Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

i ISSIC frowned, "the big Mounted, eh I suppose you ml to linn Rose was puzzled Grat'ful: I don' know thas fill-' He breeng me red ribbons from the beeg town. It mu>' be ver' nize in the town " Bruce shook Ins head. "You'd hate il ! Nothing green <>i sweet grey, dirt) -tone canyons where the sun nevei ihines," be went on to p. nut a sordid picture of ugliness and dirt and people, all hurrying, hating each other, thinking of money, lighting each other for money, but .it the end Rose onl) smiled She slid down from her branch and stood before him, looking up with unwavering "But you would be there," she said. "] tink me I lak any place where you wire there too!'1 Under the tight jersey she wore her low breasts n and fell swiftly. Her cheeks were the color of sunripened fruit, but the warm tint did not deepen altho Bruce Norton could feel himself blushing. She was not such a child after all, seventeen or eighteen perhaps, and lovel) enough to turn any man's head. He adopted a fatherly tone, taking one hard little hand in his own. "The place for Roses is out of doors, not shut up in stone 5! I'll send you a picture of the kind of houses people live in in the city when I go back, houses like mountains — " Terror sounded in her voice, "You're going away, yas? Dont go! I love you — I love you lak hell !" Bruce Norton stood still, staring startled into the implacable face of Memory. "Think what you came here to do ! Think of the vow you made beside your mother's bed your mother who died of a broken heart ! Are you free to play at love-making?" As tho lie could forget for more than a few moments at a time the thing that had brought him up into this wilderness, the thing that had shadowed his youth, the thing that lay between him and any hope for the future! But just for now. just for a few days might he not he free from it. free to he young and happy ? He lifted the brown little paw he held and kissed the back of it ceremoniously. "1 in not going a\\a\ yet. little Rose." he smiled, "you dont mean what you just said, of course. Some day when you've grown up voull marry Devlin or some one who lives up here and be very happy hut now before I go we'll be friends, wont we ?" She looked at him slantingly, hid her eyes behind smooth creamv lids. " Ml ri"" \oii lak (has Into ! . I lal thl Indian summci with its poignant hint goldi • beauty and sunshine without pr< future, made of the Northwest woods in th< a magic place, an enchanted land to B out yesterdays 01 tomorrows, P>< 1 ause he km ness of lus momenl he made the mosl of it. While his surveyors languidly drove then while th< murmured a background to their voii together under the trees and he talked .is he had n< talked to anyone before, of the books thai h< had • the shy unspoken DO) dreams he had dreamed chatted too. in her quainl broken English, and made wreaths of crimson and yellow maple leaves Her mood* wire sudden in their changes, one moment sin teasing elf. crowned with red haws, the next and sh< become a tragedy queen reciting a weird folk I And then one evening at dinner in the factor' house McCollinS said casual, ) : "We're tae have another I ni/en in the settlement. Meester Norton, a mon frae your own part o' the wurruld. The new company doctor 1 rooming tomorrow. His name is Glendenning— Robert 'den denning." Bruce Norton laid down his knife and fork, hut said nothing. Surprised at the silence, the old factor glanced across the table and saw a strange thing; he saw a man die before his eyes and go on breathing, Indeed in a mo ment Norton spoke, too. about some trivial subject, but he was a dead man speaking nevertheless, a man who had definitely resigned his hold on life. sighed Tiger Rose, "if She came closer, her face ghastly. "They 'ave foun' heem?" "They haven't — yet," Cusick snapped, "the damn fool could have gotten away — but he said he had to come back to see you. Where can we hide him?" (Thirty-one)