The Shadow of the Lynx Read Online Free PDF Page A

god.”
    “Well, I reckon that’s not a bad description.”
    “Does everyone have to be as reverent as his son?” That made him laugh.
    “You have a sharp tongue, Nora Tamasin.”
    “Do you think it will help to protect me against this Lynx?”
    “You’ve got it wrong. He’s the one who is going to protect you.”
    “If I don’t want to stay I shall come back here.”
    He bowed his head.
    There would be ways and means, I am sure,” I added.
    “And you’d find them, I reckon.”
    I had eaten one scone; he finished the entire plateful. He folded his arms and smiled at me as though he found me amusing. I was not sure what to make of him. Of one thing I was certain. Messrs Marlin Sons and Barlow could not have known that he had come alone to take me back with him for they, like Miss Emily, would surely consider this rather improper.
    “But,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud, “I suppose you are a sort of brother.”
    He laughed.
    “I reckon so. Sister Nora. And that makes everything all right. You don’t think so.”
    “You have a habit of attempting to read people’s thoughts … not always correctly.”
    “But you are pleased.”
    “It’s too soon to answer that question. I hardly know you.”
    “We’re pleased to have a new sister.”
    I was silent for a while; then I said, “How did my father die?”
    “Haven’t they told you?”
    They merely said it was an accident. “
    “An accident? He should have handed over the gold, then they wouldn’t have shot him.”
    “They shot him! Who?”
    “No one knows who. He’d been out to the mine and was on his way back on the dray, bringing gold with him. There was a hold-up. They were waylaid. It often happens. Those fellows have a nose for gold. They know when it’s being carried. So they held up the dray five miles out
    of Cradle > Creek. Your father wouldn’t give it up so they shot him.” I felt bewildered. I had imagined his falling from a tree or being thrown from his horse. I had never thought of murder.
    “So,” I said slowly, ‘someone killed him. “
    Stirling nodded.
    “It happens now and then. It’s a wild country and life’s cheaper there than it is over here.”
    “This was my father!” I felt furiously angry because someone had come along with a gun and wantonly taken that precious life. There was a new emotion to supersede my grief anger against my father’s murderer.
    “If he had given up the gold he wouldn’t have died,” said Stirling.
    “Gold!” I said angrily.
    “That’s what they are all after. It’s what they all want.”
    “And this … Lynx … he does too?”
    Stirling smiled.
    “He wants it. He’s determined to find it one day so he will.”
    “How I wish my father had never got this idea into his head! If he hadn’t he would be here now.”
    It was too much to contemplate. I turned away, deter mined that he should not ace my intense emotion.
    “It’s like a fever,” he said.
    “It gets into your brain. You think of everything you want in life and if you find gold … real gold … thousands of nuggets … you can have it.”
    Everything? ” I said.
    “Everything you can think of.”
    “My father found gold, it seems, and lost his life preserving it, and I lost him.”
    “You’re upset. You wait till you get out there. You’ll understand then. It’s a great life. You never know when you’ll make a strike.
    It’s a constant challenge, a constant hope!
    “And when you do someone kills you for it.”
    “That’s the life out there. Your father had bad luck ” It’g . hateful. “
    “It’s life. I’ve upset you. I should have broken it gently. The only thing that matters is that it happened.”
    He stood up.
    “You go back to your room. You rest awhile;
    and then well have some dinner together and talk some more. It’s the best thing. “
    I went up to my room, leaving him in the inn parlour. Was there to be no end to the shocks I was receiving, I asked myself. So he had