Читать книгу The Hermit of Gordon's Creek - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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Hal saw the old man as the train rolled into Gordon’s Creek. Tall, stoop-shouldered, with snow-white hair and beard, he stood well away from the waiting group, a profusion of rags. His eyes were fixed greedily upon the wiry little station agent who was hurrying toward the mail car.

In the next moment Hal and his Uncle Denis were claimed by their host, Richard Holliday, and his daughter Lee, who welcomed them with all the charm of her sixteen summers.

It was typical of the fiery-haired Hal to forget everything else when Adventure pointed his way. And somehow the picturesque old man seemed to embody that very spirit. He might have been the only figure on the Montana horizon as far as the impetuous young man was concerned.

“What I’d like to know, Mr. Holliday,” Hal said with all the naïveté of his nineteen years, “is where Santa Claus hails from? Movie actor or hermit, which?”

“Hal has a weakness for odd-looking people,” Mr. Denis Keen explained to the ranch owner, whimsically. “The funny part of it is—they usually turn out to be as odd as they look.”

Mr. Holliday chuckled merrily and looked past the ramshackle old station down the mud-covered platform. “Humph,” he said in his pleasant bass voice, “you mean Old Man Winters, huh? I don’t know whether or not you’d call him a hermit. He avoids people as much as it’s possible—even me. No, he’s not a movie actor, either. To tell you the truth, no one in these parts can give you much information about the poor old fellow. He’s been living in a deserted old cabin up in the hills. It’s about five miles from my ranch. He just sort of dropped out of nowhere in particular about eleven or twelve years ago and he’s been up there ever since.”

“And as usual, Papa,” Lee said smilingly, “you’ve forgotten the most important thing about Mr. Winters. It’s the one thing that would interest Hal.”

Hal smiled gratefully at the khaki clad girl. “What?” he asked anxiously. “Murderer? Escaped convict?”

Lee Holliday’s brown eyes fairly danced and she laughed lightly. “Nothing as startling as that,” she said when her mirth had subsided. “The poor old man can’t furnish you with any such thrill; he merely comes down here looking for a letter.”

“Every day,” said a voice at their side. “But he never gits it. Now, shall I take the gentlemen’s luggage, Mr. Holliday?”

“Oh, so it’s you, Kip, eh?” said the ranch owner. “Yes, yes, take it and we’ll be going on. This is Kip, Denis—and Hal, you’ll be especially interested to know Kip. He can talk adventure with you by the hour—he and my other man, Pedro, were pals in the late war. Both airmen—Kip’s as good a pilot as you’d want and Pedro’s a mechanic. They’ve both a store of thrills to tell whenever you want to hear them.”

Hal shook the long, thin hand of Kip enthusiastically, and surveyed his tall, angular frame with youthful admiration. Nothing heroic looking to be sure, he was forced to admit to himself, but the fellow had an unusual smile, a perpetual one.

“Why does that old fellow come down here every day looking for a letter if he never gets it?” Hal insisted.

“That’s th’ mystery ’bout him,” Kip answered, picking up the luggage and going toward Mr. Holliday’s comfortable-looking car. “Don’t git all fussed up ’bout it, young feller. If yuh ask me, I think he’s jest a lazy hobo,” he added with a chuckle.

“Pedro may be a grouch,” said Lee when Kip was out of hearing, “but I prefer him any time. Kip takes everything as a joke. Even that poor old man.”

Hal stood straight and tall and still, and his light blue eyes blinked inquiringly as he watched the patient attitude of the old man just down the platform. “Oh boy,” he said with boyish sincerity, “that gets me—you know it? Every day—looking for a letter he never gets. I’d like to ask him about it—you know it?”

“I’ve thought of that ever since he came here,” said Lee. “I was quite a little girl then, but it affected me just the same way as it’s affecting you now. I’ve never been able to get it out of my head but that somebody could gain his confidence and learn his secret of the letter.”

Hal’s great mass of wavy red hair tumbled precipitately down upon his forehead and he shook it back in place with a vigorous nod. “But nobody has, huh?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she answered, looking toward her father’s car. There was a gleam of defiance in her brown eyes for a moment, then: “Kip and Pedro came out here to Papa just before old Mr. Winters came. I think Papa would have believed that the poor old man really had terrible trouble if it hadn’t been for Kip. But no, right away he talked Papa out of sympathy with the story and convinced him that it was all a pose and a bluff and that Mr. Winter’s was nothing but a lazy old hobo. You heard him say that.”

“Sure, I did,” Hal agreed earnestly. “He couldn’t make me believe that, though. Hang it all, I could see there was something sad about him when the train came in. Did he tell your father in the beginning that he had had terrible trouble?”

“Yes,” said Lee, and nodded in response to her father’s summons. “He said he came to Montana to forget his troubles and that all he wanted was a little work to do while he was waiting for a letter that he expected. That was twelve years ago and as Kip told you the letter has never come, but he doesn’t give up hope. You can see for yourself.”

Hal was indignant. “And they call him a bluff when they can see how he comes down here every day. . . .”

“Kip says he does that because he isn’t quite right,” Lee interposed. “He and Pedro take turns in going up to the old man’s cabin with food. They both say that Mr. Winters hasn’t talked of that trouble again. Papa’s kind to him, of course—he doesn’t let him do any more work because of his feeble condition. And he sends up the best food we can get. But still, I don’t know—I always have the feeling that they could have helped him out of his loneliness if they had really tried to show sympathy and interest in the beginning. Don’t you think so, Hal?”

Hal did think so. “I’m going to talk to him—you know it?” he announced, warming considerably to the subject.

“I’ll go with you tomorrow and show you the way,” Lee said enthusiastically. “At last there’s someone interested in my pet romance or whatever you want to call it.”

“And how!” Hal agreed, unable to take his bright young eyes from the pathetic looking old figure on the platform. “Look, he’s waiting for the station agent to sort over that mail—poor old guy.”

“Yes, but I’m afraid we can’t wait,” said Lee at a second summons from her father. “Papa and Mr. Keen are getting impatient with our gossiping, I guess, and Kip’s had the car started this long time. There’s one consolation—we have the whole summer in which to find out Mr. Winters’ secret.”

“I’ll find it out,” said Hal with youthful superiority, “and it won’t take the whole summer either!”

And by this same token did Hal Keen enmesh himself in a strange web of mystery—the mystery of Gordon’s Creek.