At Pinneys Ranch

At Pinney's Ranch, by Edward
Bellamy

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Title: At Pinney's Ranch 1898
Author: Edward Bellamy
Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22709]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PINNEY'S RANCH ***

Produced by David Widger

AT PINNEY'S RANCH
By Edward Bellamy
1898

John Lansing first met Mary Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney,
whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her
cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening
somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had
some powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he
laughed at them himself, experimented in turn with the ladies. He failed
with nearly every subject until it came Mary Hollister's turn. As she
placed her soft palm in his, closed her eyes, and gave herself up to his
influence, he knew that he should succeed with her, and so he did. She
proved a remarkably sympathetic subject, and Lansing was himself
surprised, and the spectators fairly thrilled, by the feats he was able to
perform by her aid. After that evening he met her often, and there was
more equally remarkable mind-reading; and then mind-reading was
dropped for heart-reading, and the old, old story they read in each
other's hearts had more fascination for them than the new science.
Having once discovered that their hearts beat in unison, they took no
more interest in the relation of their minds.
The action proper of this story begins four years after their marriage,
with a very shocking event,--nothing less than the murder of Austin
Flint, who was found dead one morning in the house in which he lived
alone. Lansing had no hand in the deed, but he might almost as well
have had; for, while absolutely guiltless, he was caught in one of those
nets of circumstance which no foresight can avoid, whereby innocent
men are sometimes snared helplessly, and delivered over to a horrid
death. There had been a misunderstanding between him and the dead
man, and only a couple of days before the murder, they had exchanged
blows on the street. When Flint was found dead, in the lack of any
other clue, people thought of Lansing. He realized that this was so, and
remained silent as to a fact which otherwise he would have testified to
at the inquest, but which he feared might now imperil him. He had been
at Austin Flint's house the night of the murder, and might have
committed it, so far as opportunity was concerned. In reality, the
motive of his visit was anything but murderous. Deeply chagrined by
the scandal of the fight, he had gone to Flint to apologize, and to make
up their quarrel. But he knew very well that nobody would believe that
this was his true object in seeking his enemy secretly by night, while

the admission of the visit would complete a circumstantial evidence
against him stronger than had often hanged men. He believed that no
one but the dead man knew of the call, and that it would never be found
out. He had not told his wife of it at the time, and still less afterward,
on account of the anxiety she would feel at his position.
Two weeks passed, and he was beginning to breathe freely in the
assurance of safety, when, like a thunderbolt from a cloud that seems to
have passed over, the catastrophe came. A friend met him on the street
one day, and warned him to escape while he could. It appeared that he
had been seen to enter Flint's house that night. His concealment of the
fact had been accepted as corroborating evidence of his guilt, and the
police, who had shadowed him from the first, might arrest him at any
moment. The conviction that he was guilty, which the friend who told
him this evidently had, was a terrible comment on the desperateness of
his position. He walked home as in a dream. His wife had gone out to a
neighbor's. His little boy came to him, and clambered on his knee.
"Papa, what makes your face so wet?" he asked, for there were great
drops on his forehead. Then his wife came in, her face white, her eyes
full of horror. "Oh, John!" she exclaimed. "They say you were at Mr.
Flint's that night, and they are going to arrest