Part 57 (1/2)

”Me Anna--Yagorsha's daughter.”

”Oh, yes, I thought I'd seen you before.” She seemed to be only a little older than Muckluck, but less attractive, chiefly on account of her fat and her look of ill-temper. She was on specially bad terms with a buck they called Joe, and they seemed to pa.s.s all their time abusing one another.

The Boy craned his neck and looked round. Except just where he was lying, the Pymeut men and women were crowded together, on that side of the Kachime, at his head and at his feet, thick as herrings on a thwart. They all leaned forward and regarded him with a beady-eyed sympathy. He had never been so impressed by the fact before, but all these native people, even in their gentlest moods, frowned in a chronic perplexity and wore their wide mouths open. He reflected that he had never seen one that didn't, except Muckluck.

Here she was, crawling in with a tin can.

”Got something there to eat?”

The rescued one craned his head as far as he could.

”Too soon,” she said, showing her brilliant teeth in the fire-light.

She set the tin down, looked round, a little embarra.s.sed, and stirred the fire, which didn't need it.

”Well”--he put his chin down under the rabbit-skin once more--”how goes the world, Princess?”

She flashed her quick smile again and nodded rea.s.suringly. ”You stay here now?”

”No; goin' up river.”

”What for?” She spoke disapprovingly.

”Want to get an Orange Grove.”

”Find him up river?”

”Hope so.”

”I think I go, too”; and all the grave folk, sitting so close on the sleeping-bench, stretched their wide mouths wider still, smiling good-humouredly.

”You better wait till summer.”

”Oh!” She lifted her head from the fire as one who takes careful note of instructions. ”Nex' summer?”

”Well, summer's the time for squaws to travel.”

”I come nex' summer,” she said.

By-and-by Nicholas returned with a new parki and a pair of wonderful buckskin breeches--not like anything worn by the Lower River natives, or by the coast-men either: well cut, well made, and handsomely fringed down the outside of the leg where an officer's gold stripe goes.

”Chaparejos!” screamed the Boy. ”Where'd you get 'em?”

”Ol' Chief--he ketch um.”

”They're _bully!_” said the Boy, holding the despised rabbit-skin under his chin with both hands, and craning excitedly over it. He felt that his fortunes were looking up. Talk about a tide in the affairs of men!

Why, a tide that washes up to a wayfarer's feet a pair o' chaparejos like that--well! legs so habited would simply _have_ to carry a fella on to fortune. He lay back on the sleeping-bench with dancing eyes, while the raw whisky hummed in his head. In the dim light of seal-lamps vague visions visited him of stern and n.o.ble chiefs out of the Leather Stocking Stories of his childhood--men of daring, whose legs were invariably cased in buck-skin with dangling fringes. But the das.h.i.+ng race was not all Indian, nor all dead. Famous cowboys reared before him on bucking bronchos, their leg-fringes streaming on the blast, and desperate chaps who held up coaches and potted Wells Fargo guards.

Anybody must needs be a devil of a fellow who went about in ”shaps,” as his California cousins called chaparejos. Even a peaceable fella like himself, not out after gore at all, but after an Orange Grove--even he, once he put on--He laughed out loud at his childishness, and then grew grave. ”Say, Nicholas, what's the tax?”

”Hey?”