Читать книгу The Long Rifle - Stewart Edward White - Страница 23

Table of Contents

Days passed, but the friendship so auspiciously begun seemed to have stopped at that beginning. Andrew, as he had anticipated, never found the leisure to go to the city; the season was one of hard close work on the farm and Birkholm, Andrew’s stepfather, had no intention of hiring an ounce more than the necessary labor. But Russell did not repeat his visit, and the country boy in consequence nursed a dull ache of disappointment, which he carefully concealed. He had counted on it more than he would have acknowledged.

Thus for close on two weeks. Then late of an afternoon the beautiful saddle horse came up the road; flew like a bird in a breath-taking leap over the fence; and, with scarcely diminished speed, clumped through the fresh-plowed land to where Andrew was scattering the seed. Russell was breathless: the words tumbled from him in excitement.

“I’ve won out!” he cried jubilantly. “Had the very devil of a row. They came near to cutting me off with a shilling once or twice; and I’d certainly have been on bread and water, if I’d been a little younger. Lord, what a rumpus! You’d think I’d stolen the mint. I’d have come out before but I had to finish it. And now it’s done. But I’ve got to leave this very night, for I’m to go out with Chouteau, and he cannot delay——”

He broke off in a laugh at Andy’s look of bewilderment.

“I’m not talking very clearly, am I? What I’m trying to say is that I have had a most fearful fight with the family, but I have won, and I don’t have to go into the Business. It wasn’t pleasant, I assure you. But we’ve finally compromised. Chouteau happened to be here on some business with the firm, and it is agreed I go clerk with him for a year. So we start to-morrow. But I couldn’t go without seeing you, and telling you. Not after the other day. I wish you were going. Look here; why not? I’m sure I can fix it.”

He leaned forward in the saddle, his mobile face aglow. The horse arched its neck against the bit, and blew softly through its nostrils, and pawed at the soft and yielding earth. Andrew, from his lower elevation, thought he had never seen a more vital and romantic a figure. But his feeling was, confusedly, rather of a bird poised gloriously for flight than of a boy on a horse. And a wave of desolation darkened him, for it seemed to him that the momentary gleam of a brightness in his life was being extinguished into darkness. Nevertheless at the same instant he steadied to acceptance, for that was an essence of his steadfast nature.

“Come on!” urged Russell, afire with the idea.

Andy shook his head.

“I’d like nothing better than to be with you—anywhere. Anywhere but here. But I can’t. I’m not of age.”

“Nonsense,” Russell brushed this aside impatiently; then in reluctant recollection of the rigid laws of the time: “Anyway, nobody will know where you are.”

“I’ve no money.”

“I have plenty.”

“There’s Grandmother.”

Russell was silenced for a moment by this. Before he could gather his wits another voice broke in on them.

“Who are you?” it demanded roughly.

Both boys turned to face the speaker. John Birkholm stood surveying them. He carried his ox goad, and his harsh fanatical face was dark with anger.

“What do you here, you bedizened popinjay, trespassing in my fields? Have you no sense in your head, that you ride a horse on fresh-sowed lands?”

Russell flushed deeply, looked back at the soft earth gouged deep by the upfling of his mount’s swift gallop; at the wide trampling of its pawing hoofs.

“I am sorry, sir. I did not think——”

But the older man would have none of it. He advanced a step.

“And what mean you holding my son in vain talk?” he demanded further, but still with repression. “Think you in your pampered idleness that there is no work to be done?”

Russell’s head was up. He stared coolly at the angry man.

“I told you I am sorry, sir, for what damage I have done. If you will name it, I will make it good. As to the other, I but paused to say farewell to my friend.”

“I heard ye,” replied Birkholm grimly, “uttering the counsels of hell. ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’——” His rage burst through its fragile governance. “Now get off my lad!” he cried. “I’ll hear no words from ye! Go the way you came, and do not show your face here again!”

Then, as Russell hesitated, half in bewilderment, half in affront, he brought the heavy ox goad with a sounding crack across the horse’s rump.

The animal reared, leaped violently sideways, all but unsaddling its rider. By a desperate effort of magnificent horsemanship Russell retained his seat; by another he prevented the plunging beast from bolting. His face was contorted. For an instant he seemed on the point of launching his mount in an attempt to ride the man down. The latter grasped the ox goad in both hands. For a moment the two faced one another. Then Russell’s expression changed to one of disdainful mockery. He bent low in his saddle, and swept his hat from his head.

“I thank you, sir, for your most courteous entertainment,” he said suavely.

With a turn of the wrist he whirled the horse in its tracks and gave it its head. Across the field they raced, the clods flying; over the fence they flew; and so away up the lane out of sight.

“You devil’s whelp!” Birkholm shouted after him. “If I see you again, I’ll have the law on you!”

For several seconds he stared after the retreating figure, then turned savagely on Andrew.

“Now get back to work, you!” he began, and stopped.

Andy, his face white and set, his hands clenched at his side, was staring at him steadily. For near a full half-minute he stood thus. Then very deliberately he undid from his shoulders the apron sack that contained the seed grain; very deliberately and carefully he laid it on the ground. Without a word he turned away.

“What are you doing? Pick that up. Get on with your work!” commanded Birkholm.

Andy paid him no attention.

“Disobey me, will you!” roared the older man, beside himself. He raised the ox goad once more and brought its lash across the youth’s shoulders. The latter spun around. From beneath the straight black line of his brows his eyes blazed. After a moment he again turned away. Birkholm watched him uncertainly, fingered the ox goad in nerveless hands; at length shrugged his shoulders, picked up the seed sack, and began to strap it on himself.

“I’ll tend to you later, young man,” he promised himself; but uneasily.