The Courage of Marge O'Doone eBook

James Oliver Curwood
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 329 pages of information about The Courage of Marge O'Doone.

The Courage of Marge O'Doone eBook

James Oliver Curwood
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 329 pages of information about The Courage of Marge O'Doone.

“Came west, Bucky did—­with the kid,” he went on.  “Struck my cabin, on the Mackenzie, a year later.  Told me all about it.  Then one day he sneaked away and left her with me, begging me to put her where she’d be safe.  I did.  Gave her to Hauck’s woman, and told her Bucky’s story.  Later, Hauck came over here and built this place.  Three years ago I come down from the Yukon, and saw the kid.  Pretty?  Gawd, she was!  Almost a woman.  And she was mine.  I told ’em so.  Mebby the woman would have cheated me, but I had Hauck on the hip because I saw him kill a man when he was drunk—­a white man from Fort MacPherson.  Helped him hide the body.  And then—­oh, it was funny!—­I ran across Bucky!  He was living in a shack a dozen miles from here, an’ he didn’t know Marge was the O’Doone baby.  I told him a big lie—­told him the kid died, an’ that I’d heard the woman had killed herself, and that O’Doone was in a lunatic asylum.  Mebby he did have a conscience, the fool!  Guess he was a little crazy himself.  Went away soon after that.  Never heard of him since.  An’ I’ve been hanging round until the girl was old enough to live with a man.  Ain’t I done right, Mac?  Don’t she belong to me?  An’ to-morrow....”

His head rolled.  He recovered himself with an effort, and leaned heavily against the table.  His face was almost barren of human expression.  It was the face of a monster, unlighted by reason, stripped of mind and soul.  And David, glaring into it across the table, questioned him once more, even as he heard the crunch of footsteps outside, and knew that Hauck was coming—­coming in all probability to unmask him in the part he had played.  But Hauck was too late.  He was ready to fight now, and as he held himself prepared for the struggle he asked that question.

“And this man—­Bucky; what was his other name, Brokaw?”

Brokaw’s thick lips moved, and then came his voice, in a husky whisper: 

“Tavish!”

CHAPTER XXII

The next instant Hauck was at the open door.  He did not cross the threshold at once, but stood there for perhaps twenty seconds—­his gray, hard face looking in on them with eyes in which there was a cold and sinister glitter.  Brokaw, with the fumes of liquor thick in his brain, tried to nod an invitation for him to enter; his head rolled grotesquely and his voice was a croak.  David rose slowly to his feet, thrusting back his chair.  From contemplating Brokaw’s sagging body, Hauck’s eyes were levelled at him.  And then his lips parted.  One would not have called it a smile.  It revealed to David a deadly animosity which the man was trying to hide under the disguise of that grin, and he knew that Hauck had discovered that he was not McKenna.  Swiftly David shot a glance at Brokaw.  The giant’s head and shoulders lay on the table, and he made a sudden daring effort to save a little more time for himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “He’s terribly drunk.”

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Project Gutenberg
The Courage of Marge O'Doone from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.