Part 20 (2/2)
That night the lad had come from Hundred Mile House, with Jesse's pack-train bearing a load of stores. There was a dress length, music for my dear dumpy piano, spiced rolls of bacon, much needed flour and groceries, and an orange kerchief for Billy. From his saddle wallets he produced my crumpled letters and the weekly paper, a Vancouver rag.
Therein Jesse labors among tangles of provincial politics, I gloat over the cooking recipes of America's nice cuisine, and spare maybe just a sigh over the London letter. Billy's portion consists of blood-curdling disasters and crimes, and the widow waits ravenous for her kindling, bed stuffing, wall paper, and new pads for her wooden leg. At ten cents that paper is a bargain.
She hovered presiding while her boy had supper, I checked stores against an untruthful invoice, and Jesse prepared to read: ”Bribed with a Bridge! Who Stole the Bonds,” etc. Dear Jesse takes his reading seriously. His mind must be prepared with a pipe. His stately spectacles are cleaned on his neck-cloth, and so mounted that he can see to read over the edges. Next he crawls under the stove to find the bootjack, and pull off his long boots. After that he fills the lamp, lights that and a cigar of fearful pungency, and settles his great limbs in the chair of state. When all was arranged that night he looked up from his paper.
”Say,” he drawled, ”Billy. When you ride away and turn robber, what's the matter with politics? You see if you was Sir Billy O'Flynn, and a Right Honorable Premier, you could steal enough to buy spurs as big as car wheels. You're fiercer than our member already with that new cow-scaring scarf, so all you'd need is a machine gun slung on your belt, a man-killer like my mare Jones, and you'll be the tiger of the forest. You git yo' mother's cat to learn you how to yowl.”
II
After breakfast when Jesse had gone to work, the widow came to me in deep distress, leaning against the door-post, twisting up her ap.r.o.n with tremulous fingers, her eyes dark with dread. When I led her to a seat, perhaps she felt my sympathy, for a flood of tears broke loose, and wild Irish mixed with her sobs. The leprechawn possessed her bhoy _avick_, night-riders haunted him, divils was in him _acushla_, and the child was fey. His step-uncle went fey to his end in the dreadful quicksands, her brother-in-law went mad in the black Indian hills, running on the spears of the haythen, rest his sowl, and now Billy! He was gone this hour.
Fiercely she ordered me out to search, for she would take the southern pasture, so surely I would find him in the pines. She feared that place; muttered of fires lighted by no mortal hands. She spoke of wandering lights; the cat had bristled sparks flying from his coat because of elfin voices, and Mick had howled all night down at the Apex. Yestreen a falling star had warned her that she was to lose her bhoy, and had I not seen that face in the windy last night?
Soothing the poor thing as best I could, I undertook the search, glad of an excuse to get away outdoors. Presently I came upon Billy perched on a root overhanging the depths of the canon. He was cleaning Jesse's rifle, and I surprised him in a fit of angry laughter.
”Billy,” I shouted, ”come in off that root before you fall!”
He obeyed, with sulky patience at my whims.
”Why are you not at work? What are you doing with my husband's rifle?”
”I'm at work,” he answered sulkily,--then with an odd vagueness of manner, ”I'm cleaning the durned thing.”
Being a woman, and cursed at that with the artistic temperament, I could not help being moved by this lad's extraordinary beauty,--the curly red-gold hair, skin with the dusty block of a ripe peach, the poise of easy power and lithe grace, the sense he gave me of glowing color veiling rugged strength. As an artist studies a good model, I had observed very closely the moods of Billy's temperament.
His mother was right. That vagueness of manner was abnormal, and the lad was fey.
”But why are you cleaning his rifle?”
”It kicks when it's foul,” he said absently.
”You're off hunting?”
”Goin' to shoot Jesse, thet's all.”
”I'm sure,” I said, ”he cleaned it yesterday. Look here,” and I took the rifle to show him it was clean. ”See.” I put my little finger nail in the breech while he looked down the barrel. ”Come,” said I, and told him that in my sewing-machine there was a bottle of gun oil. The rifle was in my possession, safe.
Then he heard Jesse coming. ”Whist! Hide the gun!” he said, and as though we were fellow conspirators, I placed it behind a tree, so that my man saw nothing to cause alarm.
Jesse came, it seemed, in search of Billy.
”h.e.l.lo, Kate,” he said in greeting. ”Say, youngster, when you sawed off that table leg to make your mother's limb, what did you do with the caster?”
CHAPTER XII
EXPOUNDING THE SCRIPTURES
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