Ralestone Luck | Page 7

filling a black
pipe which allowed him to resemble--in very slight degree, decided Val--an explorer in
an English tobacco advertisement. Val himself was stretched full length on the couch
with about ten pounds of cat attempting to rest on his center section in spite of his firm
refusal to allow the same.
"Br-r-r!" Ricky shivered. "It's cold in here."
"Probably just Uncle Rick passing through--not the weather. No, cat, you may not sit on
that stomach. It's just as full of bacon as yours is and it wants a nice long rest." Val swept
Satan off to the floor and he resignedly went to roost by the boy's feet in spite of the
beguiling noises Ricky made to attract his attention.
"These stone houses are cold." Rupert scratched a match on the sole of his shoe. "We
ought to have flooring put down over this stone paving. I saw some wood stacked up in
an outhouse when I put the car away. We'll have it in tomorrow and see what we can do
about a fire in the evening."
"And I thought the South was always warm." Ricky examined her hands. "Whoever," she
remarked pleasantly, "took my hand lotion better return it. The consequences might not
be very attractive."
"Are you sure you packed it this morning?" Val asked.
"But of--" Her fingers went to her mouth. "I wonder if I did? I've just got to have some.
We'll drive to town tomorrow and get a bottle."
"Thirty miles or so for a ten-cent bottle of gooey stuff," Val protested.
"Good idea." Rupert stood with his back to the fireplace as if there really were a flame or
two within its black emptiness. "I've some papers that LeFleur wants to see. Then there're
our boxes at the freight station to arrange transportation for, and we'll have to see about
getting a newspaper and--"
"Make a list," murmured his brother.
Rupert dropped down upon the wide arm of Ricky's chair and with her only too willing
aid set to work. Val eyed them drowsily. Rupert and Ricky--or to give her her very
formal name in full--Richanda Anne, were "Red" Ralestones, possessing the thin,
three-cornered faces, the dark mahogany hair, the sharply defined cheek-bones which had
been the mark of the family as far back in history as portraits or written descriptions

existed. The "Red" Ralestones were marked also by height and a suppleness of body and
movement. The men had been fine swordsmen, the ladies noted beauties. But they were
also cursed, Val remembered vividly, with uncertain tempers.
Rupert had schooled himself to the point where his emotions were mastered by his will.
But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and the last occasion was not so long ago
that the scene had become misty in his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary,
loyal to a fault, and incurably romantic, that was a "Red" Ralestone.
Val himself was a "Black" Ralestone, which was a very different thing. They were a new
growth on the family tree, a growth which appeared after the Ralestones had been exiled
to colonial America. His black hair, his long, dark face of no particular beauty marked
with straight, black brows set in a perpetual frown--that was the sign of a "Black"
Ralestone. They were as strong-willed as the "Reds," but their anger could be controlled
to icy rage.
"Now that you have spent the monthly income," Val suggested as Rupert added up a long
column of minute figures scrawled across the first page of his pocket note-book, "let's
really get away from economics for one evening. The surroundings suggest something
more romantic than dollars and cents. After all, when did a pirate ever show a saving
disposition? Would the first Roderick--"
"The Roderick who brought home the Luck?" Ricky laughed. "But he brought home a
fortune, too, didn't he, Rupert?"
Her brother relit his pipe. "Yes, but a great many lords came home from the Crusades
with their pockets filled. Sir Roderick de la Stone thought the Luck worth his entire estate
even after he was made Baron Ralestone."
Ricky shivered delicately. "Not altogether nice people, those ancestors of ours," she
observed.
"No," Val grinned. "By rights this room should be full of ghosts instead of the beat of just
one. How many Ralestones died violently? Seven or eight, wasn't it?"
"But the ones who died in England should haunt Lorne," argued Ricky, half seriously.
"Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our
great-great-great-grandfather scuttled," her brother replied.
"Rupert," Ricky turned and asked impulsively, "do you really believe in the Luck?"
Rupert looked up at the empty niche. "I don't know--No, I don't. Not the way that
Roderick and Richard and all the rest did. But something that has