Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
MAKING A CLEAN BREAST OF IT.
”Where is she?--gone?” I mechanically asked, in a tone that must have betrayed my surprise.
”Yes--gone! gone! an' wi' a Mormon!”
”A Mormon?”
”Ay, stranger, a Mormon--a man wi' twenty wives! G.o.d forgi' her! I'd rather heerd o' her death!”
”Was there a man with her? I saw no one.”
”O stranger, excuse my talk--you're thinkin' o' that ere Injun girl.
'Taint her I'm speakin' about.”
”Who then?”
The young hunter hesitated: he was not aware that I was already in possession of his secret; but he knew that I had been witness of his emotions, and to declare the name would be to reveal the most sacred thought of his heart. Only for a moment did he appear to reflect; and then, as if relieved from his embarra.s.sment, by some sudden determination, he replied:
”Stranger! I don't see why I shedn't tell ye all about this bisness. I don know the reezun, but you've made me feel a kind o' confidence in you. I know it's a silly sort o' thing to fall in love wi' a handsum girl; but if ye'd only seen _her_!”
”I have no doubt, from what you say, she was a beautiful creature,”-- this was scarcely my thought at the moment--”and as for falling in love with a pretty girl, none of us are exempt from that little weakness.
The proud Roman conqueror yielded to the seductions of the brown-skinned Egyptian queen; and even Hercules himself was conquered by a woman's charms. There is no particular silliness in that. It is but the common destiny of man.”
”Well, stranger, it's been myen; an' I've hed reezun to be sorry for it.
But it's no use tryin' to shet up the stable arter the hoss's been stole out o't. She are gone now; an' that's the end o' it. I reckon I'll niver set eyes on her agin.”
The sigh that accompanied this last observation, with the melancholy tone in which it was uttered, told me that I was talking to a man who had truly loved.
”No doubt,” thought I, ”some strapping backwoods wench has been the object of his pa.s.sion,”--for what other idea could I have about the child of a coa.r.s.e and illiterate squatter? ”Love is as blind as a bat; and this red-haired hoyden has appeared a perfect Venus in the eyes of the handsome fellow--as not unfrequently happens. A Venus with evidently a slight admixture of the prudential Juno in her composition.
The young backwoodsman is poor; the schoolmaster perhaps a little better off; in all probability not much, but enough to decide the preference of the shrewd Marian.”
Such were my reflections at the moment, partly suggested by my own experience.
”But you have not yet told me who this sweetheart was? You say it is not the Indian damsel you've just parted with?”
”No, stranger, nothin' o' the kind: though there are some Injun in _her_ too. 'Twar o' her the girl spoke when ye heerd her talk o' a half-blood. She aint just that--she's more white than Injun; her mother only war a half-blood--o' the Chicasaw nation, that used to belong in these parts.”
”Her name?”
”It _war_ Marian Holt. It are now Stebbins, I s'pose! since I've jest heerd she's married to a fellow o' that name.”
”She has certainly not improved her name.”
”She are the daughter o' Holt the squatter--the same whar you say you're a-goin'. Thar's another, as I told ye; but she's a younger un. Her name's Lilian.”
”A pretty name. The older sister was very beautiful you say?”