🔥 Archmodels vol

Most Liked Casino Bonuses in the last 7 days 💰

Filter:

Active

Free bonus

Sort:

Newest

Popular

Bethel dozed in the tepid shade. It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair, distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where the "court- house gang" was playing poker. From the open back door of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the court-house. A cloud of dust was rolling, slowly up the parched street, with something travelling in the midst of it. The village of Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. The little white patch he saw away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been born and bred. I reckon you are mistaken about that. His word was no longer to be taken. Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Missis Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Trade was not. Garvey's preference for one of the large valley towns and Pike's hankering for primeval solitudes. Society is what she 'lows she wants, and she is getting' of it. Henry T he most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree's law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old arm-chair. Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into Blackjack's bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud between the Gorees and the Coltranes. They who cast doubts upon Garvey's soundness of mind had a strong witness in the man's countenance. Missis Garvey likes yo' old place, and she likes the neighbourhood. Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep -- but whiskey they would not buy for him, and he must have whiskey. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small cannon -- doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price -- might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever. And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. Her stout form was armoured in a skintight silk dress of the description known as "changeable," being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead. The feud had been a typical one of the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong and slaughter. When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to grow prominent. Goree frowned ominously. He had carved her countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity ; had imbued her with the stolidity of his crags , and the reserve of his hushed interiors. The sheriff, the county clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing "from the valley," sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool. Garvey threw his slouch bat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing his unblinking eyes upon Goree's. Somewhere in Mrs. These things represented to him the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. Once the "revenues" had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and desperately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state's prison for two years. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever had -- first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family home, and, latterly the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. In the cabin far up on Blackjack's shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats, this odd couple had lived for twenty years. So she coldly vetoed Pike's proposed system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon the world, and gyrate socially. But when the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex -- to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony. Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable with Martella's ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable. But that ain't what I come fur to say, Mr. The broken gambler had turned drunkard and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had stripped him denied him a seat at the game. Missis Garvey and me, we come f'om the po' white trash.{/INSERTKEYS}{/PARAGRAPH} Later on, they offered the Garveys an enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action, some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying the said property. Most of the quality folks in the mountains hev 'em. I sold out to you, as you yourself expressed it, 'lock, stock and barrel. He had been a borrower and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from lack of opportunity. Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree's feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the spendthrift's shaking hands. We been recognized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society. To the Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left -- Colonel Abner Coltrane, a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and a contemporary with Goree's father. {PARAGRAPH}{INSERTKEYS}A Blackjack Bargainer. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds, the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin' on feuds f'om twenty to a hundred year. Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers. However Martella Garvey's heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. But there's somethin' we need we ain't got. But Adam reckoned without his Eve. Pike Garvey was little known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him "crazy as a loon. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street -- the main street of the town of Bethel. Thar's somethin' you got what me and Missis Garvey wants to buy. Happily he missed, and the unconscious agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything resembling law or justice. The daily bouts at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to him was assigned the ignoble part of the onlooker. His law business was extinct; no case had been intrusted to him in two years. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze. Pike lifted his squirrel rifle off the hooks and took a shot at them at long range on the chance of their being revenues. There had come from "back yan'" in the mountains two of the strangest creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. Goree, that sech things suits me -- fur me, give me them thar. Garvey's bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty years of Blackjack. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts and the Troys hev been to see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray horse, became visible. The best folks hev axed her to differ'nt kinds of doin's. But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. The man from "back yan'" knew it as well as the lawyer did. His befuddled brain was hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself and his favourite follies. I cyan't say, Mr. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. The "gang" had cleaned him out. The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. The last man to drap was when yo' uncle, Jedge Paisley Goree, 'journed co't and shot Len Coltrane f'om the bench. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the street as it neared Goree's office, and stopped in the gutter directly in front of his door. She always seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks falling and pattering down the mountainside. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to account for the visit. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and immobile as a statue's. Goree watched this solemn equipage , as it drove to his door, with only faint interest; but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip, awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the recently civilized. One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garvey's cabin. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a serious breach of the mountain etiquette. On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. The June day was at its sultriest hour. She says it ought to been put in the 'ventory ov the sale, but it tain't thar. Soon wearying of his ostracism , Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. Now no direct heir of the Gorees survived except this plucked and singed bird of misfortune. She could always hear the awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights. They had neither dog nor children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner every day. One more chance -- he was saying to himself -- if he had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her of vanities. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.