Bondboy

W. Ogden George

Description

Joe Newbolt, bound out by force of family conditions to work for a number of years, is accused of murder and circumstances are against him. His mouth is sealed; he cannot, as a gentleman, utter the words that would clear him. A dramatic, romantic tale of intense interest.

Sujets

• Westerns
• Western (genre)
• Western

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775560753
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE BONDBOY
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GEORGE W. OGDEN
 
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The Bondboy First published in 1922 ISBN 978-1-77556-075-3 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - Delivered into Bondage Chapter II - A Dry-Salt Man Chapter III - The Spark in the Clod Chapter IV - A Stranger at the Gate Chapter V - The Secret of the Clover Chapter VI - Blood Chapter VII - Deliverance Chapter VIII - Will He Tell? Chapter IX - The Sealed Envelope Chapter X - Let Him Hang Chapter XI - Peter's Son Chapter XII - The Sunbeam on the Wall Chapter XIII - Until the Day Break Chapter XIV - Deserted Chapter XV - The State vs. Newbolt Chapter XVI - "She Cometh Not," He Said Chapter XVII - The Blow of a Friend Chapter XVIII - A Name and a Message Chapter XIX - The Shadow of a Dream Chapter XX - "The Penalty is Death!" Chapter XXI - Ollie Speaks Chapter XXII - A Summons of the Night Chapter XXIII - Lest I Forget
Chapter I - Delivered into Bondage
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Sarah Newbolt enjoyed in her saturnine, brooding way the warmth of Aprilsunshine and the stirring greenery of awakening life now beginning tosoften the brown austerity of the dead winter earth. Beside her kitchenwall the pink cones of rhubarb were showing, and the fat buds of thelilacs, which clustered coppicelike in her dooryard, were ready tounlock and flare forth leaves. On the porch with its southern exposureshe sat in her low, splint-bottomed rocker, leaning forward, her elbowson her knees.
The sun tickled her shoulders through her linsey dress, and picturedher, grotesquely foreshortened, upon the nail-drawn, warped, and beatenfloor. Her hands, nursing her cheeks, chin pivoted in their palms, werelarge and toil-distorted, great-jointed like a man's, and all thefeminine softness with which nature had endowed her seemed to have beenovercome by the masculine cast of frame and face which the hardships ofher life had developed.
She did not seem, crouched there like an old cat warming herself in thefirst keen fires of spring, conscious of anything about her; of the lowhouse, with its battered eaves, the sprawling rail-fence in front of it,out of which the gate was gone, like a tooth; of the wild bramble ofroses, or the generations of honeysuckle which had grown, layer uponlayer—the under stratum all dead and brown—over the decaying arborwhich led up to the cracked front door. She did not seem conscious thattime and poverty had wasted the beauties of that place; that shingleswere gone from the outreaching eaves, torn away by March winds; thatstones had fallen from the chimney, squatting broad-shouldered at theweathered gable; that panes were missing from the windows, their placessupplied by boards and tacked-on cloth, or that pillows crowded intothem, making it seem a house that stopped its ears against theunfriendly things which passengers upon the highway might speak of it.
Time and poverty were pressing upon Sarah Newbolt also, relaxing therethat bright hour in the sun, straying away from her troubles and hervexations like an autumn butterfly among the golden leaves, unmindful ofthe frost which soon must cut short its day. For, poor as she was in allthat governments put imposts upon, and men list in tax returns and carryto steel vaults to hoard away, Sarah Newbolt had her dreams. She had nogolden past; there was no golden future ready before her feet. There wasno review for her in those visions of happy days and tender memories,over which a woman half closes her eyes and smiles, or over the incenseof which a man's heart softens. Behind her stretched a wake ofturbulence and strife; ahead of her lay the banked clouds of anunsettled and insecure future.
But she had her dreams, in which even the poorest of us may indulge whenour taskmaster in the great brickworks of this hot and heavy world isnot hard by and pressing us forward with his lash. She had her dreams ofwhat never was and never could be; of old longings, old heart-hungers,old hopes, and loves which never had come near for one moment's caressof her toil-hardened hand. Dreams which roved the world and soothed theache in her heart by their very extravagance, which even her frugalconscience could not chide; dreams which drew hot tears upon her cheeks,to trickle down among her knotted fingers and tincture the bitterness ofthings unrealized.
The crunch of wheels in the road now startled her from her profitlessexcursions among the mist of visions and dreams. She lifted her headlike a cow startled from her peaceful grazing, for the vehicle hadstopped at the gap in the fence where the gate should have stood warderbetween its leaning posts.
"Well, he's come," said she with the resignation of one who finds thelong expected and dreaded at hand.
A man got out of the buggy and hitched his horse to one of the oldgate-posts, first trying it to satisfy himself that it was trustworthy,for stability in even a post on those premises, where everything wasgoing to decay, seemed unreasonable to expect. He turned up the path,bordered by blue flags, thrusting their swordpoints through the ground,and strode toward the house, with that uncouth giving at the knees whichmarks a man who long has followed the plow across furrowed fields.
The visitor was tall and bony, brown, dry-faced, and frowning of aspect.There was severity in every line of his long, loose body; in the hardwrinkles of his forehead, in his ill-nurtured gray beard, which was soharsh that it rasped like wire upon his coat as he turned his head inquick appraisement of his surroundings. His feet were bunion-distortedand lumpy in his great coarse shoes; coarse black hair grew down uponhis broad, thick-jointed hands; a thicket of eyebrows presented, like a chevaux-de-frise , bristling when he drew them down in his peeringsquint.
Sarah Newbolt rose to meet him, tall in the vigor of her pioneer stock.In her face there was a malarial smokiness of color, although it stillheld a trace of a past brightness, and her meagerness of feature gaveher mouth a set of determination which stood like a false index at thebeginning of a book or a misleading sign upon a door. Her eyes wereblack, her brows small and delicate. Back from her narrow forehead shehad drawn her plentiful dark hair in rigid unloveliness; over it shewore a knitted shawl.
"Well, Mr. Chase, you've come to put us out, I reckon?" said she, alittle tremor in her chin, although her voice was steady and her eyesmet his with an appeal which lay too near the soul for words.
Isom Chase drew up to the steps and placed one knotted foot upon them,standing thus in silence a little while, as if thinking it over. Thedust of the highroad was on his broad black hat, and gray upon hisgrizzly beard. In the attitude of his lean frame, in the posture of hisfoot upon the step, he seemed to be asserting a mastery over the placewhich he had invaded to the sad dispersion of Sarah Newbolt's dreams.
"I hate to do it," he declared, speaking hurriedly, as if he held wordsbut frail vehicles in a world where deeds counted with so much greaterweight, "but I've been easy on you, ma'am; no man can say that I haven'tbeen easy."
"I know your money's long past due," she sighed, "but if you was to giveJoe another chance, Mr. Chase, we could pay you off in time."
"Oh, another chance, another chance!" said he impatiently. "What couldyou do with all the chances in the world, you and him—what did yourhusband ever do with his chances? He had as many of 'em as I ever did,and what did he ever do but scheme away his time on fool things thatdidn't pan out when he ought 'a' been in the field! No, you and Joecouldn't pay back that loan, ma'am, not if I was to give you forty yearsto do it in."
"Well, maybe not," said she, drawing a sigh from the well of her sad oldheart.
"The interest ain't been paid since Peter died, and that's more than twoyears now," said Chase. "I can't sleep on my rights that way, ma'am;I've got to foreclose to save myself."
"Yes, you've been easy, even if we did give you up our last cow on thatthere inter-est," she allowed. "You've been as kind and easy over it, Ireckon, Mr. Chase, as a body could be. Well, I reckon me and Joe we'llhave to leave the old place now."
"Lord knows, I don't see what there is to stay for!" said Chase feelingly,sweeping his eyes around the wired-up, gone-to-the-devil-looking place.
"When a body's bore children in a place," she said earnestly, "andnussed 'em, and seen 'em fade away and die; and when a body's lived in ahouse for upward of forty years, and thought things in it, andeverything—"
"Bosh!" said Isom Chase, kicking the rotting step.
"I know it's all shacklety now," said she apologetically, "but it's hometo me and Joe!"
Her voice trembled over the words, and she wiped her eyes with thecorner of her head-shawl; but her face remained as immobile as featurescast in metal. When one has wept out of the heart for years, as SarahNewbolt had wept, the face is no longer a barometer over the tempests ofthe soul.
Isom Chase was silent. He stood as if reflecting his coming words,trying the loose boards of the siding with his blunt thumb.
"Peter and I, we came here from Kentucky," said she, looking at him witha sidelong appeal, as if for permission to speak the profitlesssentiments of her heart, "and people was scarce in this part of Missourithen. I rode all the way a-horseback, and I came here, to this veryhouse, a bride."
"I didn't take a mortgage on sentiment—I took it on the lan