Marrying Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

certain that he had overstepped the bounds of propriety.
    "Miss Best, Meggie, please."
    "What's it, Meggie?" Simple Jess, huge and blank-faced, asked curiously as he stood blocking the doorway. When he  saw Roe he grinned amiably. "You having a set-to with my new frien'?"
    Her eyes were wild with anger as she hurried to her feet. She was clearly outraged. "Your new
friend
is making unwanted advances to me."
    Simple Jess, three inches taller and twice as muscled as Roe, looked at him with surprise.
    Roe swallowed nervously. After spending an hour watching the youth split wood, Roe was sure the big mountain man could easily break every bone in his body without even working up a sweat.
    "Jesse, I can explain," he began. His voice was calm and rational. "Your sister has misconstrued… well perhaps not misconstrued, but…"
    "He tried to take advantage of me, Jesse!" she snapped. "You're my "brother. Beat the tar out of him."
    "Miss Best, really. It was only a kiss."
    "It was a kiss all right," she snarled angrily as she hurried to her feet. "And it turned you right into a frog! Beat him up, Jesse."
    Shaking his head, her brother clearly didn't like the prospect. "He's my frien', Meggie," Jesse protested. "I don't want to fight him."
    "There is no need to fight," Roe assured him quickly. "I merely wish to make a humble apology and express to you, Miss Best, my deepest remorse over any distress my presence here might have caused you."
    "The only apology that you can make to me, Mister J. Monroe Farley, is to get your worthless hide out of my sight and never venture in these woods again," Meggie stated adamantly.
    "I deeply regret any… any—"
    Roe stopped speaking and brought a hand to his stomach. A strange pained sound emerged from his lips and he bent over as if stricken with a cramp.
    Jesse eyed him curiously. "You know yer face is lookin' kind of downright green," he said.
    Roe didn't wait to try to make his explanations. In a rush of panic, J. Monroe Farley put his hand over his mouth and raced past Jesse out the door.
     
    A sharp, stabbing pain seemed to rip through Roe's gut as sweat broke across his brow. He ran away from the smoky-smelling cabin, away from the taste of green tomato relish that now burned in his throat. He ran to the cool shade of the Ozarks woods, his head spinning and his stomach in cramps.
    Weakly he staggered and dropped to his knees next to the shallow stream that skittered along shiny, slick rocks. He labored to catch his breath. A swirl of green flies buzzed around his head. Ripping open the tight, starched collar, he fought the dark weakness that crept up on him. He cupped a handful of the icy, Itchy Creek water and splashed it liberally upon his face. He trembled from the combination of freezing water and nausea.
    "Roe! Roe!" He heard Jesse calling but couldn't waste his strength to answer. He felt faint and the reality of that weakness embarrassed him. He lay down against the cool spring grass hoping to garner strength, but slumped to the ground and blackness swirled around him.
    "He's here, Pa!"
    Vaguely, he heard a voice calling out behind him. It seemed unearthly and far away but it revived him nonetheless.
    "He's here by the crick."
    Help was on the way. Help was almost here. The thought bolstered him somewhat. He rolled to his back and felt the warm spring breeze upon his sweat-drenched skin as he gazed at the slate-blue sky overhead. Thickly leafed branches of sassafras trees stretched out into the cloudless  sky, but still a gray darkness cast shadows before him. He was sick, green sick, as Jesse had said, and miserable.
    He moaned loudly.
    The two men rushed up beside him. The one whose face he did not know was gray-bearded and held a hand-whittled hickory staff to aid his unsteady gait. The older man awkwardly knelt down in the grass beside Roe, his pale green eyes concerned.
    "Mr. Farley?" he asked. "Mr. Farley, are you all right?"
    Jesse stood back, nervously fidgeting. His blank