Part 34 (2/2)
”I wish I had time to set you in the right road,” she hesitated; ”but my poor old uncle is out here somewhere among these ridges and ravines; he's not in his right mind, and I've got to find him if I can.”
”Crazy, do you mean?” asked her companion, with a quick yet easy, smiling attention. ”I'd like to see him, if he's crazy. I take a great interest in crazy folks. Some of 'em have a lot of sense left.”
Johnnie nodded.
”He doesn't know any of us,” she said pitifully. ”They've had him in the hospital three months, trying to do something for him; but the doctors say he'll never be well.”
”That's right hopeful,” observed the man, with a plainly intentional, dry ludicrousness. ”I always think there's some chance when the doctors give 'em up--and begin to let 'em alone. How was he hurt, sis'?”
Johnnie did not pause to reflect that she had not said Uncle Pros was hurt at all. For some reason which she would herself have been at a loss to explain, she hastened to detail to this chance-met stranger the exact appearance and nature of Pros Pa.s.smore's injuries, her listener nodding his head at this or that point; making some comment or inquiry at another.
”The doctors say that they would suppose it was a fractured skull, or concussion of the brain, or something like that; but they've examined him and there is nothing to see on the outside; and they trephined and it didn't do any good; so they just let him stay about the hospital.”
”No,” said her new friend softly, almost absently, ”it didn't do any good to trephine--but it might have done a lot of harm. I'd like to see the back of your uncle's neck. I ain't in any hurry to get to that banquet at Atlanta--a man can always overeat and make himself sick, without going so far to do it.”
So, like an idle schoolboy, the unknown forsook his own course, turning from the road when Johnnie turned, and went with her up the steep, rocky gulch where the door of a deserted cabin flung to and fro on its hinges. At sight of the smokeless chimney, the gaping doorway and empty, inhospitable interior, Johnnie looked blank.
”Have you got anything to eat?” she asked her companion, hesitatingly.
”I came off in such a hurry that I forgot all about it. Some people that I know used to live in that cabin, and I hoped to get my dinner there and ask after my uncle; but I see they have moved.”
”Sit right down here,” said the stranger, indicating the broad door-stone, around which the gra.s.s grew tall. ”We'll soon make that all right.” He sought in the pockets of the coat he carried slung across his shoulder and brought out a packet of food. ”I laid in some fuel when I thought I might get the chance to run my own engine across the mountains,” he told the girl, opening his bundle and dividing evenly. He uttered a few musical words in an unknown tongue.
”That's Indian,” he commented carelessly, without looking at her. ”It means you're to eat your dinner. I was with the Shawnees when I was a boy. I learned a lot of their language, and I'll never forget it. They taught me more things than talk.”
Johnnie studied the man beside her as they ate their bit of lunch.
”My name is Johnnie Consadine, sir,” she told him. ”What shall I call you?”
Thus directly questioned, the unknown smiled quizzically, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners and overflowing with good humour.
”Well, you might say 'Pap,'” he observed consideringly, ”Lots of boys and girls do call me Pap--more than a thousand of 'em, now, I guess. And I'm eighty--mighty near old enough to have a girl of nineteen.”
She looked at him in astonishment. Eighty years old, as lithe as a lad, and with a lad's clear, laughing eye! Yet there was a look of power, of that knowledge which is power, in his face that made her say to him:
”Do you think that Uncle Pros can ever be cured--have his right mind back again, I mean? Of course, the cut on his head is healed up long ago.”
”The cut on his head didn't make him crazy,” said her companion, murmuringly. ”Of course it wasn't that, or he would have been raving when he came down from the mountain. Something happened to him afterward.”
”Yes, there did,” Johnnie a.s.sented wonderingly--falteringly. ”I don't know how you came to guess it, but the woman who told me that she was hiding in the front room when they were quarrelling and saw Uncle Pros fall down the steps, says he landed almost square on his head. She thought at first his neck was broken--that he was killed.”
”Uh-huh,” nodded the newcomer. ”You see I'm a good guesser. I make my living guessing things.” He flung her a whimsical, sidelong glance, as, having finished their lunch, they rose and moved on. ”I wish I had my hands on the processes of that atlas vertebra,” he said.
”On--on what?” inquired Johnnie in a slightly startled tone.
”Never mind, sis'. If we find him, and I can handle him, I'll know where to look.”
”n.o.body can touch him but me when he gets out this way,” Johnnie said.
”He acts sort of scared and sort of fierce, and just runs and hides from people. Maybe if you'll tell me what you want done, I could do it.”
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