A Waif of the Plains by Bret Harte (13 ebook reader TXT) 📖

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