The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story by Various
page 30 of 818 (03%)
page 30 of 818 (03%)
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her people that lurked beneath her skin. And she was light on her feet.
Even trudging in the deep snow, she seemed more to float, to skim on top, than to walk. Unconcerned she had listened to the conversation that had gone on between her father and the Tartar in the hut of the boatman. She had hardly been interested in the whole affair, yet, when Mehmet Ali mentioned casually as soon as he was outdoors that he knew a man who would pay twenty pieces of gold for such a wife as Fanutza was, she became interested in the conversation. "I sell horses only," Marcu answered quietly. "Yet my friend and others from his tribe have bought wives. Remember that beautiful Circassian girl?" the Tartar continued without raising or lowering his voice. "Yes, Mehmet, we buy wives but we don't sell them." "Which is not fair," Mehmet reflected aloud still in the same voice. By that time they had reached the river shore. Mehmet, after rolling together the oil cloth that had covered the boat, helped the gipsy chief and his daughter to the stern. With one strong push of the oar on the shore rock, the Tartar slid his boat a hundred feet towards the middle of the stream. Then he seated himself, face towards his passengers, and rowed steadily without saying a single word. The gipsy chief lit his short pipe and looked over his friend's head, trying to distinguish the other shore from behind the curtain of falling snow. The boat glided slowly over the thickening waters of the Danube. A heavy snowstorm, the |
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