Read Online Leave Her to Heaven by Ben Ames Williams - Free Book Online

returned, herself mounted and with his horse on lead, under her direction he loosed the yellow slicker bound behind his saddle and wrapped the turkey in it and secured it on the horse’s back. Then they turned homeward, jubilant together, talking much and laughing easily. There was a like intoxication in them both, and every thought was amusing, every word provoked a shout of mirth. On the crest of the last ridge they paused to watch the level sun dip below the heights northwestward, and when it was gone, like bathers venturing into the sea at night, they descended into the cool dusk which filled the canyon; and Ellen began to sing a doleful song:
    â€˜Are we almost there? Are we almost there?
Cried the dying maid, as they drew near her home.
Are them the slip-per-y el-lums that r’ar
Their proud green forms ’neath Heaven’s blue dome?’
    He laughed in amused appreciation. ‘Where’d you get that?’
    â€˜Charlie Yates taught it to me when father and I were here two years ago.’
    â€˜It’s a classic!’ He began to sing it with her, and when he erred she corrected him.
    â€˜Not “slippery elms”!’ she protested. ‘“Slip-per-y el-lums ”! Soulful and woeful! Try it again.’
    So they began afresh, and their singing voices went before them as they neared the lodge, and their shouts of triumph summoned the others out to see their prize.
    â€“ VI –
    Harland before he slept that night planned eagerly to spend next day with Ellen; but at breakfast Lin reminded him that they were to go looking for wild horses and he could think of no ready pretext to escape. Tess decided to join them, and shortly after breakfast, lunch in their saddlebags, the others on the veranda to watch their departure, they set out.
    From the first it was clear that Lin felt himself to be — and was — in charge of the expedition. Harland found it hard to remember
that Lin was no older than Danny; the boy seemed so completely at home in these surroundings, so sure of himself, so mature in all his ways. Tess, in dungarees and checked shirt and big hat, wearing leather chaps to guard her knees against the buck brush through which sometimes they rode, seemed as much a boy as Lin; and they vied with each other like puppies, spurring their horses into sudden headlong races not only on the level but up or down the steep trails, shouting and laughing, the victor deriding the vanquished while after each sprint they waited for Harland to come up with them.
    They were charming, but he wished it were Ellen with whom he rode through these sun-filled canyons and these park-like openings carpeted with flowers. He might have forgotten their quest, but Lin did not. Whenever they were about to emerge from some forest cover he paused to scan the scene ahead; and thrice he showed Harland tracks of the quarry upon which they sought to spy. At noon, as efficiently as any guide, he boiled the kettle beside a tumbling little stream, and Harland smiled at the youngster’s gravity, and thought how Danny would have enjoyed this day, and they ate their lunch and then rode on.
    It was mid-afternoon before fortune gave them at last the glimpse they sought. Emerging from an aspen thicket into one of the lovely parks which lay everywhere, Harland saw Lin pause to look ahead, and the boy called a low, quick word, and Harland and Tess brought their horses up beside his, and then they all spurred into the open.
    Two hundred yards away, gleaming like bronze statues in the sun, nine horses stood with crests flung high, watching them. As Harland’s eye found them. they turned in thundering flight. The stallion herded his mares away, and Lin shouted and gave chase, and Tess and Harland, at full gallop, followed; but in a dozen bounds the wild creatures reached the rimrock and plunged over it and were gone. Only the stallion paused for one last defiant backward glance before he followed his harem