as the Kid in his, as defiant
an insolence in his smiling eyes, as cool an assurance and a vague added
charm which was not so readily classified.
The two men came to the door. She heard Pollard greet them, calling
them by name, and thus learned that one was Cole Dalton, the sheriff,
one Broderick. Then there came up to her the hum of voices from her
uncle's office, the heavy, rasping voice which she was certain belonged
to the thicker-set man, the light, careless pleasant tones of the taller
man. She found herself listening, not for the words which were lost in
the indistinct hum, but to the qualities of tone, idly speculating as to
which man was the sheriff, which Broderick. She wondered if now they
were going to arrest Buck Thornton and if Broderick were a deputy? And
again she hated herself with a quick spurt of contemptuous indignation
that she allowed a feeling of sympathy for the tall cattleman to slip
into her heart.
For a long time the low toned conversation in the room below her
continued. At first it was her uncle who did the greater part of the
talking, his utterances at once emphatic and yet guarded. She had the
uneasy feeling that the tones were hushed less because of Mrs. Riddell
whom she could hear clattering with her pots and pans in the kitchen,
than because of herself. A little hurt, half angry that he should think
of her as a possible eavesdropper, she took up her book again, turning
the pages impatiently in search of the place which she had a great deal
of trouble in finding since she had understood so little of what she had
read that day. And even then one half of her mind was on the men below
as she wondered why they should not want her to know what it was they
said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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