Part 40 (1/2)

”Another o' these no-'count Mexicans, by thunder!” thought Jeff Hyer to himself. ”Blamed ef I'd lived in a country all my life, ef I wouldn't know better'n to git caught out in such weather's this!” And as he put the crying babe into his wife's arms, he said half impatiently, ”Ef I'd knowed 't wuz Mexicans, Ri, I wouldn't ev' gone out ter 'um. They're more ter hum 'n I am, 'n these yer tropicks.”

”Naow, Jeff, yer know yer wouldn't let ennythin' in shape ev a human creetur go peris.h.i.+n' past aour fire sech weather's this,” replied the woman, as she took the baby, which recognized the motherly hand at its first touch, and ceased crying.

”Why, yer pooty, blue-eyed little thing!” she exclaimed, as she looked into the baby's face. ”I declar, Jos, think o' sech a mite's this bein'

aout'n this weather. I'll jest warm up some milk for it this minnit.”

”Better see't th' mother fust, Ri,” said Jeff, leading, half carrying, Ramona into the hut. ”She's nigh abaout froze stiff!”

But the sight of her baby safe and smiling was a better restorative for Ramona than anything else, and in a few moments she had fully recovered.

It was in a strange group she found herself. On a mattress, in the corner of the hut, lay a young man apparently about twenty-five, whose bright eyes and flushed cheeks told but too plainly the story of his disease. The woman, tall, ungainly, her face gaunt, her hands hardened and wrinkled, gown ragged, shoes ragged, her dry and broken light hair wound in a careless, straggling knot in her neck, wisps of it flying over her forehead, was certainly not a prepossessing figure. Yet spite of her careless, unkempt condition, there was a certain gentle dignity in her bearing, and a kindliness in her glance, which won trust and warmed hearts at once. Her pale blue eyes were still keen-sighted; and as she fixed them on Ramona, she thought to herself, ”This ain't no common Mexican, no how.” ”Be ye movers?” she said.

Ramona stared. In the little English she knew, that word was not included. ”Ah, Senora,” she said regretfully, ”I cannot talk in the English speech; only in Spanish.”

”Spanish, eh? Yer mean Mexican? Jos, hyar, he kin talk thet. He can't talk much, though; 'tain't good fur him; his lungs is out er kilter.

Thet's what we're bringin' him hyar fur,--fur warm climate! 'pears like it, don't it?” and she chuckled grimly, but with a side glance of ineffable tenderness at the sick man. ”Ask her who they be, Jos,” she added.

Jos lifted himself on his elbow, and fixing his s.h.i.+ning eyes on Ramona, said in Spanish, ”My mother asks if you are travellers?”

”Yes,” said Ramona. ”We have come all the way from San Diego. We are Indians.”

”Injuns!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jos's mother. ”Lord save us, Jos! Hev we reelly took in Injuns? What on airth--Well, well, she's fond uv her baby's enny white woman! I kin see thet; an', Injun or no Injun, they've got to stay naow. Yer couldn't turn a dog out 'n sech weather's this. I bet thet baby's father wuz white, then. Look at them blue eyes.”

Ramona listened and looked intently, but could understand nothing.

Almost she doubted if the woman were really speaking English. She had never before heard so many English sentences without being able to understand one word. The Tennessee drawl so altered even the commonest words, that she did not recognize them. Turning to Jos, she said gently, ”I know very little English. I am so sorry I cannot understand. Will it tire you to interpret to me what your mother said?”

Jos was as full of humor as his mother. ”She wants me to tell her what you wuz sayin',” he said, ”I allow, I'll only tell her the part on't she'll like best.--My mother says you can stay here with us till the storm is over,” he said to Ramona.

Swifter than lightning, Ramona had seized the woman's hand and carried it to her heart, with an expressive gesture of grat.i.tude and emotion.

”Thanks! thanks! Senora!” she cried.

”What is it she calls me, Jos?” asked his mother.

”Senora,” he replied. ”It only means the same as lady.”

”Shaw, Jos! You tell her I ain't any lady. Tell her everybody round where we live calls me 'Aunt Ri,' or 'Mis Hyer;' she kin call me whichever she's a mind to. She's reel sweet-spoken.”

With some difficulty Jos explained his mother's disclaimer of the t.i.tle of Senora, and the choice of names she offered to Ramona.

Ramona, with smiles which won both mother and son, repeated after him both names, getting neither exactly right at first trial, and finally said, ”I like 'Aunt Ri' best; she is so kind, like aunt, to every one.”

”Naow, ain't thet queer, Jos,” said Aunt Ri, ”aout here 'n thes wilderness to ketch sumbody sayin' thet,--jest what they all say ter hum? I donno's I'm enny kinder'n ennybody else. I don't want ter see ennybody put upon, nor noways sufferin', ef so be's I kin help; but thet ain't ennythin' stronary, ez I know. I donno how ennybody could feel enny different.”

”There's lots doos, mammy,” replied Jos, affectionately. ”Yer'd find out fast enuf, ef yer went raound more. There's mighty few's good's you air ter everybody.”

Ramona was crouching in the corner by the fire, her baby held close to her breast. The place which at first had seemed a haven of warmth, she now saw was indeed but a poor shelter against the fearful storm which raged outside. It was only a hut of rough boards, carelessly knocked together for a shepherd's temporary home. It had been long unused, and many of the boards were loose and broken. Through these crevices, at every blast of the wind, the fine snow swirled. On the hearth were burning a few sticks of wood, dead cottonwood branches, which Jef Hyer had hastily collected before the storm reached its height. A few more sticks lay by the hearth. Aunt Ri glanced at them anxiously. A poor provision for a night in the snow. ”Be ye warm, Jos?” she asked.

”Not very, mammy,” he said; ”but I ain't cold, nuther; an' thet's somethin'.”

It was the way in the Hyer family to make the best of things; they had always possessed this virtue to such an extent, that they suffered from it as from a vice. There was hardly to be found in all Southern Tennessee a more contented, s.h.i.+ftless, ill-bestead family than theirs.

But there was no grumbling. Whatever went wrong, whatever was lacking, it was ”jest like aour luck,” they said, and did nothing, or next to nothing, about it. Good-natured, affectionate, humorous people; after all, they got more comfort out of life than many a family whose surface conditions were incomparably better than theirs. When Jos, their oldest child and only son, broke down, had hemorrhage after hemorrhage, and the doctor said the only thing that could save him was to go across the plains in a wagon to California, they said, ”What good luck 'Lizy was married last year! Now there ain't nuthin' ter hinder sellin' the farm 'n goin' right off.” And they sold their little place for half it was worth, traded cattle for a pair of horses and a covered wagon, and set off, half beggared, with their sick boy on a bed in the bottom of the wagon, as cheery as if they were rich people on a pleasure-trip. A pair of steers ”to spell” the horses, and a cow to give milk for Jos, they drove before them; and so they had come by slow stages, sometimes camping for a week at a time, all the way from Tennessee to the San Jacinto Valley. They were rewarded. Jos was getting well. Another six months, they thought, would see him cured; and it would have gone hard with any one who had tried to persuade either Jefferson or Maria Hyer that they were not as lucky a couple as could be found. Had they not saved Joshua, their son?