Raymond S. Spears

“ One of the persons was Sue Belle and the other was a man. Adjusting the focus of the glasses, old Clinchell glared at the two.
They stopped in the edge of the timber and talked to each other. The mule leaned up against a gum-tree and rested his head on the man's shoulder, which indicated a degree of familiarity maddening for Clinchell to behold. At intervals the man held something up for the mule to eat, and that accounted for the mule not kicking the man through an acre of landscape. ”

“ She ran down to the fence, treading recklessly through the flower-beds.
"It's time for supper!" she repeated. "You can't go away now! I don't want to eat supper alone!"
"Of course not," he mumbled, looking thoughtfully at his watch. ”

“ Old Clinchell meditated over the money for some time. He grinned sardonically as he made up a thousand dollars in bills and another thousand in gold, taking fifty twenty-dollar gold pieces from a drawer of the safe.
"Take a shanty-boater," he nodded complacently, "and he'll just naturally do anything in Gawd's World for money! I'll sure make it an object for that Andrest to get his hull caboodle out of this part of the country. I might 'a' knowed I couldn't drive him out. They live on bullets and getting shot up and kicked around!" ”

“ People were apt to talk too much sometimes. Old Clinchell's early life had been milestoned, so to speak, by injudicious conversations, his own and other people's. If Morlung had been fooled and bulldozed into telling too much, there was no telling what the law of the case would be. It might involve the fifty-thousand-dollar bond, to make up for any damages done to the feelings and property of Lunmer Andrest, if the young man pressed the point. ”