Читать книгу Love of the Wild - Archie P. McKishnie - Страница 4

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Boy opened the door and passed silently inside. Beside the wide fireplace the long gaunt figure of a man was bent almost double. He had a thick shock of sandy hair tinged with gray. His bewhiskered face was hidden behind tobacco-smoke. A time-stained fiddle lay across his knee, his sock feet rested on the hickory fender, and the ruddy glow of the log fire threw a grotesque shadow of him against the whitewashed wall. A pair of high cowhide boots, newly greased and shiny, rested on his one side, while a piece of white second-growth hickory, crudely shaped to the form of an ax-handle, lay on the other. In one corner of the room a bunch of rusty rat-traps lay, and across deer antlers on the wall hung a long rifle, a short one, and a double-barreled fowling-piece.

The lad simply glanced at the man without speaking, and taking the dipper and wash-basin from the bench, passed outside again. When he re-entered, a girl of about eighteen years of age was pouring tea from a pewter pot into a tin cup. Her face was toward him, and a smile chased the shadow from the lad’s face as his eyes rested upon it. He dried his hands on the rough towel hanging on the door, and crossed over to the table. He drew back the stool, hesitated, and asked of the girl in a low tone:

“Is she sleepin’, Gloss?”

The girl shook her head. Her hair was chestnut-brown and hung below her waist in a long, thick braid. Her eyes were large, gray, and long-lashed like a fawn’s.

“You’d best not go in yet, Boy,” she said. “Granny’s readin’ her the chapter now.”

“I’ll just go in for a minute, I guess.”

He entered the inner room and stood gazing across at the low bed upon which a wasted form rested. An old woman sat beside the bed, a book in her blue-veined hands. When she closed the book, Boy advanced slowly and stood beside the bed.

“Are you feelin’ some better, ma?” he inquired gently.

“Yes, Boy, better. I’ll soon be well.”

He understood, and he held the hot hand, stretched out to him, in both his own.

“You’re not nigh as well as you was this mornin’,” he said hesitatingly; “I guess I know the reason.”

She did not reply, but lay with her eyes closed, and Boy saw tears creep down the white cheeks. He spoke fiercely.

“He threatened as he’d do it, and he did——”

He checked himself, biting the words off with a click of his white teeth.

“I know just what he told you, ma. I know all he told you, and he didn’t lie none. I haven’t been to his school. I can’t go to his school. I’ve tried my best to stay ’cause I knowed you wanted me to. But I go wild. I can’t stay still inside like that and be in prison. It chokes me, I tell you. I don’t want more learnin’ than I have. I can read and write and figure. You taught me that, and I learned from you ’cause—’cause——”

His voice faltered and feebly the mother drew him down beside her on the bed.

“Poor old Boy,” she soothed tenderly, smoothing the dark curls back from his forehead; then sorrowfully, “I wonder why you should hate that for which so many people are striving?”

“Don’t, ma—don’t speak about it. You know we talked it all over before. You called it enlightenment, you remember? I don’t want enlightenment. I hate it. I’ll fight it away from me, and I’ll have to fight it—and them.”

He shuddered, and she held him tight in her weak arms.

“Dear Boy,” she said, “it will be a useless struggle. You can’t hope to hold your little world. Now go, and God bless you. Kiss me good-night, Boy.”

He bent and kissed her on the forehead, then springing up crossed the room. At the door he halted.

“Yes, ma,” he said gayly, in response to her call.

“Did you meet the teacher?”

One moment he vacillated between love and truth. Once he had lied, uselessly, to save her. But he hated a liar. He went back to the bed slowly.

“Yes, I met him, and I told him that he best be leavin’ these parts.”

Her eyes rested upon him in mingled love and wonder.

“I don’t like—I don’t trust that man,” said the mother earnestly. “Now go, Boy, and God bless you.”

When Boy sought the table again the tea and meat were stone cold. He smiled at the girl, who was standing beside the fireplace, and she said teasingly:

“I told you you better not go.”

The man with the fiddle across his knees straightened up at her words, and he looked over at Boy with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Thought maybe you’d joined a flock of woodcock and gone south,” he remarked. “Wonder you can leave the bush long enough to get your meals. Where’ve you been, Boy?”

“Nowhere much,” answered the boy, looking hard at his plate.

“Well, we had that teacher chap over again to-night,” said the father, “—smart feller that.”

Boy glanced up quickly and caught a gleam of humor in the speaker’s blue eyes. Then he looked at the girl. She was laughing quietly.

“The teacher says that you’ve been absentin’ yourself from school,” went on the man. “I asked him if absentin’ was a regular habit in scholars same as swappin’ jack-knives, and you ought to have seen the look he gave me.

“ ‘It’s a punishable offense,’ says he.

“ ‘Well, I don’t mind you whalin’ Boy some,’ says I; ‘I’m sure he needs it.’

“ ‘I won’t whip a big boy like him,’ says he. ‘I don’t have to, and I won’t.’

“ ‘Well, I don’t know as I blame you for not wantin’ to,’ says I. ‘Boy’s some handy with his fists, bein’ a graduate in boxin’ of long Bill Paisley’s.’ ”

The big man stood up and stretched his six-foot-two figure with enjoyment. In his huge fist the old fiddle looked like a hand-mirror. He threw back his shaggy head and laughed so loudly that the burning log in the fireplace broke in twain and threw a shower of red and golden sparks up the wide chimney.

“When we were talkin’ and I was coaxin’ the visitor to set up to supper and make himself to home, who should drop in but Bill Paisley himself. Gosh, it was fun to see how he took in the teacher. ‘Nice night, sir,’ says Bill, bowin’ low and liftin’ off his cap. I shook my head at him, but he didn’t pay any attention, so I went on eatin’ and let ’em alone. Bill got out his pipe and felt in all his pockets, keepin’ his eyes right on the teacher and grinnin’ so foolish that I nearly choked on a pork-rind.

“ ‘Would you mind obligin’ me with a pipeful of Canada-Green?’ he asks; ‘I suppose you have a plug of twist in your pocket, sir?’

“The teacher frowned at him. ‘I don’t smoke Canada-Green,’ says he, short and crisp-like.

“ ‘Chaw, maybe?’ grinned Bill, puttin’ his pipe away and lickin’ his lips expectant.

“ ‘No, nor chaw—as you call it.’

“ ‘Dear me,’ sighed Bill, and after while he says, ‘dear me’ again.

“By and by Paisley limbered up and told the teacher he was right down glad to meet a man fearless enough to come to this wild place in the cause of learnin’.

“ ‘You’re a martyr, sir,’ says Bill, ‘a brave man, to come where so many dangers beset the paths. Swamp fevers that wither you up and ague that shakes your front teeth back where your back teeth are now and your back teeth where your front ones should be. There are black-snakes in these parts,’ says Bill, ‘that have got so used to bitin’ Injuns they never miss a stroke, and they’ll travel miles to get a whack at a white man, particularly a stranger,’ says he. ‘Then there be wolves here big as two-year-old steers, and they do get hungry when the winter sets in.’

“The teacher squirmed. ‘I’ll get used to all that,’ says he.

“ ‘Sure,’ agreed Bill, ‘but just the same it’s a good thing you’re a brave and a husky chap. Met any of our Injuns yet?’

“ ‘A few,’ said the young feller, lookin’ scared.

“ ‘Injuns are mighty queer reptiles,’ says Bill, ‘but you’ll get along with ’em all right if you humor ’em with presents and attend their pow-wows. Might be a good idea to let on there’s Injun blood in you. But whatever you do, if you should happen to have a little nigger blood in you, don’t tell ’em. Injuns naturally hate niggers.’

“Bill got up and went in to say ‘howdy’ to ma. ‘She wants to see you, mister,’ he says to the teacher, when he came out. ‘I suppose you’ve learned, among other things, that there’s such a thing as talkin’ too much, so be careful.’

“When Bill went away Gloss and me sat down and listened to what Simpson and your ma had to say to each other. He told her all about you stayin’ away from school and a lot of things that seemed to worry her. I thought it queer, ’cause ever since he has been comin’ across here we’ve tried to make him feel at home. But I just put it down that he had it in for you, Boy, on some account or other.”

Boy glanced at the girl and her eyes fell.

“If it hadn’t been our own house I would have throwed him out,” McTavish declared.

“I met him down by the creek as I was comin’ home,” said Boy absently. “I told him he’d best be leavin’ these parts.”

The girl came over and leaned across the table toward him.

“Boy,” she said, “do you think he will go?”

“Would you rather he’d stay?” he asked quickly.

“No.”

“Then he’ll go.”

She passed from the room, and Boy sat huddled before the table, his head in his hands, his eyes fastened upon the guns hanging on the wall. From the shadows Big McTavish’s fiddle was wailing “Ye Banks and Braes.” The fire died and the long-armed shadows reached and groped about the room, touching the dried venison strips and the hams and bacon hanging from the ceiling, glancing from the oily green hides stretched for curing on the walls, hovering above the bundles of pelts and piles of traps in the corners of the room. But Boy’s mind was not on the trapping activities that soon would bestir the times once more. In his soul he was pondering over the question of his new unrest: a question which must be answered sooner or later by somebody.