The seventh man Author:Max Brand Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III BATTLE On the road he passed Miss Brewster—for the Alder school boasted two teachers!—and under her kindly, rather faded smile he felt a great ... more »desire to stop and take her into his confidence; ask her what Betty Neal had been doing all these months. Instead, he touched Grey Molly with the spurs, and she answered like a watch-spring uncurling beneath him. The rush of wind against his face raised his spirits to a singing pitch, and when he flung from the saddle before the school he shouted: "Oh, Betty!" Up the sharply angling steps in a bound, and at the door: "Oh, Betty!" His voice filled the room with a thick, dull echo, and there was Betty behind her desk looking up at him agape; and beside her stood Blondy Hansen, big, good- looking, and equally startled. Fear made the glance of Vic Gregg swerve to where little Tommy Aiken scribbled an arithmetic problem on the blackboard—after- school work for whispering in class, or some equally heinous crime. The tingling voices of the other children, on their way home, floated in to Tommy, and the corners of his mouth drooped. To regain his poise, Vic tugged at his belt and felt the weight of the holster slipping into a more convenient place, then he sauntered up the aisle, sweeping off his sombrero. Every feeling in his body, every nerve, disappeared in a crystalline hardness, for it seemed to him that the air was surcharged by a secret something between Betty and young Hansen. Betty was out from behind her desk and she ran to meet him and took his hand in both of hers. The rush of her coming took his breath, and at her touch something melted in her. "Oh, Vic, are you all through?" Gregg stiffened for the benefit of Hansen and Tommy Aiken. "Pretty near through," he said carelessly. "Thought I'd drop dow...« less
I had read this book years ago, but had forgotten it. It was a good reread. It is the story of Dan Barry. A strange man with strange ideas that got him in the end.