Openings in the Old Trail. Bret Harte
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boy’s breathless abbreviated speech. “Lives down your way—just back of your farm. Show ye some day. Suns himself on a flat stone every day—always cold—never can get warm. Eh?”
She had not spoken, but was gazing into space with a breathless rigidity of attitude and a fixed look in her eye, not unlike the motionless orbs of the reptile that had glided away.
“Does anybody else know you keep him?” she asked.
“Nary one. I never showed him to anybody but you,” replied the boy.
“Don’t! You must show me where he hides to-morrow,” she said, in her old laughing way. “And now, Leon, I must go back to the house.”
“May I write to him—to Jim Belcher, Mrs. Burroughs?” said the boy timidly.
“Certainly. And come to me to-morrow with your letter—I will have mine ready. Good-by.” She stopped and glanced at the trail. “And you say that if that man had kept on, the snake would have bitten him?”
“Sure pop!—if he’d trod on him—as he was sure to. The snake wouldn’t have known he didn’t mean it. It’s only natural,” continued Leonidas, with glowing partisanship for the gentle and absent William Henry. “YOU wouldn’t like to be trodden upon, Mrs. Burroughs!”
“No! I’d strike out!” she said quickly. She made a rapid motion forward with her low forehead and level head, leaving it rigid the next moment, so that it reminded him of the snake, and he laughed. At which she laughed too, and tripped away.
Leonidas went back and caught his trout. But even this triumph did not remove a vague sense of disappointment which had come over him. He had often pictured to himself a Heaven-sent meeting with her in the woods, a walk with her, alone, where he could pick her the rarest flowers and herbs and show her his woodland friends; and it had only ended in this, and an exhibition of William Henry! He ought to have saved HER from something, and not her husband. Yet he had no ill-feeling for Burroughs, only a desire to circumvent him, on behalf of the unprotected, as he would have baffled a hawk or a wildcat. He went home in dismal spirits, but later that evening constructed a boyish letter of thanks to the apocryphal Belcher and told him all about—the trout!
He brought her his letter the next day, and received hers to inclose. She was pleasant, her own charming self again, but she seemed more interested in other things than himself, as, for instance, the docile William Henry, whose hiding-place he showed, and whose few tricks she made him exhibit to her, and which the gratified Leonidas accepted as a delicate form of flattery to himself. But his yearning, innocent spirit detected a something lacking, which he was too proud to admit even to himself. It was his own fault; he ought to have waited for her, and not gone for the trout!
So a fortnight passed with an interchange of the vicarious letters, and brief, hopeful, and disappointing meetings to Leonidas. To add to his unhappiness, he was obliged to listen to sneering disparagement of his goddess from his family, and criticisms which, happily, his innocence did not comprehend. It was his own mother who accused her of shamefully “making up” to the good-looking expressman at church last Sunday, and declared that Burroughs ought to “look after that wife of his,”—two statements which the simple Leonidas could not reconcile. He had seen the incident, and only thought her more lovely than ever. Why should not the expressman think so too? And yet the boy was not happy; something intruded upon his sports, upon his books, making them dull and vapid, and yet that something was she! He grew pale and preoccupied. If he had only some one in whom to confide—some one who could explain his hopes and fears. That one was nearer than he thought!
It was quite three weeks since the rattlesnake incident, and he was wandering moodily over Casket Ridge. He was near the Casket, that abrupt upheaval of quartz and gneiss, shaped like a coffer, from which the mountain took its name. It was a favorite haunt of Leonidas, one of whose boyish superstitions was that it contained a treasure of gold, and one of whose brightest dreams had been that he should yet discover it. This he did not do to-day, but looking up from the rocks that he was listlessly examining, he made the almost as thrilling discovery that near him on the trail was a distinguished-looking stranger.
He was bestriding a shapely mustang, which well became his handsome face and slight, elegant figure, and he was looking at Leonidas with an amused curiosity and a certain easy assurance that were difficult to withstand. It was with the same fascinating self-confidence of smile, voice, and manner that he rode up to the boy, and leaning lightly over his saddle, said with exaggerated politeness: “I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Leonidas Boone?”
The rising color in Leonidas’s face was apparently a sufficient answer to the stranger, for he continued smilingly, “Then permit me to introduce myself as Mr. James Belcher. As you perceive, I have grown considerably since you last saw me. In fact, I’ve done nothing else. It’s surprising what a fellow can do when he sets his mind on one thing. And then, you know, they’re always telling you that San Francisco is a ‘growing place.’ That accounts for it!”
Leonidas, dazed, dazzled, but delighted, showed all his white teeth in a shy laugh. At which the enchanting stranger leaped from his horse like a very boy, drew his arm through the rein, and going up to Leonidas, lifted the boy’s straw hat from his head and ran his fingers through his curls. There was nothing original in that—everybody did that to him as a preliminary to conversation. But when this ingenuous fine gentleman put his own Panama hat on Leonidas’s head, and clapped Leonidas’s torn straw on his own, and, passing his arm through the boy’s, began to walk on with him, Leonidas’s simple heart went out to him at once.
“And now, Leon,” said the delightful stranger, “let’s you and me have a talk. There’s a nice cool spot under these laurels; I’ll stake out Pepita, and we’ll just lie off there and gab, and not care if school keeps or not.”
“But you know you ain’t really Jim Belcher,” said the boy shyly.
“I’m as good a man as he is any day, whoever I am,” said the stranger, with humorous defiance, “and can lick him out of his boots, whoever HE is. That ought to satisfy you. But if you want my certificate, here’s your own letter, old man,” he said, producing Leonidas’s last scrawl from his pocket.
“And HERS?” said the boy cautiously.
The stranger’s face changed a little. “And HERS,” he repeated gravely, showing a little pink note which Leonidas recognized as one of Mrs. Burroughs’s inclosures. The boy was silent until they reached the laurels, where the stranger tethered his horse and then threw himself in an easy attitude beneath the tree, with the back of his head upon his clasped hands. Leonidas could see his curved brown mustaches and silky lashes that were almost as long, and thought him the handsomest man he had ever beheld.
“Well, Leon,” said the stranger, stretching himself out comfortably and pulling the boy down beside him, “how are things going on the Casket? All serene, eh?”
The inquiry so dismally recalled Leonidas’s late feelings that his face clouded, and he involuntarily sighed. The stranger instantly shifted his head and gazed curiously at him. Then he took the boy’s sunburnt hand in his own, and held it a moment. “Well, go on,” he said.
“Well, Mr.—Mr.—I can’t go on—I won’t!” said Leonidas, with a sudden fit of obstinacy. “I don’t know what to call you.”
“Call me ‘Jack’—‘Jack Hamlin’ when you’re not in a hurry. Ever heard of me before?” he added, suddenly turning his head towards Leonidas.
The boy shook his head. “No.”
Mr. Jack Hamlin lifted his lashes in affected expostulation to the skies. “And this is Fame!” he murmured audibly.
But this Leonidas did not comprehend. Nor could he understand why the stranger, who clearly must have come to see HER, should not ask about her, should not rush to seek her, but should lie back there all the while so contentedly on the grass. HE wouldn’t. He half resented it, and then it occurred to him that this fine gentleman was like himself—shy. Who could help being so before such an angel? HE would help him on.
And so, shyly at first, but bit by bit emboldened by a word or two from