Read Online Following the Grass by Harry Sinclair Drago - Free Book Online

“Folks are always talking about me in Paradise; sorta making fun of me, I reckon, ’cause I ain’t got clothes like they’ve got. A boy commenced it yesterday, and I sassed him back. He said my daddy was a bad man. I called him a liar. Then he said his grandpa said you and my daddy wasn’t married right; that you didn’t have a priest. He wouldn’t take it back, so I hit him. The teacher came running. But I hit him again, —’cause you did have a priest, didn’t you, mother?”
    Margarida was on her knees before him, her arms outstretched to enfold him.
    â€œCome to me, my little man!” she cried. “Come to me! Let me kiss you! Of course we had a priest; but he was not the kind of priest they know in Paradise. He had no robes, but he preached the word of God, and your father and I believed in him. It didn’t matter, did it, dear?”
    Joseph shook his head as his mother’s tears wet his face.
    â€œAnd that boy, Joseph?” Margarida questioned, “you hit him hard?”
    â€œI ’most killed him, mother!”
    â€œOh, I’m glad! I’m glad! And his name?”
    â€œJuan Irosabal!” said Joseph.
    Margarida winced.
    â€œAn Irosabal, eh?” In a wild fury she swept her son from his feet. “I’m glad!’ she cried;
    â€œI’m glad you ’most killed him, Joseph!”

CHAPTER V.

THE FAR HORIZON.
    T A BOR K INCAID paid a visit to Buckskin shortly after Joseph’s return. His broad, usually smiling face wore a frown, for he was the bearer of bad news, and bad news was the last thing in the world that he wished to carry to Margarida Gault. His courage almost failed him as he stood before her, her thin white hand in his.
    She smiled bravely at him, but his keen eyes were not deceived, and he prayed that she might not see the surprise her appearance caused him. It was hard for him to believe that she was the Margarida Gault, who as a bride, had come to Buckskin such a few years ago.
    Kincaid kept back the news which had brought him up the mountain, and it was not until he was ready to leave that he broached it. Then with that indirection which appears to belong only to desert men, he spoke.
    â€œDid Joe ever try to buy this land?” he asked.
    â€œHe often spoke of it,” Margarida answered. “But that was before it was put in the Forest Reserve. For the last three years we have been paying a grazing fee; ten cents a head this year, not counting the lambs.”
    â€œForest Reserve!” Kincaid exclaimed with biting sarcasm. “Did it ever strike you as strange that Buckskin should have been included in a reserve? They ain’t enough timber on this mountain to build a man a house—stunted cedar and mountain mahogany, and maybe a piñon pine or two, don’t sound to me like much of a beginning for a forest reserve. No sir-ree!
    â€œThe way public lands have been juggled around in this state is something scandalous. The State Land Office has been swapping good for bad so long that they’ve pretty near run out of good things. Somebody has been casting eyes at Buckskin. The Surveyor-General restored it to the public domain last week.”
    â€œYou mean the mountain is no longer a part 0£ the Forest Reserve?” Margarida asked anxiously.
    â€œIt was thrown open to entry last week. It was filed on immediately—almost, I might say, before the dear general public knew about it. It went for a dollar and a quarter an acre. I could have used it.”
    Margarida began to understand what Kincaid was telling her. At first, his matter-of-fact tone had not aroused any sense of suspicion in her, and she had not been prepared for what he had just told her.
    â€œDo I understand that Buckskin has been sold?” she demanded, her voice strange to her ears.
    Kincaid nodded.
    â€œYour father bought it in.”
    The big man was watching her covertly, and he reached out his hand