WESTERN CLASSICS - Ultimate Collection: Historical Novels, Wild West Adventures & Action Romance Novels. Owen Wister
there a faint, vanishing glint; and here and there in the departing column a bold, half-laughing face turned for a look at the girl in the doorway, and then was gone again into the dimness.
The sheriff in the cab took off his hat to Miss Buckner, remarking that she should belong to the force; and as the bell rang and the engine moved, off popped young Billy Lusk from his cow-catcher. With an exclamation of horror she sprang down, and Mr. McLean appeared, and, with all a parent's fright and rage, held the boy by the arm grotesquely as the sheriff steamed by.
"I ain't a-going to chase it," said young Billy, struggling.
"I've a mind to cowhide you," said Lin.
But Miss Buckner interposed. "Oh, well," said she, "next time; if he does it next time. It's so late to-night! You'll not frighten us that way again if he lets you off?" she asked Billy.
"No," said Billy, looking at her with interest. "Father 'd have cowhided me anyway, I guess," he added, meditatively.
"Do you call him father?"
"Ah, father's at Laramie," said Billy, with disgust. "He'd not stop for your asking. Lin don't bother me much."
"You quit talking and step up there!" ordered his guardian. "Well, m'm, I guess yu' can sleep good now in there."
"If it was only an 'L. and N.' I'd not have a thing against it! Good-night, Mr. McLean; good-night, young Mr.—"
"I'm Billy Lusk. I can ride Chalkeye's pinto that bucked Honey Wiggin."
"I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride together. Pleasant dreams!"
She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered it, remarking: "I like her. What makes her live in a car?"
But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off, when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping a watch on it. "So I gave him to understand," said Lin, "that I had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for his system." After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown, unthanked young sentinel. "Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till they get their growth," was his single observation.
But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see him upon her return, to thank him.
"Any Jack can walk around all night," said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
"Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't," observed the young lady.
This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold her.
Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn. Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.
And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.
"I know this road," piped Billy, on the box
"'I camped here with father when mother was off that time. You can take a left-hand trail by those cottonwoods and strike the mountains."
So I inquired what game he had then shot.
"Ah, just a sage-hen. Lin's a-going to let me shoot a bear, you know. What made Lin marry mother when father was around?"
The driver gave me a look over Billy's head, and I gave him one; and I instructed Billy that people supposed his father was dead. I withheld that his mother gave herself out as Miss Peck in the days when Lin met her on Bear Creek.
The formidable nine-year-old pondered. "The geography says they used to have a lot of wives at Salt Lake City. Is there a place where a woman can have a lot of husbands?"
"It don't especially depend on the place," remarked the driver to me.
"Because," Billy went on, "Bert Taylor told me in recess that mother'd had a lot, and I told him he lied, and the other boys they laughed and I blacked Bert's eye on him, and I'd have blacked the others too, only Miss Wood came out. I wouldn't tell her what Bert said, and Bert wouldn't, and Sophy Armstrong told her. Bert's father found out, and he come round, and I thought he was a-going to lick me about the eye, and he licked Bert! Say, am I Lin's, honest?"
"No, Billy, you're not," I said.
"Wish I was. They couldn't get me back to Laramie then; but, oh, bother! I'd not go for 'em! I'd like to see 'em try! Lin wouldn't leave me go. You ain't married, are you? No more is Lin now, I guess. A good many are, but I wouldn't want to. I don't think anything of 'em. I've seen mother take 'pothecary stuff on the sly. She's whaled me worse than Lin ever does. I guess he wouldn't want to be mother's husband again, and if he does," said Billy, his voice suddenly vindictive, "I'll quit him and skip."
"No danger, Bill," said I.
"How would the nice lady inside please you?" inquired the driver.
"Ah, pshaw! she ain't after Lin!" sang out Billy, loud and scornful. "She's after her brother. She's all right, though," he added, approvingly.
At this all talk stopped short inside, reviving in a casual, scanty manner; while unconscious Billy Lusk, tired of the one subject, now spoke cheerfully of birds' eggs.
Who knows the child-soul, young in days, yet old as Adam and the hills? That school-yard slur about his mother was as dim to his understanding as to the offender's, yet mysterious nature had bid him go to instant war! How foreseeing in Lin to choke the unfounded jest about his relation to Billy Lusk, in hopes to save the boy's ever awakening to the facts of his mother's life! "Though," said the driver, an easygoing cynic, "folks with lots of fathers will find heaps of brothers in this country!" But presently he let Billy hold the reins, and at the next station carefully lifted him down and up. "I've knowed that woman, too," he whispered to me. "Sidney, Nebraska. Lusk was off half the time. We laughed when she fooled Lin into marryin' her. Come to think," he mused, as twilight deepened around our clanking stage, and small Billy slept sound between us, "there's scarcely a thing in life you get a laugh out of that don't make soberness for somebody."
Soberness had now visited the pair behind us; even Lin's lively talk had quieted, and his tones were low and few. But though Miss Jessamine at our next change of horses "hoped" I would come inside, I knew she did not hope very earnestly, and outside I remained until Buffalo.
Journeying done, her face revealed the