Hough Emerson Hough: 13 western novels

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-9170-7
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 2561 Seiten

This book-collection file includes: 54-40 of Fight, The Covered Wagon, Girl at the Halfway House, Heart's Desire, The Law of the land, Maw's Vacation, The Mississippi bubble, The Purchase Price, The Sagebrusher, The Story of the Outlaw, The Way of a Man, The Young Alaskans, and The Young Alaskans on the Missouri. According to Wikipedia: 'Emerson Hough (1857-1923) was an American author, best known for writing western stories. Hough was born in Newton, Iowa, and graduated from the University of Iowa with a law degree. He moved to White Oaks, New Mexico, and practiced law there but eventually turned to literary work by taking camping trips and writing about them for publication. He is best known as a novelist, writing The Mississippi Bubble as well as The Covered Wagon, about Oregon Trail pioneers, which later became successful as a movie, running 59 weeks at the Criterion Theater in New York City, passing the record set by Birth of a Nation. Other notable works included Story of the Cowboy, Way of the West, Singing Mouse Stories, and Passing of the Frontier, and writing the 'Out-of-Doors' column for the Saturday Evening Post.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hough, Emerson

Leseproben

 CHAPTER XIV. THE OTHER WOMAN
       The world is the book of women.--Rousseau.    I needed not to be advised that presently there would be a meeting of some of the leading men of the Hudson Bay Company at the little gray stone, dormer-windowed building on Notre Dame Street. In this old building--in whose vaults at one time of emergency was stored the entire currency of the Canadian treasury--there still remained some government records, and now under the steep-pitched roof affairs were to be transacted somewhat larger than the dimensions of the building might have suggested. The keeper of my inn freely made me a list of those who would be present--a list embracing so many scores of prominent men whom he then swore to be in the city of Montreal that, had the old Chateau Ramezay afforded twice its room, they could not all have been accommodated. For myself, it was out of the question to gain admittance.   In those days all Montreal was iron-shuttered after nightfall, resembling a series of jails; and to-night it seemed doubly screened and guarded. None the less, late in the evening, I allowed seeming accident to lead me in a certain direction. Passing as often as I might up and down Notre Dame Street without attracting attention, I saw more than one figure in the semi-darkness enter the low chateau door. Occasionally a tiny gleam showed at the edge of a shutter or at the top of some little window not fully screened. As to what went on within I could only guess.   I passed the chateau, up and down, at different times from nine o'clock until midnight. The streets of Montreal at that time made brave pretense of lighting by virtue of the new gas works; at certain intervals flickering and wholly incompetent lights serving to make the gloom more visible. None the less, as I passed for the last time, I plainly saw a shaft of light fall upon the half darkness from a little side door. There emerged upon the street the figure of a woman. I do not know what led me to cast a second glance, for certainly my business was not with ladies, any more than I would have supposed ladies had business there; but, victim of some impulse of curiosity, I walked a step or two in the same direction as that taken by the cloaked figure.   Careless as I endeavored to make my movements, the veiled lady seemed to take suspicion or fright. She quickened her steps. Accident favored me. Even as she fled, she caught her skirt on some object which lay hidden in the shadows and fell almost at full length. This I conceived to be opportunity warranting my approach. I raised my hat and assured her that her flight was needless.   She made no direct reply to me, but as she rose gave utterance to an expression of annoyance. "Mon Dieu!" I heard her say.   I stood for a moment trying to recall where I had heard this same voice! She turned her face in such a way that the light illuminated it. Then indeed surprise smote me.   "Madam Baroness," said I, laughing, "it is wholly impossible for you to be here, yet you are here! Never again will I say there is no such thing as chance, no such thing as fate, no such thing as a miracle!"   She looked at me one brief moment; then her courage returned.   "Ah, then, my idiot," she said, "since it is to be our fortune always to meet of dark nights and in impossible ways, give me your arm."   I laughed. "We may as well make treaty. If you run again, I shall only follow you."   "Then I am again your prisoner?"   "Madam, I again am yours!"   "At least, you improve!" said she. "Then come."   "Shall I not call a caleche?--the night is dark."   "No, no!" hurriedly.   We began a midnight course that took us quite across the old French quarter of Montreal. At last she turned into a small, dark street of modest one-story residences, iron-shuttered, dark and cheerless. Here she paused in front of a narrow iron gate.   "Madam," I said, "you represent to me one of the problems of my life. Why does your taste run to such quarters as these? This might be that same back street in Washington!"   She chuckled to herself, at length laughed aloud. "But wait! If you entered my abode once," she said, "why not again? Come."   Her hand was at the heavy knocker as she spoke. In a moment the door slowly opened, just as it had done that night before in Washington. My companion passed before me swiftly. As she entered I saw standing at the opening the same brown and wrinkled old dame who had served that night before in Washington!   For an instant the light dazzled my eyes, but, determined now to see this adventure through, I stepped within. Then, indeed, I found it difficult to stifle the exclamation of surprise which came to my lips. Believe it or not, as you like, we were again in Washington!   I say that I was confronted by the identical arrangement, the identical objects of furnishing, which had marked the luxurious boudoir of Helena von Ritz in Washington! The tables were the same, the chairs, the mirrors, the consoles. On the mantel stood the same girandoles with glittering crystals. The pictures upon the walls, so far as I could remember their themes, did not deviate in any particular of detail or arrangement. The oval-backed chairs were duplicates of those I had seen that other night at midnight. Beyond these same amber satin curtains stood the tall bed with its canopy, as I could see; and here at the right was the same low Napoleon bed with its rolled ends. The figures of the carpets were the same, their deep-piled richness, soft under foot, the same. The flowered cups of the sconces were identical with those I had seen before. To my eye, even as it grew more studious, there appeared no divergence, no difference, between these apartments and those I had so singularly visited--and yet under circumstances so strangely akin to these--in the capital of my own country!   "You are good enough to admire my modest place," said a laughing voice at my shoulder. Then indeed I waked and looked about me, and saw that this, stranger than any mirage of the brain, was but a fact and must later be explained by the laborious processes of the feeble reason.   I turned to her then, pulling myself together as best I could. Yes, she too was the same, although in this case costumed somewhat differently. The wide ball gown of satin was gone, and in its place was a less pretentious robing of some darker silk. I remembered distinctly that the flowers upon the white satin gown I first had seen were pink roses. Here were flowers of the crocus, cunningly woven into the web of the gown itself. The slippers which I now saw peeping out as she passed were not of white satin, but better foot covering for the street. She cast over the back of a chair, as she had done that other evening, her light shoulder covering, a dark mantle, not of lace now, but of some thin cloth. Her jewels were gone, and the splendor of her dark hair was free of decoration. No pale blue fires shone at her white throat, and her hands were ringless. But the light, firm poise of her figure could not be changed; the mockery of her glance remained the same, half laughing and half wistful. The strong curve of her lips remained, and I recalled this arch of brow, the curve of neck and chin, the droop of the dark locks above her even forehead. Yes, it was she. It could be no one else.   She clapped her hands and laughed like a child as she turned to me. "Bravo!" she said. "My judgment, then, was quite correct."   "In regard to what?"   "Yourself!"   "Pardon me?"   "You do not show curiosity! You do not ask me questions! Good! I think I shall ask you to wait. I say to you frankly that I am alone here. It pleases me to live--as pleases me! You are alone in Montreal. Why should we not please ourselves?"   In some way which I did not pause to analyze, I felt perfectly sure that this strange woman could, if she cared to do so, tell me some of the things I ought to know. She might be here on some errand identical with my own. Calhoun had sent for her once before. Whose agent was she now? I found chairs for us both.   An instant later, summoned in what way I do not know, the old serving-woman again reappeared. "Wine, Threlka," said the baroness; "service for two--you may use this little table. Monsieur," she added, turning to me, "I am most happy to make even some slight return for the very gracious entertainment offered me that morning by Mr. Calhoun at his residence. Such a droll man! Oh, la! la!"   "Are you his friend, Madam?" I asked bluntly.   "Why should I not be?"   I could frame neither offensive nor defensive art with her. She mocked me.   In a few moments the weazened old woman was back with cold fowl, wine, napery, silver.   "Will Monsieur carve?" At her nod the old woman filled my glass, after my hostess had tasted of her own. We had seated ourselves at the table as she spoke.   "Not so bad for a black midnight, eh?" she went on, "--in a strange town--and on a...