THE NEW NEIGHBOR
But what a man is, _that_ is a matter of concern to every one who
is called by circumstance to associate with him.
With a merry greeting to Saint Jimmy, Marta ran straight to the
welcoming arms of Mother Burton.
“Goodness me, child,” the older woman exclaimed when she had kissed her
and held her close for a moment as such mothers do, “you look as if--as
if you were going to jump right out of your skin; I do declare!”
And Saint Jimmy, watching them, silently agreed with his mother,
thinking that he had never seen the girl quite so animated. Her vivid,
flamelike beauty seemed to fill the house with joyous warmth and light,
while her laughter, in quick response to Mrs. Burton’s words, rang with
such happy abandon, and thrilled with such tingling excitement, that her
teacher knew something unusual must have happened.
“What is it?” cried Mother Burton, shaking the girl playfully, and
laughing with her. “What is the matter with you? What are you so excited
about? Have Thad and Bob struck it rich at last?”
Marta shook her head.
“No, but it is something almost as good. We have a new neighbor.”
Mother Burton looked from Marta to her son inquiringly, as if mildly
puzzled to know why the mere arrival of a newcomer in the neighborhood,
unusual as it was, should cause such manifestations.
Saint Jimmy, smiling, asked:
“What is his name? Where is he from? And what is he like?”
The girl’s face was glowing with color and her eyes were bright as she
answered:
“His name is Hugh Edwards. He came here from Tucson. I didn’t quite
understand where he lived before he went to Tucson.” She paused and the
ghost of a troubled frown fell across her brow. “But it was somewhere,”
she finished brightly.
“Quite likely you are right,” said Jimmy, grave as a judge on the bench.
“Yes,” she continued, “and he has come here to stay. He is awfully
poor--poorer than any of us. Why, he hasn’t even a burro to pack his
outfit--had to pack it himself on his back, and he has been sick too,
but he doesn’t look a bit sick now.” She laughed a little laugh of
charming confusion. “He looks as if--as if--oh, as if he could do just
anything--you know what I mean.”
“You make it very clear,” murmured Saint Jimmy.
Mother Burton made a curious little noise in her throat.
Marta looked from one to the other suspiciously. Then a bit defiantly
she said:
“I don’t care, he does. And he is different from anybody that ever came
to the Cañada del Oro before--for that matter, he is different from
anybody that I have ever seen anywhere.”
“Dear me,” murmured Mother Burton, “how interesting! But how is he
different, dear?”
The girl answered honestly:
“I can’t exactly tell what it is. For one thing, it is easy to see that
he is educated. But of course Jimmy is too, so it can’t be _that_. I am
sure, too, that he has lived in a big city somewhere and has known lots
of nice people, but so has Jimmy. I don’t know what it is.”
“I judge he is not, then, one of our typical old prospectors,” said
Saint Jimmy.
Again the girl’s joyous, unaffected laughter bubbled forth.
“Old! He is no older than you are; I suspect not quite so old, and he
has the nicest eyes, almost as nice as you, Jimmy--only, only different,
somehow--nice in another way, I mean. And he knows absolutely nothing
about prospecting. He is so green it is funny. But he’s going to live in
the old Dalton cabin right next door to us and we’re going to teach
him.”
“Fine,” said Saint Jimmy with proper enthusiasm, and managed somehow to
hide the queer, sinking pain that made itself felt suddenly down deep
inside of him. Saint Jimmy was skilled by long practice in hiding pain.
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mother Burton. “This is interesting. But I must
finish my morning work,” she added, moving toward the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” volunteered Marta quickly, and started after the older
woman.
But Mother Burton answered:
“No, no, I was almost finished when you came.” Then catching the girl in
her arms impulsively, and looking toward her son whose face was turned
again to the far-off horizon, she added in a hurried whisper: “Get him
out of doors, dear, he has been sitting like that all this blessed
morning--make him go for a walk.”
* * * * *
Marta led her teacher straight to their favorite spot on the mountain
side, some distance from the house. Here, in the shade of a gnarled and
twisted cedar that for a century or more had looked down upon the varied
life that moved through the Cañon of Gold below, they had spent many an
hour over the girl’s studies. Against the bole of the tree they had
contrived a rude shelf and pegs for hats and wraps. Mrs. Burton had
contributed an old kitchen table and two chairs that neither rain nor
sun could injure, and there was a large, flat-topped rock that served as
bookcase and desk, or for a variety of other purposes, as it might
happen.
On this occasion, Marta converted the rock into a couch by throwing
herself full length upon it with the unconscious freedom of a schoolboy.
Saint Jimmy seated himself in a chair and, in defiance of all
schoolmaster propriety, elevated his feet to the table top.
They talked a while, as neighbors will, of the small affairs of the
country side. But Doctor Burton could see that Marta’s thoughts were not
of the things they were saying; and so, presently, from her rocky couch,
the girl spoke again of the stranger who had come to be her nearest
neighbor. She described him now in fuller detail--his eyes, his voice,
his smile. She contrasted him with the Pardners, the Lizard, and with
other men whom she had seen. She imagined fanciful stories for his past
and invented for him various wonderful futures. And always she came back
to the curious assertion that he was like her teacher, only different.
And Saint Jimmy, as he listened, asked an occasional encouraging
question and studied her as in his old professional days he might have
studied a patient. Never before had he seen the girl in such a mood. It
was as if something deep-buried in her inner self was striving to break
its way through to the surface of her being, as a deep-buried seed, when
its time comes, forces its way through the dark earth to the light and
sun.
Then for some time the girl was silent. With her head pillowed on one
arm, and her eyes half closed, she lay as if she had drifted with the
currents of her wandering thoughts into the quietude of dreams--dreams
that were as intangible, yet as real, as the blue haze and purple
shadows through which she saw the distant desert and mountains.
And Saint Jimmy, too, was still; while his face was turned away toward
the far-off horizon, as if he saw there things which he might not talk
about.
On the pine-clad heights of Mount Lemmon there were a few scattered
patches of snow that had not yet yielded to the spring; but the air was
soft and fragrant with the perfumes of warm earth and growing plants and
opening blossoms. There was the low hum of the bees that were mining in
the fragrant cat-claw bushes for the gold they stored in their wild
treasure-houses in the cliffs. Not far away a gambrel partridge
gallantly assured his plump gray mate, who sat on the nest in the
shelter of a tall mescal plant, that there was no danger. A Sonora
pigeon, from the top of a lone sahuaro, called his soft, deep-throated
mating call. And a vermilion flycatcher sprang into the air from his
perch near-by and climbed higher and higher into the blue and then,
after holding himself aloft for a moment, puffed out his red feathers,
and, twittering in a mad love ecstasy, came drifting back like a
brilliant-colored thistle bloom, or an oversized and fiery-tinted
dandelion tuft.
Marta’s teacher had not forgotten that the Pardners had trusted him to
tell their girl the things that they--Saint Jimmy and his mother--were
agreed she should know. And Saint Jimmy meant to tell her. But somehow
this did not seem to be the time. He stole a look at the girl lying on
the rocks. No, this was not the time. He could not tell her just now.
He would wait. Some other time, perhaps, it would be easier.
“Jimmy,” said the girl at last, and her words came slowly as if she
spoke out of the haze of her dreams, “when you went to school--I don’t
mean when you were just a little boy, but when you were almost a
man--was it a big school?”
Saint Jimmy did not answer at once, then, without taking his eyes from
what ever it was that he was looking at in the distance, he said:
“Why, yes, it was a fairly large school.”
“And were there both men and women students?”
“Yes, there were a good many women in the University, and a few in the
medical school, where I finally finished.”
“I expect you had lots of friends, didn’t you, Jimmy? I should think you
would--men and women friends both. And I suppose there were all kinds of
good times--parties and dances and picnics.”
Doctor Burton turned suddenly to look at her. “What in the world are you
driving at now?”
“Please, Jimmy,” she said wistfully, “I want to know.”
And something made him look away again.
“I suppose I had my share of friends,” he answered. “And there was a
reasonable amount of fun, as there always is at school, you know. But
we--most of us--worked hard, too.”
“Yes,” she returned quickly, “and you dreamed and planned the great
things you would do in the world when your school days should be over,
and, in spite of all your friends and the good times, you could hardly
wait to begin--yes, I am sure that is the way it would be.”
Saint Jimmy did not speak.
“And when your school days were finished, and you were actually a doctor
in a big city, you still had lots of men and women friends, and you
found a little time, now and then, for parties and--and dinners and such
things, didn’t you, Jimmy?”
Saint Jimmy smiled, a patient, shadowy smile as he answered:
“My practice at first certainly left me plenty of time for other
things.”
The girl did not notice the smile, because she was not looking at her
companion.
“You lived in a nice house, too, with books and pictures and--and
carpets on the floors. Do you know, I think I have wanted more than
anything else in the world to live in a house with carpets on the
floors. That is, I mean, I have wanted it ever since I knew there were
such things. Do you know, Jimmy, I never saw a house with carpets until
that first day I came to see you and Mother Burton?”
She laughed a little.
“That was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it? And I couldn’t much more
than read then. Gee! how scared I was of you and Mother Burton.”
“You have made wonderful progress in your studies and in every way,”
said Jimmy, proudly.
“Yes,” she returned. “The carpets did it--the carpets and you and Mother
Burton. I don’t see how you ever managed to teach me, though. I guess
you just learned by doctoring so many sick people. It must be a
wonderful, satisfying work--helping people, I mean, like a doctor, or a
teacher, or any work like that. It’s not like just finding gold in the
ground. Even though you do have to work so hard to get the gold, it’s
not like--like working for _people_--or _with_ people. Getting gold out
of the ground seems to take you away from people. You don’t seem to be
doing anything for anybody--but only just for yourself. Prospectors and
workers like that ’most always live alone, I have noticed. I don’t think
many of them are very happy either. I have seen quite a lot of
prospectors in my time, you know, Jimmy. In fact, except for you,
prospectors and that sort are the only kind of men I have ever
known--until now.”
Saint Jimmy was watching her closely.
“Yes,” he said softly, as if he did not wish to disturb her mood.
“I suspect it was pretty hard, wasn’t it, Jimmy, when you got sick
yourself and had to give up your work and all your plans and leave your
nice home and all your friends and everything and come away out here to
get well, and then to find that you never could go back but must stay
here always--poor Jimmy! It must have been mighty hard.”
“It wasn’t exactly easy,” he said slowly, “not at first. I fought a good
deal until I learned better. After that it was not so hard--only at
times, perhaps. Even now, I rebel occasionally, but not for long.”
Which was as near a complaint as any one had ever heard from Doctor
Jimmy Burton.
“Jimmy,” said Marta earnestly, “I think that you are the most wonderful
man that ever was--that ever could be.”
Saint Jimmy shrugged his shoulders, and waved a protesting hand.
“But you are,” she insisted, “and you know how I love you, don’t you?
Not merely because you have helped me as you have, but because you are
_you_. You _do_ know, don’t you, Jimmy?”
There was an odd note in Jimmy’s voice now--it might have been
gladness--it might have been protest--or perhaps it was both--with a
hint of pain.
“Marta! I----“
He stopped as if he found himself suddenly unable to finish whatever it
was that he had started to say. It may be that this was one of the times
when Saint Jimmy was not wholly reconciled to the part that life had
assigned to him.
Apparently Marta did not notice her teacher’s manner. Her thoughts must
have been centered elsewhere because she said, quite as if she had been
considering it all the time:
“I feel sure that Mr. Edwards has been hurt some way, just as you have,
Jimmy. I mean that he has been to school, and had a world of nice
friends and good times, and then started his real work and all that,
and, now for some reason, has had to give up his work and home and
friends and everything, and come out here. He didn’t tell us much, but
you could sort of feel that he was that kind of a man. You _can_ feel
those things about men, can’t you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy nodded:
“I suppose so.”
“I don’t know why he didn’t tell us more about himself--about before he
came to Tucson, I mean. Perhaps he will some day; but he acts as if he
didn’t like to think about it now. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.”
“It is rather important that one have a past, isn’t it, Jimmy?” She
smiled as she added: “Rather important that one have the right kind of a
past, I mean.”
“To my mind it is quite important,” answered Jimmy soberly. And suddenly
he remembered again the story that the Pardners had told.
She nodded thoughtfully.
“You have talked to me a lot about heredity and breeding and good blood
and early environment and those things. I suspect it is your being a
doctor that makes you consider them as you do. And Mother Burton, she
has told me a lot, too, about your ancestors, away back. And so I can
see that it is your past and the things you have to remember that make
you the kind of a man you are. If you didn’t have the father and mother
that you had, and the fathers and mothers that they had, and if you
hadn’t had the schools and the friends and the home with carpets and
the work of helping people that you have had, why, you wouldn’t be you
at all, would you, Jimmy?”
Saint Jimmy moved uneasily. He wished now, in the light of the Pardners’
story and their conclusion as to the birth and parentage of this girl,
that he had not included some subjects in his pupil’s course of study.
Marta continued as if, scarcely conscious of her companion’s presence,
she were thinking aloud.
“And so if--if any one else _did_ have the same kind of things to
remember that you have, he would be the same kind of a man that you
are--not exactly, of course. He might not be a doctor, or might not be
sick, but on the whole--well--you see what I mean, don’t you, Jimmy?”
Saint Jimmy was quite sure that he saw her meaning. In fact, Doctor
Burton was fast being convinced that he realized, more clearly than
Marta herself, the real meaning of her unusual mood. Her next words
confirmed his fast-growing suspicion that, however scientifically right
he had been in his teaching, he had not been altogether kind in
stressing certain truths.
“It’s funny that I never really thought of it before,” she said, “but I
don’t seem to have any past at all. All I can remember is just moving
around with my two fathers, who, of course, are not my fathers at
all--at least not both of them. And, if it were not for you and Mother
Burton, we wouldn’t have stayed here any longer than we did the other
places. I think I must have been born while my real father and mother
were moving somewhere. I never cared much about it before, Jimmy, but
somehow I wish--now--that I--that I knew who I am. I wish--I wish--I had
things to remember--such as you and Mr. Edwards have--schools and
friends and good times and a home with carpets--I mean.”
There was a suspicious brightness in the frank eyes and her lips were
trembling a little; a state of affairs very unusual to the Pardners’
daughter.
Saint Jimmy realized that it was going to be even harder than he had
foreseen to make known to this girl the things he had promised to tell
her. Certainly he could not tell her just now.
His voice was gentle as he finally said:
“I wouldn’t worry about all that, if I were you, dear. You see, it
doesn’t really matter so much whether you know or not--your people must
have been the best kind of people because you are what you are, and
after all, it is what you are right now that counts. It is your own dear
self, and not what you might have been that matters, don’t you see? Why,
you have a better education already than most girls of your age. As for
the rest--the friends and all that--those will come in time, I am sure.”
She smiled her gratitude bravely, then:
“Jimmy, may I ask you something more--something real personal?”
“As personal as you like,” he answered gravely.
“Well, among all your friends at school, and among all the people you
met and knew afterwards, was there ever--was there ever one who was
more than all the others--one girl or woman, I mean?”
Jimmy considered, then deliberately:
“You mean, in my school days and before I was forced to give up my
work?”
She nodded.
“No,” said Jimmy readily. “Once or twice I thought there might be, but I
soon found out that I was mistaken--of course I am glad now that I found
it out.”
“But didn’t you, in all of your plans and dreams for your life and
work--didn’t you ever include some one, didn’t you ever plan for
a--for--well, for”--she finished triumphantly--“for two little boys like
the Wheelers have?”
“I looked forward in a general way to a home and children, as I think
every man does,” he answered.
She caught him up eagerly:
“You really think that every man includes such things in his plans?”
“At least,” he replied, “I fail to see how any normal, right-thinking
man can ignore such things in his life plans.”
“I wonder if that could be it?” said Marta.
“You wonder what?”
“If Mr. Edwards came to the Cañada del Oro because his plans included
some one who refused to be included.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Saint Jimmy under his breath.
“No,” she continued, “I don’t believe that is it. He doesn’t act as
though that was the reason.”
Suddenly her mood changed. She seemed to awaken to some hitherto
unrealized possibilities of her life, and to grasp with startled
fierceness a defiant truth.
“Jimmy,” she cried, “just because I have no past is no reason why I
should not have a future, is it?”
Before he could find an answer she went on, and her words came rushing,
tumbling, hurrying out, as if the floodgate of her emotions were
suddenly lifted and the passionate spirit of her released.
“I can see now that I have always been like our cañon creek in summer,
just playing along any old way, taking things as they are, without even
caring whether I stopped or not, but now--now I feel like the creek is
to-day, with its springtime life, boiling and roaring and leaping--I
won’t--I won’t be like the creek though--that for all its strength and
fuss and fury just fades away at last into nothing, out there in the
desert. I want to keep on going and going and going--I don’t know where.
I don’t care where, just on, and on, and on!”
She sprang to her feet and stood before him in all the radiant, vigorous
beauty of her young womanhood, and with reckless abandon challenged:
“Jimmy, let’s run away. Let’s go away off somewhere beyond the farthest
line yonder that you are always looking at; and then let’s keep on
going, just you and I. Wouldn’t it be fun if we were to be married? Why
shouldn’t we? You’re not too old--I’m not too young. We could live in a
little house somewhere--a house with carpets, Jimmy--and books and
pictures, and you could make music, and I would take care of you--Oh,
such good care of you, Jimmy. I’d cook all the things you like and ought
to eat, and wash for you, and mend your things, and you could go on
teaching me, and scolding me when I forgot to use the right words,
and--and--wouldn’t it be fun, Jimmy? Of course after a while Mother
Burton would come too--and perhaps there would be a place somewhere near
for my daddies to prospect--Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, let’s go!”
Doctor Burton laughed, and it was well for the girl that she was still
too much of a child to know how often grim tragedy wears a mask of
mirth.
* * * * *
When the stranger had told the Pardners and their daughter his simple
story--how he had been ill and could find no work in Tucson, and so had
come to the Cañada del Oro with the hope of finding enough gold to live
by, and Marta had ridden away to spend the Sunday with Saint Jimmy and
Mother Burton, Thad said doubtfully:
“I don’t see as there’s much we can do. We can’t learn nobody to find
gold whar it ain’t, an’ if we knowed whar it was we certain sure would
stake out some claims for ourselves, wouldn’t we? I don’t take no stock
in there bein’ anythin’ more than a color mebby, round that old Dalton
cabin yonder.”
“Gold is where you find it,” remarked Bob cheerfully. “You can’t never
tell when or where you’re going to strike it rich.”
“That’s all right,” retorted Thad. “But it stands to reason that if the
feller what built that cabin hadn’t of worked out his claim, he’d be
there workin’ on it yet, wouldn’t he? He quit and vamoosed because he’d
worked it out, I’m tellin’ you.”
Bob returned with energy:
“And I’m maintainin’ that no claim or mine or nothin’ else was ever
worked out. Folks jest quit workin’ on ’em, that’s all. There’s many and
many a mine been abandoned when three hours more--or one more shot,
mebby, would a-opened up a bonanza. This young man may go right up there
in the creek and stick in his pick a foot from where the other feller
took out his last shovel of dirt an’ turn up a reg’lar glory-hole. Don’t
you let him give you the dumps, Mr. Edwards, he’s the worst old
pessimist you ever see. There’s enough gold in this neighborhood to buy
all the bacon an’ beans you’ll need, long as you live, if you’re willin’
to scratch around for it; an’ you’ve got jest as good a chance as there
is to strike a real mine an’ make your everlastin’ fortune, too.”
“If you want my honest opinion, Mr. Edwards,” said Thad solemnly, as if
his pardner had not spoken, “you’ll be a fool to spend any time here.”
The younger man smiled:
“But you see, Mr. Grove, I am rather forced to do something right now.
As I told you, I’m not in a position to spend much time tramping about
the country looking for what might be a better place. All my
capital--all my worldly possessions, in fact--are in that pack there.
After all, you know the old saying,” he finished laughingly, “‘It takes
a fool for luck.’”
“That ain’t so,” growled Thad, “’cause if it was, my pardner there would
be as rich as Rockefeller and Morgan an’ the rest of them billionaires
all rolled into one.”
Bob grinned at Edwards reassuringly. Then he said to Thad:
“Now that you’ve got that off your mind, suppose we jest turn in an’ do
what we can for the boy here.”
“This here’s Sunday, ain’t it?” returned Thad, doubtfully. “Didn’t my
gal tell us yesterday that we couldn’t----“
“Your gal,” interrupted Bob, fiercely. “Your gal--huh. I’m here to tell
you that you’d best keep within your rights, Thad Grove, even if me an’
you be pardners. She’s my gal this week beginnin’ at sun-up this
mornin’, an’ you know it; an’ besides, there’s good scripture for us
helpin’ Mr. Edwards here to get located, even if ’tis Sunday.”
“Scripture!” said Thad scornfully. “What scripture?”
“It’s that there part where the Lord is linin’ ’em up about what they
did an’ what they didn’t do,” explained Bob. “Says He to one bunch,
‘When I was dead broke an’ hungry an’ thirsty an’ all but petered out,
you ornary skunks wouldn’t turn a hand to give me a lift, an’ so you
don’t need to figger that you’re goin’ to git in on the ground floor
with me now that I’ve struck pay dirt’--or words to that effect. An’
then to the other bunch He says: ‘You’re all right, Pardners; come on in
an’ make your pile along with me, ’cause I ain’t forgot how when I was a
stranger you took me in. You grubstaked me when I was down and out, an’
for that, all I’ve got now is yourn’--leastways, that’s the general
meanin’ of it.”
Whereupon Thad conceded that while it would be wrong actually to work on
the day of rest, it might be safe for them to show the stranger around
and sort of talk things over.
And all that day, while the two old prospectors were conducting him to
the cabin that, for the following months, was to be his home, while they
were showing him about the neighborhood and advising him in a general
way about his work, and as they sat at the dinner which Marta had left
prepared for them, Hugh Edwards felt that he was being weighed,
measured, analyzed. Nor did he in any way attempt to avoid or shirk the
ordeal. Fairly and squarely, with neither hesitation nor evasion, he met
those keen old eyes that for so many years had searched for the precious
metal that is hidden in the sands and rocks and gravel of desert wastes,
and lonely cañons, and those mountain places that are far remote from
the haunts of less hardy and courageous men.
They did not ask many questions about his past, for it is not the way
of such men to pry into another’s past. By their code a man’s personal
history is his own most private affair, to be given or withheld as he
himself elects. But what a man is, _that_ is a matter of concern to
every one who is called by circumstance to associate with him. They were
not particularly interested in what this man who had given his name as
Hugh Edwards _had_ been. They were mightily interested in discerning
what sort of a man Hugh Edwards, at that moment, was.
“Well, Pardner,” said Bob, later in the afternoon when Edwards, with
sincere expression of his gratitude, had left them to go to the cabin
which by common consent they now called his, “what do you make of him?”
Old Thad, rubbing his bald head, answered in--for him--an unusual vein:
“He’s a right likable chap, ain’t he, Bob? If I’d ever had a boy of my
own--that is, supposin’, first, I’d ever had a wife--I think I’d like
him to be jest about what I sense this lad is.” Then, as if alarmed at
this betrayal of what might be considered sentiment, the old prospector
suddenly stiffened, and added in his usual manner: “You can’t tell what
he is--some sort of a sneakin’ coyote, like as not, a-tryin’ to pass
hisself off as a harmless little cottontail. I’m for layin’ low an’
watchin’ his smoke mighty careful.”
“He’ll assay purty high-grade ore, I’m a-thinkin’,” said Bob.
“Time enough to invest when said assay has been made,” retorted Thad.
“It looks funny to me that a man of his eddication would be a-comin’ up
here in this old cañon to waste his time tryin’ to do somethin’ that he
don’t know no more about than a baby. Hard work, too; an’ anybody can
see he ain’t never done much of that.”
“He’s been sick,” returned Bob.
Thad grunted:
“Huh! If he was, it was a long time ago. Did you notice the weight of
that pack--He’s a totin’ it like it warn’t nothin’ at all.”
“He looks kind of pale when his hat is off,” said Bob.
To which Thad returned:
“He’s mighty perticler about where he was an’ what he was doin’ for a
livin’ before he blew into Tucson.”
“As for that,” returned Bob, “there’s been some things happen since me
an’ you was first pardners that we ain’t jest exactly a-wavin’ in the
wind--an’ look at us now.”
Thad’s dry retort was inevitable:
“Yes, jest look at us!”
Bob chuckled.
“_You_ ain’t so mighty much to look at, I admit.”
“Well,” said Thad, “as long as my gal thinks I’m all right, you----“
“My gal--_my_ gal,” snapped Bob. “Why have you allus got to be a-tryin’
to do me out of my rights. You know well as I do this is my week.”
“Excuse me, Pard,” the other apologized in all seriousness. “And that
leads me to remark that your gal didn’t appear altogether indifferent
an’ uninterested in this young prospectin’ neighbor of ours. You took
notice, too, I reckon.”
“I ain’t blind, be I?” answered Bob. “An’ why wouldn’t she take notice?
My gal ain’t no wizened-up old mummy like me an’ you. Why wouldn’t she
take notice of a fine, up-standin’ clean-eyed, straight-limbed,
fair-spoken youngster like him, heh? It’s nateral enough--an’ right
enough too, I reckon.”
Old Thad, with sudden rage, shook his long finger at his pardner and, in
a voice that was high pitched and trembling with emotion, cried:
“Nateral enough, you poor old, thick-headed, ossified, wreck of manhood,
you. Nateral enough! Holy Cats! It’s _too_ nateral, that’s what I’m a
meanin’, it’s _too_ nateral--whether it’s all right or all wrong--it’s
too almighty nateral--that’s what it is.”
* * * * *
Later, when Marta had returned to her home in the Cañon of Gold--when
the sun was down and the shadow of the approaching night was deepening
over desert and mesa and mountain--a cowboy on his way to the home ranch
stopped to listen as the music of Saint Jimmy’s flute came soft and
clear through the quiet of the evening, from that spot beneath the old
cedar tree, high on the mountain side. A wandering Mexican, camped near
Juniper Spring below, heard and crossed himself. Natachee the Indian who
was following a faint trail toward the wild upper cañon heard and
smiled. Jimmy’s mother heard, and her eyes filled with tears.