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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Waif of the Plains, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Waif of the Plains
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 13, 2006 [EBook #2279]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WAIF OF THE PLAINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+A WAIF OF THE PLAINS
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A long level of dull gray that further away became a faint blue, with
+here and there darker patches that looked like water. At times an open
+space, blackened and burnt in an irregular circle, with a shred of
+newspaper, an old rag, or broken tin can lying in the ashes. Beyond
+these always a low dark line that seemed to sink into the ground at
+night, and rose again in the morning with the first light, but never
+otherwise changed its height and distance. A sense of always moving with
+some indefinite purpose, but of always returning at night to the same
+place--with the same surroundings, the same people, the same bedclothes,
+and the same awful black canopy dropped down from above. A chalky taste
+of dust on the mouth and lips, a gritty sense of earth on the fingers,
+and an all-pervading heat and smell of cattle.
+
+This was "The Great Plains" as they seemed to two children from the
+hooded depth of an emigrant wagon, above the swaying heads of toiling
+oxen, in the summer of 1852.
+
+It had appeared so to them for two weeks, always the same and always
+without the least sense to them of wonder or monotony. When they viewed
+it from the road, walking beside the wagon, there was only the team
+itself added to the unvarying picture. One of the wagons bore on
+its canvas hood the inscription, in large black letters, "Off to
+California!" on the other "Root, Hog, or Die," but neither of them
+awoke in the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or
+jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who
+occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and
+depressed as the day wore on, with this past effusive pleasantry.
+
+Yet the impressions of the two children differed slightly. The eldest, a
+boy of eleven, was apparently new to the domestic habits and customs of
+a life to which the younger, a girl of seven, was evidently native and
+familiar. The food was coarse and less skillfully prepared than that to
+which he had been accustomed. There was a certain freedom and roughness
+in their intercourse, a simplicity that bordered almost on rudeness
+in their domestic arrangements, and a speech that was at times almost
+untranslatable to him. He slept in his clothes, wrapped up in blankets;
+he was conscious that in the matter of cleanliness he was left to
+himself to overcome the difficulties of finding water and towels. But it
+is doubtful if in his youthfulness it affected him more than a novelty.
+He ate and slept well, and found his life amusing. Only at times the
+rudeness of his companions, or, worse, an indifference that made him
+feel his dependency upon them, awoke a vague sense of some wrong that
+had been done to him which while it was voiceless to all others and
+even uneasily put aside by himself, was still always slumbering in his
+childish consciousness.
+
+To the party he was known as an orphan put on the train at "St. Jo" by
+some relative of his stepmother, to be delivered to another relative at
+Sacramento. As his stepmother had not even taken leave of him, but had
+entrusted his departure to the relative with whom he had been lately
+living, it was considered as an act of "riddance," and accepted as such
+by her party, and even vaguely acquiesced in by the boy himself. What
+consideration had been offered for his passage he did not know; he only
+remembered that he had been told "to make himself handy." This he had
+done cheerfully, if at times with the unskillfulness of a novice; but it
+was not a peculiar or a menial task in a company where all took part in
+manual labor, and where existence seemed to him to bear the charm of
+a prolonged picnic. Neither was he subjected to any difference of
+affection or treatment from Mrs. Silsbee, the mother of his little
+companion, and the wife of the leader of the train. Prematurely old,
+of ill-health, and harassed with cares, she had no time to waste in
+discriminating maternal tenderness for her daughter, but treated the
+children with equal and unbiased querulousness.
+
+The rear wagon creaked, swayed, and rolled on slowly and heavily. The
+hoofs of the draft-oxen, occasionally striking in the dust with a
+dull report, sent little puffs like smoke on either side of the track.
+Within, the children were playing "keeping store." The little girl, as
+an opulent and extravagant customer, was purchasing of the boy, who sat
+behind a counter improvised from a nail-keg and the front seat, most of
+the available contents of the wagon, either under their own names or an
+imaginary one as the moment suggested, and paying for them in the easy
+and liberal currency of dried beans and bits of paper. Change was given
+by the expeditious method of tearing the paper into smaller fragments.
+The diminution of stock was remedied by buying the same article over
+again under a different name. Nevertheless, in spite of these favorable
+commercial conditions, the market seemed dull.
+
+"I can show you a fine quality of sheeting at four cents a yard, double
+width," said the boy, rising and leaning on his fingers on the counter
+as he had seen the shopmen do. "All wool and will wash," he added, with
+easy gravity.
+
+"I can buy it cheaper at Jackson's," said the girl, with the intuitive
+duplicity of her bargaining sex.
+
+"Very well," said the boy. "I won't play any more."
+
+"Who cares?" said the girl indifferently. The boy here promptly upset
+the counter; the rolled-up blanket which had deceitfully represented the
+desirable sheeting falling on the wagon floor. It apparently suggested
+a new idea to the former salesman. "I say! let's play 'damaged stock.'
+See, I'll tumble all the things down here right on top o' the others,
+and sell 'em for less than cost."
+
+The girl looked up. The suggestion was bold, bad, and momentarily
+attractive. But she only said "No," apparently from habit, picked up her
+doll, and the boy clambered to the front of the wagon. The incomplete
+episode terminated at once with that perfect forgetfulness,
+indifference, and irresponsibility common to all young animals. If
+either could have flown away or bounded off finally at that moment, they
+would have done so with no more concern for preliminary detail than a
+bird or squirrel. The wagon rolled steadily on. The boy could see that
+one of the teamsters had climbed up on the tail-board of the preceding
+vehicle. The other seemed to be walking in a dusty sleep.
+
+"Kla'uns," said the girl.
+
+The boy, without turning his head, responded, "Susy."
+
+"Wot are you going to be?" said the girl.
+
+"Goin' to be?" repeated Clarence.
+
+"When you is growed," explained Susy.
+
+Clarence hesitated. His settled determination had been to become a
+pirate, merciless yet discriminating. But reading in a bethumbed "Guide
+to the Plains" that morning of Fort Lamarie and Kit Carson, he had
+decided upon the career of a "scout," as being more accessible and
+requiring less water. Yet, out of compassion for Susy's possible
+ignorance, he said neither, and responded with the American boy's modest
+conventionality, "President." It was safe, required no embarrassing
+description, and had been approved by benevolent old gentlemen with
+their hands on his head.
+
+"I'm goin' to be a parson's wife," said Susy, "and keep hens, and
+have things giv' to me. Baby clothes, and apples, and apple sass--and
+melasses! and more baby clothes! and pork when you kill."
+
+She had thrown herself at the bottom of the wagon, with her back towards
+him and her doll in her lap. He could see the curve of her curly head,
+and beyond, her bare dimpled knees, which were raised, and over which
+she was trying to fold the hem of her brief skirt.
+
+"I wouldn't be a President's wife," she said presently.
+
+"You couldn't!"
+
+"Could if I wanted to!"
+
+"Couldn't!"
+
+"Could now!"
+
+"Couldn't!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+Finding it difficult to explain his convictions of her ineligibility,
+Clarence thought it equally crushing not to give any. There was a long
+silence. It was very hot and dusty. The wagon scarcely seemed to move.
+Clarence gazed at the vignette of the track behind them formed by
+the hood of the rear. Presently he rose and walked past her to the
+tail-board. "Goin' to get down," he said, putting his legs over.
+
+"Maw says 'No,'" said Susy.
+
+Clarence did not reply, but dropped to the ground beside the slowly
+turning wheels. Without quickening his pace he could easily keep his
+hand on the tail-board.
+
+"Kla'uns."
+
+He looked up.
+
+"Take me."
+
+She had already clapped on her sun-bonnet and was standing at the edge
+of the tail-board, her little arms extended in such perfect confidence
+of being caught that the boy could not resist. He caught her cleverly.
+They halted a moment and let the lumbering vehicle move away from them,
+as it swayed from side to side as if laboring in a heavy sea. They
+remained motionless until it had reached nearly a hundred yards, and
+then, with a sudden half-real, half-assumed, but altogether delightful
+trepidation, ran forward and caught up with it again. This they repeated
+two or three times until both themselves and the excitement were
+exhausted, and they again plodded on hand in hand. Presently Clarence
+uttered a cry.
+
+"My! Susy--look there!"
+
+The rear wagon had once more slipped away from them a considerable
+distance. Between it and them, crossing its track, a most extraordinary
+creature had halted.
+
+At first glance it seemed a dog--a discomfited, shameless, ownerless
+outcast of streets and byways, rather than an honest stray of some
+drover's train. It was so gaunt, so dusty, so greasy, so slouching,
+and so lazy! But as they looked at it more intently they saw that the
+grayish hair of its back had a bristly ridge, and there were great
+poisonous-looking dark blotches on its flanks, and that the slouch of
+its haunches was a peculiarity of its figure, and not the cowering of
+fear. As it lifted its suspicious head towards them they could see that
+its thin lips, too short to cover its white teeth, were curled in a
+perpetual sneer.
+
+"Here, doggie!" said Clarence excitedly. "Good dog! Come."
+
+Susy burst into a triumphant laugh. "Et tain't no dog, silly; it's er
+coyote."
+
+Clarence blushed. It wasn't the first time the pioneer's daughter had
+shown her superior knowledge. He said quickly, to hide his discomfiture,
+"I'll ketch him, any way; he's nothin' mor'n a ki yi."
+
+"Ye can't, tho," said Susy, shaking her sun-bonnet. "He's faster nor a
+hoss!"
+
+Nevertheless, Clarence ran towards him, followed by Susy. When they had
+come within twenty feet of him, the lazy creature, without apparently
+the least effort, took two or three limping bounds to one side, and
+remained at the same distance as before. They repeated this onset three
+or four times with more or less excitement and hilarity, the animal
+evading them to one side, but never actually retreating before them.
+Finally, it occurred to them both that although they were not catching
+him they were not driving him away. The consequences of that thought
+were put into shape by Susy with round-eyed significance.
+
+"Kla'uns, he bites."
+
+Clarence picked up a hard sun-baked clod, and, running forward, threw
+it at the coyote. It was a clever shot, and struck him on his slouching
+haunches. He snapped and gave a short snarling yelp, and vanished.
+Clarence returned with a victorious air to his companion. But she was
+gazing intently in the opposite direction, and for the first time he
+discovered that the coyote had been leading them half round a circle.
+
+"Kla'uns," said Susy, with a hysterical little laugh.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The wagon's gone."
+
+Clarence started. It was true. Not only their wagon, but the whole train
+of oxen and teamsters had utterly disappeared, vanishing as completely
+as if they had been caught up in a whirlwind or engulfed in the earth!
+Even the low cloud of dust that usually marked their distant course by
+day was nowhere to be seen. The long level plain stretched before them
+to the setting sun, without a sign or trace of moving life or animation.
+That great blue crystal bowl, filled with dust and fire by day, with
+stars and darkness by night, which had always seemed to drop its rim
+round them everywhere and shut them in, seemed to them now to have
+been lifted to let the train pass out, and then closed down upon them
+forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Their first sensation was one of purely animal freedom.
+
+They looked at each other with sparkling eyes and long silent breaths.
+But this spontaneous outburst of savage nature soon passed. Susy's
+little hand presently reached forward and clutched Clarence's jacket.
+The boy understood it, and said quickly,--
+
+"They ain't gone far, and they'll stop as soon as they find us gone."
+
+They trotted on a little faster; the sun they had followed every day and
+the fresh wagon tracks being their unfailing guides; the keen, cool air
+of the plains, taking the place of that all-pervading dust and smell of
+the perspiring oxen, invigorating them with its breath.
+
+"We ain't skeered a bit, are we?" said Susy.
+
+"What's there to be afraid of?" said Clarence scornfully. He said this
+none the less strongly because he suddenly remembered that they had been
+often left alone in the wagon for hours without being looked after,
+and that their absence might not be noticed until the train stopped to
+encamp at dusk, two hours later. They were not running very fast, yet
+either they were more tired than they knew, or the air was thinner, for
+they both seemed to breathe quickly. Suddenly Clarence stopped.
+
+"There they are now."
+
+He was pointing to a light cloud of dust in the far-off horizon, from
+which the black hulk of a wagon emerged for a moment and was lost. But
+even as they gazed the cloud seemed to sink like a fairy mirage to the
+earth again, the whole train disappeared, and only the empty stretching
+track returned. They did not know that this seemingly flat and level
+plain was really undulatory, and that the vanished train had simply
+dipped below their view on some further slope even as it had once
+before. But they knew they were disappointed, and that disappointment
+revealed to them the fact that they had concealed it from each other.
+The girl was the first to succumb, and burst into a quick spasm of
+angry tears. That single act of weakness called out the boy's pride and
+strength. There was no longer an equality of suffering; he had become
+her protector; he felt himself responsible for both. Considering her no
+longer his equal, he was no longer frank with her.
+
+"There's nothin' to boo-boo for," he said, with a half-affected
+brusqueness. "So quit, now! They'll stop in a minit, and send some one
+back for us. Shouldn't wonder if they're doin' it now."
+
+But Susy, with feminine discrimination detecting the hollow ring in his
+voice, here threw herself upon him and began to beat him violently with
+her little fists. "They ain't! They ain't! They ain't. You know it!
+How dare you?" Then, exhausted with her struggles, she suddenly threw
+herself flat on the dry grass, shut her eyes tightly, and clutched at
+the stubble.
+
+"Get up," said the boy, with a pale, determined face that seemed to have
+got much older.
+
+"You leave me be," said Susy.
+
+"Do you want me to go away and leave you?" asked the boy.
+
+Susy opened one blue eye furtively in the secure depths of her
+sun-bonnet, and gazed at his changed face.
+
+"Ye-e-s."
+
+He pretended to turn away, but really to look at the height of the
+sinking sun.
+
+"Kla'uns!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Take me."
+
+She was holding up her hands. He lifted her gently in his arms, dropping
+her head over his shoulder. "Now," he said cheerfully, "you keep a good
+lookout that way, and I this, and we'll soon be there."
+
+The idea seemed to please her. After Clarence had stumbled on for a few
+moments, she said, "Do you see anything, Kla'uns?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"No more don't I." This equality of perception apparently satisfied her.
+Presently she lay more limp in his arms. She was asleep.
+
+The sun was sinking lower; it had already touched the edge of the
+horizon, and was level with his dazzled and straining eyes. At times it
+seemed to impede his eager search and task his vision. Haze and black
+spots floated across the horizon, and round wafers, like duplicates of
+the sun, glittered back from the dull surface of the plains. Then he
+resolved to look no more until he had counted fifty, a hundred,
+but always with the same result, the return of the empty, unending
+plains--the disk growing redder as it neared the horizon, the fire it
+seemed to kindle as it sank, but nothing more.
+
+Staggering under his burden, he tried to distract himself by fancying
+how the discovery of their absence would be made. He heard the listless,
+half-querulous discussion about the locality that regularly pervaded
+the nightly camp. He heard the discontented voice of Jake Silsbee as he
+halted beside the wagon, and said, "Come out o' that now, you two, and
+mighty quick about it." He heard the command harshly repeated. He saw
+the look of irritation on Silsbee's dusty, bearded face, that followed
+his hurried glance into the empty wagon. He heard the query, "What's
+gone o' them limbs now?" handed from wagon to wagon. He heard a few
+oaths; Mrs. Silsbee's high rasping voice, abuse of himself, the hurried
+and discontented detachment of a search party, Silsbee and one of the
+hired men, and vociferation and blame. Blame always for himself, the
+elder, who might have "known better!" A little fear, perhaps, but he
+could not fancy either pity or commiseration. Perhaps the thought upheld
+his pride; under the prospect of sympathy he might have broken down.
+
+At last he stumbled, and stopped to keep himself from falling forward on
+his face. He could go no further; his breath was spent; he was dripping
+with perspiration; his legs were trembling under him; there was
+a roaring in his ears; round red disks of the sun were scattered
+everywhere around him like spots of blood. To the right of the trail
+there seemed to be a slight mound where he could rest awhile, and yet
+keep his watchful survey of the horizon. But on reaching it he found
+that it was only a tangle of taller mesquite grass, into which he sank
+with his burden. Nevertheless, if useless as a point of vantage, it
+offered a soft couch for Susy, who seemed to have fallen quite naturally
+into her usual afternoon siesta, and in a measure it shielded her from a
+cold breeze that had sprung up from the west. Utterly exhausted himself,
+but not daring to yield to the torpor that seemed to be creeping over
+him, Clarence half sat, half knelt down beside her, supporting himself
+with one hand, and, partly hidden in the long grass, kept his straining
+eyes fixed on the lonely track.
+
+The red disk was sinking lower. It seemed to have already crumbled away
+a part of the distance with its eating fires. As it sank still lower,
+it shot out long, luminous rays, diverging fan-like across the plain,
+as if, in the boy's excited fancy, it too were searching for the lost
+estrays. And as one long beam seemed to linger over his hiding-place,
+he even thought that it might serve as a guide to Silsbee and the other
+seekers, and was constrained to stagger to his feet, erect in its
+light. But it soon sank, and with it Clarence dropped back again to his
+crouching watch. Yet he knew that the daylight was still good for an
+hour, and with the withdrawal of that mystic sunset glory objects became
+even more distinct and sharply defined than at any other time. And with
+the merciful sheathing of that flaming sword which seemed to have swayed
+between him and the vanished train, his eyes already felt a blessed
+relief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+With the setting of the sun an ominous silence fell. He could hear the
+low breathing of Susy, and even fancied he could hear the beating of his
+own heart in that oppressive hush of all nature. For the day's march had
+always been accompanied by the monotonous creaking of wheels and axles,
+and even the quiet of the night encampment had been always more or less
+broken by the movement of unquiet sleepers on the wagon beds, or the
+breathing of the cattle. But here there was neither sound nor motion.
+Susy's prattle, and even the sound of his own voice, would have broken
+the benumbing spell, but it was a part of his growing self-denial now
+that he refrained from waking her even by a whisper. She would awaken
+soon enough to thirst and hunger, perhaps, and then what was he to do?
+If that looked-for help would only come now--while she still slept. For
+it was part of his boyish fancy that if he could deliver her asleep and
+undemonstrative of fear and suffering, he would be less blameful, and
+she less mindful of her trouble. If it did not come--but he would not
+think of that yet! If she was thirsty meantime--well, it might rain, and
+there was always the dew which they used to brush off the morning grass;
+he would take off his shirt and catch it in that, like a shipwrecked
+mariner. It would be funny, and make her laugh. For himself he would not
+laugh; he felt he was getting very old and grown up in this loneliness.
+
+It was getting darker--they should be looking into the wagons now. A new
+doubt began to assail him. Ought he not, now that he was rested, make
+the most of the remaining moments of daylight, and before the glow faded
+from the west, when he would no longer have any bearings to guide him?
+But there was always the risk of waking her!--to what? The fear of being
+confronted again with HER fear and of being unable to pacify her, at
+last decided him to remain. But he crept softly through the grass, and
+in the dust of the track traced the four points of the compass, as he
+could still determine them by the sunset light, with a large printed W
+to indicate the west! This boyish contrivance particularly pleased him.
+If he had only had a pole, a stick, or even a twig, on which to tie his
+handkerchief and erect it above the clump of mesquite as a signal to the
+searchers in case they should be overcome by fatigue or sleep, he would
+have been happy. But the plain was barren of brush or timber; he did
+not dream that this omission and the very unobtrusiveness of his
+hiding-place would be his salvation from a greater danger.
+
+With the coming darkness the wind arose and swept the plain with a
+long-drawn sigh. This increased to a murmur, till presently the whole
+expanse--before sunk in awful silence--seemed to awake with vague
+complaints, incessant sounds, and low moanings. At times he thought he
+heard the halloaing of distant voices, at times it seemed as a whisper
+in his own ear. In the silence that followed each blast he fancied he
+could detect the creaking of the wagon, the dull thud of the oxen's
+hoofs, or broken fragments of speech, blown and scattered even as he
+strained his ears to listen by the next gust. This tension of the ear
+began to confuse his brain, as his eyes had been previously dazzled by
+the sunlight, and a strange torpor began to steal over his faculties.
+Once or twice his head dropped.
+
+He awoke with a start. A moving figure had suddenly uplifted itself
+between him and the horizon! It was not twenty yards away, so clearly
+outlined against the still luminous sky that it seemed even nearer.
+A human figure, but so disheveled, so fantastic, and yet so mean and
+puerile in its extravagance, that it seemed the outcome of a childish
+dream. It was a mounted figure, but so ludicrously disproportionate to
+the pony it bestrode, whose slim legs were stiffly buried in the dust in
+a breathless halt, that it might have been a straggler from some vulgar
+wandering circus. A tall hat, crownless and rimless, a castaway of
+civilization, surmounted by a turkey's feather, was on its head; over
+its shoulders hung a dirty tattered blanket that scarcely covered the
+two painted legs which seemed clothed in soiled yellow hose. In one hand
+it held a gun; the other was bent above its eyes in eager scrutiny of
+some distant point beyond and east of the spot where the children lay
+concealed. Presently, with a dozen quick noiseless strides of the pony's
+legs, the apparition moved to the right, its gaze still fixed on that
+mysterious part of the horizon. There was no mistaking it now! The
+painted Hebraic face, the large curved nose, the bony cheek, the broad
+mouth, the shadowed eyes, the straight long matted locks! It was an
+Indian! Not the picturesque creature of Clarence's imagination, but
+still an Indian! The boy was uneasy, suspicious, antagonistic, but
+not afraid. He looked at the heavy animal face with the superiority of
+intelligence, at the half-naked figure with the conscious supremacy of
+dress, at the lower individuality with the contempt of a higher race.
+Yet a moment after, when the figure wheeled and disappeared towards the
+undulating west, a strange chill crept over him. Yet he did not know
+that in this puerile phantom and painted pigmy the awful majesty of
+Death had passed him by.
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+It was Susy's voice, struggling into consciousness. Perhaps she had been
+instinctively conscious of the boy's sudden fears.
+
+"Hush!"
+
+He had just turned to the objective point of the Indian's gaze. There
+WAS something! A dark line was moving along with the gathering darkness.
+For a moment he hardly dared to voice his thoughts even to himself.
+It was a following train overtaking them from the rear! And from the
+rapidity of its movements a train with horses, hurrying forward to
+evening camp. He had never dreamt of help from that quarter. This
+was what the Indian's keen eyes had been watching, and why he had so
+precipitately fled.
+
+The strange train was now coming up at a round trot. It was evidently
+well appointed with five or six large wagons and several outriders. In
+half an hour it would be here. Yet he refrained from waking Susy, who
+had fallen asleep again; his old superstition of securing her safety
+first being still uppermost. He took off his jacket to cover her
+shoulders, and rearranged her nest. Then he glanced again at the coming
+train. But for some unaccountable reason it had changed its direction,
+and instead of following the track that should have brought it to his
+side it had turned off to the left! In ten minutes it would pass abreast
+of him a mile and a half away! If he woke Susy now, he knew she would be
+helpless in her terror, and he could not carry her half that distance.
+He might rush to the train himself and return with help, but he would
+never leave her alone--in the darkness. Never! If she woke she would die
+of fright, perhaps, or wander blindly and aimlessly away. No! The train
+would pass and with it that hope of rescue. Something was in his throat,
+but he gulped it down and was quiet again albeit he shivered in the
+night wind.
+
+The train was nearly abreast of him now. He ran out of the tall grass,
+waving his straw hat above his head in the faint hope of attracting
+attention. But he did not go far, for he found to his alarm that when
+he turned back again the clump of mesquite was scarcely distinguishable
+from the rest of the plain. This settled all question of his going. Even
+if he reached the train and returned with some one, how would he ever
+find her again in this desolate expanse?
+
+He watched the train slowly pass--still mechanically, almost hopelessly,
+waving his hat as he ran up and down before the mesquite, as if he were
+waving a last farewell to his departing hope. Suddenly it appeared to
+him that three of the outriders who were preceding the first wagon had
+changed their shape. They were no longer sharp, oblong, black blocks
+against the horizon but had become at first blurred and indistinct,
+then taller and narrower, until at last they stood out like exclamation
+points against the sky. He continued to wave his hat, they continued to
+grow taller and narrower. He understood it now--the three transformed
+blocks were the outriders coming towards him.
+
+This is what he had seen--
+
+[Drawing of three black blocks]
+
+This is what he saw now--
+
+! ! !
+
+He ran back to Susy to see if she still slept, for his foolish desire
+to have her saved unconsciously was stronger than ever now that safety
+seemed so near. She was still sleeping, although she had moved slightly.
+He ran to the front again.
+
+The outriders had apparently halted. What were they doing? Why wouldn't
+they come on?
+
+Suddenly a blinding flash of light seemed to burst from one of them.
+Away over his head something whistled like a rushing bird, and sped
+off invisible. They had fired a gun; they were signaling to
+him--Clarence--like a grown-up man. He would have given his life at that
+moment to have had a gun. But he could only wave his hat frantically.
+
+One of the figures here bore away and impetuously darted forward again.
+He was coming nearer, powerful, gigantic, formidable, as he loomed
+through the darkness. All at once he threw up his arm with a wild
+gesture to the others; and his voice, manly, frank, and assuring, came
+ringing before him.
+
+"Hold up! Good God! It's no Injun--it's a child!"
+
+In another moment he had reined up beside Clarence and leaned over him,
+bearded, handsome, powerful and protecting.
+
+"Hallo! What's all this? What are you doing here?"
+
+"Lost from Mr. Silsbee's train," said Clarence, pointing to the darkened
+west.
+
+"Lost?--how long?"
+
+"About three hours. I thought they'd come back for us," said Clarence
+apologetically to this big, kindly man.
+
+"And you kalkilated to wait here for 'em?"
+
+"Yes, yes--I did--till I saw you."
+
+"Then why in thunder didn't you light out straight for us, instead of
+hanging round here and drawing us out?"
+
+The boy hung his head. He knew his reasons were unchanged, but all at
+once they seemed very foolish and unmanly to speak out.
+
+"Only that we were on the keen jump for Injins," continued the stranger,
+"we wouldn't have seen you at all, and might hev shot you when we did.
+What possessed you to stay here?"
+
+The boy was still silent. "Kla'uns," said a faint, sleepy voice from the
+mesquite, "take me." The rifle-shot had awakened Susy.
+
+The stranger turned quickly towards the sound. Clarence started and
+recalled himself. "There," he said bitterly, "you've done it now, you've
+wakened her! THAT'S why I stayed. I couldn't carry her over there to
+you. I couldn't let her walk, for she'd be frightened. I wouldn't wake
+her up, for she'd be frightened, and I mightn't find her again. There!"
+He had made up his mind to be abused, but he was reckless now that she
+was safe.
+
+The men glanced at each other. "Then," said the spokesman quietly, "you
+didn't strike out for us on account of your sister?"
+
+"She ain't my sister," said Clarence quickly. "She's a little girl.
+She's Mrs. Silsbee's little girl. We were in the wagon and got down.
+It's my fault. I helped her down."
+
+The three men reined their horses closely round him, leaning forward
+from their saddles, with their hands on their knees and their heads on
+one side. "Then," said the spokesman gravely, "you just reckoned to stay
+here, old man, and take your chances with her rather than run the risk
+of frightening or leaving her--though it was your one chance of life!"
+
+"Yes," said the boy, scornful of this feeble, grown-up repetition.
+
+"Come here."
+
+The boy came doggedly forward. The man pushed back the well-worn straw
+hat from Clarence's forehead and looked into his lowering face. With his
+hand still on the boy's head he turned him round to the others, and said
+quietly,--
+
+"Suthin of a pup, eh?"
+
+"You bet," they responded.
+
+The voice was not unkindly, although the speaker had thrown his lower
+jaw forward as if to pronounce the word "pup" with a humorous suggestion
+of a mastiff. Before Clarence could make up his mind if the epithet
+was insulting or not, the man put out his stirruped foot, and, with a
+gesture of invitation, said, "Jump up."
+
+"But Susy," said Clarence, drawing back.
+
+"Look; she's making up to Phil already."
+
+Clarence looked. Susy had crawled out of the mesquite, and with her
+sun-bonnet hanging down her back, her curls tossed around her face,
+still flushed with sleep, and Clarence's jacket over her shoulders, was
+gazing up with grave satisfaction in the laughing eyes of one of the men
+who was with outstretched hands bending over her. Could he believe his
+senses? The terror-stricken, willful, unmanageable Susy, whom he would
+have translated unconsciously to safety without this terrible ordeal of
+being awakened to the loss of her home and parents at any sacrifice
+to himself--this ingenuous infant was absolutely throwing herself with
+every appearance of forgetfulness into the arms of the first new-comer!
+Yet his perception of this fact was accompanied by no sense of
+ingratitude. For her sake he felt relieved, and with a boyish smile
+of satisfaction and encouragement vaulted into the saddle before the
+stranger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The dash forward to the train, securely held in the saddle by the arms
+of their deliverers, was a secret joy to the children that seemed only
+too quickly over. The resistless gallop of the fiery mustangs, the rush
+of the night wind, the gathering darkness in which the distant wagons,
+now halted and facing them, looked like domed huts in the horizon--all
+these seemed but a delightful and fitting climax to the events of the
+day. In the sublime forgetfulness of youth, all they had gone through
+had left no embarrassing record behind it; they were willing to repeat
+their experiences on the morrow, confident of some equally happy end.
+And when Clarence, timidly reaching his hand towards the horse-hair
+reins lightly held by his companion, had them playfully yielded up to
+him by that hold and confident rider, the boy felt himself indeed a man.
+
+But a greater surprise was in store for them. As they neared the wagons,
+now formed into a circle with a certain degree of military formality,
+they could see that the appointments of the strange party were larger
+and more liberal than their own, or indeed anything they had ever known
+of the kind. Forty or fifty horses were tethered within the circle, and
+the camp fires were already blazing. Before one of them a large tent
+was erected, and through the parted flaps could be seen a table actually
+spread with a white cloth. Was it a school feast, or was this their
+ordinary household arrangement? Clarence and Susy thought of their own
+dinners, usually laid on bare boards beneath the sky, or under the low
+hood of the wagon in rainy weather, and marveled. And when they finally
+halted, and were lifted from their horses, and passed one wagon fitted
+up as a bedroom and another as a kitchen, they could only nudge each
+other with silent appreciation. But here again the difference already
+noted in the quality of the sensations of the two children was
+observable. Both were equally and agreeably surprised. But Susy's wonder
+was merely the sense of novelty and inexperience, and a slight disbelief
+in the actual necessity of what she saw; while Clarence, whether from
+some previous general experience or peculiar temperament, had the
+conviction that what he saw here was the usual custom, and what he had
+known with the Silsbees was the novelty. The feeling was attended with a
+slight sense of wounded pride for Susy, as if her enthusiasm had exposed
+her to ridicule.
+
+The man who had carried him, and seemed to be the head of the party, had
+already preceded them to the tent, and presently reappeared with a lady
+with whom he had exchanged a dozen hurried words. They seemed to refer
+to him and Susy; but Clarence was too much preoccupied with the fact
+that the lady was pretty, that her clothes were neat and thoroughly
+clean, that her hair was tidy and not rumpled, and that, although she
+wore an apron, it was as clean as her gown, and even had ribbons on it,
+to listen to what was said. And when she ran eagerly forward, and with
+a fascinating smile lifted the astonished Susy in her arms, Clarence, in
+his delight for his young charge, quite forgot that she had not noticed
+him. The bearded man, who seemed to be the lady's husband, evidently
+pointed out the omission, with some additions that Clarence could not
+catch; for after saying, with a pretty pout, "Well, why shouldn't he?"
+she came forward with the same dazzling smile, and laid her small and
+clean white hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"And so you took good care of the dear little thing? She's such an
+angel, isn't she? and you must love her very much."
+
+Clarence colored with delight. It was true it had never occurred to him
+to look at Susy in the light of a celestial visitant, and I fear he was
+just then more struck with the fair complimenter than the compliment
+to his companion, but he was pleased for her sake. He was not yet
+old enough to be conscious of the sex's belief in its irresistible
+domination over mankind at all ages, and that Johnny in his check apron
+would be always a hopeless conquest of Jeannette in her pinafore, and
+that he ought to have been in love with Susy.
+
+Howbeit, the lady suddenly whisked her away to the recesses of her own
+wagon, to reappear later, washed, curled, and beribboned like a new
+doll, and Clarence was left alone with the husband and another of the
+party.
+
+"Well, my boy, you haven't told me your name yet."
+
+"Clarence, sir."
+
+"So Susy calls you, but what else?"
+
+"Clarence Brant."
+
+"Any relation to Colonel Brant?" asked the second man carelessly.
+
+"He was my father," said the boy, brightening under this faint prospect
+of recognition in his loneliness.
+
+The two men glanced at each other. The leader looked at the boy
+curiously, and said,--
+
+"Are you the son of Colonel Brant, of Louisville?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the boy, with a dim stirring of uneasiness in his
+heart. "But he's dead now," he added finally.
+
+"Ah, when did he die?" said the man quickly.
+
+"Oh, a long time ago. I don't remember him much. I was very little,"
+said the boy, half apologetically.
+
+"Ah, you don't remember him?"
+
+"No," said Clarence shortly. He was beginning to fall back upon that
+certain dogged repetition which in sensitive children arises from their
+hopeless inability to express their deeper feelings. He also had an
+instinctive consciousness that this want of a knowledge of his father
+was part of that vague wrong that had been done him. It did not help his
+uneasiness that he could see that one of the two men, who turned away
+with a half-laugh, misunderstood or did not believe him.
+
+"How did you come with the Silsbees?" asked the first man.
+
+Clarence repeated mechanically, with a child's distaste of practical
+details, how he had lived with an aunt at St. Jo, and how his stepmother
+had procured his passage with the Silsbees to California, where he was
+to meet his cousin. All this with a lack of interest and abstraction
+that he was miserably conscious told against him, but he was yet
+helpless to resist.
+
+The first man remained thoughtful, and then glanced at Clarence's
+sunburnt hands. Presently his large, good-humored smile returned.
+
+"Well, I suppose you are hungry?"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence shyly. "But--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I should like to wash myself a little," he returned hesitatingly,
+thinking of the clean tent, the clean lady, and Susy's ribbons.
+
+"Certainly," said his friend, with a pleased look. "Come with me."
+Instead of leading Clarence to the battered tin basin and bar of yellow
+soap which had formed the toilet service of the Silsbee party, he
+brought the boy into one of the wagons, where there was a washstand, a
+china basin, and a cake of scented soap. Standing beside Clarence, he
+watched him perform his ablutions with an approving air which rather
+embarrassed his protege. Presently he said, almost abruptly,--
+
+"Do you remember your father's house at Louisville?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but it was a long time ago."
+
+Clarence remembered it as being very different from his home at St.
+Joseph's, but from some innate feeling of diffidence he would have
+shrunk from describing it in that way. He, however, said he thought it
+was a large house. Yet the modest answer only made his new friend look
+at him the more keenly.
+
+"Your father was Colonel Hamilton Brant, of Louisville, wasn't he?" he
+said, half-confidentially.
+
+"Yes," said Clarence hopelessly.
+
+"Well," said his friend cheerfully, as if dismissing an abstruse problem
+from his mind, "Let's go to supper."
+
+When they reached the tent again, Clarence noticed that the supper was
+laid only for his host and wife and the second man--who was familiarly
+called "Harry," but who spoke of the former always as "Mr. and Mrs.
+Peyton"--while the remainder of the party, a dozen men, were at a second
+camp fire, and evidently enjoying themselves in a picturesque fashion.
+Had the boy been allowed to choose, he would have joined them, partly
+because it seemed more "manly," and partly that he dreaded a renewal of
+the questioning.
+
+But here, Susy, sitting bolt upright on an extemporized high stool,
+happily diverted his attention by pointing to the empty chair beside
+her.
+
+"Kla'uns," she said suddenly, with her usual clear and appalling
+frankness, "they is chickens, and hamanaigs, and hot biksquits, and
+lasses, and Mister Peyton says I kin have 'em all."
+
+Clarence, who had begun suddenly to feel that he was responsible for
+Susy's deportment and was balefully conscious that she was holding her
+plated fork in her chubby fist by its middle, and, from his previous
+knowledge of her, was likely at any moment to plunge it into the dish
+before her, said softly,--
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"Yes, you shall, dear," said Mrs. Peyton, with tenderly beaming
+assurance to Susy and a half-reproachful glance at the boy. "Eat what
+you like, darling."
+
+"It's a fork," whispered the still uneasy Clarence, as Susy now seemed
+inclined to stir her bowl of milk with it.
+
+"'Tain't, now, Kla'uns, it's only a split spoon," said Susy.
+
+But Mrs. Peyton, in her rapt admiration, took small note of these
+irregularities, plying the child with food, forgetting her own meal, and
+only stopping at times to lift back the forward straying curls on Susy's
+shoulders. Mr. Peyton looked on gravely and contentedly. Suddenly the
+eyes of husband and wife met.
+
+"She'd have been nearly as old as this, John," said Mrs. Peyton, in a
+faint voice.
+
+John Peyton nodded without speaking, and turned his eyes away into the
+gathering darkness. The man "Harry" also looked abstractedly at his
+plate, as if he was saying grace. Clarence wondered who "she" was, and
+why two little tears dropped from Mrs. Peyton's lashes into Susy's milk,
+and whether Susy might not violently object to it. He did not know until
+later that the Peytons had lost their only child, and Susy comfortably
+drained this mingled cup of a mother's grief and tenderness without
+suspicion.
+
+"I suppose we'll come up with their train early tomorrow, if some of
+them don't find us to-night," said Mrs. Peyton, with a long sigh and a
+regretful glance at Susy. "Perhaps we might travel together for a little
+while," she added timidly.
+
+Harry laughed, and Mr. Peyton replied gravely, "I am afraid we wouldn't
+travel with them, even for company's sake; and," he added, in a lower
+and graver voice, "it's rather odd the search party hasn't come upon
+us yet, though I'm keeping Pete and Hank patrolling the trail to meet
+them."
+
+"It's heartless--so it is!" said Mrs. Peyton, with sudden indignation.
+"It would be all very well if it was only this boy, who can take care of
+himself; but to be so careless of a mere baby like this, it's shameful!"
+
+For the first time Clarence tasted the cruelty of discrimination. All
+the more keenly that he was beginning to worship, after his boyish
+fashion, this sweet-faced, clean, and tender-hearted woman. Perhaps Mr.
+Peyton noticed it, for he came quietly to his aid.
+
+"Maybe they knew better than we in what careful hands they had left
+her," he said, with a cheerful nod towards Clarence. "And, again, they
+may have been fooled as we were by Injin signs and left the straight
+road."
+
+This suggestion instantly recalled to Clarence his vision in the
+mesquite. Should he dare tell them? Would they believe him, or would
+they laugh at him before her? He hesitated, and at last resolved to tell
+it privately to the husband. When the meal was ended, and he was made
+happy by Mrs. Peyton's laughing acceptance of his offer to help her
+clear the table and wash the dishes, they all gathered comfortably in
+front of the tent before the large camp fire. At the other fire the rest
+of the party were playing cards and laughing, but Clarence no longer
+cared to join them. He was quite tranquil in the maternal propinquity
+of his hostess, albeit a little uneasy as to his reticence about the
+Indian.
+
+"Kla'uns," said Susy, relieving a momentary pause, in her highest voice,
+"knows how to speak. Speak, Kla'uns!"
+
+It appearing from Clarence's blushing explanation that this gift was not
+the ordinary faculty of speech, but a capacity to recite verse, he was
+politely pressed by the company for a performance.
+
+"Speak 'em, Kla'uns, the boy what stood unto the burnin' deck, and said,
+'The boy, oh, where was he?'" said Susy, comfortably lying down on Mrs.
+Peyton's lap, and contemplating her bare knees in the air. "It's 'bout
+a boy," she added confidentially to Mrs. Peyton, "whose father wouldn't
+never, never stay with him on a burnin' ship, though he said, 'Stay,
+father, stay,' ever so much."
+
+With this clear, lucid, and perfectly satisfactory explanation of
+Mrs. Hemans's "Casabianca," Clarence began. Unfortunately, his actual
+rendering of this popular school performance was more an effort of
+memory than anything else, and was illustrated by those wooden gestures
+which a Western schoolmaster had taught him. He described the flames
+that "roared around him," by indicating with his hand a perfect circle,
+of which he was the axis; he adjured his father, the late Admiral
+Casabianca, by clasping his hands before his chin, as if wanting to
+be manacled in an attitude which he was miserably conscious was unlike
+anything he himself had ever felt or seen before; he described that
+father "faint in death below," and "the flag on high," with one
+single motion. Yet something that the verses had kindled in his
+active imagination, perhaps, rather than an illustration of the verses
+themselves, at times brightened his gray eyes, became tremulous in
+his youthful voice, and I fear occasionally incoherent on his lips. At
+times, when not conscious of his affected art, the plain and all upon it
+seemed to him to slip away into the night, the blazing camp fire at
+his feet to wrap him in a fateful glory, and a vague devotion to
+something--he knew not what--so possessed him that he communicated it,
+and probably some of his own youthful delight in extravagant voice, to
+his hearers, until, when he ceased with a glowing face, he was surprised
+to find that the card players had deserted their camp fires and gathered
+round the tent.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"You didn't say 'Stay, father, stay,' enough, Kla'uns," said Susy
+critically. Then suddenly starting upright in Mrs. Peyton's lap, she
+continued rapidly, "I kin dance. And sing. I kin dance High Jambooree."
+
+"What's High Jambooree, dear?" asked Mrs. Peyton.
+
+"You'll see. Lemme down." And Susy slipped to the ground.
+
+The dance of High Jambooree, evidently of remote mystical African
+origin, appeared to consist of three small skips to the right and
+then to the left, accompanied by the holding up of very short skirts,
+incessant "teetering" on the toes of small feet, the exhibition of
+much bare knee and stocking, and a gurgling accompaniment of childish
+laughter. Vehemently applauded, it left the little performer breathless,
+but invincible and ready for fresh conquest.
+
+"I kin sing, too," she gasped hurriedly, as if unwilling that the
+applause should lapse. "I kin sing. Oh, dear! Kla'uns," piteously, "WHAT
+is it I sing?"
+
+"Ben Bolt," suggested Clarence.
+
+"Oh, yes. Oh, don't you remember sweet Alers Ben Bolt?" began Susy, in
+the same breath and the wrong key. "Sweet Alers, with hair so brown, who
+wept with delight when you giv'd her a smile, and--" with knitted brows
+and appealing recitative, "what's er rest of it, Kla'uns?"
+
+"Who trembled with fear at your frown?" prompted Clarence.
+
+"Who trembled with fear at my frown?" shrilled Susy. "I forget er rest.
+Wait! I kin sing--"
+
+"Praise God," suggested Clarence.
+
+"Yes." Here Susy, a regular attendant in camp and prayer-meetings, was
+on firmer ground.
+
+Promptly lifting her high treble, yet with a certain acquired
+deliberation, she began, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." At
+the end of the second line the whispering and laughing ceased. A deep
+voice to the right, that of the champion poker player, suddenly rose
+on the swell of the third line. He was instantly followed by a dozen
+ringing voices, and by the time the last line was reached it was given
+with a full chorus, in which the dull chant of teamsters and drivers
+mingled with the soprano of Mrs. Peyton and Susy's childish treble.
+Again and again it was repeated, with forgetful eyes and abstracted
+faces, rising and falling with the night wind and the leap and gleam of
+the camp fires, and fading again like them in the immeasurable mystery
+of the darkened plain.
+
+In the deep and embarrassing silence that followed, at last the party
+hesitatingly broke up, Mrs. Peyton retiring with Susy after offering
+the child to Clarence for a perfunctory "good-night" kiss, an unusual
+proceeding, which somewhat astonished them both--and Clarence found
+himself near Mr. Peyton.
+
+"I think," said Clarence timidly, "I saw an Injin to-day."
+
+Mr. Peyton bent down towards him. "An Injin--where?" he asked quickly,
+with the same look of doubting interrogatory with which he had received
+Clarence's name and parentage.
+
+The boy for a moment regretted having spoken. But with his old
+doggedness he particularized his statement. Fortunately, being gifted
+with a keen perception, he was able to describe the stranger accurately,
+and to impart with his description that contempt for its subject
+which he had felt, and which to his frontier auditor established its
+truthfulness. Peyton turned abruptly away, but presently returned with
+Harry and another man.
+
+"You are sure of this?" said Peyton, half-encouragingly.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"As sure as you are that your father is Colonel Brant and is dead?" said
+Harry, with a light laugh.
+
+Tears sprang into the boy's lowering eyes. "I don't lie," he said
+doggedly.
+
+"I believe you, Clarence," said Peyton quietly. "But why didn't you say
+it before?"
+
+"I didn't like to say it before Susy and--her!" stammered the boy.
+
+"Her?"
+
+"Yes, sir--Mrs. Peyton," said Clarence blushingly.
+
+"Oh," said Harry sarcastically, "how blessed polite we are!"
+
+"That'll do. Let up on him, will you?" said Peyton, roughly, to his
+subordinate. "The boy knows what he's about. But," he continued,
+addressing Clarence, "how was it the Injin didn't see you?"
+
+"I was very still on account of not waking Susy," said Clarence, "and--"
+He hesitated.
+
+"And what?"
+
+"He seemed more keen watching what YOU were doing," said the boy boldly.
+
+"That's so," broke in the second man, who happened to be experienced,
+"and as he was to wind'ard o' the boy he was off HIS scent and bearings.
+He was one of their rear scouts; the rest o' them's ahead crossing our
+track to cut us off. Ye didn't see anything else?"
+
+"I saw a coyote first," said Clarence, greatly encouraged.
+
+"Hold on!" said the expert, as Harry turned away with a sneer. "That's
+a sign, too. Wolf don't go where wolf hez been, and coyote don't foller
+Injins--there's no pickin's! How long afore did you see the coyote?"
+
+"Just after we left the wagon," said Clarence.
+
+"That's it," said the man, thoughtfully. "He was driven on ahead, or
+hanging on their flanks. These Injins are betwixt us and that ar train,
+or following it."
+
+Peyton made a hurried gesture of warning, as if reminding the speaker
+of Clarence's presence--a gesture which the boy noticed and wondered
+at. Then the conversation of the three men took a lower tone, although
+Clarence distinctly heard the concluding opinion of the expert.
+
+"It ain't no good now, Mr. Peyton, and you'd be only exposing yourself
+on their ground by breakin' camp agin to-night. And you don't know
+that it ain't US they're watchin'. You see, if we hadn't turned off the
+straight road when we got that first scare from these yer lost children,
+we might hev gone on and walked plump into some cursed trap of those
+devils. To my mind, we're just in nigger luck, and with a good watch and
+my patrol we're all right to be fixed where we be till daylight."
+
+Mr. Peyton presently turned away, taking Clarence with him. "As we'll
+be up early and on the track of your train to-morrow, my boy, you had
+better turn in now. I've put you up in my wagon, and as I expect to be
+in the saddle most of the night, I reckon I won't trouble you much." He
+led the way to a second wagon--drawn up beside the one where Susy and
+Mrs. Peyton had retired--which Clarence was surprised to find fitted
+with a writing table and desk, a chair, and even a bookshelf containing
+some volumes. A long locker, fitted like a lounge, had been made up as
+a couch for him, with the unwonted luxury of clean white sheets and
+pillow-cases. A soft matting covered the floor of the heavy wagon bed,
+which, Mr. Peyton explained, was hung on centre springs to prevent
+jarring. The sides and roof of the vehicle were of lightly paneled wood,
+instead of the usual hooked canvas frame of the ordinary emigrant wagon,
+and fitted with a glazed door and movable window for light and air.
+Clarence wondered why the big, powerful man, who seemed at home on
+horseback, should ever care to sit in this office like a merchant or
+a lawyer; and if this train sold things to the other trains, or took
+goods, like the peddlers, to towns on the route; but there seemed to be
+nothing to sell, and the other wagons were filled with only the goods
+required by the party. He would have liked to ask Mr. Peyton who HE was,
+and have questioned HIM as freely as he himself had been questioned. But
+as the average adult man never takes into consideration the injustice
+of denying to the natural and even necessary curiosity of childhood
+that questioning which he himself is so apt to assume without right, and
+almost always without delicacy, Clarence had no recourse. Yet the
+boy, like all children, was conscious that if he had been afterwards
+questioned about THIS inexplicable experience, he would have been
+blamed for his ignorance concerning it. Left to himself presently, and
+ensconced between the sheets, he lay for some moments staring about him.
+The unwonted comfort of his couch, so different from the stuffy blanket
+in the hard wagon bed which he had shared with one of the teamsters, and
+the novelty, order, and cleanliness of his surroundings, while they were
+grateful to his instincts, began in some vague way to depress him.
+To his loyal nature it seemed a tacit infidelity to his former rough
+companions to be lying here; he had a dim idea that he had lost that
+independence which equal discomfort and equal pleasure among them had
+given him. There seemed a sense of servitude in accepting this luxury
+which was not his. This set him endeavoring to remember something of
+his father's house, of the large rooms, drafty staircases, and far-off
+ceilings, and the cold formality of a life that seemed made up of
+strange faces; some stranger--his parents; some kinder--the servants;
+particularly the black nurse who had him in charge. Why did Mr. Peyton
+ask him about it? Why, if it were so important to strangers, had not
+his mother told him more of it? And why was she not like this good woman
+with the gentle voice who was so kind to--to Susy? And what did they
+mean by making HIM so miserable? Something rose in his throat, but with
+an effort he choked it back, and, creeping from the lounge, went softly
+to the window, opened it to see if it "would work," and looked out. The
+shrouded camp fires, the stars that glittered but gave no light, the dim
+moving bulk of a patrol beyond the circle, all seemed to intensify the
+darkness, and changed the current of his thoughts. He remembered what
+Mr. Peyton had said of him when they first met. "Suthin of a pup, ain't
+he?" Surely that meant something that was not bad! He crept back to the
+couch again.
+
+Lying there, still awake, he reflected that he wouldn't be a scout when
+he grew up, but would be something like Mr. Peyton, and have a train
+like this, and invite the Silsbees and Susy to accompany him. For this
+purpose, he and Susy, early to-morrow morning, would get permission to
+come in here and play at that game. This would familiarize him with the
+details, so that he would be able at any time to take charge of it. He
+was already an authority on the subject of Indians! He had once been
+fired at--as an Indian. He would always carry a rifle like that hanging
+from the hooks at the end of the wagon before him, and would eventually
+slay many Indians and keep an account of them in a big book like that
+on the desk. Susy would help him, having grown up a lady, and they would
+both together issue provisions and rations from the door of the wagon to
+the gathered crowds. He would be known as the "White Chief," his Indian
+name being "Suthin of a Pup." He would have a circus van attached to
+the train, in which he would occasionally perform. He would also have
+artillery for protection. There would be a terrific engagement, and he
+would rush into the wagon, heated and blackened with gunpowder; and
+Susy would put down an account of it in a book, and Mrs. Peyton--for she
+would be there in some vague capacity--would say, "Really, now, I don't
+see but what we were very lucky in having such a boy as Clarence with
+us. I begin to understand him better." And Harry, who, for purposes of
+vague poetical retaliation, would also drop in at that moment, would
+mutter and say, "He is certainly the son of Colonel Brant; dear me!" and
+apologize. And his mother would come in also, in her coldest and most
+indifferent manner, in a white ball dress, and start and say, "Good
+gracious, how that boy has grown! I am sorry I did not see more of
+him when he was young." Yet even in the midst of this came a confusing
+numbness, and then the side of the wagon seemed to melt away, and he
+drifted out again alone into the empty desolate plain from which even
+the sleeping Susy had vanished, and he was left deserted and forgotten.
+Then all was quiet in the wagon, and only the night wind moving round
+it. But lo! the lashes of the sleeping White Chief--the dauntless
+leader, the ruthless destroyer of Indians--were wet with glittering
+tears!
+
+Yet it seemed only a moment afterwards that he awoke with a faint
+consciousness of some arrested motion. To his utter consternation,
+the sun, three hours high, was shining in the wagon, already hot and
+stifling in its beams. There was the familiar smell and taste of the
+dirty road in the air about him. There was a faint creaking of boards
+and springs, a slight oscillation, and beyond the audible rattle of
+harness, as if the train had been under way, the wagon moving, and then
+there had been a sudden halt. They had probably come up with the Silsbee
+train; in a few moments the change would be effected and all of his
+strange experience would be over. He must get up now. Yet, with the
+morning laziness of the healthy young animal, he curled up a moment
+longer in his luxurious couch.
+
+How quiet it was! There were far-off voices, but they seemed suppressed
+and hurried. Through the window he saw one of the teamsters run rapidly
+past him with a strange, breathless, preoccupied face, halt a moment at
+one of the following wagons, and then run back again to the front.
+
+Then two of the voices came nearer, with the dull beating of hoofs in
+the dust.
+
+"Rout out the boy and ask him," said a half-suppressed, impatient voice,
+which Clarence at once recognized as the man Harry's.
+
+"Hold on till Peyton comes up," said the second voice, in a low tone;
+"leave it to him."
+
+"Better find out what they were like, at once," grumbled Harry.
+
+"Wait, stand back," said Peyton's voice, joining the others; "I'LL ask
+him."
+
+Clarence looked wonderingly at the door. It opened on Mr. Peyton, dusty
+and dismounted, with a strange, abstracted look in his face.
+
+"How many wagons are in your train, Clarence?"
+
+"Three, sir."
+
+"Any marks on them?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Clarence, eagerly: "'Off to California' and 'Root, Hog,
+or Die.'"
+
+Mr. Peyton's eye seemed to leap up and hold Clarence's with a sudden,
+strange significance, and then looked down.
+
+"How many were you in all?" he continued.
+
+"Five, and there was Mrs. Silsbee."
+
+"No other woman?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Get up and dress yourself," he said gravely, "and wait here till I
+come back. Keep cool and have your wits about you." He dropped his
+voice slightly. "Perhaps something's happened that you'll have to show
+yourself a little man again for, Clarence!"
+
+The door closed, and the boy heard the same muffled hoofs and voices die
+away towards the front. He began to dress himself mechanically, almost
+vacantly, yet conscious always of a vague undercurrent of thrilling
+excitement. When he had finished he waited almost breathlessly, feeling
+the same beating of his heart that he had felt when he was following the
+vanished train the day before. At last he could stand the suspense no
+longer, and opened the door. Everything was still in the motionless
+caravan, except--it struck him oddly even then--the unconcerned
+prattling voice of Susy from one of the nearer wagons. Perhaps a
+sudden feeling that this was something that concerned HER, perhaps an
+irresistible impulse overcame him, but the next moment he had leaped to
+the ground, faced about, and was running feverishly to the front.
+
+The first thing that met his eyes was the helpless and desolate bulk of
+one of the Silsbee wagons a hundred rods away, bereft of oxen and pole,
+standing alone and motionless against the dazzling sky! Near it was the
+broken frame of another wagon, its fore wheels and axles gone, pitched
+forward on its knees like an ox under the butcher's sledge. Not far away
+there were the burnt and blackened ruins of a third, around which the
+whole party on foot and horseback seemed to be gathered. As the boy ran
+violently on, the group opened to make way for two men carrying some
+helpless but awful object between them. A terrible instinct made
+Clarence swerve from it in his headlong course, but he was at the same
+moment discovered by the others, and a cry arose of "Go back!" "Stop!"
+"Keep him back!" Heeding it no more than the wind that whistled by him,
+Clarence made directly for the foremost wagon--the one in which he
+and Susy had played. A powerful hand caught his shoulder; it was Mr.
+Peyton's.
+
+"Mrs. Silsbee's wagon," said the boy, with white lips, pointing to it.
+"Where is she?"
+
+"She's missing," said Peyton, "and one other--the rest are dead."
+
+"She must be there," said the boy, struggling, and pointing to the
+wagon; "let me go."
+
+"Clarence," said Peyton sternly, accenting his grasp upon the boy's arm,
+"be a man! Look around you. Try and tell us who these are."
+
+There seemed to be one or two heaps of old clothes lying on the ground,
+and further on, where the men at a command from Peyton had laid down
+their burden, another. In those ragged, dusty heaps of clothes, from
+which all the majesty of life seemed to have been ruthlessly stamped
+out, only what was ignoble and grotesque appeared to be left. There
+was nothing terrible in this. The boy moved slowly towards them; and,
+incredible even to himself, the overpowering fear of them that a moment
+before had overcome him left him as suddenly. He walked from the one to
+the other, recognizing them by certain marks and signs, and mentioning
+name after name. The groups gazed at him curiously; he was conscious
+that he scarcely understood himself, still less the same quiet purpose
+that made him turn towards the furthest wagon.
+
+"There's nothing there," said Peyton; "we've searched it." But the boy,
+without replying, continued his way, and the crowd followed him.
+
+The deserted wagon, more rude, disorderly, and slovenly than it had
+ever seemed to him before, was now heaped and tumbled with broken bones,
+cans, scattered provisions, pots, pans, blankets, and clothing in the
+foul confusion of a dust-heap. But in this heterogeneous mingling the
+boy's quick eye caught sight of a draggled edge of calico.
+
+"That's Mrs. Silsbee's dress!" he cried, and leapt into the wagon.
+
+At first the men stared at each other, but an instant later a dozen
+hands were helping him, nervously digging and clearing away the rubbish.
+Then one man uttered a sudden cry, and fell back with frantic but
+furious eyes uplifted against the pitiless, smiling sky above him.
+
+"Great God! look here!"
+
+It was the yellowish, waxen face of Mrs. Silsbee that had been
+uncovered. But to the fancy of the boy it had changed; the old familiar
+lines of worry, care, and querulousness had given way to a look of
+remote peace and statue-like repose. He had often vexed her in her
+aggressive life; he was touched with remorse at her cold, passionless
+apathy now, and pressed timidly forward. Even as he did so, the man,
+with a quick but warning gesture, hurriedly threw his handkerchief
+over the matted locks, as if to shut out something awful from his view.
+Clarence felt himself drawn back; but not before the white lips of a
+bystander had whispered a single word--
+
+"Scalped, too! by God!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Then followed days and weeks that seemed to Clarence as a dream. At
+first, an interval of hushed and awed restraint when he and Susy were
+kept apart, a strange and artificial interest taken little note of by
+him, but afterwards remembered when others had forgotten it; the burial
+of Mrs. Silsbee beneath a cairn of stones, with some ceremonies that,
+simple though they were, seemed to usurp the sacred rights of grief from
+him and Susy, and leave them cold and frightened; days of frequent and
+incoherent childish outbursts from Susy, growing fainter and rarer as
+time went on, until they ceased, he knew not when; the haunting by night
+of that morning vision of the three or four heaps of ragged clothes on
+the ground and a half regret that he had not examined them more closely;
+a recollection of the awful loneliness and desolation of the broken and
+abandoned wagon left behind on its knees as if praying mutely when the
+train went on and left it; the trundling behind of the fateful wagon
+in which Mrs. Silsbee's body had been found, superstitiously shunned by
+every one, and when at last turned over to the authorities at an outpost
+garrison, seeming to drop the last link from the dragging chain of the
+past. The revelation to the children of a new experience in that brief
+glimpse of the frontier garrison; the handsome officer in uniform and
+belted sword, an heroic, vengeful figure to be admired and imitated
+hereafter; the sudden importance and respect given to Susy and himself
+as "survivors"; the sympathetic questioning and kindly exaggerations
+of their experiences, quickly accepted by Susy--all these, looking back
+upon them afterwards, seemed to have passed in a dream.
+
+No less strange and visionary to them seemed the real transitions they
+noted from the moving train. How one morning they missed the changeless,
+motionless, low, dark line along the horizon, and before noon found
+themselves among the rocks and trees and a swiftly rushing river.
+How there suddenly appeared beside them a few days later a great gray
+cloud-covered ridge of mountains that they were convinced was that same
+dark line that they had seen so often. How the men laughed at them, and
+said that for the last three days they had been CROSSING that dark line,
+and that it was HIGHER than the great gray-clouded range before them,
+which it had always hidden from their view! How Susy firmly believed
+that these changes took place in her sleep, when she always "kinder felt
+they were crawlin' up," and how Clarence, in the happy depreciation of
+extreme youth, expressed his conviction that they "weren't a bit high,
+after all." How the weather became cold, though it was already summer,
+and at night the camp fire was a necessity, and there was a stove in
+the tent with Susy; and yet how all this faded away, and they were again
+upon a dazzling, burnt, and sun-dried plain! But always as in a dream!
+
+More real were the persons who composed the party--whom they seemed to
+have always known--and who, in the innocent caprice of children, had
+become to them more actual than the dead had even been. There was Mr.
+Peyton, who they now knew owned the train, and who was so rich that he
+"needn't go to California if he didn't want to, and was going to buy
+a great deal of it if he liked it," and who was also a lawyer and
+"policeman"--which was Susy's rendering of "politician"--and was called
+"Squire" and "Judge" at the frontier outpost, and could order anybody to
+be "took up if he wanted to," and who knew everybody by their Christian
+names; and Mrs. Peyton, who had been delicate and was ordered by the
+doctor to live in the open air for six months, and "never go into a
+house or a town agin," and who was going to adopt Susy as soon as her
+husband could arrange with Susy's relatives, and draw up the papers! How
+"Harry" was Henry Benham, Mrs. Peyton's brother, and a kind of partner
+of Mr. Peyton. And how the scout's name was Gus Gildersleeve, or the
+"White Crow," and how, through his recognized intrepidity, an attack
+upon their train was no doubt averted. Then there was "Bill," the
+stock herder, and "Texas Jim," the vaquero--the latter marvelous and
+unprecedented in horsemanship. Such were their companions, as
+appeared through the gossip of the train and their own inexperienced
+consciousness. To them, they were all astounding and important
+personages. But, either from boyish curiosity or some sense of being
+misunderstood, Clarence was more attracted by the two individuals of the
+party who were least kind to him--namely, Mrs. Peyton and her brother
+Harry. I fear that, after the fashion of most children, and some
+grown-up people, he thought less of the steady kindness of Mr. Peyton
+and the others than of the rare tolerance of Harry or the polite
+concessions of his sister. Miserably conscious of this at times, he
+quite convinced himself that if he could only win a word of approbation
+from Harry, or a smile from Mrs. Peyton, he would afterwards revenge
+himself by "running away." Whether he would or not, I cannot say. I am
+writing of a foolish, growing, impressionable boy of eleven, of whose
+sentiments nothing could be safely predicted but uncertainty.
+
+It was at this time that he became fascinated by another member of the
+party whose position had been too humble and unimportant to be included
+in the group already noted. Of the same appearance as the other
+teamsters in size, habits, and apparel, he had not at first exhibited to
+Clarence any claim to sympathy. But it appeared that he was actually
+a youth of only sixteen--a hopeless incorrigible of St. Joseph, whose
+parents had prevailed on Peyton to allow him to join the party, by way
+of removing him from evil associations and as a method of reform. Of
+this Clarence was at first ignorant, not from any want of frankness on
+the part of the youth, for that ingenious young gentleman later informed
+him that he had killed three men in St. Louis, two in St. Jo, and that
+the officers of justice were after him. But it was evident that to
+precocious habits of drinking, smoking, chewing, and card-playing this
+overgrown youth added a strong tendency to exaggeration of statement.
+Indeed, he was known as "Lying Jim Hooker," and his various qualities
+presented a problem to Clarence that was attractive and inspiring,
+doubtful, but always fascinating. With the hoarse voice of early
+wickedness and a contempt for ordinary courtesy, he had a round,
+perfectly good-humored face, and a disposition that when not called
+upon to act up to his self-imposed role of reckless wickedness, was not
+unkindly.
+
+It was only a few days after the massacre, and while the children were
+still wrapped in the gloomy interest and frightened reticence which
+followed it, that "Jim Hooker" first characteristically flashed upon
+Clarence's perceptions. Hanging half on and half off the saddle of
+an Indian pony, the lank Jim suddenly made his appearance, dashing
+violently up and down the track, and around the wagon in which Clarence
+was sitting, tugging desperately at the reins, with every indication of
+being furiously run away with, and retaining his seat only with the most
+dauntless courage and skill. Round and round they went, the helpless
+rider at times hanging by a single stirrup near the ground, and again
+recovering himself by--as it seemed to Clarence--almost superhuman
+effort. Clarence sat open-mouthed with anxiety and excitement, and yet
+a few of the other teamsters laughed. Then the voice of Mr. Peyton, from
+the window of his car, said quietly,--
+
+"There, that will do, Jim. Quit it!"
+
+The furious horse and rider instantly disappeared. A few moments after,
+the bewildered Clarence saw the redoubted horseman trotting along
+quietly in the dust of the rear, on the same fiery steed, who in that
+prosaic light bore an astounding resemblance to an ordinary team horse.
+Later in the day he sought an explanation from the rider.
+
+"You see," answered Jim gloomily, "thar ain't a galoot in this yer crowd
+ez knows jist WHAT'S in that hoss! And them ez suspecks daren't say! It
+wouldn't do for to hev it let out that the Judge hez a Morgan-Mexican
+plug that's killed two men afore he got him, and is bound to kill
+another afore he gets through! Why, on'y the week afore we kem up to
+you, that thar hoss bolted with me at camping! Bucked and throwed me,
+but I kept my holt o' the stirrups with my foot--so! Dragged me a matter
+of two miles, head down, and me keepin' away rocks with my hand--so!"
+
+"Why didn't you loose your foot and let go?" asked Clarence
+breathlessly.
+
+"YOU might," said Jim, with deep scorn; "that ain't MY style. I just
+laid low till we kem to a steep pitched hill, and goin' down when the
+hoss was, so to speak, kinder BELOW me, I just turned a hand spring, so,
+and that landed me onter his back again."
+
+This action, though vividly illustrated by Jim's throwing his hands down
+like feet beneath him, and indicating the parabola of a spring in
+the air, proving altogether too much for Clarence's mind to grasp, he
+timidly turned to a less difficult detail.
+
+"What made the horse bolt first, Mr. Hooker?"
+
+"Smelt Injins!" said Jim, carelessly expectorating tobacco juice in
+a curving jet from the side of his mouth--a singularly fascinating
+accomplishment, peculiarly his own, "'n' likely YOUR Injins."
+
+"But," argued Clarence hesitatingly, "you said it was a week
+before--and--"
+
+"Er Mexican plug kin smell Injins fifty, yes, a hundred miles away,"
+said Jim, with scornful deliberation; "'n' if Judge Peyton had took my
+advice, and hadn't been so mighty feared about the character of his hoss
+gettin' out he'd hev played roots on them Injins afore they tetched ye.
+But," he added, with gloomy dejection, "there ain't no sand in this yer
+crowd, thar ain't no vim, thar ain't nothin'; and thar kan't be ez long
+ez thar's women and babies, and women and baby fixin's, mixed up with
+it. I'd hev cut the whole blamed gang ef it weren't for one or two
+things," he added darkly.
+
+Clarence, impressed by Jim's mysterious manner, for the moment forgot
+his contemptuous allusion to Mr. Peyton, and the evident implication of
+Susy and himself, and asked hurriedly, "What things?"
+
+Jim, as if forgetful of the boy's presence in his fitful mood,
+abstractedly half drew a glittering bowie knife from his bootleg,
+and then slowly put it back again. "Thar's one or two old scores," he
+continued, in a low voice, although no one was in hearing distance of
+them, "one or two private accounts," he went on tragically, averting
+his eyes as if watched by some one, "thet hev to be wiped out with blood
+afore I leave. Thar's one or two men TOO MANY alive and breathin' in
+this yer crowd. Mebbee it's Gus Gildersleeve; mebbee it's Harry Benham;
+mebbee," he added, with a dark yet noble disinterestedness, "it's ME."
+
+"Oh, no," said Clarence, with polite deprecation.
+
+Far from placating the gloomy Jim, this seemed only to awake his
+suspicions. "Mebbee," he said, dancing suddenly away from Clarence,
+"mebbee you think I'm lyin'. Mebbee you think, because you're Colonel
+Brant's son, yer kin run ME with this yer train. Mebbee," he continued,
+dancing violently back again, "ye kalkilate, because ye run off'n'
+stampeded a baby, ye kin tote me round too, sonny. Mebbee," he went
+on, executing a double shuffle in the dust and alternately striking
+his hands on the sides of his boots, "mebbee you're spyin' round and
+reportin' to the Judge."
+
+Firmly convinced that Jim was working himself up by an Indian war-dance
+to some desperate assault on himself, but resenting the last unjust
+accusation, Clarence had recourse to one of his old dogged silences.
+Happily at this moment an authoritative voice called out, "Now, then,
+you Jim Hooker!" and the desperate Hooker, as usual, vanished instantly.
+Nevertheless, he appeared an hour or two later beside the wagon in which
+Susy and Clarence were seated, with an expression of satiated vengeance
+and remorseful bloodguiltiness in his face, and his hair combed Indian
+fashion over his eyes. As he generously contented himself with only
+passing a gloomy and disparaging criticism on the game of cards that
+the children were playing, it struck Clarence for the first time that a
+great deal of his real wickedness resided in his hair. This set him to
+thinking that it was strange that Mr. Peyton did not try to reform him
+with a pair of scissors, but not until Clarence himself had for at
+least four days attempted to imitate Jim by combing his own hair in that
+fashion.
+
+A few days later, Jim again casually favored him with a confidential
+interview. Clarence had been allowed to bestride one of the team leaders
+postillionwise, and was correspondingly elevated, when Jim joined him,
+on the Mexican plug, which appeared--no doubt a part of its wicked
+art--heavily docile, and even slightly lame.
+
+"How much," said Jim, in a tone of gloomy confidence,--"how much did you
+reckon to make by stealin' that gal-baby, sonny?"
+
+"Nothing," replied Clarence with a smile. Perhaps it was an evidence of
+the marked influence that Jim was beginning to exert over him that
+he already did not attempt to resent this fascinating implication of
+grownup guilt.
+
+"It orter bin a good job, if it warn't revenge," continued Jim moodily.
+
+"No, it wasn't revenge," said Clarence hurriedly.
+
+"Then ye kalkilated ter get er hundred dollars reward ef the old man and
+old woman hadn't bin scelped afore yet got up to 'em?" said Jim. "That's
+your blamed dodgasted luck, eh! Enyhow, you'll make Mrs. Peyton plank
+down suthin' if she adopts the babby. Look yer, young feller," he said,
+starting suddenly and throwing his face forward, glaring fiendishly
+through his matted side-locks, "d'ye mean ter tell me it wasn't a
+plant--a skin game--the hull thing?"
+
+"A what?" said Clarence.
+
+"D'ye mean to say"--it was wonderful how gratuitously husky his voice
+became at this moment--"d'ye mean ter tell me ye didn't set on them
+Injins to wipe out the Silsbees, so that ye could hev an out-an'-out gal
+ORFEN on hand fer Mrs. Peyton ter adopt--eh?"
+
+But here Clarence was forced to protest, and strongly, although Jim
+contemptuously ignored it. "Don't lie ter me," he repeated mysteriously,
+"I'm fly. I'm dark, young fel. We're cahoots in this thing?" And with
+this artful suggestion of being in possession of Clarence's guilty
+secret he departed in time to elude the usual objurgation of his
+superior, "Phil," the head teamster.
+
+Nor was his baleful fascination exercised entirely on Clarence. In
+spite of Mrs. Peyton's jealously affectionate care, Clarence's frequent
+companionship, and the little circle of admiring courtiers that always
+surrounded Susy, it became evident that this small Eve had been secretly
+approached and tempted by the Satanic Jim. She was found one day to
+have a few heron's feathers in her possession with which she adorned her
+curls, and at another time was discovered to have rubbed her face and
+arms with yellow and red ochre, confessedly the free gift of Jim Hooker.
+It was to Clarence alone that she admitted the significance and purport
+of these offerings. "Jim gived 'em to me," she said, "and Jim's a kind
+of Injin hisself that won't hurt me; and when bad Injins come, they'll
+think I'm his Injin baby and run away. And Jim said if I'd just told the
+Injins when they came to kill papa and mamma, that I b'longed to him,
+they'd hev runned away."
+
+"But," said the practical Clarence, "you could not; you know you were
+with Mrs. Peyton all the time."
+
+"Kla'uns," said Susy, shaking her head and fixing her round blue eyes
+with calm mendacity on the boy, "don't you tell me. I WAS THERE!"
+
+Clarence started back, and nearly fell over the wagon in hopeless dismay
+at this dreadful revelation of Susy's powers of exaggeration. "But," he
+gasped, "you know, Susy, you and me left before--"
+
+"Kla'uns," said Susy calmly, making a little pleat in the skirt of her
+dress with her small thumb and fingers, "don't you talk to me. I was
+there. I'se a SERIVER! The men at the fort said so! The SERIVERS is
+allus, allus there, and allus allus knows everythin'."
+
+Clarence was too dumfounded to reply. He had a vague recollection
+of having noticed before that Susy was very much fascinated by the
+reputation given to her at Fort Ridge as a "survivor," and was trying
+in an infantile way to live up to it. This the wicked Jim had evidently
+encouraged. For a day or two Clarence felt a little afraid of her, and
+more lonely than ever.
+
+It was in this state, and while he was doggedly conscious that his
+association with Jim did not prepossess Mrs. Peyton or her brother in
+his favor, and that the former even believed him responsible for Susy's
+unhallowed acquaintance with Jim, that he drifted into one of those
+youthful escapades on which elders are apt to sit in severe but not
+always considerate judgment. Believing, like many other children, that
+nobody cared particularly for him, except to RESTRAIN him, discovering,
+as children do, much sooner than we complacently imagine, that love and
+preference have no logical connection with desert or character, Clarence
+became boyishly reckless. But when, one day, it was rumored that a herd
+of buffalo was in the vicinity, and that the train would be delayed the
+next morning in order that a hunt might be organized, by Gildersleeve,
+Benham, and a few others, Clarence listened willingly to Jim's
+proposition that they should secretly follow it.
+
+To effect their unhallowed purpose required boldness and duplicity.
+It was arranged that shortly after the departure of the hunting party
+Clarence should ask permission to mount and exercise one of the team
+horses--a favor that had been frequently granted him; that in the
+outskirts of the camp he should pretend that the horse ran away with
+him, and Jim would start in pursuit. The absence of the shooting party
+with so large a contingent of horses and men would preclude any further
+detachment from the camp to assist them. Once clear, they would follow
+the track of the hunters, and, if discovered by them, would offer the
+same excuse, with the addition that they had lost their way to the camp.
+The plan was successful. The details were carried out with almost too
+perfect effect; as it appeared that Jim, in order to give dramatic
+intensity to the fractiousness of Clarence's horse, had inserted a thorn
+apple under the neck of his saddle, which Clarence only discovered
+in time to prevent himself from being unseated. Urged forward by
+ostentatious "Whoas!" and surreptitious cuts in the rear from Jim,
+pursuer and pursued presently found themselves safely beyond the
+half-dry stream and fringe of alder bushes that skirted the camp. They
+were not followed. Whether the teamsters suspected and winked at this
+design, or believed that the boys could take care of themselves, and ran
+no risk of being lost in the proximity of the hunting party, there was
+no general alarm.
+
+Thus reassured, and having a general idea of the direction of the hunt,
+the boys pushed hilariously forward. Before them opened a vast expanse
+of bottom land, slightly sloping on the right to a distant half-filled
+lagoon, formed by the main river overflow, on whose tributary they had
+encamped. The lagoon was partly hidden by straggling timber and "brush,"
+and beyond that again stretched the unlimitable plains--the pasture
+of their mighty game. Hither, Jim hoarsely informed his companion, the
+buffaloes came to water. A few rods further on, he started dramatically,
+and, alighting, proceeded to slowly examine the ground. It seemed to
+be scattered over with half-circular patches, which he pointed out
+mysteriously as "buffalo chip." To Clarence's inexperienced perception
+the plain bore a singular resemblance to the surface of an ordinary
+unromantic cattle pasture that somewhat chilled his heroic fancy.
+However, the two companions halted and professionally examined their
+arms and equipments.
+
+These, I grieve to say, though varied, were scarcely full or
+satisfactory. The necessities of their flight had restricted Jim to an
+old double-barreled fowling-piece, which he usually carried slung across
+his shoulders; an old-fashioned "six-shooter," whose barrels revolved
+occasionally and unexpectedly, known as "Allen's Pepper Box" on account
+of its culinary resemblance; and a bowie-knife. Clarence carried an
+Indian bow and arrow with which he had been exercising, and a hatchet
+which he had concealed under the flanks of his saddle. To this Jim
+generously added the six-shooter, taking the hatchet in exchange--a
+transfer that at first delighted Clarence, until, seeing the warlike
+and picturesque effect of the hatchet in Jim's belt, he regretted the
+transfer. The gun, Jim meantime explained "extry charged," "chuck up"
+to the middle with slugs and revolver bullets, could only be fired by
+himself, and even then he darkly added, not without danger. This poverty
+of equipment was, however, compensated by opposite statements from
+Jim of the extraordinary results obtained by these simple weapons from
+"fellers I knew:" how HE himself had once brought down a "bull" by a
+bold shot with a revolver through its open bellowing mouth that pierced
+his "innards;" how a friend of his--an intimate in fact--now in jail at
+Louisville for killing a sheriff's deputy, had once found himself alone
+and dismounted with a simple clasp-knife and a lariat among a herd of
+buffaloes; how, leaping calmly upon the shaggy shoulders of the biggest
+bull, he lashed himself with the lariat firmly to its horns, goading it
+onward with his clasp-knife, and subsisting for days upon the flesh cut
+from its living body, until, abandoned by its fellows and exhausted
+by the loss of blood, it finally succumbed to its victor at the very
+outskirts of the camp to which he had artfully driven it! It must be
+confessed that this recital somewhat took away Clarence's breath, and
+he would have liked to ask a few questions. But they were alone on the
+prairie, and linked by a common transgression; the glorious sun was
+coming up victoriously, the pure, crisp air was intoxicating their
+nerves; in the bright forecast of youth everything WAS possible!
+
+The surface of the bottom land that they were crossing was here and
+there broken up by fissures and "potholes," and some circumspection in
+their progress became necessary. In one of these halts, Clarence was
+struck by a dull, monotonous jarring that sounded like the heavy regular
+fall of water over a dam. Each time that they slackened their pace the
+sound would become more audible, and was at last accompanied by that
+slight but unmistakable tremor of the earth that betrayed the vicinity
+of a waterfall. Hesitating over the phenomenon, which seemed to imply
+that their topography was wrong and that they had blundered from the
+track, they were presently startled by the fact that the sound was
+actually APPROACHING them! With a sudden instinct they both galloped
+towards the lagoon. As the timber opened before them Jim uttered a long
+ecstatic shout. "Why, it's THEM!"
+
+At a first glance it seemed to Clarence as if the whole plain beyond
+was broken up and rolling in tumbling waves or furrows towards them. A
+second glance showed the tossing fronts of a vast herd of buffaloes, and
+here and there, darting in and out and among them, or emerging from the
+cloud of dust behind, wild figures and flashes of fire. With the idea of
+water still in his mind, it seemed as if some tumultuous tidal wave were
+sweeping unseen towards the lagoon, carrying everything before it. He
+turned with eager eyes, in speechless expectancy, to his companion.
+
+Alack! that redoubtable hero and mighty hunter was, to all appearances,
+equally speechless and astonished. It was true that he remained rooted
+to the saddle, a lank, still heroic figure, alternately grasping his
+hatchet and gun with a kind of spasmodic regularity. How long he would
+have continued this would never be known, for the next moment, with a
+deafening crash, the herd broke through the brush, and, swerving at the
+right of the lagoon, bore down directly upon them. All further doubt or
+hesitation on their part was stopped. The farseeing, sagacious Mexican
+plug with a terrific snort wheeled and fled furiously with his rider.
+Moved, no doubt, by touching fidelity, Clarence's humbler team-horse
+instantly followed. In a few moments those devoted animals struggled
+neck to neck in noble emulation.
+
+"What are we goin' off this way for?" gasped the simple Clarence.
+
+"Peyton and Gildersleeve are back there--and they'll see us," gasped Jim
+in reply. It struck Clarence that the buffaloes were much nearer them
+than the hunting party, and that the trampling hoofs of a dozen bulls
+were close behind them, but with another gasp he shouted,
+
+"When are we going to hunt 'em?"
+
+"Hunt THEM!" screamed Jim, with a hysterical outburst of truth; "why,
+they're huntin' US--dash it!"
+
+Indeed, there was no doubt that their frenzied horses were flying before
+the equally frenzied herd behind them. They gained a momentary advantage
+by riding into one of the fissures, and out again on the other side,
+while their pursuers were obliged to make a detour. But in a few minutes
+they were overtaken by that part of the herd who had taken the other and
+nearer side of the lagoon, and were now fairly in the midst of them. The
+ground shook with their trampling hoofs; their steaming breath, mingling
+with the stinging dust that filled the air, half choked and blinded
+Clarence. He was dimly conscious that Jim had wildly thrown his hatchet
+at a cow buffalo pressing close upon his flanks. As they swept down into
+another gully he saw him raise his fateful gun with utter desperation.
+Clarence crouched low on his horse's outstretched neck. There was a
+blinding flash, a single stunning report of both barrels; Jim reeled in
+one way half out of the saddle, while the smoking gun seemed to leap in
+another over his head, and then rider and horse vanished in a choking
+cloud of dust and gunpowder. A moment after Clarence's horse stopped
+with a sudden check, and the boy felt himself hurled over its head into
+the gully, alighting on something that seemed to be a bounding cushion
+of curled and twisted hair. It was the shaggy shoulder of an enormous
+buffalo! For Jim's desperate random shot and double charge had taken
+effect on the near hind leg of a preceding bull, tearing away the flesh
+and ham-stringing the animal, who had dropped in the gully just in front
+of Clarence's horse.
+
+Dazed but unhurt, the boy rolled from the lifted fore quarters of the
+struggling brute to the ground. When he staggered to his feet again, not
+only his horse was gone but the whole herd of buffaloes seemed to have
+passed too, and he could hear the shouts of unseen hunters now ahead of
+him. They had evidently overlooked his fall, and the gully had concealed
+him. The sides before him were too steep for his aching limbs to climb;
+the slope by which he and the bull had descended when the collision
+occurred was behind the wounded animal. Clarence was staggering towards
+it when the bull, by a supreme effort, lifted itself on three legs, half
+turned, and faced him.
+
+These events had passed too quickly for the inexperienced boy to
+have felt any active fear, or indeed anything but wild excitement and
+confusion. But the spectacle of that shaggy and enormous front, that
+seemed to fill the whole gully, rising with awful deliberation between
+him and escape, sent a thrill of terror through his frame. The great,
+dull, bloodshot eyes glared at him with a dumb, wondering fury; the
+large wet nostrils were so near that their first snort of inarticulate
+rage made him reel backwards as from a blow. The gully was only a
+narrow and short fissure or subsidence of the plain; a few paces more of
+retreat and he would be at its end, against an almost perpendicular
+bank fifteen feet high. If he attempted to climb its crumbling sides and
+fell, there would be those short but terrible horns waiting to impale
+him! It seemed too terrible, too cruel! He was so small beside this
+overgrown monster. It wasn't fair! The tears started to his eyes, and
+then, in a rage at the injustice of Fate, he stood doggedly still with
+clenched fists. He fixed his gaze with half-hysterical, childish fury on
+those lurid eyes; he did not know that, owing to the strange magnifying
+power of the bull's convex pupils, he, Clarence, appeared much bigger
+than he really was to the brute's heavy consciousness, the distance from
+him most deceptive, and that it was to this fact that hunters so often
+owed their escape. He only thought of some desperate means of attack.
+Ah! the six-shooter. It was still in his pocket. He drew it nervously,
+hopelessly--it looked so small compared with his large enemy!
+
+He presented it with flashing eyes, and pulled the trigger. A feeble
+click followed, another, and again! Even THIS had mocked him. He
+pulled the trigger once more, wildly; there was a sudden explosion, and
+another. He stepped back; the balls had apparently flattened themselves
+harmlessly on the bull's forehead. He pulled again, hopelessly; there
+was another report, a sudden furious bellow, and the enormous brute
+threw his head savagely to one side, burying his left horn deep in the
+crumbling bank beside him. Again and again he charged the bank, driving
+his left horn home, and bringing down the stones and earth in showers.
+It was some seconds before Clarence saw in a single glimpse of that
+wildly tossing crest the reason of this fury. The blood was pouring from
+his left eye, penetrated by the last bullet; the bull was blinded! A
+terrible revulsion of feeling, a sudden sense of remorse that was for
+the moment more awful than even his previous fear, overcame him. HE
+had done THAT THING! As much to fly from the dreadful spectacle as
+any instinct of self-preservation, he took advantage of the next mad
+paroxysms of pain and blindness, that always impelled the suffering
+beast towards the left, to slip past him on the right, reach the
+incline, and scramble wildly up to the plain again. Here he ran
+confusedly forward, not knowing whither--only caring to escape that
+agonized bellowing, to shut out forever the accusing look of that huge
+blood-weltering eye.
+
+Suddenly he heard a distant angry shout. To his first hurried glance
+the plain had seemed empty, but, looking up, he saw two horsemen rapidly
+advancing with a led horse behind them--his own. With the blessed sense
+of relief that overtook him now came the fevered desire for sympathy
+and to tell them all. But as they came nearer he saw that they were
+Gildersleeve, the scout, and Henry Benham, and that, far from sharing
+any delight in his deliverance, their faces only exhibited irascible
+impatience. Overcome by this new defeat, the boy stopped, again dumb and
+dogged.
+
+"Now, then, blank it all, WILL you get up and come along, or do
+you reckon to keep the train waiting another hour over your blanked
+foolishness?" said Gildersleeve savagely.
+
+The boy hesitated, and then mounted mechanically, without a word.
+
+"'Twould have served 'em right to have gone and left 'em," muttered
+Benham vindictively.
+
+For one wild instant Clarence thought of throwing himself from his
+horse and bidding them go on and leave him. But before he could put his
+thought into action the two men were galloping forward, with his horse
+led by a lariat fastened to the horn of Gildersleeve's saddle.
+
+In two hours more they had overtaken the train, already on the march,
+and were in the midst of the group of outriders. Judge Peyton's face,
+albeit a trifle perplexed, turned towards Clarence with a kindly,
+half-tolerant look of welcome. The boy's heart instantly melted with
+forgiveness.
+
+"Well, my boy, let's hear YOUR story. What happened?"
+
+Clarence cast a hurried glance around, and saw Jim, with face averted,
+riding gloomily behind. Then nervously and hurriedly he told how he had
+been thrown into the gully on the back of the wounded buffalo, and the
+manner of his escape. An audible titter ran through the cavalcade.
+Mr. Peyton regarded him gravely. "But how did the buffalo get so
+conveniently into the gully?" he asked.
+
+"Jim Hooker lamed him with a shotgun, and he fell over," said Clarence
+timidly.
+
+A roar of Homeric laughter went up from the party. Clarence looked up,
+stung and startled, but caught a single glimpse of Jim Hooker's face
+that made him forget his own mortification. In its hopeless, heart-sick,
+and utterly beaten dejection--the first and only real expression he had
+seen on it--he read the dreadful truth. Jim's REPUTATION had ruined him!
+The one genuine and striking episode of his life, the one trustworthy
+account he had given of it, had been unanimously accepted as the biggest
+and most consummate lie of his record!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+With this incident of the hunt closed, to Clarence, the last remembered
+episode of his journey. But he did not know until long after that it had
+also closed to him what might have been the opening of a new career.
+For it had been Judge Peyton's intention in adopting Susy to include a
+certain guardianship and protection of the boy, provided he could get
+the consent of that vague relation to whom he was consigned. But it
+had been pointed out by Mrs. Peyton and her brother that Clarence's
+association with Jim Hooker had made him a doubtful companion for Susy,
+and even the Judge himself was forced to admit that the boy's apparent
+taste for evil company was inconsistent with his alleged birth and
+breeding. Unfortunately, Clarence, in the conviction of being hopelessly
+misunderstood, and that dogged acquiescence to fate which was one of his
+characteristics, was too proud to correct the impression by any of the
+hypocracies of childhood. He had also a cloudy instinct of loyalty to
+Jim in his disgrace, without, however, experiencing either the sympathy
+of an equal or the zeal of a partisan, but rather--if it could be said
+of a boy of his years--with the patronage and protection of a superior.
+So he accepted without demur the intimation that when the train reached
+California he would be forwarded from Stockton with an outfit and a
+letter of explanation to Sacramento, it being understood that in the
+event of not finding his relative he would return to the Peytons in one
+of the southern valleys, where they elected to purchase a tract of land.
+
+With this outlook, and the prospect of change, independence, and all
+the rich possibilities that to the imagination of youth are included in
+them, Clarence had found the days dragging. The halt at Salt Lake,
+the transit of the dreary Alkali desert, even the wild passage of the
+Sierras, were but a blurred picture in his memory. The sight of eternal
+snows and the rolling of endless ranks of pines, the first glimpse of a
+hillside of wild oats, the spectacle of a rushing yellow river that to
+his fancy seemed tinged with gold, were momentary excitements, quickly
+forgotten. But when, one morning, halting at the outskirts of a
+struggling settlement, he found the entire party eagerly gathered around
+a passing stranger, who had taken from his saddle-bags a small buckskin
+pouch to show them a double handful of shining scales of metal, Clarence
+felt the first feverish and overmastering thrill of the gold-seekers.
+Breathlessly he followed the breathless questions and careless replies.
+The gold had been dug out of a placer only thirty miles away. It might
+be worth, say, a hundred and fifty dollars; it was only HIS share of a
+week's work with two partners. It was not much; "the country was
+getting played out with fresh arrivals and greenhorns." All this falling
+carelessly from the unshaven lips of a dusty, roughly dressed man, with
+a long-handled shovel and pickaxe strapped on his back, and a frying-pan
+depending from his saddle. But no panoplied or armed knight ever seemed
+so heroic or independent a figure to Clarence. What could be finer than
+the noble scorn conveyed in his critical survey of the train, with its
+comfortable covered wagons and appliances of civilization? "Ye'll hev to
+get rid of them ther fixin's if yer goin' in for placer diggin'!" What
+a corroboration of Clarence's real thoughts! What a picture of
+independence was this! The picturesque scout, the all-powerful Judge
+Peyton, the daring young officer, all crumbled on their clayey pedestals
+before this hero in a red flannel shirt and high-topped boots. To stroll
+around in the open air all day, and pick up those shining bits of metal,
+without study, without method or routine--this was really life; to some
+day come upon that large nugget "you couldn't lift," that was worth as
+much as the train and horses--such a one as the stranger said was found
+the other day at Sawyer's Bar--this was worth giving up everything for.
+That rough man, with his smile of careless superiority, was the living
+link between Clarence and the Thousand and One Nights; in him were
+Aladdin and Sindbad incarnate.
+
+Two days later they reached Stockton. Here Clarence, whose single suit
+of clothes had been reinforced by patching, odds and ends from Peyton's
+stores, and an extraordinary costume of army cloth, got up by the
+regimental tailor at Fort Ridge, was taken to be refitted at a general
+furnishing "emporium." But alas! in the selection of the clothing for
+that adult locality scant provision seemed to have been made for a
+boy of Clarence's years, and he was with difficulty fitted from an
+old condemned Government stores with "a boy's" seaman suit and a
+brass-buttoned pea-jacket. To this outfit Mr. Peyton added a small sum
+of money for his expenses, and a letter of explanation to his cousin.
+The stage-coach was to start at noon. It only remained for Clarence to
+take leave of the party. The final parting with Susy had been discounted
+on the two previous days with some tears, small frights and clingings,
+and the expressed determination on the child's part "to go with him;"
+but in the excitement of the arrival at Stockton it was still
+further mitigated, and under the influence of a little present from
+Clarence--his first disbursement of his small capital--had at last taken
+the form and promise of merely temporary separation. Nevertheless, when
+the boy's scanty pack was deposited under the stage-coach seat, and he
+had been left alone, he ran rapidly back to the train for one moment
+more with Susy. Panting and a little frightened, he reached Mrs.
+Peyton's car.
+
+"Goodness! You're not gone yet," said Mrs. Peyton sharply. "Do you want
+to lose the stage?"
+
+An instant before, in his loneliness, he might have answered, "Yes."
+But under the cruel sting of Mrs. Peyton's evident annoyance at his
+reappearance he felt his legs suddenly tremble, and his voice left him.
+He did not dare to look at Susy. But her voice rose comfortably from the
+depths of the wagon where she was sitting.
+
+"The stage will be gone away, Kla'uns."
+
+She too! Shame at his foolish weakness sent the yearning blood that had
+settled round his heart flying back into his face.
+
+"I was looking for--for--for Jim, ma'am," he said at last, boldly.
+
+He saw a look of disgust pass over Mrs. Peyton's face, and felt a
+malicious satisfaction as he turned and ran back to the stage. But here,
+to his surprise, he actually found Jim, whom he really hadn't thought
+of, darkly watching the last strapping of luggage. With a manner
+calculated to convey the impression to the other passengers that he was
+parting from a brother criminal, probably on his way to a state prison,
+Jim shook hands gloomily with Clarence, and eyed the other passengers
+furtively between his mated locks.
+
+"Ef ye hear o' anythin' happenin', ye'll know what's up," he said, in a
+low, hoarse, but perfectly audible whisper. "Me and them's bound to part
+company afore long. Tell the fellows at Deadman's Gulch to look out for
+me at any time."
+
+Although Clarence was not going to Deadman's Gulch, knew nothing of it,
+and had a faint suspicion that Jim was equally ignorant, yet as one or
+two of the passengers glanced anxiously at the demure, gray-eyed boy
+who seemed booked for such a baleful destination, he really felt the
+half-delighted, half-frightened consciousness that he was starting in
+life under fascinating immoral pretenses. But the forward spring of the
+fine-spirited horses, the quickened motion, the glittering sunlight, and
+the thought that he really was leaving behind him all the shackles of
+dependence and custom, and plunging into a life of freedom, drove
+all else from his mind. He turned at last from this hopeful, blissful
+future, and began to examine his fellow passengers with boyish
+curiosity. Wedged in between two silent men on the front seat, one of
+whom seemed a farmer, and the other, by his black attire, a professional
+man, Clarence was finally attracted by a black-mantled, dark-haired,
+bonnetless woman on the back seat, whose attention seemed to be
+monopolized by the jocular gallantries of her companions and the two
+men before her in the middle seat. From her position he could see little
+more than her dark eyes, which occasionally seemed to meet his frank
+curiosity in an amused sort of way, but he was chiefly struck by the
+pretty foreign sound of her musical voice, which was unlike anything
+he had ever heard before, and--alas for the inconstancy of youth--much
+finer than Mrs. Peyton's. Presently his farmer companion, casting a
+patronizing glance on Clarence's pea-jacket and brass buttons, said
+cheerily--
+
+"Jest off a voyage, sonny?"
+
+"No, sir," stammered Clarence; "I came across the plains."
+
+"Then I reckon that's the rig-out for the crew of a prairie schooner,
+eh?" There was a laugh at this which perplexed Clarence. Observing it,
+the humorist kindly condescended to explain that "prairie schooner" was
+the current slang for an emigrant wagon.
+
+"I couldn't," explained Clarence, naively looking at the dark eyes on
+the back seat, "get any clothes at Stockton but these; I suppose the
+folks didn't think there'd ever be boys in California."
+
+The simplicity of this speech evidently impressed the others, for
+the two men in the middle seats turned at a whisper from the lady and
+regarded him curiously. Clarence blushed slightly and became silent.
+Presently the vehicle began to slacken its speed. They were ascending
+a hill; on either bank grew huge cottonwoods, from which occasionally
+depended a beautiful scarlet vine.
+
+"Ah! eet ees pretty," said the lady, nodding her black-veiled head
+towards it. "Eet is good in ze hair."
+
+One of the men made an awkward attempt to clutch a spray from the
+window. A brilliant inspiration flashed upon Clarence. When the stage
+began the ascent of the next hill, following the example of an outside
+passenger, he jumped down to walk. At the top of the hill he rejoined
+the stage, flushed and panting, but carrying a small branch of the vine
+in his scratched hands. Handing it to the man on the middle seat, he
+said, with grave, boyish politeness--"Please--for the lady."
+
+A slight smile passed over the face of Clarence's neighbors. The
+bonnetless woman nodded a pleasant acknowledgment, and coquettishly
+wound the vine in her glossy hair. The dark man at his side, who hadn't
+spoken yet, turned to Clarence dryly.
+
+"If you're goin' to keep up this gait, sonny, I reckon ye won't find
+much trouble gettin' a man's suit to fit you by the time you reach
+Sacramento."
+
+Clarence didn't quite understand him, but noticed that a singular
+gravity seemed to overtake the two jocular men on the middle seat, and
+the lady looked out of the window. He came to the conclusion that he had
+made a mistake about alluding to his clothes and his size. He must try
+and behave more manly. That opportunity seemed to be offered two hours
+later, when the stage stopped at a wayside hotel or restaurant.
+
+Two or three passengers had got down to refresh themselves at the bar.
+His right and left hand neighbors were, however, engaged in a drawling
+conversation on the comparative merits of San Francisco sandhill
+and water lots; the jocular occupants of the middle seat were still
+engrossed with the lady. Clarence slipped out of the stage and entered
+the bar-room with some ostentation. The complete ignoring of his person
+by the barkeeper and his customers, however, somewhat disconcerted him.
+He hesitated a moment, and then returned gravely to the stage door and
+opened it.
+
+"Would you mind taking a drink with me, sir?" said Clarence politely,
+addressing the farmer-looking passenger who had been most civil to him.
+A dead silence followed. The two men on the middle seat faced entirely
+around to gaze at him.
+
+"The Commodore asks if you'll take a drink with him," explained one of
+the men to Clarence's friend with the greatest seriousness.
+
+"Eh? Oh, yes, certainly," returned that gentleman, changing his
+astonished expression to one of the deepest gravity, "seeing it's the
+Commodore."
+
+"And perhaps you and your friend will join, too?" said Clarence timidly
+to the passenger who had explained; "and you too, sir?" he added to the
+dark man.
+
+"Really, gentlemen, I don't see how we can refuse," said the latter,
+with the greatest formality, and appealing to the others. "A compliment
+of this kind from our distinguished friend is not to be taken lightly."
+
+"I have observed, sir, that the Commodore's head is level," returned the
+other man with equal gravity.
+
+Clarence could have wished they had not treated his first hospitable
+effort quite so formally, but as they stepped from the coach with
+unbending faces he led them, a little frightened, into the bar-room.
+Here, unfortunately, as he was barely able to reach over the counter,
+the barkeeper would have again overlooked him but for a quick glance
+from the dark man, which seemed to change even the barkeeper's
+perfunctory smiling face into supernatural gravity.
+
+"The Commodore is standing treat," said the dark man, with unbroken
+seriousness, indicating Clarence, and leaning back with an air of
+respectful formality. "I will take straight whiskey. The Commodore,
+on account of just changing climate, will, I believe, for the present
+content himself with lemon soda."
+
+Clarence had previously resolved to take whiskey, like the others, but
+a little doubtful of the politeness of countermanding his guest's
+order, and perhaps slightly embarrassed by the fact that all the other
+customers seemed to have gathered round him and his party with equally
+immovable faces, he said hurriedly:
+
+"Lemon soda for me, please."
+
+"The Commodore," said the barkeeper with impassive features, as he bent
+forward and wiped the counter with professional deliberation, "is right.
+No matter how much a man may be accustomed all his life to liquor, when
+he is changing climate, gentlemen, he says 'Lemon soda for me' all the
+time."
+
+"Perhaps," said Clarence, brightening, "you will join too?"
+
+"I shall be proud on this occasion, sir."
+
+"I think," said the tall man, still as ceremoniously unbending as
+before, "that there can be but one toast here, gentlemen. I give you the
+health of the Commodore. May his shadow never be less."
+
+The health was drunk solemnly. Clarence felt his cheeks tingle and
+in his excitement drank his own health with the others. Yet he was
+disappointed that there was not more joviality; he wondered if men
+always drank together so stiffly. And it occurred to him that it would
+be expensive. Nevertheless, he had his purse all ready ostentatiously
+in his hand; in fact, the paying for it out of his own money was not
+the least manly and independent pleasure he had promised himself. "How
+much?" he asked, with an affectation of carelessness.
+
+The barkeeper cast his eye professionally over the barroom. "I think you
+said treats for the crowd; call it twenty dollars to make even change."
+
+Clarence's heart sank. He had heard already of the exaggeration
+of California prices. Twenty dollars! It was half his fortune.
+Nevertheless, with an heroic effort, he controlled himself, and with
+slightly nervous fingers counted out the money. It struck him, however,
+as curious, not to say ungentlemanly, that the bystanders craned their
+necks over his shoulder to look at the contents of his purse, although
+some slight explanation was offered by the tall man.
+
+"The Commodore's purse, gentlemen, is really a singular one. Permit me,"
+he said, taking it from Clarence's hand with great politeness. "It is
+one of the new pattern, you observe, quite worthy of inspection." He
+handed it to a man behind him, who in turn handed it to another, while
+a chorus of "suthin quite new," "the latest style," followed it in its
+passage round the room, and indicated to Clarence its whereabouts.
+It was presently handed back to the barkeeper, who had begged also to
+inspect it, and who, with an air of scrupulous ceremony insisted upon
+placing it himself in Clarence's side pocket, as if it were an
+important part of his function. The driver here called "all aboard."
+The passengers hurriedly reseated themselves, and the episode abruptly
+ended. For, to Clarence's surprise, these attentive friends of a moment
+ago at once became interested in the views of a new passenger concerning
+the local politics of San Francisco, and he found himself utterly
+forgotten. The bonnetless woman had changed her position, and her head
+was no longer visible. The disillusion and depression that overcame him
+suddenly were as complete as his previous expectations and hopefulness
+had been extravagant. For the first time his utter unimportance in
+the world and his inadequacy to this new life around him came upon him
+crushingly.
+
+The heat and jolting of the stage caused him to fall into a slight
+slumber and when he awoke he found his two neighbors had just got out
+at a wayside station. They had evidently not cared to waken him to say
+"Good-by." From the conversation of the other passengers he learned that
+the tall man was a well-known gambler, and the one who looked like a
+farmer was a ship captain who had become a wealthy merchant. Clarence
+thought he understood now why the latter had asked him if he came off a
+voyage, and that the nickname of "Commodore" given to him, Clarence, was
+some joke intended for the captain's understanding. He missed them, for
+he wanted to talk to them about his relative at Sacramento, whom he was
+now so soon to see. At last, between sleeping and waking, the end of
+his journey was unexpectedly reached. It was dark, but, being "steamer
+night," the shops and business places were still open, and Mr. Peyton
+had arranged that the stage-driver should deliver Clarence at the
+address of his relative in "J Street,"--an address which Clarence had
+luckily remembered. But the boy was somewhat discomfited to find that
+it was a large office or banking-house. He, however, descended from the
+stage, and with his small pack in his hand entered the building as the
+stage drove off, and, addressing one of the busy clerks, asked for "Mr.
+Jackson Brant."
+
+There was no such person in the office. There never had been any such
+person. The bank had always occupied that building. Was there not some
+mistake in the number? No; the name, number, and street had been deeply
+engrafted in the boy's recollection. Stop! it might be the name of a
+customer who had given his address at the bank. The clerk who made this
+suggestion disappeared promptly to make inquiries in the counting-room.
+Clarence, with a rapidly beating heart, awaited him. The clerk returned.
+There was no such name on the books. Jackson Brant was utterly unknown
+to every one in the establishment.
+
+For an instant the counter against which the boy was leaning seemed to
+yield with his weight; he was obliged to steady himself with both hands
+to keep from falling. It was not his disappointment, which was terrible;
+it was not a thought of his future, which seemed hopeless; it was not
+his injured pride at appearing to have willfully deceived Mr. Peyton,
+which was more dreadful than all else; but it was the sudden, sickening
+sense that HE himself had been deceived, tricked, and fooled! For it
+flashed upon him for the first time that the vague sense of wrong which
+had always haunted him was this--that this was the vile culmination of
+a plan to GET RID OF HIM, and that he had been deliberately lost and led
+astray by his relatives as helplessly and completely as a useless cat or
+dog!
+
+Perhaps there was something of this in his face, for the clerk, staring
+at him, bade him sit down for a moment, and again vanished into the
+mysterious interior. Clarence had no conception how long he was absent,
+or indeed anything but his own breathless thoughts, for he was conscious
+of wondering afterwards why the clerk was leading him through a door in
+the counter into an inner room of many desks, and again through a glass
+door into a smaller office, where a preternaturally busy-looking man
+sat writing at a desk. Without looking up, but pausing only to apply a
+blotting-pad to the paper before him, the man said crisply--
+
+"So you've been consigned to some one who don't seem to turn up, and
+can't be found, eh? Never mind that," as Clarence laid Peyton's letter
+before him. "Can't read it now. Well, I suppose you want to be shipped
+back to Stockton?"
+
+"No!" said the boy, recovering his voice with an effort.
+
+"Eh, that's business, though. Know anybody here?"
+
+"Not a living soul; that's why they sent me," said the boy, in sudden
+reckless desperation. He was the more furious that he knew the tears
+were standing in his eyes.
+
+The idea seemed to strike the man amusingly. "Looks a little like it,
+don't it?" he said, smiling grimly at the paper before him. "Got any
+money?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"About twenty dollars," said Clarence hesitatingly. The man opened a
+drawer at his side, mechanically, for he did not raise his eyes, and
+took out two ten-dollar gold pieces. "I'll go twenty better," he said,
+laying them down on the desk. "That'll give you a chance to look around.
+Come back here, if you don't see your way clear." He dipped his pen into
+the ink with a significant gesture as if closing the interview.
+
+Clarence pushed back the coin. "I'm not a beggar," he said doggedly.
+
+The man this time raised his head and surveyed the boy with two keen
+eyes. "You're not, hey? Well, do I look like one?"
+
+"No," stammered Clarence, as he glanced into the man's haughty eyes.
+
+"Yet, if I were in your fix, I'd take that money and be glad to get it."
+
+"If you'll let me pay you back again," said Clarence, a little ashamed,
+and considerably frightened at his implied accusation of the man before
+him.
+
+"You can," said the man, bending over his desk again.
+
+Clarence took up the money and awkwardly drew out his purse. But it was
+the first time he had touched it since it was returned to him in the
+bar-room, and it struck him that it was heavy and full--indeed, so
+full that on opening it a few coins rolled out on to the floor. The man
+looked up abruptly.
+
+"I thought you said you had only twenty dollars?" he remarked grimly.
+
+"Mr. Peyton gave me forty," returned Clarence, stupefied and blushing.
+"I spent twenty dollars for drinks at the bar--and," he stammered,
+"I--I--I don't know how the rest came here."
+
+"You spent twenty dollars for DRINKS?" said the man, laying down his
+pen, and leaning back in his chair to gaze at the boy.
+
+"Yes--that is--I treated some gentlemen of the stage, sir, at Davidson's
+Crossing."
+
+"Did you treat the whole stage company?"
+
+"No, sir, only about four or five--and the bar-keeper. But everything's
+so dear in California. I know that."
+
+"Evidently. But it don't seem to make much difference with YOU," said
+the man, glancing at the purse.
+
+"They wanted my purse to look at," said Clarence hurriedly, "and that's
+how the thing happened. Somebody put HIS OWN MONEY back into MY purse by
+accident."
+
+"Of course," said the man grimly.
+
+"Yes, that's the reason," said Clarence, a little relieved, but somewhat
+embarrassed by the man's persistent eyes.
+
+"Then, of course," said the other quietly, "you don't require my twenty
+dollars now."
+
+"But," returned Clarence hesitatingly, "this isn't MY money. I must
+find out who it belongs to, and give it back again. Perhaps," he added
+timidly, "I might leave it here with you, and call for it when I find
+the man, or send him here."
+
+With the greatest gravity he here separated the surplus from what was
+left of Peyton's gift and the twenty dollars he had just received. The
+balance unaccounted for was forty dollars. He laid it on the desk before
+the man, who, still looking at him, rose and opened the door.
+
+"Mr. Reed."
+
+The clerk who had shown Clarence in appeared.
+
+"Open an account with--" He stopped and turned interrogatively to
+Clarence.
+
+"Clarence Brant," said Clarence, coloring with excitement.
+
+"With Clarence Brant. Take that deposit"--pointing to the money--"and
+give him a receipt." He paused as the clerk retired with a wondering
+gaze at the money, looked again at Clarence, said, "I think YOU'LL do,"
+and reentered the private office, closing the door behind him.
+
+I hope it will not be deemed inconceivable that Clarence, only a few
+moments before crushed with bitter disappointment and the hopeless
+revelation of his abandonment by his relatives, now felt himself lifted
+up suddenly into an imaginary height of independence and manhood. He was
+leaving the bank, in which he stood a minute before a friendless boy,
+not as a successful beggar, for this important man had disclaimed the
+idea, but absolutely as a customer! a depositor! a business man like
+the grown-up clients who were thronging the outer office, and before the
+eyes of the clerk who had pitied him! And he, Clarence, had been spoken
+to by this man, whose name he now recognized as the one that was on the
+door of the building--a man of whom his fellow-passengers had spoken
+with admiring envy--a banker famous in all California! Will it be deemed
+incredible that this imaginative and hopeful boy, forgetting all else,
+the object of his visit, and even the fact that he considered this
+money was not his own, actually put his hat a little on one side as he
+strolled out on his way to the streets and prospective fortune?
+
+Two hours later the banker had another visitor. It chanced to be the
+farmer-looking man who had been Clarence's fellow-passenger. Evidently a
+privileged person, he was at once ushered as "Captain Stevens" into the
+presence of the banker. At the end of a familiar business interview the
+captain asked carelessly--
+
+"Any letters for me?"
+
+The busy banker pointed with his pen to the letter "S" in a row of
+alphabetically labeled pigeon-holes against the wall. The captain,
+having selected his correspondence, paused with a letter in his hand.
+
+"Look here, Carden, there are letters here for some chap called 'John
+Silsbee.' They were here when I called, ten weeks ago."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's the name of that Pike County man who was killed by Injins in the
+plains. The 'Frisco papers had all the particulars last night; may be
+it's for that fellow. It hasn't got a postmark. Who left it here?"
+
+Mr. Carden summoned a clerk. It appeared that the letter had been left
+by a certain Brant Fauquier, to be called for.
+
+Captain Stevens smiled. "Brant's been too busy dealin' faro to think of
+'em agin, and since that shootin' affair at Angels' I hear he's skipped
+to the southern coast somewhere. Cal Johnson, his old chum, was in the
+up stage from Stockton this afternoon."
+
+"Did you come by the up stage from Stockton this afternoon?" said
+Carden, looking up.
+
+"Yes, as far as Ten-mile Station--rode the rest of the way here."
+
+"Did you notice a queer little old-fashioned kid--about so high--like a
+runaway school-boy?"
+
+"Did I? By G--d, sir, he treated me to drinks."
+
+Carden jumped from his chair. "Then he wasn't lying!"
+
+"No! We let him do it; but we made it good for the little chap
+afterwards. Hello! What's up?"
+
+But Mr. Carden was already in the outer office beside the clerk who had
+admitted Clarence.
+
+"You remember that boy Brant who was here?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Where did he go?"
+
+"Don't know, sir."
+
+"Go and find him somewhere and somehow. Go to all the hotels,
+restaurants, and gin-mills near here, and hunt him up. Take some one
+with you, if you can't do it alone. Bring him back here, quick!"
+
+It was nearly midnight when the clerk fruitlessly returned. It was the
+fierce high noon of "steamer nights"; light flashed brilliantly from
+shops, counting-houses, drinking-saloons, and gambling-hells. The
+streets were yet full of eager, hurrying feet--swift of fortune,
+ambition, pleasure, or crime. But from among these deeper harsher
+footfalls the echo of the homeless boy's light, innocent tread seemed to
+have died out forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+When Clarence was once more in the busy street before the bank, it
+seemed clear to his boyish mind that, being now cast adrift upon the
+world and responsible to no one, there was no reason why he should not
+at once proceed to the nearest gold mines! The idea of returning to
+Mr. Peyton and Susy, as a disowned and abandoned outcast, was not to
+be thought of. He would purchase some kind of an outfit, such as he had
+seen the miners carry, and start off as soon as he had got his supper.
+But although one of his most delightful anticipations had been the
+unfettered freedom of ordering a meal at a restaurant, on entering the
+first one he found himself the object of so much curiosity, partly
+from his size and partly from his dress, which the unfortunate boy was
+beginning to suspect was really preposterous, and he turned away with a
+stammered excuse, and did not try another. Further on he found a baker's
+shop, where he refreshed himself with some gingerbread and lemon soda.
+At an adjacent grocery he purchased some herrings, smoked beef, and
+biscuits, as future provisions for his "pack" or kit. Then began his
+real quest for an outfit. In an hour he had secured--ostensibly for some
+friend, to avoid curious inquiry--a pan, a blanket, a shovel and
+pick, all of which he deposited at the baker's, his unostentatious
+headquarters, with the exception of a pair of disguising high boots that
+half hid his sailor trousers, which he kept to put on at the last. Even
+to his inexperience the cost of these articles seemed enormous; when
+his purchases were complete, of his entire capital scarcely four dollars
+remained! Yet in the fond illusions of boyhood these rude appointments
+seemed possessed of far more value than the gold he had given in
+exchange for them, and he had enjoyed a child's delight in testing the
+transforming magic of money.
+
+Meanwhile, the feverish contact of the crowded street had, strange
+to say, increased his loneliness, while the ruder joviality of its
+dissipations began to fill him with vague uneasiness. The passing
+glimpse of dancing halls and gaudily whirled figures that seemed only
+feminine in their apparel; the shouts and boisterous choruses from
+concert rooms; the groups of drunken roisterers that congregated around
+the doors of saloons or, hilariously charging down the streets, elbowed
+him against the wall, or humorously insisted on his company, discomposed
+and frightened him. He had known rude companionship before, but it
+was serious, practical, and under control. There was something in this
+vulgar degradation of intellect and power--qualities that Clarence had
+always boyishly worshiped--which sickened and disillusioned him. Later
+on a pistol shot in a crowd beyond, the rush of eager men past him, the
+disclosure of a limp and helpless figure against the wall, the closing
+of the crowd again around it, although it stirred him with a fearful
+curiosity, actually shocked him less hopelessly than their brutish
+enjoyments and abandonment.
+
+It was in one of these rushes that he had been crushed against a
+swinging door, which, giving way to his pressure, disclosed to his
+wondering eyes a long, glitteringly adorned, and brightly lit room,
+densely filled with a silent, attentive throng in attitudes of decorous
+abstraction and preoccupation, that even the shouts and tumult at its
+very doors could not disturb. Men of all ranks and conditions, plainly
+or elaborately clad, were grouped together under this magic spell of
+silence and attention. The tables before them were covered with cards
+and loose heaps of gold and silver. A clicking, the rattling of an ivory
+ball, and the frequent, formal, lazy reiteration of some unintelligible
+sentence was all that he heard. But by a sudden instinct he UNDERSTOOD
+it all. It was a gambling saloon!
+
+Encouraged by the decorous stillness, and the fact that everybody
+appeared too much engaged to notice him, the boy drew timidly beside
+one of the tables. It was covered with a number of cards, on which were
+placed certain sums of money. Looking down, Clarence saw that he was
+standing before a card that as yet had nothing on it. A single player at
+his side looked up, glanced at Clarence curiously, and then placed half
+a dozen gold pieces on the vacant card. Absorbed in the general aspect
+of the room and the players, Clarence did not notice that his neighbor
+won twice, and even THRICE, upon that card. Becoming aware, however,
+that the player while gathering in his gains, was smilingly regarding
+him he moved in some embarrassment to the other end of the table, where
+there seemed another gap in the crowd. It so chanced that there was also
+another vacant card. The previous neighbor of Clarence instantly shoved
+a sum of money across the table on the vacant card and won! At this the
+other players began to regard Clarence singularly, one or two of the
+spectators smiled, and the boy, coloring, moved awkwardly away. But his
+sleeve was caught by the successful player, who, detaining him gently,
+put three gold pieces into his hand.
+
+"That's YOUR share, sonny," he whispered.
+
+"Share--for what?" stammered the astounded Clarence.
+
+"For bringing me 'the luck,'" said the man.
+
+Clarence stared. "Am I--to--to play with it?" he said, glancing at the
+coins and then at the table, in ignorance of the stranger's meaning.
+
+"No, no!" said the man hurriedly, "don't do that. You'll lose it, sonny,
+sure! Don't you see, YOU BRING THE LUCK TO OTHERS, not to yourself. Keep
+it, old man, and run home!"
+
+"I don't want it! I won't have it!" said Clarence with a swift
+recollection of the manipulation of his purse that morning, and a sudden
+distrust of all mankind.
+
+"There!" He turned back to the table and laid the money on the first
+vacant card he saw. In another moment, as it seemed to him, it was raked
+away by the dealer. A sense of relief came over him.
+
+"There!" said the man, with an awed voice and a strange, fatuous look
+in his eye. "What did I tell you? You see, it's allus so! Now," he added
+roughly, "get up and get out o' this, afore you lose the boots and shirt
+off ye."
+
+Clarence did not wait for a second command. With another glance round
+the room, he began to make his way through the crowd towards the front.
+But in that parting glance he caught a glimpse of a woman presiding over
+a "wheel of fortune" in a corner, whose face seemed familiar. He looked
+again, timidly. In spite of an extraordinary head-dress or crown that
+she wore as the "Goddess of Fortune," he recognized, twisted in its
+tinsel, a certain scarlet vine which he had seen before; in spite of the
+hoarse formula which she was continually repeating, he recognized the
+foreign accent. It was the woman of the stage-coach! With a sudden dread
+that she might recognize him, and likewise demand his services "for
+luck," he turned and fled.
+
+Once more in the open air, there came upon him a vague loathing
+and horror of the restless madness and feverish distraction of this
+half-civilized city. It was the more powerful that it was vague, and the
+outcome of some inward instinct. He found himself longing for the pure
+air and sympathetic loneliness of the plains and wilderness; he began to
+yearn for the companionship of his humble associates--the teamster, the
+scout Gildersleeve, and even Jim Hooker. But above all and before all
+was the wild desire to get away from these maddening streets and
+their bewildering occupants. He ran back to the baker's, gathered his
+purchases together, took advantage of a friendly doorway to strap them
+on his boyish shoulders, slipped into a side street, and struck out at
+once for the outskirts.
+
+It had been his first intention to take stage to the nearest mining
+district, but the diminution of his small capital forbade that outlay,
+and he decided to walk there by the highroad, of whose general direction
+he had informed himself. In half an hour the lights of the flat,
+struggling city, and their reflection in the shallow, turbid river
+before it, had sunk well behind him. The air was cool and soft; a yellow
+moon swam in the slight haze that rose above the tules; in the distance
+a few scattered cottonwoods and sycamores marked like sentinels the
+road. When he had walked some distance he sat down beneath one of them
+to make a frugal supper from the dry rations in his pack, but in the
+absence of any spring he was forced to quench his thirst with a glass of
+water in a wayside tavern. Here he was good-humoredly offered
+something stronger, which he declined, and replied to certain curious
+interrogations by saying that he expected to overtake his friends in a
+wagon further on. A new distrust of mankind had begun to make the boy
+an adept in innocent falsehood, the more deceptive as his careless,
+cheerful manner, the result of his relief at leaving the city, and his
+perfect ease in the loving companionship of night and nature, certainly
+gave no indication of his homelessness and poverty.
+
+It was long past midnight, when, weary in body, but still hopeful and
+happy in mind, he turned off the dusty road into a vast rolling expanse
+of wild oats, with the same sense of security of rest as a traveler to
+his inn. Here, completely screened from view by the tall stalks of grain
+that rose thickly around him to the height of a man's shoulder, he beat
+down a few of them for a bed, on which he deposited his blanket. Placing
+his pack for a pillow, he curled himself up in his blanket, and speedily
+fell asleep.
+
+He awoke at sunrise, refreshed, invigorated, and hungry. But he was
+forced to defer his first self-prepared breakfast until he had reached
+water, and a less dangerous place than the wild-oat field to build
+his first camp fire. This he found a mile further on, near some dwarf
+willows on the bank of a half-dry stream. Of his various efforts to
+prepare his first meal, the fire was the most successful; the coffee
+was somewhat too substantially thick, and the bacon and herring lacked
+definiteness of quality from having been cooked in the same vessel.
+In this boyish picnic he missed Susy, and recalled, perhaps a little
+bitterly, her coldness at parting. But the novelty of his situation, the
+brilliant sunshine and sense of freedom, and the road already awakening
+to dusty life with passing teams, dismissed everything but the future
+from his mind. Readjusting his pack, he stepped on cheerily. At noon he
+was overtaken by a teamster, who in return for a match to light his pipe
+gave him a lift of a dozen miles. It is to be feared that Clarence's
+account of himself was equally fanciful with his previous story, and
+that the teamster parted from him with a genuine regret, and a hope that
+he would soon be overtaken by his friends along the road. "And mind that
+you ain't such a fool agin to let 'em make you tote their dod-blasted
+tools fur them!" he added unsuspectingly, pointing to Clarence's mining
+outfit. Thus saved the heaviest part of the day's journey, for the
+road was continually rising from the plains during the last six miles,
+Clarence was yet able to cover a considerable distance on foot before
+he halted for supper. Here he was again fortunate. An empty lumber
+team watering at the same spring, its driver offered to take Clarence's
+purchases--for the boy had profited by his late friend's suggestion to
+personally detach himself from his equipment--to Buckeye Mills for a
+dollar, which would also include a "shakedown passage" for himself on
+the floor of the wagon. "I reckon you've been foolin' away in Sacramento
+the money yer parents give yer for return stage fare, eh? Don't
+lie, sonny," he added grimly, as the now artful Clarence smiled
+diplomatically, "I've been thar myself!" Luckily, the excuse that he was
+"tired and sleepy" prevented further dangerous questioning, and the boy
+was soon really in deep slumber on the wagon floor.
+
+He awoke betimes to find himself already in the mountains. Buckeye
+Mills was a straggling settlement, and Clarence prudently stopped any
+embarrassing inquiry from his friend by dropping off the wagon with
+his equipment as they entered it, and hurriedly saying "Good-by" from a
+crossroad through the woods. He had learned that the nearest mining camp
+was five miles away, and its direction was indicated by a long wooden
+"flume," or water-way, that alternately appeared and disappeared on the
+flank of the mountain opposite. The cooler and drier air, the grateful
+shadow of pine and bay, and the spicy balsamic odors that everywhere
+greeted him, thrilled and exhilarated him. The trail plunging sometimes
+into an undisturbed forest, he started the birds before him like a
+flight of arrows through its dim recesses; at times he hung breathlessly
+over the blue depths of canyons where the same forests were repeated a
+thousand feet below. Towards noon he struck into a rude road--evidently
+the thoroughfare of the locality--and was surprised to find that it,
+as well as the adjacent soil wherever disturbed, was a deep Indian red.
+Everywhere, along its sides, powdering the banks and boles of trees with
+its ruddy stain, in mounds and hillocks of piled dirt on the road, or
+in liquid paint-like pools, when a trickling stream had formed a gutter
+across it, there was always the same deep sanguinary color. Once or
+twice it became more vivid in contrast with the white teeth of quartz
+that peeped through it from the hillside or crossed the road in crumbled
+strata. One of those pieces Clarence picked up with a quickening pulse.
+It was veined and streaked with shining mica and tiny glittering cubes
+of mineral that LOOKED like gold!
+
+The road now began to descend towards a winding stream, shrunken by
+drought and ditching, that glared dazzingly in the sunlight from its
+white bars of sand, or glistened in shining sheets and channels. Along
+its banks, and even encroaching upon its bed, were scattered a few mud
+cabins, strange-looking wooden troughs and gutters, and here and there,
+glancing through the leaves, the white canvas of tents. The stumps of
+felled trees and blackened spaces, as of recent fires, marked the stream
+on either side. A sudden sense of disappointment overcame Clarence. It
+looked vulgar, common, and worse than all--FAMILIAR. It was like the
+unlovely outskirts of a dozen other prosaic settlements he had seen in
+less romantic localities. In that muddy red stream, pouring out of a
+wooden gutter, in which three or four bearded, slouching, half-naked
+figures were raking like chiffonniers, there was nothing to suggest
+the royal metal. Yet he was so absorbed in gazing at the scene, and had
+walked so rapidly during the past few minutes, that he was startled, on
+turning a sharp corner of the road, to come abruptly upon an outlying
+dwelling.
+
+It was a nondescript building, half canvas and half boards. The interior
+seen through the open door was fitted up with side shelves, a
+counter carelessly piled with provisions, groceries, clothing, and
+hardware--with no attempt at display or even ordinary selection--and a
+table, on which stood a demijohn and three or four dirty glasses. Two
+roughly dressed men, whose long, matted beards and hair left only their
+eyes and lips visible in the tangled hirsute wilderness below their
+slouched hats, were leaning against the opposite sides of the doorway,
+smoking. Almost thrown against them in the rapid momentum of his
+descent, Clarence halted violently.
+
+"Well, sonny, you needn't capsize the shanty," said the first man,
+without taking his pipe from his lips.
+
+"If yer looking fur yer ma, she and yer Aunt Jane hev jest gone over to
+Parson Doolittle's to take tea," observed the second man lazily. "She
+allowed that you'd wait."
+
+"I'm--I'm--going to--to the mines," explained Clarence, with some
+hesitation. "I suppose this is the way."
+
+The two men took their pipes from their lips, looked at each other,
+completely wiped every vestige of expression from their faces with the
+back of their hands, turned their eyes into the interior of the cabin,
+and said, "Will yer come yer, now WILL yer?" Thus adjured, half a dozen
+men, also bearded and carrying pipes in their mouths, straggled out of
+the shanty, and, filing in front of it, squatted down, with their backs
+against the boards, and gazed comfortably at the boy. Clarence began to
+feel uneasy.
+
+"I'll give," said one, taking out his pipe and grimly eying Clarence, "a
+hundred dollars for him as he stands."
+
+"And seein' as he's got that bran-new rig-out o' tools," said another,
+"I'll give a hundred and fifty--and the drinks. I've been," he added
+apologetically, "wantin' sunthin' like this a long time."
+
+"Well, gen'lemen," said the man who had first spoken to him, "lookin'
+at him by and large; takin' in, so to speak, the gin'ral gait of him in
+single harness; bearin' in mind the perfect freshness of him, and the
+coolness and size of his cheek--the easy downyness, previousness, and
+utter don't-care-a-damnativeness of his coming yer, I think two hundred
+ain't too much for him, and we'll call it a bargain."
+
+Clarence's previous experience of this grim, smileless Californian chaff
+was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the
+cabin, and repeated doggedly, "I asked you if this was the way to the
+mines."
+
+"It ARE the mines, and these yere are the miners," said the first
+speaker gravely. "Permit me to interdoose 'em. This yere's Shasta Jim,
+this yere's Shotcard Billy, this is Nasty Bob, and this Slumgullion
+Dick. This yere's the Dook o' Chatham Street, the Livin' Skeleton, and
+me!"
+
+"May we ask, fair young sir," said the Living Skeleton, who, however,
+seemed in fairly robust condition, "whence came ye on the wings of the
+morning, and whose Marble Halls ye hev left desolate?"
+
+"I came across the plains, and got into Stockton two days ago on Mr.
+Peyton's train," said Clarence, indignantly, seeing no reason now to
+conceal anything. "I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, who isn't
+living there any more. I don't see anything funny in THAT! I came here
+to the mines to dig gold--because---because Mr. Silsbee, the man who was
+to bring me here and might have found my cousin for me, was killed by
+Indians."
+
+"Hold up, sonny. Let me help ye," said the first speaker, rising to his
+feet. "YOU didn't get killed by Injins because you got lost out of a
+train with Silsbee's infant darter. Peyton picked you up while you was
+takin' care of her, and two days arter you kem up to the broken-down
+Silsbee wagons, with all the folks lyin' there slartered."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Clarence, breathlessly with astonishment.
+
+"And," continued the man, putting his hand gravely to his head as if
+to assist his memory, "when you was all alone on the plains with that
+little child you saw one of those redskins, as near to you as I be,
+watchin' the train, and you didn't breathe or move while he was there?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Clarence eagerly.
+
+"And you was shot at by Peyton, he thinkin' you was an Injun in the
+mesquite grass? And you once shot a buffalo that had been pitched with
+you down a gully--all by yourself?"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence, crimson with wonder and pleasure. "You know me,
+then?"
+
+"Well, ye-e-es," said the man gravely, parting his mustache with his
+fingers. "You see, YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE."
+
+"Before! Me?" repeated the astounded Clarence.
+
+"Yes, before. Last night. You was taller then, and hadn't cut your hair.
+You cursed a good deal more than you do now. You drank a man's share
+of whiskey, and you borrowed fifty dollars to get to Sacramento with. I
+reckon you haven't got it about you now, eh?"
+
+Clarence's brain reeled in utter confusion and hopeless terror.
+
+Was he going crazy, or had these cruel men learned his story from
+his faithless friends, and this was a part of the plot? He staggered
+forward, but the men had risen and quickly encircled him, as if to
+prevent his escape. In vague and helpless desperation he gasped--
+
+"What place is this?"
+
+"Folks call it Deadman's Gulch."
+
+Deadman's Gulch! A flash of intelligence lit up the boy's blind
+confusion. Deadman's Gulch! Could it have been Jim Hooker who had really
+run away, and had taken his name? He turned half-imploringly to the
+first speaker.
+
+"Wasn't he older than me, and bigger? Didn't he have a smooth, round
+face and little eyes? Didn't he talk hoarse? Didn't he--" He stopped
+hopelessly.
+
+"Yes; oh, he wasn't a bit like you," said the man musingly. "Ye see,
+that's the h-ll of it! You're altogether TOO MANY and TOO VARIOUS fur
+this camp."
+
+"I don't know who's been here before, or what they have said," said
+Clarence desperately, yet even in that desperation retaining the dogged
+loyalty to his old playmate, which was part of his nature. "I don't
+know, and I don't care--there! I'm Clarence Brant of Kentucky; I started
+in Silsbee's train from St. Jo, and I'm going to the mines, and you
+can't stop me!"
+
+The man who had first spoken started, looked keenly at Clarence, and
+then turned to the others. The gentleman known as the living skeleton
+had obtruded his huge bulk in front of the boy, and, gazing at him, said
+reflectively, "Darned if it don't look like one of Brant's pups--sure!"
+
+"Air ye any relation to Kernel Hamilton Brant of Looeyville?" asked the
+first speaker.
+
+Again that old question! Poor Clarence hesitated, despairingly. Was
+he to go through the same cross-examination he had undergone with the
+Peytons? "Yes," he said doggedly, "I am--but he's dead, and you know
+it."
+
+"Dead--of course." "Sartin." "He's dead." "The Kernel's planted," said
+the men in chorus.
+
+"Well, yes," reflected the Living Skeleton ostentatiously, as one who
+spoke from experience. "Ham Brant's about as bony now as they make 'em."
+
+"You bet! About the dustiest, deadest corpse you kin turn out,"
+corroborated Slumgullion Dick, nodding his head gloomily to the others;
+"in point o' fack, es a corpse, about the last one I should keer to go
+huntin' fur."
+
+"The Kernel's tech 'ud be cold and clammy," concluded the Duke of
+Chatham Street, who had not yet spoken, "sure. But what did yer mammy
+say about it? Is she gettin' married agin? Did SHE send ye here?"
+
+It seemed to Clarence that the Duke of Chatham Street here received a
+kick from his companions; but the boy repeated doggedly--
+
+"I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, Jackson Brant; but he wasn't
+there."
+
+"Jackson Brant!" echoed the first speaker, glancing at the others. "Did
+your mother say he was your cousin?"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence wearily. "Good-by."
+
+"Hullo, sonny, where are you going?"
+
+"To dig gold," said the boy. "And you know you can't prevent me, if it
+isn't on your claim. I know the law." He had heard Mr. Peyton discuss
+it at Stockton, and he fancied that the men, who were whispering among
+themselves, looked kinder than before, and as if they were no longer
+"acting" to him. The first speaker laid his hand on his shoulder, and
+said, "All right, come with me, and I'll show you where to dig."
+
+"Who are you?" said Clarence. "You called yourself only 'me.'"
+
+"Well, you can call me Flynn--Tom Flynn."
+
+"And you'll show me where I can dig--myself?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Do you know," said Clarence timidly, yet with a half-conscious smile,
+"that I--I kinder bring luck?"
+
+The man looked down upon him, and said gravely, but, as it struck
+Clarence, with a new kind of gravity, "I believe you."
+
+"Yes," said Clarence eagerly, as they walked along together, "I brought
+luck to a man in Sacramento the other day." And he related with great
+earnestness his experience in the gambling saloon. Not content with
+that--the sealed fountains of his childish deep being broken up by
+some mysterious sympathy--he spoke of his hospitable exploit with the
+passengers at the wayside bar, of the finding of his Fortunatus purse
+and his deposit at the bank. Whether that characteristic old-fashioned
+reticence which had been such an important factor for good or ill in
+his future had suddenly deserted him, or whether some extraordinary
+prepossession in his companion had affected him, he did not know; but
+by the time the pair had reached the hillside Flynn was in possession
+of all the boy's history. On one point only was his reserve unshaken.
+Conscious although he was of Jim Hooker's duplicity, he affected to
+treat it as a comrade's joke.
+
+They halted at last in the middle of an apparently fertile hillside.
+Clarence shifted his shovel from his shoulders, unslung his pan, and
+looked at Flynn. "Dig anywhere here, where you like," said his companion
+carelessly, "and you'll be sure to find the color. Fill your pan with
+the dirt, go to that sluice, and let the water run in on the top of the
+pan--workin' it round so," he added, illustrating a rotary motion with
+the vessel. "Keep doing that until all the soil is washed out of it, and
+you have only the black sand at the bottom. Then work that the same way
+until you see the color. Don't be afraid of washing the gold out of the
+pan--you couldn't do it if you tried. There, I'll leave you here, and
+you wait till I come back." With another grave nod and something like a
+smile in the only visible part of his bearded face--his eyes--he strode
+rapidly away.
+
+Clarence did not lose time. Selecting a spot where the grass was less
+thick, he broke through the soil and turned up two or three spadefuls of
+red soil. When he had filled the pan and raised it to his shoulder, he
+was astounded at its weight. He did not know that it was due to the red
+precipitate of iron that gave it its color. Staggering along with his
+burden to the running sluice, which looked like an open wooden gutter,
+at the foot of the hill, he began to carefully carry out Flynn's
+direction. The first dip of the pan in the running water carried off
+half the contents of the pan in liquid paint-like ooze. For a moment he
+gave way to boyish satisfaction in the sight and touch of this unctuous
+solution, and dabbled his fingers in it. A few moments more of rinsing
+and he came to the sediment of fine black sand that was beneath it.
+Another plunge and swilling of water in the pan, and--could he believe
+his eyes!--a few yellow tiny scales, scarcely larger than pins' heads,
+glittered among the sand. He poured it off. But his companion was right;
+the lighter sand shifted from side to side with the water, but the
+glittering points remained adhering by their own tiny specific gravity
+to the smooth surface of the bottom. It was "the color"--gold!
+
+Clarence's heart seemed to give a great leap within him. A vision of
+wealth, of independence, of power, sprang before his dazzled eyes,
+and--a hand lightly touched him on the shoulder.
+
+He started. In his complete preoccupation and excitement, he had not
+heard the clatter of horse-hoofs, and to his amazement Flynn was already
+beside him, mounted, and leading a second horse.
+
+"You kin ride?" he said shortly.
+
+"Yes" stammered Clarence; "but--"
+
+"BUT--we've only got two hours to reach Buckeye Mills in time to catch
+the down stage. Drop all that, jump up, and come with me!"
+
+"But I've just found gold," said the boy excitedly.
+
+"And I've just found your--cousin. Come!"
+
+He spurred his horse across Clarence's scattered implements, half
+helped, half lifted, the boy into the saddle of the second horse, and,
+with a cut of his riata over the animal's haunches, the next moment they
+were both galloping furiously away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Torn suddenly from his prospective future, but too much dominated by the
+man beside him to protest, Clarence was silent until a rise in the road,
+a few minutes later, partly abated their headlong speed, and gave him
+chance to recover his breath and courage.
+
+"Where is my cousin?" he asked.
+
+"In the Southern county, two hundred miles from here."
+
+"Are we going to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+They rode furiously forward again. It was nearly half an hour before
+they came to a longer ascent. Clarence could see that Flynn was from
+time to time examining him curiously under his slouched hat. This
+somewhat embarrassed him, but in his singular confidence in the man no
+distrust mingled with it.
+
+"Ye never saw your--cousin?" he asked.
+
+"No," said Clarence; "nor he me. I don't think he knew me much, any way.
+
+"How old mout ye be, Clarence?"
+
+"Eleven."
+
+"Well, as you're suthin of a pup"--Clarence started, and recalled
+Peyton's first criticism of him--"I reckon to tell ye suthin. Ye ain't
+goin' to be skeert, or afeard, or lose yer sand, I kalkilate, for
+skunkin' ain't in your breed. Well, wot ef I told ye that thish
+yer--thish yer--COUSIN o' yours was the biggest devil onhung; that he'd
+just killed a man, and had to lite out elsewhere, and THET'S why he
+didn't show up in Sacramento--what if I told you that?"
+
+Clarence felt that this was somehow a little too much. He was perfectly
+truthful, and lifting his frank eyes to Flynn, he said,
+
+"I should think you were talking a good deal like Jim Hooker!"
+
+His companion stared, and suddenly reined up his horse; then, bursting
+into a shout of laughter, he galloped ahead, from time to time shaking
+his head, slapping his legs, and making the dim woods ring with his
+boisterous mirth. Then as suddenly becoming thoughtful again, he rode on
+rapidly for half an hour, only speaking to Clarence to urge him forward,
+and assisting his progress by lashing the haunches of his horse.
+Luckily, the boy was a good rider--a fact which Flynn seemed to
+thoroughly appreciate--or he would have been unseated a dozen times.
+
+At last the straggling sheds of Buckeye Mills came into softer purple
+view on the opposite mountain. Then laying his hand on Clarence's
+shoulder as he reined in at his side, Flynn broke the silence.
+
+"There, boy," he said, wiping the mirthful tears from his eyes. "I was
+only foolin'--only tryin' yer grit! This yer cousin I'm taking you to be
+as quiet and soft-spoken and as old-fashioned ez you be. Why, he's
+that wrapped up in books and study that he lives alone in a big adobe
+rancherie among a lot o' Spanish, and he don't keer to see his own
+countrymen! Why, he's even changed his name, and calles himself Don Juan
+Robinson! But he's very rich; he owns three leagues of land and heaps of
+cattle and horses, and," glancing approvingly at Clarence's seat in the
+saddle, "I reckon you'll hev plenty of fun thar."
+
+"But," hesitated Clarence, to whom this proposal seemed only a
+repetition of Peyton's charitable offer, "I think I'd better stay here
+and dig gold--WITH YOU."
+
+"And I think you'd better not," said the man, with a gravity that was
+very like a settled determination.
+
+"But my cousin never came for me to Sacramento--nor sent, nor even
+wrote," persisted Clarence indignantly.
+
+"Not to YOU, boy; but he wrote to the man whom he reckoned would bring
+you there--Jack Silsbee--and left it in the care of the bank. And
+Silsbee, being dead, didn't come for the letter; and as you didn't ask
+for it when you came, and didn't even mention Silsbee's name, that same
+letter was sent back to your cousin through me, because the bank thought
+we knew his whereabouts. It came to the gulch by an express rider,
+whilst you were prospectin' on the hillside. Rememberin' your story, I
+took the liberty of opening it, and found out that your cousin had told
+Silsbee to bring you straight to him. So I'm only doin' now what Silsbee
+would have done."
+
+Any momentary doubt or suspicion that might have risen in Clarence's
+mind vanished as he met his companion's steady and masterful eye.
+Even his disappointment was forgotten in the charm of this new-found
+friendship and protection. And as its outset had been marked by
+an unusual burst of confidence on Clarence's part, the boy, in his
+gratitude, now felt something of the timid shyness of a deeper feeling,
+and once more became reticent.
+
+They were in time to snatch a hasty meal at Buckeye Mills before the
+stage arrived, and Clarence noticed that his friend, despite his rough
+dress and lawless aspect, provoked a marked degree of respect from those
+he met--in which, perhaps, a wholesome fear was mingled. It is certain
+that the two best places in the stage were given up to them without
+protest, and that a careless, almost supercilious invitation to drink
+from Flynn was responded to with singular alacrity by all, including
+even two fastidiously dressed and previously reserved passengers. I
+am afraid that Clarence enjoyed this proof of his friend's singular
+dominance with a boyish pride, and, conscious of the curious eyes of the
+passengers, directed occasionally to himself, was somewhat ostentatious
+in his familiarity with this bearded autocrat.
+
+At noon the next day they left the stage at a wayside road station, and
+Flynn briefly informed Clarence that they must again take horses. This
+at first seemed difficult in that out-of-the-way settlement, where
+they alone had stopped, but a whisper from the driver in the ear of
+the station-master produced a couple of fiery mustangs, with the same
+accompaniment of cautious awe and mystery. For the next two days they
+traveled on horseback, resting by night at the lodgings of one or other
+of Flynn's friends in the outskirts of a large town, where they arrived
+in the darkness, and left before day. To any one more experienced
+than the simple-minded boy it would have been evident that Flynn was
+purposely avoiding the more traveled roads and conveyances; and when
+they changed horses again the next day's ride was through an apparently
+unbroken wilderness of scattered wood and rolling plain. Yet to
+Clarence, with his pantheistic reliance and joyous sympathy with nature,
+the change was filled with exhilarating pleasure. The vast seas of
+tossing wild oats, the hillside still variegated with strange flowers,
+the virgin freshness of untrodden woods and leafy aisles, whose floors
+of moss or bark were undisturbed by human footprint, were a keen delight
+and novelty. More than this, his quick eye, trained perceptions, and
+frontier knowledge now stood him in good stead. His intuitive sense of
+distance, instincts of woodcraft, and his unerring detection of those
+signs, landmarks, and guideposts of nature, undistinguishable to aught
+but birds and beasts and some children, were now of the greatest service
+to his less favored companion. In this part of their strange pilgrimage
+it was the boy who took the lead. Flynn, who during the past two days
+seemed to have fallen into a mood of watchful reserve, nodded his
+approbation. "This sort of thing's yer best holt, boy," he said. "Men
+and cities ain't your little game."
+
+At the next stopping-place Clarence had a surprise. They had again
+entered a town at nightfall, and lodged with another friend of Flynn's
+in rooms which from vague sounds appeared to be over a gambling saloon.
+Clarence woke late in the morning, and, descending into the street to
+mount for the day's journey, was startled to find that Flynn was not on
+the other horse, but that a well-dressed and handsome stranger had taken
+his place. But a laugh, and the familiar command, "Jump up, boy,"
+made him look again. It WAS Flynn, but completely shaven of beard and
+mustache, closely clipped of hair, and in a fastidiously cut suit of
+black!
+
+"Then you didn't know me?" said Flynn.
+
+"Not till you spoke," replied Clarence.
+
+"So much the better," said his friend sententiously, as he put spurs to
+his horse. But as they cantered through the street, Clarence, who had
+already become accustomed to the stranger's hirsute adornment, felt a
+little more awe of him. The profile of the mouth and chin now exposed to
+his sidelong glance was hard and stern, and slightly saturnine. Although
+unable at the time to identify it with anybody he had ever known, it
+seemed to the imaginative boy to be vaguely connected with some sad
+experience. But the eyes were thoughtful and kindly, and the boy later
+believed that if he had been more familiar with the face he would have
+loved it better. For it was the last and only day he was to see it, as,
+late that afternoon, after a dusty ride along more traveled highways,
+they reached their journey's end.
+
+It was a low-walled house, with red-tiled roofs showing against the dark
+green of venerable pear and fig trees, and a square court-yard in the
+centre, where they had dismounted. A few words in Spanish from Flynn to
+one of the lounging peons admitted them to a wooden corridor, and thence
+to a long, low room, which to Clarence's eyes seemed literally piled
+with books and engravings. Here Flynn hurriedly bade him stay while he
+sought the host in another part of the building. But Clarence did not
+miss him; indeed, it may be feared, he forgot even the object of their
+journey in the new sensations that suddenly thronged upon him, and the
+boyish vista of the future that they seemed to open. He was dazed
+and intoxicated. He had never seen so many books before; he had never
+conceived of such lovely pictures. And yet in some vague way he thought
+he must have dreamt of them at some time. He had mounted a chair, and
+was gazing spellbound at an engraving of a sea-fight when he heard
+Flynn's voice.
+
+His friend had quietly reentered the room, in company with an oldish,
+half-foreign-looking man, evidently his relation. With no helping
+recollection, with no means of comparison beyond a vague idea that his
+cousin might look like himself, Clarence stood hopelessly before him. He
+had already made up his mind that he would have to go through the
+usual cross-questioning in regard to his father and family; he had even
+forlornly thought of inventing some innocent details to fill out his
+imperfect and unsatisfactory recollection. But, glancing up, he was
+surprised to find that his elderly cousin was as embarrassed as he was,
+Flynn, as usual, masterfully interposed.
+
+"Of course ye don't remember each other, and thar ain't much that either
+of you knows about family matters, I reckon," he said grimly; "and as
+your cousin calls himself Don Juan Robinson," he added to Clarence,
+"it's just as well that you let 'Jackson Brant' slide. I know him better
+than you, but you'll get used to him, and he to you, soon enough. At
+least, you'd better," he concluded, with his singular gravity.
+
+As he turned as if to leave the room with Clarence's embarrassed
+relative--much to that gentleman's apparent relief--the boy looked up at
+the latter and said timidly--
+
+"May I look at those books?"
+
+His cousin stopped, and glanced at him with the first expression of
+interest he had shown.
+
+"Ah, you read; you like books?"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence. As his cousin remained still looking at him
+thoughtfully, he added, "My hands are pretty clean, but I can wash them
+first, if you like."
+
+"You may look at them," said Don Juan smilingly; "and as they are
+old books you can wash your hands afterwards." And, turning to Flynn
+suddenly, with an air of relief, "I tell you what I'll do--I'll teach
+him Spanish!"
+
+They left the room together, and Clarence turned eagerly to the
+shelves. They were old books, some indeed very old, queerly bound, and
+worm-eaten. Some were in foreign languages, but others in clear, bold
+English type, with quaint wood-cuts and illustrations. One seemed to
+be a chronicle of battles and sieges, with pictured representations of
+combatants spitted with arrows, cleanly lopped off in limb, or toppled
+over distinctly by visible cannon-shot. He was deep in its perusal when
+he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs in the court-yard and the voice
+of Flynn. He ran to the window, and was astonished to see his friend
+already on horseback, taking leave of his host.
+
+For one instant Clarence felt one of those sudden revulsions of feeling
+common to his age, but which he had always timidly hidden under dogged
+demeanor. Flynn, his only friend! Flynn, his only boyish confidant!
+Flynn, his latest hero, was going away and forsaking him without a
+word of parting! It was true that he had only agreed to take him to his
+guardian, but still Flynn need not have left him without a word of hope
+or encouragement! With any one else Clarence would probably have taken
+refuge in his usual Indian stoicism, but the same feeling that had
+impelled him to offer Flynn his boyish confidences on their first
+meeting now overpowered him. He dropped his book, ran out into the
+corridor, and made his way to the court-yard, just as Flynn galloped out
+from the arch.
+
+But the boy uttered a despairing shout that reached the rider. He drew
+rein, wheeled, halted, and sat facing Clarence impatiently. To add
+to Clarence's embarrassment his cousin had lingered in the corridor,
+attracted by the interruption, and a peon, lounging in the archway,
+obsequiously approached Flynn's bridle-rein. But the rider waved him
+off, and, turning sternly to Clarence, said:--
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"Nothing," said Clarence, striving to keep back the hot tears that rose
+in his eyes. "But you were going away without saying 'good-by.' You've
+been very kind to me, and--and--I want to thank you!"
+
+A deep flush crossed Flynn's face. Then glancing suspiciously towards
+the corridor, he said hurriedly,--
+
+"Did HE send you?"
+
+"No, I came myself. I heard you going."
+
+"All right. Good-by." He leaned forward as if about to take Clarence's
+outstretched hand, checked himself suddenly with a grim smile, and
+taking from his pocket a gold coin handed it to the boy.
+
+Clarence took it, tossed it with a proud gesture to the waiting peon,
+who caught it thankfully, drew back a step from Flynn, and saying, with
+white cheeks, "I only wanted to say good-by," dropped his hot eyes to
+the ground. But it did not seem to be his own voice that had spoken, nor
+his own self that had prompted the act.
+
+There was a quick interchange of glances between the departing guest and
+his late host, in which Flynn's eyes flashed with an odd, admiring fire,
+but when Clarence raised his head again he was gone. And as the boy
+turned back with a broken heart towards the corridor, his cousin laid
+his hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Muy hidalgamente, Clarence," he said pleasantly. "Yes, we shall make
+something of you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Then followed to Clarence three uneventful years. During that interval
+he learnt that Jackson Brant, or Don Juan Robinson--for the tie of
+kinship was the least factor in their relations to each other, and after
+the departure of Flynn was tacitly ignored by both--was more Spanish
+than American. An early residence in Lower California, marriage with a
+rich Mexican widow, whose dying childless left him sole heir, and some
+strange restraining idiosyncrasy of temperament had quite denationalized
+him. A bookish recluse, somewhat superfastidious towards his own
+countrymen, the more Clarence knew him the more singular appeared
+his acquaintance with Flynn; but as he did not exhibit more
+communicativeness on this point than upon their own kinship, Clarence
+finally concluded that it was due to the dominant character of his
+former friend, and thought no more about it. He entered upon the new
+life at El Refugio with no disturbing past. Quickly adapting himself to
+the lazy freedom of this hacienda existence, he spent the mornings
+on horseback ranging the hills among his cousin's cattle, and the
+afternoons and evenings busied among his cousin's books with equally
+lawless and undisciplined independence. The easy-going Don Juan, it is
+true, attempted to make good his rash promise to teach the boy Spanish,
+and actually set him a few tasks; but in a few weeks the quick-witted
+Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual
+acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to
+leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those
+illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a
+single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El
+Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The
+grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed the coin repeated
+the act, gesture, and spirit of the scene to his companion, and Don
+Juan's unknown and youthful relation was at once recognized as hijo
+de la familia, and undeniably a hidalgo born and bred. But in the
+more vivid imagination of feminine El Refugio the incident reached its
+highest poetic form. "It is true, Mother of God," said Chucha of the
+Mill; "it was Domingo who himself relates it as it were the Creed. When
+the American escort had arrived with the young gentleman, this escort,
+look you, being not of the same quality, he is departing again without a
+word of permission. Comes to him at this moment my little hidalgo. 'You
+have yourself forgotten to take from me your demission,' he said. This
+escort, thinking to make his peace with a mere muchacho, gives to him a
+gold piece of twenty pesos. The little hidalgo has taken it SO, and
+with the words, 'Ah! you would make of me your almoner to my cousin's
+people,' has given it at the moment to Domingo, and with a grace and
+fire admirable." But it is certain that Clarence's singular simplicity
+and truthfulness, a faculty of being picturesquely indolent in a way
+that suggested a dreamy abstraction of mind rather than any vulgar
+tendency to bodily ease and comfort, and possibly the fact that he was
+a good horseman, made him a popular hero at El Refugio. At the end of
+three years Don Juan found that this inexperienced and apparently idle
+boy of fourteen knew more of the practical ruling of the rancho than he
+did himself; also that this unlettered young rustic had devoured nearly
+all the books in his library with boyish recklessness of digestion.
+He found, too, that in spite of his singular independence of action,
+Clarence was possessed of an invincible loyalty of principle, and that,
+asking no sentimental affection, and indeed yielding none, he was,
+without presuming on his relationship, devoted to his cousin's interest.
+It seemed that from being a glancing ray of sunshine in the house,
+evasive but never obtrusive, he had become a daily necessity of comfort
+and security to his benefactor.
+
+Clarence was, however, astonished, when, one morning, Don Juan, with the
+same embarrassed manner he had shown at their first meeting, suddenly
+asked him, "what business he expected to follow." It seemed the more
+singular, as the speaker, like most abstracted men, had hitherto always
+studiously ignored the future, in their daily intercourse. Yet this
+might have been either the habit of security or the caution of
+doubt. Whatever it was, it was some sudden disturbance of Don Juan's
+equanimity, as disconcerting to himself as it was to Clarence. So
+conscious was the boy of this that, without replying to his cousin's
+question, but striving in vain to recall some delinquency of his own, he
+asked, with his usual boyish directness--
+
+"Has anything happened? Have I done anything wrong?"
+
+"No, no," returned Don Juan hurriedly. "But, you see, it's time that
+you should think of your future--or at least prepare for it. I mean
+you ought to have some more regular education. You will have to go to
+school. It's too bad," he added fretfully, with a certain impatient
+forgetfulness of Clarence's presence, and as if following his own
+thought. "Just as you are becoming of service to me, and justifying
+your ridiculous position here--and all this d--d nonsense that's gone
+before--I mean, of course, Clarence," he interrupted himself, catching
+sight of the boy's whitening cheek and darkening eye, "I mean, you
+know--this ridiculousness of my keeping you from school at your age, and
+trying to teach you myself--don't you see."
+
+"You think it is--ridiculous," repeated Clarence, with dogged
+persistency.
+
+"I mean I am ridiculous," said Don Juan hastily. "There! there! let's
+say no more about it. To-morrow we'll ride over to San Jose and see the
+Father Secretary at the Jesuits' College about your entering at once.
+It's a good school, and you'll always be near the rancho!" And so the
+interview ended.
+
+I am afraid that Clarence's first idea was to run away. There are
+few experiences more crushing to an ingenuous nature than the sudden
+revelation of the aspect in which it is regarded by others. The
+unfortunate Clarence, conscious only of his loyalty to his cousin's
+interest and what he believed were the duties of his position, awoke to
+find that position "ridiculous." In an afternoon's gloomy ride through
+the lonely hills, and later in the sleepless solitude of his room at
+night, he concluded that his cousin was right. He would go to school;
+he would study hard--so hard that in a little, a very little while, he
+could make a living for himself. He awoke contented. It was the blessing
+of youth that this resolve and execution seemed as one and the same
+thing.
+
+The next day found him installed as a pupil and boarder in the college.
+Don Juan's position and Spanish predilections naturally made his
+relation acceptable to the faculty; but Clarence could not help
+perceiving that Father Sobriente, the Principal, regarded him at times
+with a thoughtful curiosity that made him suspect that his cousin had
+especially bespoken that attention, and that he occasionally questioned
+him on his antecedents in a way that made him dread a renewal of the
+old questioning about his progenitor. For the rest, he was a polished,
+cultivated man; yet, in the characteristic, material criticism of youth,
+I am afraid that Clarence chiefly identified him as a priest with large
+hands, whose soft palms seemed to be cushioned with kindness, and whose
+equally large feet, encased in extraordinary shapeless shoes of undyed
+leather, seemed to tread down noiselessly--rather than to ostentatiously
+crush--the obstacles that beset the path of the young student. In the
+cloistered galleries of the court-yard Clarence sometimes felt himself
+borne down by the protecting weight of this paternal hand; in the
+midnight silence of the dormitory he fancied he was often conscious
+of the soft browsing tread and snuffly muffled breathing of his
+elephantine-footed mentor.
+
+His relations with his school-fellows were at first far from pleasant.
+Whether they suspected favoritism; whether they resented that old and
+unsympathetic manner which sprang from his habits of association with
+his elders; or whether they rested their objections on the broader
+grounds of his being a stranger, I do not know, but they presently
+passed from cruel sneers to physical opposition. It was then found that
+this gentle and reserved youth had retained certain objectionable, rude,
+direct, rustic qualities of fist and foot, and that, violating all rules
+and disdaining the pomp and circumstance of school-boy warfare, of which
+he knew nothing, he simply thrashed a few of his equals out of hand,
+with or without ceremony, as the occasion or the insult happened. In
+this emergency one of the seniors was selected to teach this youthful
+savage his proper position. A challenge was given, and accepted by
+Clarence with a feverish alacrity that surprised himself as much as his
+adversary. This was a youth of eighteen, his superior in size and skill.
+
+The first blow bathed Clarence's face in his own blood. But the
+sanguinary chrism, to the alarm of the spectators, effected an
+instantaneous and unhallowed change in the boy. Instantly closing with
+his adversary, he sprang at his throat like an animal, and locking
+his arm around his neck began to strangle him. Blind to the blows that
+rained upon him, he eventually bore his staggering enemy by sheer onset
+and surprise to the earth. Amidst the general alarm, the strength of
+half a dozen hastily summoned teachers was necessary to unlock his hold.
+Even then he struggled to renew the conflict. But his adversary
+had disappeared, and from that day forward Clarence was never again
+molested.
+
+Seated before Father Sobriente in the infirmary, with swollen and
+bandaged face, and eyes that still seemed to see everything in the murky
+light of his own blood, Clarence felt the soft weight of the father's
+hand upon his knee.
+
+"My son," said the priest gently, "you are not of our religion, or I
+should claim as a right to ask a question of your own heart at this
+moment. But as to a good friend, Claro, a good friend," he continued,
+patting the boy's knee, "you will tell me, old Father Sobriente,
+frankly and truthfully, as is your habit, one little thing. Were you not
+afraid?"
+
+"No," said Clarence doggedly. "I'll lick him again to-morrow."
+
+"Softly, my son! It was not of HIM I speak, but of something more
+terrible and awful. Were you not afraid of--of--" he paused, and
+suddenly darting his clear eyes into the very depths of Clarence's soul,
+added--"of YOURSELF?"
+
+The boy started, shuddered, and burst into tears.
+
+"So, so," said the priest gently, "we have found our real enemy. Good!
+Now, by the grace of God, my little warrior, we shall fight HIM and
+conquer."
+
+Whether Clarence profited by this lesson, or whether this brief
+exhibition of his quality prevented any repetition of the cause, the
+episode was soon forgotten. As his school-fellows had never been his
+associates or confidants, it mattered little to him whether they feared
+or respected him, or were hypocritically obsequious, after the fashion
+of the weaker. His studies, at all events, profited by this lack of
+distraction. Already his two years of desultory and omnivorous reading
+had given him a facile familiarity with many things, which left
+him utterly free of the timidity, awkwardness, or non-interest of a
+beginner. His usually reserved manner, which had been lack of expression
+rather than of conviction, had deceived his tutors. The audacity of a
+mind that had never been dominated by others, and owed no allegiance to
+precedent, made his merely superficial progress something marvelous.
+
+At the end of the first year he was a phenomenal scholar, who seemed
+capable of anything. Nevertheless, Father Sobriente had an interview
+with Don Juan, and as a result Clarence was slightly kept back in his
+studies, a little more freedom from the rules was conceded to him, and
+he was even encouraged to take some diversion. Of such was the
+privilege to visit the neighboring town of Santa Clara unrestricted and
+unattended. He had always been liberally furnished with pocket-money,
+for which, in his companionless state and Spartan habits, he had a
+singular and unboyish contempt. Nevertheless, he always appeared dressed
+with scrupulous neatness, and was rather distinguished-looking in his
+older reserve and melancholy self-reliance.
+
+Lounging one afternoon along the Alameda, a leafy avenue set out by the
+early Mission Fathers between the village of San Jose and the convent
+of Santa Clara, he saw a double file of young girls from the convent
+approaching, on their usual promenade. A view of this procession
+being the fondest ambition of the San Jose collegian, and especially
+interdicted and circumvented by the good Fathers attending the college
+excursions, Clarence felt for it the profound indifference of a boy who,
+in the intermediate temperate zone of fifteen years, thinks that he
+is no longer young and romantic! He was passing them with a careless
+glance, when a pair of deep violet eyes caught his own under the broad
+shade of a coquettishly beribboned hat, even as it had once looked at
+him from the depths of a calico sunbonnet. Susy! He started, and would
+have spoken; but with a quick little gesture of caution and a meaning
+glance at the two nuns who walked at the head and foot of the file,
+she indicated him to follow. He did so at a respectful distance, albeit
+wondering. A little further on Susy dropped her handkerchief, and was
+obliged to dart out and run back to the end of the file to recover it.
+But she gave another swift glance of her blue eyes as she snatched it up
+and demurely ran back to her place. The procession passed on, but when
+Clarence reached the spot where she had paused he saw a three-cornered
+bit of paper lying in the grass. He was too discreet to pick it up while
+the girls were still in sight, but continued on, returning to it later.
+It contained a few words in a schoolgirl's hand, hastily scrawled in
+pencil: "Come to the south wall near the big pear-tree at six."
+
+Delighted as Clarence felt, he was at the same time embarrassed. He
+could not understand the necessity of this mysterious rendezvous.
+He knew that if she was a scholar she was under certain conventual
+restraints; but with the privileges of his position and friendship with
+his teachers, he believed that Father Sobriente would easily procure him
+an interview with this old play-fellow, of whom he had often spoken,
+and who was, with himself, the sole survivor of his tragical past. And
+trusted as he was by Sobriente, there was something in this clandestine
+though innocent rendezvous that went against his loyalty. Nevertheless,
+he kept the appointment, and at the stated time was at the south wall
+of the convent, over which the gnarled boughs of the distinguishing
+pear-tree hung. Hard by in the wall was a grated wicket door that seemed
+unused.
+
+Would she appear among the boughs or on the edge of the wall? Either
+would be like the old Susy. But to his surprise he heard the sound
+of the key turning in the lock. The grated door suddenly swung on its
+hinges, and Susy slipped out. Grasping his hand, she said, "Let's run,
+Clarence," and before he could reply she started off with him at a rapid
+pace. Down the lane they flew--very much, as it seemed to Clarence's
+fancy, as they had flown from the old emigrant wagon on the prairie,
+four years before. He glanced at the fluttering, fairy-like figure
+beside him. She had grown taller and more graceful; she was dressed in
+exquisite taste, with a minuteness of luxurious detail that bespoke
+the spoilt child; but there was the same prodigal outburst of rippling,
+golden hair down her back and shoulders, violet eyes, capricious little
+mouth, and the same delicate hands and feet he had remembered. He would
+have preferred a more deliberate survey, but with a shake of her head
+and an hysteric little laugh she only said, "Run, Clarence, run," and
+again darted forward. Arriving at the cross-street, they turned the
+corner, and halted breathlessly.
+
+"But you're not running away from school, Susy, are you?" said Clarence
+anxiously.
+
+"Only a little bit. Just enough to get ahead of the other girls," she
+said, rearranging her brown curls and tilted hat. "You see, Clarence,"
+she condescended to explain, with a sudden assumption of older
+superiority, "mother's here at the hotel all this week, and I'm allowed
+to go home every night, like a day scholar. Only there's three or
+four other girls that go out at the same time with me, and one of the
+Sisters, and to-day I got ahead of 'em just to see YOU."
+
+"But" began Clarence.
+
+"Oh, it's all right; the other girls knew it, and helped me. They don't
+start out for half an hour yet, and they'll say I've just run ahead, and
+when they and the Sister get to the hotel I'll be there already--don't
+you see?"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence dubiously.
+
+"And we'll go to an ice-cream saloon now, shan't we? There's a nice one
+near the hotel. I've got some money," she added quickly, as Clarence
+looked embarrassed.
+
+"So have I," said Clarence, with a faint accession of color. "Let's go!"
+She had relinquished his hand to smooth out her frock, and they were
+walking side by side at a more moderate pace. "But," he continued,
+clinging to his first idea with masculine persistence, and anxious to
+assure his companion of his power, of his position, "I'm in the college,
+and Father Sobriente, who knows your lady superior, is a good friend
+of mine and gives me privileges; and--and--when he knows that you and
+I used to play together--why, he'll fix it that we may see each other
+whenever we want."
+
+"Oh, you silly!" said Susy. "WHAT!--when you're--"
+
+"When I'm WHAT?"
+
+The young girl shot a violet blue ray from under her broad hat.
+"Why--when we're grown up now?" Then with a certain precision, "Why,
+they're VERY particular about young gentlemen! Why, Clarence, if they
+suspected that you and I were--" Another violet ray from under the hat
+completed this unfinished sentence.
+
+Pleased and yet confused, Clarence looked straight ahead with deepening
+color. "Why," continued Susy, "Mary Rogers, that was walking with me,
+thought you were ever so old--and a distinguished Spaniard! And I,"
+she said abruptly--"haven't I grown? Tell me, Clarence," with her old
+appealing impatience, "haven't I grown? Do tell me!"
+
+"Very much," said Clarence.
+
+"And isn't this frock pretty--it's only my second best--but I've a
+prettier one with lace all down in front; but isn't this one pretty,
+Clarence, tell me?"
+
+Clarence thought the frock and its fair owner perfection, and said
+so. Whereat Susy, as if suddenly aware of the presence of passers-by,
+assumed an air of severe propriety, dropped her hands by her side, and
+with an affected conscientiousness walked on, a little further from
+Clarence's side, until they reached the ice-cream saloon.
+
+"Get a table near the back, Clarence," she said, in a confidential
+whisper, "where they can't see us--and strawberry, you know, for the
+lemon and vanilla here are just horrid!"
+
+They took their seats in a kind of rustic arbor in the rear of the shop,
+which gave them the appearance of two youthful but somewhat over-dressed
+and over-conscious shepherds. There was an interval of slight
+awkwardness, which Susy endeavored to displace. "There has been," she
+remarked, with easy conversational lightness, "quite an excitement about
+our French teacher being changed. The girls in our class think it most
+disgraceful."
+
+And this was all she could say after a separation of four years!
+Clarence was desperate, but as yet idealess and voiceless. At last, with
+an effort over his spoon, he gasped a floating recollection: "Do you
+still like flapjacks, Susy?"
+
+"Oh, yes," with a laugh, "but we don't have them now."
+
+"And Mose" (a black pointer, who used to yelp when Susy sang), "does he
+still sing with you?"
+
+"Oh, HE'S been lost ever so long," said Susy composedly; "but I've got
+a Newfoundland and a spaniel and a black pony;" and here, with a rapid
+inventory of her other personal effects, she drifted into some desultory
+details of the devotion of her adopted parents, whom she now
+readily spoke of as "papa" and "mamma," with evidently no disturbing
+recollection of the dead. From which it appeared that the Peytons were
+very rich, and, in addition to their possessions in the lower country,
+owned a rancho in Santa Clara and a house in San Francisco. Like all
+children, her strongest impressions were the most recent. In the vain
+hope to lead her back to this material yesterday, he said--
+
+"You remember Jim Hooker?"
+
+"Oh, HE ran away, when you left. But just think of it! The other day,
+when papa and I went into a big restaurant in San Francisco, who should
+be there WAITING on the table--yes, Clarence, a real waiter--but Jim
+Hooker! Papa spoke to him; but of course," with a slight elevation of
+her pretty chin, "I couldn't, you know; fancy--a waiter!"
+
+The story of how Jim Hooker had personated him stopped short upon
+Clarence's lips. He could not bring himself now to add that revelation
+to the contempt of his small companion, which, in spite of its naivete,
+somewhat grated on his sensibilities.
+
+"Clarence," she said, suddenly turning towards him mysteriously, and
+indicating the shopman and his assistants, "I really believe these
+people suspect us."
+
+"Of what?" said the practical Clarence.
+
+"Don't be silly! Don't you see how they are staring?"
+
+Clarence was really unable to detect the least curiosity on the part of
+the shopman, or that any one exhibited the slightest concern in him or
+his companion. But he felt a return of the embarrassed pleasure he was
+conscious of a moment before.
+
+"Then you're living with your father?" said Susy, changing the subject.
+
+"You mean my COUSIN," said Clarence, smiling. "You know my father died
+long before I ever knew you."
+
+"Yes; that's what YOU used to say, Clarence, but papa says it isn't
+so." But seeing the boy's wondering eyes fixed on her with a troubled
+expression, she added quickly, "Oh, then, he IS your cousin!"
+
+"Well, I think I ought to know," said Clarence, with a smile, that was,
+however, far from comfortable, and a quick return of his old unpleasant
+recollections of the Peytons. "Why, I was brought to him by one of his
+friends." And Clarence gave a rapid boyish summary of his journey from
+Sacramento, and Flynn's discovery of the letter addressed to Silsbee.
+But before he had concluded he was conscious that Susy was by no means
+interested in these details, nor in the least affected by the
+passing allusion to her dead father and his relation to Clarence's
+misadventures. With her rounded chin in her hand, she was slowly
+examining his face, with a certain mischievous yet demure abstraction.
+"I tell you what, Clarence," she said, when he had finished, "you
+ought to make your cousin get you one of those sombreros, and a nice
+gold-braided serape. They'd just suit you. And then--then you could ride
+up and down the Alameda when we are going by."
+
+"But I'm coming to see you at--at your house, and at the convent," he
+said eagerly. "Father Sobriente and my cousin will fix it all right."
+
+But Susy shook her head, with superior wisdom. "No; they must never know
+our secret!--neither papa nor mamma, especially mamma. And they mustn't
+know that we've met again--AFTER THESE YEARS!" It is impossible to
+describe the deep significance which Susy's blue eyes gave to this
+expression. After a pause she went on--
+
+"No! We must never meet again, Clarence, unless Mary Rogers helps. She
+is my best, my ONLIEST friend, and older than I; having had trouble
+herself, and being expressly forbidden to see him again. You can speak
+to her about Suzette--that's my name now; I was rechristened Suzette
+Alexandra Peyton by mamma. And now, Clarence," dropping her voice and
+glancing shyly around the saloon, "you may kiss me just once under my
+hat, for good-by." She adroitly slanted her broad-brimmed hat towards
+the front of the shop, and in its shadow advanced her fresh young cheek
+to Clarence.
+
+Coloring and laughing, the boy pressed his lips to it twice. Then Susy
+arose, with the faintest affectation of a sigh, shook out her skirt,
+drew on her gloves with the greatest gravity, and saying, "Don't follow
+me further than the door--they're coming now," walked with supercilious
+dignity past the preoccupied proprietor and waiters to the entrance.
+Here she said, with marked civility, "Good-afternoon, Mr. Brant," and
+tripped away towards the hotel. Clarence lingered for a moment to look
+after the lithe and elegant little figure, with its shining undulations
+of hair that fell over the back and shoulders of her white frock like a
+golden mantle, and then turned away in the opposite direction.
+
+He walked home in a state, as it seemed to him, of absurd perplexity.
+There were many reasons why his encounter with Susy should have been of
+unmixed pleasure. She had remembered him of her own free will, and, in
+spite of the change in her fortune, had made the first advances. Her
+doubts about her future interviews had affected him but little; still
+less, I fear, did he think of the other changes in her character and
+disposition, for he was of that age when they added only a piquancy and
+fascination to her--as of one who, in spite of her weakness of nature,
+was still devoted to him! But he was painfully conscious that this
+meeting had revived in him all the fears, vague uneasiness, and sense
+of wrong that had haunted his first boyhood, and which he thought he had
+buried at El Refugio four years ago. Susy's allusion to his father and
+the reiteration of Peyton's skepticism awoke in his older intellect the
+first feeling of suspicion that was compatible with his open nature.
+Was this recurring reticence and mystery due to any act of his father's?
+But, looking back upon it in after-years, he concluded that the incident
+of that day was a premonition rather than a recollection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+When he reached the college the Angelus had long since rung. In the
+corridor he met one of the Fathers, who, instead of questioning him,
+returned his salutation with a grave gentleness that struck him. He
+had turned into Father Sobriente's quiet study with the intention of
+reporting himself, when he was disturbed to find him in consultation
+with three or four of the faculty, who seemed to be thrown into some
+slight confusion by his entrance. Clarence was about to retire hurriedly
+when Father Sobriente, breaking up the council with a significant glance
+at the others, called him back. Confused and embarrassed, with a dread
+of something impending, the boy tried to avert it by a hurried account
+of his meeting with Susy, and his hopes of Father Sobriente's counsel
+and assistance. Taking upon himself the idea of suggesting Susy's
+escapade, he confessed the fault. The old man gazed into his frank eyes
+with a thoughtful, half-compassionate smile. "I was just thinking
+of giving you a holiday with--with Don Juan Robinson." The unusual
+substitution of this final title for the habitual "your cousin" struck
+Clarence uneasily. "But we will speak of that later. Sit down, my son;
+I am not busy. We shall talk a little. Father Pedro says you are
+getting on fluently with your translations. That is excellent, my son,
+excellent."
+
+Clarence's face beamed with relief and pleasure. His vague fears began
+to dissipate.
+
+"And you translate even from dictation! Good! We have an hour to spare,
+and you shall give to me a specimen of your skill. Eh? Good! I will walk
+here and dictate to you in my poor English, and you shall sit there and
+render it to me in your good Spanish. Eh? So we shall amuse and instruct
+ourselves."
+
+Clarence smiled. These sporadic moments of instruction and admonition
+were not unusual to the good Father. He cheerfully seated himself at
+the Padre's table before a blank sheet of paper, with a pen in his hand.
+Father Sobriente paced the apartment, with his usual heavy but noiseless
+tread. To his surprise, the good priest, after an exhaustive pinch of
+snuff, blew his nose, and began, in his most lugubrious style of pulpit
+exhortation:--
+
+"It has been written that the sins of the father shall be visited upon
+the children, and the unthinking and worldly have sought refuge from
+this law by declaring it harsh and cruel. Miserable and blind! For do we
+not see that the wicked man, who in the pride of his power and vainglory
+is willing to risk punishment to HIMSELF--and believes it to be
+courage--must pause before the awful mandate that condemns an equal
+suffering to those he loves, which he cannot withhold or suffer for? In
+the spectacle of these innocents struggling against disgrace, perhaps
+disease, poverty, or desertion, what avails his haughty, all-defying
+spirit? Let us imagine, Clarence."
+
+"Sir?" said the literal Clarence, pausing in his exercise.
+
+"I mean," continued the priest, with a slight cough, "let the thoughtful
+man picture a father: a desperate, self-willed man, who scorned the laws
+of God and society--keeping only faith with a miserable subterfuge he
+called 'honor,' and relying only on his own courage and his knowledge of
+human weakness. Imagine him cruel and bloody--a gambler by profession,
+an outlaw among men, an outcast from the Church; voluntarily abandoning
+friends and family,--the wife he should have cherished, the son he
+should have reared and educated--for the gratification of his deadly
+passions. Yet imagine that man suddenly confronted with the thought
+of that heritage of shame and disgust which he had brought upon his
+innocent offspring--to whom he cannot give even his own desperate
+recklessness to sustain its vicarious suffering. What must be the
+feelings of a parent--"
+
+"Father Sobriente," said Clarence softly.
+
+To the boy's surprise, scarcely had he spoken when the soft protecting
+palm of the priest was already upon his shoulder, and the snuffy but
+kindly upper lip, trembling with some strange emotion, close beside his
+cheek.
+
+"What is it, Clarence?" he said hurriedly. "Speak, my son, without fear!
+You would ask--"
+
+"I only wanted to know if 'padre' takes a masculine verb here," replied
+Clarence naively.
+
+Father Sobriente blew his nose violently. "Truly--though used for either
+gender, by the context masculine," he responded gravely. "Ah," he added,
+leaning over Clarence, and scanning his work hastily, "Good, very good!
+And now, possibly," he continued, passing his hand like a damp sponge
+over his heated brow, "we shall reverse our exercise. I shall deliver
+to you in Spanish what you shall render back in English, eh? And--let us
+consider--we shall make something more familiar and narrative, eh?"
+
+To this Clarence, somewhat bored by these present solemn abstractions,
+assented gladly, and took up his pen. Father Sobriente, resuming his
+noiseless pacing, began:
+
+"On the fertile plains of Guadalajara lived a certain caballero,
+possessed of flocks and lands, and a wife and son. But, being also
+possessed of a fiery and roving nature, he did not value them as he did
+perilous adventure, feats of arms, and sanguinary encounters. To this
+may be added riotous excesses, gambling and drunkenness, which in time
+decreased his patrimony, even as his rebellious and quarrelsome spirit
+had alienated his family and neighbors. His wife, borne down by shame
+and sorrow, died while her son was still an infant. In a fit of equal
+remorse and recklessness the caballero married again within the year.
+But the new wife was of a temper and bearing as bitter as her consort.
+Violent quarrels ensued between them, ending in the husband abandoning
+his wife and son, and leaving St. Louis--I should say Guadalajara--for
+ever. Joining some adventurers in a foreign land, under an assumed name,
+he pursued his reckless course, until, by one or two acts of outlawry,
+he made his return to civilization impossible. The deserted wife and
+step-mother of his child coldly accepted the situation, forbidding his
+name to be spoken again in her presence, announced that he was dead, and
+kept the knowledge of his existence from his own son, whom she placed
+under the charge of her sister. But the sister managed to secretly
+communicate with the outlawed father, and, under a pretext, arranged
+between them, of sending the boy to another relation, actually
+dispatched the innocent child to his unworthy parent. Perhaps stirred by
+remorse, the infamous man--"
+
+"Stop!" said Clarence suddenly.
+
+He had thrown down his pen, and was standing erect and rigid before the
+Father.
+
+"You are trying to tell me something, Father Sobriente," he said, with
+an effort. "Speak out, I implore you. I can stand anything but this
+mystery. I am no longer a child. I have a right to know all. This that
+you are telling me is no fable--I see it in your face, Father Sobriente;
+it is the story of--of--"
+
+"Your father, Clarence!" said the priest, in a trembling voice.
+
+The boy drew back, with a white face. "My father!" he repeated. "Living,
+or dead?"
+
+"Living, when you first left your home," said the old man hurriedly,
+seizing Clarence's hand, "for it was he who in the name of your cousin
+sent for you. Living--yes, while you were here, for it was he who for
+the past three years stood in the shadow of this assumed cousin, Don
+Juan, and at last sent you to this school. Living, Clarence, yes; but
+living under a name and reputation that would have blasted you! And
+now DEAD--dead in Mexico, shot as an insurgent and in a still desperate
+career! May God have mercy on his soul!"
+
+"Dead!" repeated Clarence, trembling, "only now?"
+
+"The news of the insurrection and his fate came only an hour since,"
+continued the Padre quickly; "his complicity with it and his identity
+were known only to Don Juan. He would have spared you any knowledge of
+the truth, even as this dead man would; but I and my brothers thought
+otherwise. I have broken it to you badly, my son, but forgive me?"
+
+An hysterical laugh broke from Clarence and the priest recoiled before
+him. "Forgive YOU! What was this man to me?" he said, with boyish
+vehemence. "He never LOVED me! He deserted me; he made my life a lie.
+He never sought me, came near me, or stretched a hand to me that I could
+take?"
+
+"Hush! hush!" said the priest, with a horrified look, laying his huge
+hand upon the boy's shoulder and bearing him down to his seat. "You know
+not what you say. Think--think, Clarence! Was there none of all those
+who have befriended you--who were kind to you in your wanderings--to
+whom your heart turned unconsciously? Think, Clarence! You yourself
+have spoken to me of such a one. Let your heart speak again, for his
+sake--for the sake of the dead."
+
+A gentler light suffused the boy's eyes, and he started. Catching
+convulsively at his companion's sleeve, he said in an eager, boyish
+whisper, "There was one, a wicked, desperate man, whom they all
+feared--Flynn, who brought me from the mines. Yes, I thought that he
+was my cousin's loyal friend--more than all the rest; and I told him
+everything--all, that I never told the man I thought my cousin, or
+anyone, or even you; and I think, I think, Father, I liked him best
+of all. I thought since it was wrong," he continued, with a trembling
+smile, "for I was foolishly fond even of the way the others feared him,
+he that I feared not, and who was so kind to me. Yet he, too, left me
+without a word, and when I would have followed him--" But the boy broke
+down, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+"No, no," said Father Sobriente, with eager persistence, "that was his
+foolish pride to spare you the knowledge of your kinship with one so
+feared, and part of the blind and mistaken penance he had laid upon
+himself. For even at that moment of your boyish indignation, he never
+was so fond of you as then. Yes, my poor boy, this man, to whom God led
+your wandering feet at Deadman's Gulch; the man who brought you here,
+and by some secret hold--I know not what--on Don Juan's past, persuaded
+him to assume to be your relation; this man Flynn, this Jackson Brant
+the gambler, this Hamilton Brant the outlaw--WAS YOUR FATHER! Ah,
+yes! Weep on, my son; each tear of love and forgiveness from thee hath
+vicarious power to wash away his sin."
+
+With a single sweep of his protecting hand he drew Clarence towards
+his breast, until the boy slowly sank upon his knees at his feet. Then,
+lifting his eyes towards the ceiling, he said softly in an older tongue,
+"And THOU, too, unhappy and perturbed spirit, rest!"
+
+* * * * *
+
+It was nearly dawn when the good Padre wiped the last tears from
+Clarence's clearer eyes. "And now, my son," he said, with a gentle
+smile, as he rose to his feet, "let us not forget the living. Although
+your step-mother has, through her own act, no legal claim upon you, far
+be it from me to indicate your attitude towards her. Enough that YOU are
+independent." He turned, and, opening a drawer in his secretaire, took
+out a bank-book, and placed it in the hands of the wondering boy.
+
+"It was HIS wish, Clarence, that even after his death you should never
+have to prove your kinship to claim your rights. Taking advantage of
+the boyish deposit you had left with Mr. Carden at the bank, with his
+connivance and in your name he added to it, month by month and year by
+year; Mr. Carden cheerfully accepting the trust and management of the
+fund. The seed thus sown has produced a thousandfold, Clarence, beyond
+all expectations. You are not only free, my son, but of yourself and in
+whatever name you choose--your own master."
+
+"I shall keep my father's name," said the boy simply.
+
+"Amen!" said Father Sobriente.
+
+
+Here closes the chronicle of Clarence Brant's boyhood. How he sustained
+his name and independence in after years, and who, of those already
+mentioned in these pages, helped him to make or mar it, may be a matter
+for future record.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Waif of the Plains, by Bret Harte
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