Part 34 (1/2)

”Ah!” breathed Cary. The two walked on, now in sun, now in shade, upon the quiet road. The drouth was broken. There had been a torrential rain, then two days of suns.h.i.+ne. A cool wind now stirred the treetops; the mountains drew closer in the crystal air, and the washed fields renewed their green. So bright and sunny was the morning that the late summer wore the air of spring. Cary stood still beside a log, huge and mossy, that lay beside the road. ”Let us rest here a moment,” he said, and, taking his seat, began to draw in the dust before him with the b.u.t.t of his whip. ”I do not remember seeing you that day. I did not know that you were in Richmond.”

”I was there,” answered Adam cheerfully, ”on business.” He took an acorn from the ground and balanced it upon a brown forefinger. ”It's a handsome place--Lynch's--and, my faith, one sees the best of company! I was there with Lewis Rand.”

”Ah!”

The sound was sharp, and long like an indrawn breath. Adam, who could read the tones of a man's voice, glanced aside and remembered the quarrel. ”Thin ice there, and crackling twigs!” he thought. ”Look where you set your moccasin, Golden-Tongue!” Aloud he said, ”You and your brother came in out of the snow, and read your letters by the fire. It had fallen thick the day before.”

”Yes, I remember. A heavy fall all day, but at night it cleared.”

”Yes,” went on the other blithely. ”I was at Lewis Rand's on Shockoe Hill, and when I walked home, the stars were s.h.i.+ning. What's the matter, sir?”

”Nothing. Why?”

”I thought,” quoth Adam, ”that some varmint had stung you.” He looked thoughtfully at the acorn. ”You are a schollard, Mr. Cary. Is the whole oak, root, branch, and seed, in the acorn--bound to come out just that way?”

”So they say,” answered Cary. ”And in the invisible acorn of that oak a second tree, and that second holds a third, and the third a fourth, and so on through the magic forest. Consequences to the thousandth generation. You were saying that you were at Mr. Rand's the night of the nineteenth of February.”

”Was I?” asked Adam, with coolness. ”Oh, yes! I went over to talk with him about a buffalo skin and some antlers of elk that he wanted for Roselands--and the stars were s.h.i.+ning when I came away.” To himself he said, ”Now why did he start like that a moment back? It wasn't because the snow had stopped and the stars were s.h.i.+ning. Where was _he_ that night?”

Cary drew a circle in the dust with the handle of his whip. ”You were at Lynch's with Mr. Rand the next afternoon. And immediately after that you returned to the West?”

Adam nodded. The acorn was yet poised upon his finger, but his keen blue eyes were for the other's face and form, bent over the drawing in the dusty road. ”Ay, West I went,” he said cheerfully. ”I'm just a born wanderer! I can't any more stay in one town than a bird can stay on one bush.”

”A born wanderer,” said Cary pleasantly, ”is almost always a born good fellow. How long this time will be your stay in Albemarle?”

”Why, that's as may be,” answered Adam, with vagueness. ”I'm mighty fond of this country in the fall of the year, and I've a hankering for an old-time Christmas at home--But, my faith; wanderers never know when the fit will take them! It may be to-morrow, and it may be next year.”

”You and Mr. Rand are old friends?”

”You may say that,” exclaimed the hunter. ”There's a connection somewhere between the Gaudylocks and the Rands, and I knew Gideon better than most men. As for Lewis, I reckon there was a time when I was almost his only friend. I've stood between him and many a beating, and 'twas I that taught him to shoot. A fine place he's making out of Roselands!”

”Yes,” agreed Cary, with a quick sigh; ”a beautiful place. The West is in a ferment just now, is it not? One hears much talk of dissatisfaction.”

”Why, all that sort of thing is told me when I come home,” said Adam.

”The Indians call such idle speech talk of singing birds. My faith, I think all the singing birds in the Mississippi Territory have flown East! In the West we don't listen to them. That's a fine mare you're riding, sir! You should see the wild horses start up from the prairie gra.s.s.”

”That would be worth seeing. Have you ever, in your wanderings, come across Aaron Burr?”

Adam regarded the other side of the acorn. ”Aaron Burr! Why, I wouldn't say that I mayn't have seen him somewhere. A man who traps and trades, and hunts and fishes, up and down a thousand miles of the Mississippi River is bound to come across a mort of men. But 'twould be by accident.

He's a gentleman and a talker, and he was the Vice-President. I reckon he runs with the Governor and the General and the gentleman-planter and the New Orleans ladies.” Adam laughed genially. ”I know a red lip or two in New Orleans myself, but they're not ladies! and I drink with the soldiers, but not with the General. What's your interest, sir, in Aaron Burr?”

”The common interest,” said Cary, rising. ”When you quit Albemarle this time, you quit it alone?”

Gaudylock tossed aside the acorn. ”That is my fortune,” he answered coolly.

Cary swung himself into his saddle. ”The woods, I see, teach but half the Spartan learning. We'll part here, I think, unless you'll come by Greenwood?”

”Thank you kindly, sir, but I've a bit of a woodsman's job to look after at Roselands. What was the Spartan learning?”

”You are going,” replied the other, ”to the house of a gentleman who knows the cla.s.sics. Ask him. Good-day!”