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[Illustration: HE DREW REIN AND LOOKED AT THE GREAT RANGE TO
THE SOUTHEAST.]
THE EAGLE'S HEART
HAMLIN GARLAND
SUNSET EDITION
HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HAMLIN GARLAND
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CONTENTS
PART I
I.--HIS YOUTH 1
II.--HIS LOVE AFFAIRS 11
III.--THE YOUNG EAGLE STRIKES 23
IV.--THE TRIAL 35
V.--THE EAGLE'S EYES GROW DIM 51
VI.--THE CAGE OPENS 72
VII.--ON THE WING 83
VIII.--THE UPWARD TRAIL 96
IX.--WAR ON THE CANNON BALL 123
X.--THE YOUNG EAGLE MOUNTS 143
XI.--ON THE ROUND-UP 157
PART II
XII.--THE YOUNG EAGLE FLUTTERS THE DOVE-COTE 175
XIII.--THE YOUNG EAGLE DREAMS OF A MATE 199
XIV.--THE YOUNG EAGLE RETURNS TO HIS EYRIE 220
PART III
XV.--THE EAGLE COMPLETES HIS CIRCLE 233
XVI.--AGAIN ON THE ROUND-UP 250
XVII.--MOSE RETURNS TO WAGON WHEEL 265
XVIII.--THE EAGLE GUARDS THE SHEEP 283
XIX.--THE EAGLE ADVENTURES INTO STRANGE LANDS 316
XX.--A DARK DAY WITH A GLOWING SUNSET 339
XXI.--CONCLUSION 363
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THE EAGLE'S HEART
PART I
CHAPTER I
HIS YOUTH
Harold was about ten years of age when his father, the Rev. Mr. Excell,
took the pastorate of the First Church in Rock River. Many of the people
in his first congregation remarked upon "the handsome lad." The clear
brown of his face, his big yellow-brown eyes, his slender hands, and the
grace of his movements gave him distinction quite aside from that
arising from his connection with the minister.
Rev. John Excell was a personable man himself. He was tall and broad
shouldered, with abundant brown hair and beard, and a winning smile. His
eyes were dark and introspective, but they could glow like sunlit topaz,
or grow dim with tears, as his congregation had opportunity to observe
during this first sermon--but they were essentially sad eyes.
Mrs. Excell, a colorless little woman who retained only the dim outline
of her girlhood's beauty, sat gracelessly in her pew, but her
stepdaughter, Maud, by her side, was carrying to early maturity a dainty
grace united with something strong and fine drawn from her father. She
had his proud lift of the head.
"What a fine family!" whispered the women from pew to pew under cover of
the creaking fans.
In the midst of the first sermon, a boy seated in front of Harold gave a
shrill whoop of agony and glared back at the minister's son with
distorted face, and only the prompt action on the part of both mothers
prevented a clamorous encounter over the pew. Harold had stuck the head
of a pin in the toe of his boot and jabbed his neighbor in the calf of
the leg. It was an old trick, but it served well.
The minister did not interrupt his reading, but a deep flush of hot
blood arose to his face, and the lids of his eyes dropped to shut out
the searching gaze of his parishioners, as well as to close in a red
glare of anger. From that moment Harold was known as "that preacher's
boy," the intention being to convey by significant inflections and a
meaning smile that he filled the usual description of a minister's
graceless son.
Harold soon became renowned in his own world. He had no hard-fought
battles, though he had scores of quarrels, for he scared his opponents
by the suddenness and the intensity of his rage, which was fairly
demoniacal in fury.
"You touch me and I'll _kill you_," he said in a low voice to the fat
boy whose leg he had jabbed, and his bloodless face and blazing eyes
caused the boy to leap frenziedly away. He carried a big knife, his
playmates discovered, and no one, not even youths grown to man's
stature, cared to attempt violence with him. One lad, struck with a
stone from his cunning right hand, was carried home in a carriage.
Another, being thrown by one convulsive effort, fell upon his arm,
breaking it at the elbow. In less than a week every boy in Rock River
knew something of Harry Excell's furious temper, and had learned that it
was safer to be friend than enemy to him.
He had his partisans, too, for his was a singularly attractive nature
when not enraged. He was a hearty, buoyant playmate, and a good scholar
five days out of six, but he demanded a certain consideration at all
times. An accidental harm he bore easily, but an intentional
injury--that was flame to powder.
The teachers in the public school each had him in turn, as he ran
rapidly up the grades. They all admired him unreservedly, but most of
them were afraid of him, so that he received no more decisive check than
at home. He was subject to no will but his own.
The principal was a kind and scholarly old man, who could make a boy cry
with remorse and shame by his Christlike gentleness, and Harold also
wept in his presence, but that did not prevent him from fairly knocking
out the brains of the next boy who annoyed him. In his furious, fickle
way he often defended his chums or smaller boys, so that it was not easy
to condemn him entirely.
There were rumors from the first Monday after Harold's pin-sticking
exploit that the minister had "lively sessions" with his boy. The old
sexton privately declared that he heard muffled curses and shrieks and
the sound of blows rising from the cellar of the parsonage--but this
story was hushed on his lips. The boy admittedly needed thrashing, but
the deacons of the church would rather not have it known that the
minister used the rod himself.
The rumors of the preacher's stern measures softened the judgment of
some of the townspeople, who shifted some of the blame of the son to the
shoulders of the sire. Harry called his father "the minister," and
seemed to have no regard for him beyond a certain respect for his
physical strength. When boys came by and raised the swimming sign he
replied, "Wait till I ask 'the minister.'" This was considered "queer"
in him.
He ignored his stepmother completely, but tormented his sister Maud in a
thousand impish ways. He disarranged her neatly combed hair. He threw
mud on her dress and put carriage grease on her white stockings on
picnic day. He called her "chiny-thing," in allusion to her pretty round
cheeks and clear complexion, and yet he loved her and would instantly
fight for her, and no one else dared tease her or utter a word to annoy
her. She was fourteen years of age when Mr. Excell came to town, and at
sixteen considered herself a young lady. As suitors began to gather
about her, they each had a vigorous trial to undergo with Harold; it was
indeed equivalent to running the gantlet. Maud was always in terror of
him on the evenings when she had callers.
One day he threw a handful of small garter snakes into the parlor where
his sister sat with young Mr. Norton. Maud sprang to a chair screaming
wildly, while her suitor caught the snakes and threw them from the
window just as the minister's tall form darkened the doorway.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
Maud, eager to shield Harry, said: "Oh, nothing much, papa--only one of
Harry's jokes."
"Tell me," said the minister to the young man, who, with a painful smile
on his face, stammeringly replied:
"Harry thought he'd scare me, that's all. It didn't amount to much."
"I insist on knowing the truth, Mr. Norton," the minister sternly
insisted.
As Norton described the boy's action, Mr. Excell's face paled and his
lips set close. His eyes became terrible to meet, and the beaded sweat
of his furious anger stood thick on his face. "Thank you," he said with
ominous calmness, and turning without another word, went to his study.
His wife, stealing up, found the door locked and her husband walking the
floor like a roused tiger. White and shaking with a sort of awe, Mrs.
Excell ran down to the kitchen where Harold crouched and said:
"Harold, dear, you'd better go out to Mr. Burns' right away."
Harold understood perfectly what she meant and fled. For hours neither
Mrs. Excell nor Maud spoke above a whisper. When the minister came down
to tea he made no comment on Harry's absence. He had worn out his
white-hot rage, but was not yet in full control of himself.
He remained silent, and kept his eyes on his plate during the meal.
The last time he had punished Harold the scene narrowly escaped a tragic
ending. When the struggle ended Harold lay on the floor, choked into
insensibility.
When he had become calm and Harold was sleeping naturally in his own
bed, the father knelt at his wife's knee and prayed God for grace to
bear his burden, and said:
"Mary, keep us apart when we are angry. He is like me: he has my
fiendish temper. No matter what I say or do, keep us apart till I am
calm. By God's grace I will never touch his flesh again in anger."
Nevertheless he dared not trust himself to refer to the battles which
shamed them all. The boy was deeply repentant, but uttered no word of
it. And so they grew ever more silent and vengeful in their intercourse.
Harold early developed remarkable skill with horses, and once rode in
the races at the County Fair, to the scandal of the First Church. He not
only won the race, but was at once offered a great deal of money to go
with the victor to other races. To his plea the father, with deep-laid
diplomacy, replied:
"Very well; study hard this year and next year you may go." But the boy
was just at the age to take on weight rapidly, and by the end of the
year was too heavy, and the owner of the horse refused to repeat his
offer. Harold did not fail to remark how he had been cheated, but said
nothing more of his wish to be a jockey.
He was also fond of firearms, and during his boyhood his father tried in
every way to keep weapons from him, and a box in his study contained a
contraband collection of his son's weapons. There was a certain pathos
in this little arsenal, for it gave evidence of considerable labor on
the boy's part, and expressed much of buoyant hope and restless energy.
There were a half-dozen Fourth of July pistols, as many cannons for
crackers, and three attempts at real guns intended to explode powder and
throw a bullet. Some of them were "toggled up" with twine, and one or
two had handles rudely carved out of wood. Two of them were genuine
revolvers which he had managed to earn by working in the harvest field
on the Burns' farm.
From his fifteenth year he was never without a shotgun and revolver. The
shotgun was allowed, but the revolver was still contraband and kept
carefully concealed. On Fourth of July he always helped to fire the
anvil and fireworks, for he was deft and sure and quite at home with
explosives. He had acquired great skill with both gun and pistol as
early as his thirteenth year, and his feats of marksmanship came now and
then to the ears of his father.
The father and son were in open warfare. Harold submitted to every
command outwardly, but inwardly vowed to break all restraint which he
considered useless or unjust.
His great ambition was to acquire a "mustang pony," for all the
adventurous spirits of the dime novels he had known carried revolvers
and rode mustangs. He did not read much, but when he did it was always
some tale of fighting. He was too restless and active to continue at a
book of his own accord for any length of time, but he listened
delightedly to any one who consented to read for him. When his sister
Maud wished to do him a great favor and to enjoy his company (for she
loved him dearly) she read Daredevil Dan, or some similar story, while
he lay out on his stomach in the grass under the trees, with restless
feet swinging like pendulums. At such times his face was beautiful with
longing, and his eyes became dark and dreamy. "I'm going there, Beauty,"
he would say as Maud rolled out the word _Colorado_ or _Brazos_. "I'm
going there. I won't stay here and rot. I'll go, you'll see, and I'll
have a big herd of cattle, too."
His gentlest moments were those spent with his sister in the fields or
under the trees. As he grew older he became curiously tender and
watchful of her. It pleased him to go ahead of her through the woods, to
pilot the way, and to help her over ditches or fences. He loved to lead
her into dense thickets and to look around and say: "There, isn't this
wild, though? You couldn't find your way out if it wasn't for me, could
you?" And she, to carry out the spirit of the story, always shuddered
and said, "Don't leave me to perish here."
Once, as he lay with his head in the grass, he suddenly said: "Can't you
hear the Colorado roar?"
The wind was sweeping over the trees, and Maud, eager to keep him in
this gentle mood, cried: "I hear it; it is a wonderful river, isn't it?"
He did not speak again for a moment.
"Oh, I want to be where there is nobody west of me," he said, a look of
singular beauty on his face. "Don't you?"
"N--no, I don't," answered Maud. "But, then, I'm a girl, you know; we're
afraid of wild things, most of us."
"Dot Burland isn't."
"Oh, she only pretends; she wants you to think she's brave."
"That's a lie." He said it so savagely that Maud hastened to apologize.