Half an hour later the one-car special was retracing
its way westward up the valley of the Tumbling Water, and Lidgerwood was
trying to go to sleep in the well-appointed little state-room which it
was Tadasu Matsuwari's pride to keep spick and span and spotlessly
clean. But there were disturbing thoughts, many and varied, to keep him
awake, chief among them those which hung upon the dramatic midnight
episode with the demented woman for its central figure. Through what
dreadful Valley of Humiliation had she come to reach the abysmal depths
in which the one cry of her soul was a cry for vengeance? Who was the
unnamed man whom Hallock had promised to kill? How much or how little
was this tragedy figuring in the trouble storm which was brooding over
the Red Desert? And how much or how little would it involve one who was
anxious only to see even-handed justice prevail?
These and similar insistent questions kept Lidgerwood awake long after
his train had left the crooked pathway marked out by the Tumbling Water,
and when he finally fell asleep the laboring engine of the one-car
special was storming the approaches to Crosswater Summit.
Pages:
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217