Openings in the Old Trail. Bret Harte
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became mere glittering points, her nostrils grew white and contracted, and her pretty little mouth seemed to narrow into a straight cruel line, like a cat's. “Not a word ever to HIM, of all men! Do you hear?” she said almost brusquely. Then, seeing the concern in the boy's face, she laughed, and added explanatorily: “He's a bad, bad man, Leon, remember that.”
The fact that she was speaking of her husband did not shock the boy's moral sense in the least. The sacredness of those relations, and even of blood kinship, is, I fear, not always so clear to the youthful mind as we fondly imagine. That Mr. Burroughs was a bad man to have excited this change in this lovely woman was Leonidas's only conclusion. He remembered how his sister's soft, pretty little kitten, purring on her lap, used to get its back up and spit at the postmaster's yellow hound.
“I never wished to come unless you called me first,” he said frankly.
“What?” she said, in her half playful, half reproachful, but wholly caressing way. “You mean to say you would never come to see me unless I sent for you? Oh, Leon! and you'd abandon me in that way?”
But Leonidas was set in his own boyish superstition. “I'd just delight in being sent for by you any time, Mrs. Burroughs, and you kin always find me,” he said shyly, but doggedly; “but”—He stopped.
“What an opinionated young gentleman! Well, I see I must do all the courting. So consider that I sent for you this morning. I've got another letter for you to mail.” She put her hand to her breast, and out of the pretty frillings of her frock produced, as before, with the same faint perfume of violets, a letter like the first. But it was unsealed. “Now, listen, Leon; we are going to be great friends—you and I.” Leonidas felt his cheeks glowing. “You are going to do me another great favor, and we are going to have a little fun and a great secret all by our own selves. Now, first, have you any correspondent—you know—any one who writes to you—any boy or girl—from San Francisco?”
Leonidas's cheeks grew redder—alas! from a less happy consciousness. He never received any letters; nobody ever wrote to him. He was obliged to make this shameful admission.
Mrs. Burroughs looked thoughtful. “But you have some friend in San Francisco—some one who MIGHT write to you?” she suggested pleasantly.
“I knew a boy once who went to San Francisco,” said Leonidas doubtfully. “At least, he allowed he was goin' there.”
“That will do,” said Mrs. Burroughs. “I suppose your parents know him or of him?”
“Why,” said Leonidas, “he used to live here.”
“Better still. For, you see, it wouldn't be strange if he DID write. What was the gentleman's name?”
“Jim Belcher,” returned Leonidas hesitatingly, by no means sure that the absent Belcher knew how to write. Mrs. Burroughs took a tiny pencil from her belt, opened the letter she was holding in her hand, and apparently wrote the name in it. Then she folded it and sealed it, smiling charmingly at Leonidas's puzzled face.
“Now, Leon, listen; for here is the favor I am asking. Mr. Jim Belcher”—she pronounced the name with great gravity—“will write to you in a few days. But inside of YOUR letter will be a little note to me, which you will bring me. You can show your letter to your family, if they want to know who it is from; but no one must see MINE. Can you manage that?”
“Yes,” said Leonidas. Then, as the whole idea flashed upon his quick intelligence, he smiled until he showed his dimples. Mrs. Burroughs leaned forward over the fence, lifted his torn straw hat, and dropped a fluttering little kiss on his forehead. It seemed to the boy, flushed and rosy as a maid, as if she had left a shining star there for every one to see.
“Don't smile like that, Leon, you're positively irresistible! It will be a nice little game, won't it? Nobody in it but you and me—and Belcher! We'll outwit them yet. And, you see, you'll be obliged to come to me, after all, without my asking.”
They both laughed; indeed, quite a dimpled, bright-eyed, rosy, innocent pair, though I think Leonidas was the more maidenly.
“And,” added Leonidas, with breathless eagerness, “I can sometimes write to—to—Jim, and inclose your letter.”
“Angel of wisdom! certainly. Well, now, let's see—have you got any letters for the post to-day?” He colored again, for in anticipation of meeting her he had hurried up the family post that morning. He held out his letters: she thrust her own among them. “Now,” she said, laying her cool, soft hand against his hot cheek, “run along, dear; you must not be seen loitering here.”
Leonidas ran off, buoyed up on ambient air. It seemed just like a fairy-book. Here he was, the confidant of the most beautiful creature he had seen, and there was a mysterious letter coming to him—Leonidas—and no one to know why. And now he had a “call” to see her often; she would not forget him—he needn't loiter by the fencepost to see if she wanted him—and his boyish pride and shyness were appeased. There was no question of moral ethics raised in Leonidas's mind; he knew that it would not be the real Jim Belcher who would write to him, but that made the prospect the more attractive. Nor did another circumstance trouble his conscience. When he reached the post-office, he was surprised to see the man whom he knew to be Mr. Burroughs talking with the postmaster. Leonidas brushed by him and deposited his letters in the box in discreet triumph. The postmaster was evidently officially resenting some imputation on his carelessness, and, concluding his defense, “No, sir,” he said, “you kin bet your boots that ef any letter hez gone astray for you or your wife—Ye said your wife, didn't ye?”
“Yes,” said Burroughs hastily, with a glance around the shop.
“Well, for you or anybody at your house—it ain't here that's the fault. You hear me! I know every letter that comes in and goes outer this office, I reckon, and handle 'em all,”—Leonidas pricked up his ears—“and if anybody oughter know, it's me. Ye kin paste that in your hat, Mr. Burroughs.” Burroughs, apparently disconcerted by the intrusion of a third party—Leonidas—upon what was evidently a private inquiry, murmured something surlily, and passed out.
Leonidas was puzzled. That big man seemed to be “snoopin'” around for something! He knew that he dared not touch the letter-bag—Leonidas had heard somewhere that it was a deadly crime to touch any letters after the Government had got hold of them once, and he had no fears for the safety of hers. But ought he not go back at once and tell her about her husband's visit, and the alarming fact that the postmaster was personally acquainted with all the letters? He instantly saw, too, the wisdom of her inclosing her letter hereafter in another address. Yet he finally resolved not to tell her to-day—it would look like “hanging round” again; and—another secret reason—he was afraid that any allusion to her husband's interference would bring back that change in her beautiful face which he did not like. The better to resist temptation, he went back another way.
It must not be supposed that, while Leonidas indulged in this secret passion for the beautiful stranger, it was to the exclusion of his boyish habits. It merely took the place of his intellectual visions and his romantic reading. He no longer carried books in his pocket on his lazy rambles. What were mediaeval legends of high-born ladies and their pages to this real romance of himself and Mrs. Burroughs? What were the exploits of boy captains and juvenile trappers and the Indian maidens and Spanish senoritas to what was now possible to himself and his divinity here—upon Casket Ridge! The very ground around her was now consecrated to romance and adventure. Consequently, he visited a few traps on his way back which he had set for “jackass-rabbits” and wildcats—the latter a vindictive reprisal for aggression upon an orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection. For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. He had even gone out of his way to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear, although it did not prevent