Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

tesy which does n't belong to me. Shall I go corrupted accent. Philip found it very pleasant back and tell her who I am?"

Alan was not sure but that he meant it. "Oh, that's all right. I was only laughing at the joke on my sister. I'm the emancipated one of the family. I don't hold by any old-fossil feud. I don't care whose son you are. I hope I know a gentleman when I see one, though it 's little practice I get in the knowledge. We 're not all scheme-ridden at our house. I go in for a good time."

"And do you mostly get it?" asked Philip. "Not often; and when I do I have to pay for it, as I 'm doing now."

"Really? You are paying at this moment? That's perhaps hard on me again."

"This is part of it," and Alan indicated his bandaged arm. "But it's the least part. Do you happen to be acquainted with any of the boys at Gillespie's horse-ranch in the hills, up

the river a mile or so?"

Philip did not know Gillespie's. "Peter Kountze is the man in charge. My father gave me a horse when I was twelve, and let me ride with the range-riders, as they used to send a boy before the mast to cure him of the sea. I was n't cured; and now he thinks I'm turning cowboy. That 's why it was so unlucky my getting mixed up in that Pacheco business the other night when I was out with Peter."

"And what was the 'Pacheco business'?" asked Philip.

"Don't you read the Wallula Gazette'? Then, of course, you don't know the locals: who 's in trouble, or who 's skipped, or who's struck it rich in the Cœur d'Alêne, or whose wife's got a ten-pound boy, or anything. Well, I'd got leave to go with Peter to Long Valley to help him round up some cattle. But just this side the bridge, before you get to town, we met up with Sheriff Hanson and his men, out after this Pacheco, who is wanted for a cutting scrape. Sheriff said Peter 'd got to go along, because he knew where Pacheco's girl lived, in the hills back of Cottonwood Gulch. Peter had no objection, only for me. I told him he needn't let that hinder-I'd take the responsibility; and the boys said, 'Let the kid come along and see the fun.' I say, does this bore you?" Alan had caught his companion's eye wandering to the landscape.

"Far from it. But let us go to the edge, and take it comfortably, with the view below us." "Like the gods beside their nectar," Alan suggested with his usual "freshness." When they were lying prone in the warm, brittle grass, with their faces over the brink, the lad went on with his adventure. His speaking voice was like his sister's, deep and sweet, with an odd, singsong cadence in it; a voice that atoned for his lazy,

to listen to him, with the dreamy lights and motionless shadows of the cañon below them.

"We put out into the hills about moonrise. It's a broken country after you leave the valley. We played hide-and-seek with the moon among the gulches-the little draws, you know, between the hills; Cottonwood is the biggest of 'em. Finally she broke loose from the clouds, and there was the cabin-no light in the window, but the greaser's pony stood puffing by the door, his cinch not loosened; so we knew we had n't long to wait.

"Pacheco heard us s'rounding the house, and some one else heard us too. We did n't count on the girl's taking a hand. She broke us all up, firing on us while Pacheco lit out up the gulch. Peter tried to shove me into the woodpile, but we were n't a man too many. I'd have looked pretty in the woodpile! They said it was the girl hit me. Pacheco only fired twice; his horse was on the jump, and his shots went wild. If ever I see that little girl of his, I'll give her back her bullet. The boys all laughed at me; said she spotted me in the moonlight on purpose. She did n't know what she was aiming at. Every time she fired a shot she gave a screech like a wildcat, and the boys would n't give it her back again because she was a woman. Anyhow, Pacheco got away, and I got into a precious row with my father. They had up the doctor from town, and he joked me; said the whole thing was in the newspaper, names and all. And that did n't help matters. Of course my father blames Peter, and he 's bound I shall cut the whole concern. I won't, because Peter was not to blame. We both lost our tempers, and so it's gone on. I saw you that evening in town, and Peter told me about you. 'He ain't much for talk,' Peter says, 'but he 's got a good eye, and he takes in the country same's a States' horse when you turn him loose on the range.' I've noticed that. And if I had my pony back, I could show you some country. But I'm not to have a horse again till I've promised to quit riding with the boys; and promise I will not. Am I to pass 'em to windward as if they 'd got something the matter with them that was catching?"

Alan rolled over in the grass and pulled his soft felt hat over his eyes.

"I say, do you come up this way often?" "I've never been up before, but I 'm sure I shall want to come again," said Philip.

"I suppose you know all about the row between our governors?"

"I have heard an outline of it from mine." "Is he very bitter?"

"You may judge when I tell you there's no man of this region I so much wish to meet as your father; there is no engineer I would

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]

rather work under; and all I know of him I fixed on the future. Do you know the Persian have from my own father."

"You can afford to say those things; you have been out of it, and your father has won. It's not so easy for us to be good-natured. It is for me, because I don't care about the scheme. I hate this arid-land business; I think it's a kind of bewitchment, like the Dark Continent or the Polar Sea. Is n't there land enough with water belonging to it, without spending millions to twist the rivers out of their courses, and make grass grow where God said, 'Let there be a desert'!"

"Are you quite sure that was the word in the beginning in regard to these desert lands?" "It don't matter," Alan retorted, superior, in his quarrel with fate, both to history and grammar. "It's enough for me that it's a desert now. I should let it stay so. My father can build other things besides ditches. Every spring and every fall the work 's going to start up, and I'm to go away to school; and every spring and every fall it does n't, and here I am. I've no work; I 've no amusements; I 've nothing to do but loaf and study; and my father will tell you I stick to my books like cobbler's wax to an oil-stone! I've no friends but the boys, and now they 're put down. It's no wonder if I kick."

"I hope you are not compromised through me," said Philip, smiling. "You showed me the crevice, it's true, but the cave I discovered for myself; and I suppose I've the same right up here as the rest of the mob."

"Ah, you are not the mob. Ditches be hanged! Have n't you been everywhere that I want to go? and seen everything, and had the chance I ought to have had? And yet I can't ask you home to dinner, nor even meet you here, without a hangdog feeling that I 'm keeping something from my father-all on account of that idiotic scheme!"

[ocr errors][merged small]

proverb, 'He that rides in the chariot of hope hath poverty for his companion'? It is sad to spend years on those long journeys, trying to overtake the future, but you would not have us all time-servers, men of the present. And when they do arrive, those men of the future, their names are not forgotten; or their works are not, which is better. I wish you were farther away from the scheme—"

"I wish I were," Alan interrupted. "It's a pity we can't change places, since you seem to fancy riding in hope's chariot with poverty alongside. I don't. There's my sister come to remind me. She 's afraid I 'll cut five o'clock recitations."

The girl stopped beneath the ledge, and looked up at the two faces against the sky. "Alan, are you coming down?

[blocks in formation]

"This gentleman"-the announcement was made very distinctly" is Mr. Philip Norrisson. Mr.-Philip-Norrisson! Do you understand?"

"Why do you shy my name at her as if it were a thing to be dodged? My vanity protests," objected Philip.

"Oh, just to see her stare." "She does n't believe you."

Philip had been watching the girl's face. She kept her eyes upon her brother. "You are too silly for anything," she remarked in a conversational tone.

Philip longed to throw her a kiss in answer to her charming, puzzled upward gaze. As she turned to go there came the note of the cañonbird pealing through the deep cut—the wild broken song that insisted yet could not explain. She looked up involuntarily, as if asking them to listen. Philip was fain to think that her eyes sought his for sympathy: he could not be sure.

"It was; but the heroes and martyrs are considerably older. For the most part, their persistence was the despair of their families, and the ruin of their fortunes when they had any; but their lives make excellent reading. They were men, like your father, with a tremendous power of affirmation. They had a genius for waiting. Of course there's a tragic side to the life of every man whose eye is acquaintance.

All the way home, in the pink dusk, before moonrise, his aroused fancy was at play constructing a future which should include himself, his work, and the fair children of the cañon; with ever the dreamy cañon-lights and -shadows attending them on their way to better

(To be continued.)

Mary Hallock Foote.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

HE

THREE SONNETS.

MAGELLAN.

E left the landmarks of the past behind:
The world of waters opened wide before,
Wherethrough he aimed to sail forevermore,
Seeking within the waste, with steadfast mind,
Some brighter realm, untrod of human kind,
Some happy island, some Elysian shore.
From many an unknown coast he heard the roar
Of breakers, heard the voices of the wind
On unknown seas, but neither rising blast

Nor wave could daunt his soul, firm-set as he
Who first saw Calpe sink behind the mast,
Nor turned his prow, bent to explore the sea,
Whether its westering tides touched Asia vast,
Or washed the steep shores of eternity.

SOM

CARLYLE.

OMEWHERE, in dim Antarctic space, alone
Upon the unsailed ocean's utmost verge,
There is a nameless rock, that with the surge
Wars, battling everlastingly. Upthrown,
Basaltic, black, time-scarred, from earth's fire-zone,
It stands unconquered, hears the wrathful dirge
The tempest utters from its whirlpool gurge,
And fronts the starlight with calm face of stone.
Carlyle was like that rock,—the peace was his

That reigneth at the hollow whirlwind's core,
The calm of faith in God,-as when the main,
After long rage, drags down some rugged shore,
And a deep stillness holds the night again,
So, now, that where he was dull silence is.

A LOST MIND.

ALE traveler in regions saturnine,

PALE

Whose feet tread pathways steep as Alpine steeps,
Through passes desolate, where no light sleeps
Of this world's sun or moon, and no stars shine,
My heart aches when, with tender word and sign,
I try to cheer the gloom that o'er thee creeps,
Yet still thy soul its awful exile keeps,
A wanderer through fancy's vast confine.
The mind hath deserts, wastes unknown to men,
Yet unforgot of God; of none more sad
Sang Dante; by what whips of scorpions vexed,
Thy torn soul, wandering far beyond our ken,

Hastes through that hell, insanity, perplexed
By the dark doubt that thou, or God, art mad.

William Prescott Foster.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »