The Ramrodders - A Novel by Holman (Holman Francis) Day
page 93 of 400 (23%)
page 93 of 400 (23%)
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She cried her question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes
would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be wounding her ingenuous faith. "If this is the way it all turns out, and I can't have your friendship any longer, what is it that you're going to do or I'm going to do?" she insisted. "That's losing too much, just because one is grown up." Tenderness surged in his heart toward this motherless girl--tenderness in which there was a new quality. But he had no answer for her just then. He did not understand his own emotions. He was as unsophisticated as she in the affairs of the heart. His man's life of the woods had kept him free from women. His friendship with this child, their rides, their companionship, had been almost on the plane of boy with boy; her character invited that kind of intimacy. And so he wondered what to say; for her demand had been explicit, and she demanded candor in return. At that moment he welcomed the appearance of even Ivus Niles. That sooty prophet of ill appeared around a bend in the read ahead. The twilight shrouded him, but there was no mistaking his stove-pipe hat and his frock-coat. He was leading his buck sheep, and the hounds rushed forward clamorously. Niles stopped in the middle of the road, and let them frolic about him and his emblematic captive. "The dogs won't hurt you, Niles," Harlan assured him, spurring forward. "I ain't afraid of dogs, I ain't afraid of wolves, not after what I've been through with the political Bengal tigers I've been up against |
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