THE WHITE WOLF Read Online Free PDF

wrist—and then, eyes widening, stared. There was a mark on her white flesh; a tiny crescent, seemingly tattooed, seemingly indelible.
     
     
Chapter Two
     
    DAVID said, with that slow precision that sometimes made his listeners impatient, “But where’d you get the idea the man told fortunes?”
     
    Sara, utterly miserable, said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
     
    David’s big, powerful right hand reached for the lighter on the dashboard and held it to the cigarette drooping from his mouth. More to himself than to- her he said:
     
    “Good thing we got out of that mess. 'Specially for Chick’s sake. If anyone had called the cops. Chick would have been tossed off the team. It was after hours, anyhow, and we need him for Navy.”
     
    “You talk like a rah-rah baby.” Sara replied. “You sound as if football were more important than . . . going to jail. What do you care about football and Penn? You never played. You never went there.”
     
    She bit her lip. She knew, instantly, she’d hurt David. She knew as well as he that he'd never been able to play football and, for the same reason, had never gone to college. David, on his part, lapsed into diplomatic silence.
     
    They had had these quarrels before. Always. before, Sara had been contrite; had anticipated making up. She knew she was usually wrong, that she always wound up by saying something nasty. Now, she found with growing wonder, she didn’t care.
     
    They were driving back from a farm near Easton where David had attended an auction of Ayrshires. Sara was still wondering why she’d gone along; was beginning seriously to question whether she wanted a farmer, even a gentleman farmer, for a husband.
     
    They were winding along a section of the old Canal Road above New Hope, paralleling the new broken-down barge canal whose course, intercepted every few miles by rusty locks, lay between them and the Delaware. Save for the hard surface and an occasional red or green gasoline pump, the road was virtually unchanged from the days of the French and Indian Wars. Here were taverns, red-roofed stone barns, stone houses that were old when the Revolution began. Here were covered bridges of a later period.
     
    Up on the hillsides to the west, sumac spilled its crimson paint. In the gullies the haze of late day gathered along the runs. Out of that blanket of deepening mists great swamp maples raised their scarlet crowns. In the foreground the solid topaz of a poplar stood aloof.
     
    The haze clung, too. to the river on the east. It clung in little patches where the white hunger rocks jutted out of the shallow waters. Beyond the river the wooded Jersey hills burned in yellow and red and fading green.
     
    David, glancing at Sara, asked:
     
    “Where did you get the wrist watch?”
     
    “In Jenkintown this morning. Shopping.”
     
    “Thought,” said David slowly, “you didn't like wrist watches?”
     
    Sara was evasive.
     
    “Oh, I guess they’re nice.”
     
    David was puzzled. He revealed his wonder in. the creases about his pale gray eyes and along his wide forehead. He remembered, just before last Christmas, saying something to the effect that Sara never wore a watch. He didn’t say so, of course, but he was thinking a watch would make a nice gift. But she'd told him then she didn’t like them. Indeed, she liked nothing that bound her—belts, straps, garters, girdles. And. thank her stars, she had a figure that could do without them.
     
    David shrugged, lounged bark into the seat, giving the road his attention. He was a big fellow. When he was a child he'd been afflicted with a spinal ailment. People, even Manning, thought he would be a permanent cripple. But David, moodily watching other youngsters at play, possessed a patient courage. There were good doctors. And Da vid faithfully followed their instructions. There were braces. There were little exercises; then there were exercises that called for more exertion. It was slow work. It took