Page:MacLeod Raine - The Sheriff's Son.djvu/215

 yet back. He was looking for strays, his wife said.

In the family rocking-chair Roy was reading a torn copy of "Martin Chuzzlewit." How it had reached this haven was a question, since it was the only book in the house except a Big Creek bible, as the catalogue of a mail-order house is called in that country. Beaudry resented the frank, insolent observations of Dickens on the manners of Americans. In the first place, the types were not true to life. In the second place—

The young man heard footsteps coming around the corner of the house. He glanced up carelessly—and his heart seemed to stop beating.

He was looking into the barrel of a revolver pointed straight at him. Back of the weapon was the brutal, triumphant face of Meldrum. It was set in a cruel grin that showed two rows of broken, tobacco-stained teeth.

"By God! I 've got you. Git down on yore knees and beg, Mr. Spy. I'm going to blow yore head off in just thirty seconds."

Not in his most unbridled moments had Dickens painted a bully so appalling as this one. This man was a notorious "killer" and the lust of