James Oliver Curwood

The Country Beyond James Oliver Curwood

Book Excerpt: ...reature, and Peter knew that the devil was in him as he stood there at the cabin door. His breath, if one had stood close enough to smell it, was heavy with whiskey. Tobacco juice stained the corners of his mouth, and his one eye gleamed with an animal-like exultation as he nodded toward the girl with the shining curls"Mooney says he'll pay seven-fifty for her when he gets his tie- money from the Government, an' he paid me fifty down," he said. "It'll help pay for the brat's board these last ten years--an' mebby, when it comes to a show-down, I can stick him for a thousand."The woman made no answer. She was, in a way, past answering with a mind of her own. The man, as he stood there, was wicked and cruel, every line in his ugly face and angular body a line of sin. The woman was bent, broken, a wreck. In her face there was no sign of a living soul. Her eyes were dull, her heart burned out, her hands gnarled with toil under the slavedom of a beast. Yet even Peter, quiet as a mouse where he lay, sensed t..