Oliver Strange - Sudden Westerns 06 - Sudden Gold-Seeker(1937) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“A fine actor was lost in you, Snowy.”
                 “Ah,
I got brains, I has,” came the complacent answer. “You reckon she swallowed it?”
                 “Hook,
line and sinker,” Paul assured him. “How do you know she resembles her mother?”
o “I don’t,” Snowy smirked, “but most gals like to think so.” At the Pioneer
the prospector found himself a popular person. Not only was he the uncle of the
most charming visitor Wayside had ever received but he owned a fabulously rich
gold-mine; Fagan had talked to some purpose. Never in Snowy’s sinful life had
so much free whisky been offered to him and he was preparing to enjoy himself
thoroughly when Lesurge intervened; a liquor-loosened tongue might well wreck
his plans.
                 “No
more now, Phil,” he said firmly. “You have business to talk over with Mary
presently.” Two of the company watched him follow Lesurge out of the saloon
with unbelieving eyes.
                 “That of skeezicks her uncle?” Mason ejaculated
contemptuously. “The whale what found a home for Jonah couldn’t ‘a’ swallowed
that.”
                 “I’m
allowin’ Jonah must ‘a’ looked more appetizin’,” Sudden said soberly. “O’
course, Snowy might be the fella, but how did Mister Lesurge get wise an’ what’s his game? was he waitin’ here for the
girl, an’ where’s the real uncle? Also who wiped out her daddy?” His friend
looked at him in mock disgust. “Can’t yu think o’ no more questions?”
                 “Shore,
there’s another,” Sudden grinned. “What are we goin’ to do about it?” Mason
spun round, his face alight. “Jim, did yu mean that `we’?” he asked.
                 “Why,
I got nothin’ to interest me about now,” was the careless reply, “an’ they tell
me gold-minn’ is a lazy way o’ gettin’ a livin’.”
                 “I
wish I knowed if she really believes in this scarecrow
relative,” Gerry reflected.
                 “Go
an’ ask her,” Sudden suggested. “She don’t look like she’d savage yu, though yu
can’t tell; women is same as hosses—the meekest-appearin’ is sometimes the one
to pile yu ”
                 “Miss
Ducane would never say a harsh word to anyone,” Gerry reproved, and departed in
search of this paragon.
                 Greatly
to his relief he did not have to ask for her—she tripped out of the hotel just
as he arrived. She was pleased to see this boy who had
been chivalrous and attentive to her, and she said so, but when he bluntly
asked whether she was satisfied that Snowy was indeed the uncle she had come to
find, her smile vanished and a look of dignified surprise took its place.
                 “Have
you any right to put such a question?” she inquired, and when he could find no
answer, “What object could Mister Lesurge and that harmless old man have in
deceiving a girl who has nothing?” Mason could have replied that she had
herself, but his courage would not carry him so far, and as he did not know the
whole story of her pilgrimage could only mutter doubts about “that other fella.”
                 “Mister
Lesurge has been exceedingly good,” she said severely. “He is a gentleman.”
                 “Looks
to me more like a tin-horn gambler,” the boy burst out angrily.
                 Her
eyes grew stormy. “How dare you say such an outrageous thing?” she cried. “I am
afraid I have misjudged you. When I heard you had been engaged in a brawl
yesterday I was willing to believe it was not your fault, but I fear you must
be of a quarrelsome nature.” He could have told her that the trouble was on her
account, but he had his pride, and remained silent. One not vitally concerned
might have smiled at her rather prim seriousness, so out of keeping with her
budding beauty, but to Gerry