Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 22

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Time, for the next few years, passed swiftly and pleasantly. Djo grew to the responsive age and absorbed more and more of his father’s delighted attention. He was a great freshener. Things that had grown stale from constant accustomedness took on a new interest to Andy when he thought of them in relation to Djo. The fact that Djo had somehow acquired a sister broke the feminine concentration on himself; freed him fully to his father’s companionship. By his fourth year he was riding, and conducting, a horse of his own under the careful supervision of Andy or Panchito or some one of the trusted vaqueros. Not long thereafter he began to accompany them on their shorter excursions afield. Soon he was known to the whole valley as Don Largo’s shadow. He was amusingly like a shadow, made small by noon, in his similarity as well as in his invariable presence. He had Andy’s straight thick eyebrows; his figure gave promise of the same long supple strength. There were other similarities; but analyzed they proved not to be physical, but rather replicas of small mannerisms, for Djo adored his father. He had even the same steady, intent, unwinking way of looking at anyone or anything, a habit in Andy derived from the wilderness, but now reproduced in Djo as a “family trait.” Though his eyes were Andy’s, also, their furnishings were Carmel’s, long curling lashes, a bit of nature’s foofaraw more appropriate to a girl. Djo was a grave child when with Andy, and he was with Andy most of the time. At first this bothered his Uncle Ramón.

“He is like you, valedor,” he told Andy, “and that I like, all but one thing. He is serio, like you when I first see you, before you learn to be californio.”

“I am still serio, as you call it,” said Andy. “My face gets tired grinning all the time. It ain’t trained to it—like yours,” he added with a disarming smile. “I have to rest it.”

“The face!” Ramón shrugged aside the face. “That is as God has willed it, and some, like yours and Panchito’s, He cut from the oak so never they change at all. But it is here,”—he thumped his chest—“inside. There you are not serio any more as when I first saw you. You do not deceive me, valedor, with the face. Is it not so? Is there not something there inside that is warm, that sings?”

“I am happy, Ramón,” said Andy soberly. “And why not?” He looked about him slowly. “When first you saw me, amigo, I had nothing, and I had had much. Yes,” he insisted, “much.” Abruptly he shifted to Spanish. Strangely enough, when it came to the expression of sentiment he felt more at home in that language than in his mother tongue. Possibly in it he was less self-conscious. “I know what you would say. But over there—in the wild country of the mountains—I had friends, true, and dear to me as you are dear, Ramón mío. I was not then serio, I think, in the way you mean. The Blackfeet named me I-tam-api, and in their language that means Happiness. I lost them all, everyone. I lost even my name.”

“I know,” said Ramón.

“But the Above People led me to you, valedor.”

“The Above People?” repeated Ramón.

“That is what my Blackfeet called them, the——”

“The blessed saints,” cut in Ramón.

“So why should I not be happy? What more can a man need for happiness? A wife like Carmel, children, all this”—he swept his hand abroad—“friends. A friend.” He laid the hand briefly on Ramón’s arm.

“What I tell you!” cried Ramón. “That you do not fool me with the face! But this Djo. It is danger. So small a one to walk so grave and make no smile. If he is like that when he is so young! The young thing always he skip. If he is so serio when he is young, then when he grow up, what? You don’t want him come to be monk, eh?”

“If he’s as good a man as Father Seria,” said Andy.

Ramón searched his face anxiously for a moment.

“You fooling with me,” he decided with relief. “Just the same, he’s too serio.”

He worried over the matter off and on. Andy, accustomed to the contained taciturnity of the mountain men, forgot all about it. But before the conclusion of Ramón’s visit the young californio’s anxiety was lifted. He had had opportunity, unobserved, to inspect the conduct of Djo off duty, as it were, down at the milpas in free commerce with Benito’s numerous progeny. At once he sought out Andy in laughing relief.

“It is I who have been the fool and blind,” he confessed. “Djo is not serio, like I did think. No, no-no!” He slapped his thigh. “Ah, that one! No, I shall not tell you what I see. Djo is my amigo also. I mus’ not—what you call?—give him away! But he is not serio. No, no-no! But I tell you this, what I think. He try to make hisself all like you, all, all! And I think, amigo mío, you—what you call?—watch yourself, because everything you be like, he’s goin’ to be like that also!”

Ramón and Conchita departed the next day, after arranging for a jovial celebration by all of the festival of Santos Inocentes. Andy and Carmel stood together before the casa to see them off. By Andy’s side was Djo, very solemn, holding himself as tall and straight as he could. Ramón looked from one to the other and burst out laughing.

“Remember what I say, valedor!” he cried. “Watch yourself!”