Читать книгу The Saint of the Speedway онлайн

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The buckboard seemed to be almost falling down the precipitous slope under the man’s reckless handling. It was literally plunging headlong, but she understood—she knew. It was McLagan’s way with his Alaskan bronchos. There would be no disaster. And as she watched his progress she wanted to laugh, for such was the lightness of her mood.

The buckboard rattled, and shook, and jolted as it bustled down the hillside over a broken almost undefined trail. Its surefooted, well-fed team was utterly untiring. The shaggy creatures made no mistakes. Tough, hardy, they were bred to just such work as this, and they were in the hands of a super-teamster. So the creek came up to them with a rush and they plunged belly deep into the chill water of the ford. Then, moments later, they were reined in sharply at the door of the man’s familiar stopping place.

“Say, ma’am, this country’s one hell of a proposition for a quiet, decent, comfort-loving, ordinary sort of engineer.”

The man’s greeting was full of cheer, and his smiling eyes conveyed a quiet sense of dry humour. Ivor McLagan had no claims to good looks, and his manner ordinarily was sufficiently brusque to border on rudeness, but in this woman’s presence he had a way of displaying a side to his character that those who met him in business, those of his own sex, were never admitted to. No, McLagan had nothing in face or feature to thrill any woman’s artist soul, but what he lacked in that direction he made up in another. As he turned his buckboard wheels and leapt to the ground, he towered over the little woman in the doorway a figure of magnificent manhood.