The shoemaker : $b A powerful picture of nature, adapted from Hal Reid's famous drama of the same nameHarper, Olive
General
The shoemaker : $b A powerful picture of nature, adapted from Hal Reid's famous drama of the same name
Harper, Olive
Abduction -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Shoemakers -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Fiction
The body of her brother lay in his coffin in the tiny room above, but,
with a delicacy rare to men, Morris Goldberg had wished to spare her
the sight of a dead stranger. They neither knew that the man lying so
calm and peaceful there was her brother who had come from the West to
seek her and to avenge her; so she started Westward and the stranger
was laid at rest.
Morris Goldberg had clung to Loney as the link between him and
despair. The child had loved Dora and he loved her. So there was some
one to whom the unhappy father could pour out his heart without fear of
wearying them.
Search was made everywhere for the man who had shot the stranger, and
for Dopey Mack, but they had disappeared from their old haunts. So,
at last, the shoemaker decided to go West himself, in the faint hope
that this man, who had doubtless come from some place in the West,
had returned there. His rather slow mind had pieced together “Cactus
Bill’s” declaration that he had come from Wyoming in search of the man
who had abandoned his sister, and that Helen Pierson might be that
sister. And, if she was, he owed it to her to look after the interest
in the claim, the title to which he now held. Poor Loney could not be
left behind, so Morris Goldberg sold out his little shop, which had
prospered in his industrious hands, and all his belongings save a few
cherished treasures which he left with his friend who owned a safe. But
he took the tiny shoe with him.
What Bennie had felt at this sudden bereavement, just when he was so
happy, words could not express. He, too, sought everywhere, and grew
old and worn in his anxiety. So, not long after the shoemaker had
gone, Bennie resigned his excellent position and took up his march
toward the wild and woolly West.
At the end of six months from the day of the murder and the stealing
of Dora, there was a little wave of excitement, which did not owe its
origin to a shooting scrape, in a hamlet in Wyoming. This small cluster
of shacks and shanties was known as Hellandgone, and a forsaken spot
it seemed, with scarcely any vegetation beyond the dusty sagebrush and
scrubby bushes sparsely scattered upon the hills beyond.
There was the usual “hotel,” a board house, of two stories. The lower
floor was taken up by the bar-room, which was the general sitting-room,
there being no other; the dining-room, with a lean-to kitchen beyond.
The dining-room had one long table made of planks, with a bench of the
same length on each side. The bar-room had the smaller tables, and
several wooden chairs, besides a few kegs which also served as seats on
occasion. Lumber was scarce, and all furniture had to be carried a long
distance in wagons, which made it not only an expensive luxury, but one
of difficult attainment.
The bar was at one side of the room, with the usual complement of
bottles, glasses and other paraphernalia devoted to such purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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