Kitabı oku: «Who ate the pink sweetmeat?», sayfa 3

Mrar and I stood and looked into the glass doors of the bookcase like we used to when the fire made them like a looking-glass, and there were our faces, hers round and wide between the eyes, and curly-headed; and mine long, and narrow between the eyes, and my hair in a black roach.

I told the Whizzer she better have a bed made down by the fire, considering the blankets and comforts were most all out a-visiting, and he guessed so, too; and Sam helped me bring lots of quilts and a feather tick from my old room to fix up the lounge with. Sam went into the kitchen and slept by the stove.

Then I undressed Mrar, and heard her prayers after I tucked her in. She’s six years old, and dressed herself before mother died, all but hooking up. I hooked her up, and sometimes she’d swell out for mischief when she ought to swell in. But now I tended to her entirely because she missed her mother. The Whizzer acted like he saw something in the fire, but when Mrar was asleep and I sat down by him, he pushed up my roach, and he says:

“You’re a very fatherly little fellow, Steele Pedicord.”

It put me in mind to ask him if he’s Sam’s father, but he laughed out loud at the notion.

“Sam’s smaller than you and he minds so well,” says I. “And I never saw a man that was so handy at girl’s work.”

“Sam is an excellent fellow,” says the Whizzer, “but I don’t deserve to have a Chinaman called my son.”

“Oh!” I says. “Is he a Chinaman? Well, I’ve read about them, but I never saw one before.”

Then I concluded to ask the Whizzer what his own name was. But just then he got up from his chair and brought the other basket to the fire.

“Do you know who Santa Claus is?” he says, talking low.

“I found that out two years ago,” says I.

“Well, get her little stockings, then,” he says.

“I thought you’d like to do this yourself,” says the Whizzer. He acted just like mother.

We took the things out of the basket. There were toy sheep and dogs, and dolls and tubs and dishes, and underneath them all kinds of candies, enough to treat a school. I felt like the Whizzer was Santa Claus. We stuffed her little stockings till they stood alone, like kegs, and tied bundles to them, and fastened them together and hung them on the mantel-piece. Bounce’d wake up and watch us, and then he’d doze off, for Bounce was fuller of turkey-bones than he ever expected to be again; and Mrar slept away, looking like a doll in the fireshine.

But all at once Bounce gave a jump and a bark. Back went the door like the wind had tore it open, and there stood uncle Moze, and aunt Ibby, and cousin Andy Sanders, and the Widow Briggs’s grown son, and two or three men behind them. They all looked scared or mad, and aunt Ibby’s face was so white that her moles all bristled.

“This is a pretty how-to-do,” says she, speaking up loud like she did on wash-days, or times she took a stick and drove the boys to the wood-pile. “What’s going on in this house to-night? fires, and candles burning, and travellers putting up, and children running away when they’re let go some place else to stay all night! You little sneak,” says she, “you’ll get one such a whipping as you ached for when your mother was alive.”

“Stop, stop,” says the Whizzer peaceably.

“What are you doing in this house?” says cousin Andy Sanders. “Are you the man I saw go past my place to-night on that wheel, pulling the children?”

“I am,” says the Whizzer, “and I’ve been making notes of the personal property that has been carried out of the house.”

“Well,” says uncle Moze, “I’m the constable and this is my posse.”

The Whizzer laughed, and he says, “This thornbush is my thornbush, and this dog my dog.”

I did not know what he meant and they acted as if they did not either.

“I arrest you,” says uncle Moze, “for breaking into a house and disturbing the peace.”

“You can’t do it,” says the Whizzer.

“Go in and take him,” says uncle Moze to the other men.

“Because this is my house,” says the Whizzer.

I swallowed my breath when he said that.

“I wish you’d shut the door,” he says; “and since to-morrow is Christmas, and I don’t want to harbor any ill-will, you can shut it behind instead of in front of you. I’m Steele Pedicord, this boy’s father as you might all know by looking at me.”

Even cousin Andy Sanders didn’t jump any more than I did, but I jumped for gladness, and seemed like he jumped for something else.

“I’m appointed guerdeen to the children,” he says, “and I don’t want any impudent talk from a stranger.”

“You pretend you don’t know me, Andy Sanders,” says the Whizzer, “but I always knew you. You expected to settle on their land, while Moze and his wife pillaged their goods. I didn’t grow up with you for nothing.”

“Steele Pedicord died when that boy was a year old,” says aunt Ibby, and she looked so awful and so big I could hardly bear to watch her. “He was killed by the Indians on his way from Californy, after he sent his money home.”

“He was only kept prisoner by the Indians,” says my father, “and sick and ill-used. But he had no notion he was dead till he got away after a few years, and heard his widow was married again, and even mother to another child.”

“It’s a likely story,” says cousin Andy Sanders, “that a man wouldn’t come forward and claim his own in such a case.”

“Your notion of a man and mine never did agree, Andy Sanders,” says my father. “She wasn’t to blame, and her second husband was my best friend. The boy and girl are mine now.”

“It’s some robbing scheme,” says aunt Ibby, but she looked as if she knew him well enough.

“I’ve more to give them than you could have taken from them,” he says, “and you may begin to investigate to-night. Is that the Widow Briggs’s boy?” he says.

The Briggs boy came up and shook hands with him, and the other men stepped in and shook hands, too. They all begun to talk. But uncle Moze, and aunt Ibby, and cousin Andy Sanders left the door, and I heard them slam the gate.

Mrar slept right along, though the neighbors talked so loud and fast; and I sat down on the lounge at her feet, wondering what she would say Christmas morning when she found out the Whizzer was my own father, that mother thought was dead since I’s a year old!

I felt so queer and glad that something in me whizzed like the wheel, and while my father was not looking, and everybody sat up to the fire asking questions, I slipped over and tried to hug it around the cranks that he wiggled with his feet.

You can read pieces about Santa Claus coming on a sledge, but that’s nothing to having your own father – that you think is dead and gone – ride up like a regular Whizzer and open the house for Christmas!

THE PATRONCITO’S CHRISTMAS

Driven downwards by the storm which had raged incessantly for two days about the lofty red ramparts of the Sierra Roja, the black-tail deer, in broken bands, sought refuge in the lower foot hills. Here, also, a light “tracking snow” had fallen, and their trails lay fresh for hunters’ following.

Cherokee Sam had been early abroad, long rifle on shoulder, and lank deer hound at heels. Not all for pleasure did the gaunt half-breed slip like a shadow in his hunting moccasons through the cañons clad in pine. Meat was needed in the dirt-roofed cabin in the gulch. And for that matter, bread also, and this, too, despite the fact that the stubble sticking up through the snow in the bottom, marked the site of a harvested corn patch.

The swarthy hunter had indeed planted there; but other hands had gathered the harvest.

Mixed, like his blood, were the half-breed’s occupations, and his sinewy hands as often swung the pick and shook the pan, as pointed the rifle. When his company of gold-hunters from the Nacoochee had struck the Sierra, they had scattered through it to prospect for placer, and he had then first come upon the gulch, and though it had never panned out even “a color,” the charm of its virgin solitude had smitten the half-savage heart of this wanderer after the will-o-wisp of fortune. Too tangled for trail lay the storm-felled trees, and no man’s foot but his own ever trod the gramma grass or brushed the wild cypress bending by the stream. By this, just where the beavers had built their dam, Cherokee Sam had pitched his cabin. Standing by the margin of the silent pool, in close proximity to the uncouth beaver huts, at the first glance its mud-be-daubed exterior might have been taken for the mud palace of the king beaver himself, but for the thin smoke that slowly melting into air marked the abode of fire-making man. In the rich “bottom” near, the half-breed, with provident mind for “ash-cakes,” and “fatty bread,” had planted a corn patch, and at evening as he came over the hill above, returning from his day’s hunting, and saw the cabin, and the corn greenly waving, he hailed the spot as home.

But one day as he sat idly before his open door, a little gray burro came ambling agilely through the fallen trees, his rider, a dwarfish man of haughty aspect, whose cheeks were wrinkled, and beard grizzled, but whose eyes were as piercing and elf-locks as black as the half-breed’s own. Seated on his little long-eared palfrey, he accosted the half-breed and gravely inquired, in tolerable English, if he knew that he was trespassing on the lands of the patron, who lived at the plaza, on the plain below.

“No; I don’t know nothing about no patron,” said Cherokee Sam shortly, as he arose and stood towering in giant height above the dwarfish rider of the burro.

Bien, then he was sorry to have to tell him, said the Spanish stranger in suave reply. He was the mayordomo, and this was the patron’s land, and the coyote (half-breed) that killed all the deer must seek some other spot. Far he must go, too, for the patron’s land was far-reaching, and he pointed with his willow wand to the Sierra rising above, and the plain rolling far away below. On all sides far as the eye could see was the patron’s land. His it was by virtue of a Spanish grant.

The coyote giant laughed in scorn. “I’ve heerd of them thar grants. What good are they? Squatters’ rights and squatters’ rifles rules in this here free country, I reckon. Go back, little Mr. Mexican, to your patron, and tell him that here I’ve took up my homestead, and here I’ll stay, and you uns may do your do!”

As he spoke he threw his rifle on his hollowed arm, and looked black thunder from his beetling brow upon the burro-rider. Perhaps had he been less haughty in his defiance, he would have fared better at the mayordomo’s hands. For when the corn was yellow, and he returned from one of his periodical prospects to gather it, he found only the bare stubble field awaiting him.

Thus it was that Cherokee Sam, hunter, prospector and squatter, despite his triad of trades, was now at Christmas without a “corn-pone,” and this state was likely to continue through the winter.

Returning home at sunset with the legs of a doe tied across his breast, and her slender head, with its big ears trailing behind against the muzzle of the eager hound, the hunter strode from the timber on the slope, and struck the snow from his frozen leggins and moccasons as he paused on the Shut-in. A lofty upheaved ledge of red sandstone was this, which arose from the slopes on either hand, and shut in the gulch from the plain below, leaving only a narrow portal for the passage of the stream.

Above him, as he stood, were the foot-hills, and his wild home all snow-covered and cold in the shadow of the Sierra. But below the snow had not fallen, and the plain shone brown and warm in the lingering light of the setting sun. There, softened by the distance, with a saffron shimmer about its dark outlines, lay the gray adobe plaza, sleeping by the silver stream.

There were gathered corn and oil, the fat of the land; and he would have nothing but the deer on his shoulders for Christmas cheer. A bad gleam came in the half-breed’s eyes as he thought of his harried corn-patch, and gazed at the abode of his enemy.

As if in sympathy with his master, the hound put up his bristles, and growled savagely. Looking down, the hunter was astonished to see a small figure standing motionless at the foot of the Shut-in, and gazing up at him.

The stranger was a young boy. He was very richly and somewhat fantastically dressed in a silken jacket, and silken pantalones, much be-buttoned about the outer seams, and confined at the waist by a silken sash. On his feet were buckskin zapatos, soled with raw-hide, and tied with drawstrings of ribbon, and over his long and flowing hair a white sombrero with gay silk tassels.

This he reverentially removed as the hunter descended, and resting on him his soft black eyes, said:

“Good evening, Señor don San Nicolas. To-night is Noche Buena (Christmas eve), and Padre Luis told me you would pass through the Shut-in on your way to the plaza. So I’ve come to meet you.”

His manner was eager and full of trustful confidence. The half-breed was taken aback.

“I don’t go by no such name as that,” he replied gruffly. “I’m Cherokee Sam, and I live down thar;” and he pointed to the dirt-roofed cabin in the gulch.

“I wanted badly to see the saint,” said the stranger, as his face fell; “and I never could when he comes to the plaza, because I’m then always asleep. I’m the patroncito, señor.”

He had replaced his sombrero, and his air as he declared himself was princely.

Cherokee Sam’s face darkened. The young patron– the son of his enemy – the despoiler of the corn-patch. Even now they must be seeking him, and here he was in his hands. And there was no snow below, and they could find no trail to follow.

“What did you do that for?” asked the patroncito, in a tone of authority, as he laid his hand on the ragged bullet-hole behind the doe’s shoulder.

“I had to have meat for my Christmas dinner,” said Sam. “Come with me, and I will show you that thar Spanish Santy Claus you’re huntin’ for,” he added, and held out his hand.

The patroncito placed his own in it promptly. For a moment the giant stayed his stride to the other’s puny steps. Then the patroncito stopped and said commandingly:

“The snow is deep; take me up!”

Never had the wild hunter known a master; but now, without a word, he stooped and, like another giant St. Christopher, set the child upon his shoulder, and plunged through the drifts for the cabin.

In a moment he had the doe gambrelled to a pine in front of the cabin. Then he pushed open the slab door, and entering, blew up the covered embers in the rough fireplace, and piled on the pitch pine. As it blazed up, he drew a couple of deerskins from his bed in the corner and flung them down before the fire and bade the patroncito be seated.

He obeyed; and the half-breed looked at him with stern satisfaction. Many a long day should it be ere the patron saw again his son and heir. But these reflections were disturbed. His guest pointed to his gay zapatos.

“Will you please take them off, Don Cherokee Sam?” he said. “My feet are wet and my fingers are numb.”

The half-breed knelt and undid the ribbons, and drew them off, and also his long silk stockings.

“Muchas gracias, Don,” said the patroncito, as he reclined at ease and toasted his bare toes before the fire.

His fearlessness pleased his hunter host well. His manner, too, was patronizing, and the half-breed entered into the jest with savage humor.

“If you’ll ’scuse me, Mister Patroncito, I’ll git supper.”

He spoke as if this were an operation requiring great culinary skill and much previous preparation. It consisted in cutting three steaks, with his sheath-knife, from the deer’s ham, and placing them with a lump of fat in the frying-pan over the fire. These turned and browned, two tin cups filled with water, and the supper was ready.

The guest took kindly enough to the venison. He tasted the water and paused. “I’ll thank you for a cup of hot coffee, Don Cherokee Sam, with plenty of sugar in it, if you please.”

Don Cherokee Sam was embarrassed at this polite but luxurious request.

“Coffee’s bad,” he said, shaking his head. “It spiles my nerve so’s I can’t draw a stiddy bead. Water’s best, patroncito.”

The guest was truly polite. He emptied his cup with the best of grace. But presently he paused again in his consumption of venison.

“Pardon me, but you have forgotten the bread.”

The host arose. What could he set before this youthful sybarite from the plaza?

“Bread’s been mighty scarce with me this winter,” he muttered. “And I planted a good plenty of corn out thar too.”

The recollection roused his rankling resentment, and he paused.

“Why didn’t you gather it, then, like the peones do?” asked the patroncito placidly.

“It was stole,” muttered the host; but he checked himself, and added in a softer tone, “by b’ars and other varmints, I reckon.”

And with this compromise between anger and truth, Cherokee Sam reached up and took down a small sack hanging to the great centre roof-log. It contained a few nubbins found on the harried field, his seed for next spring.

“Patroncito,” he remarked in a tone of conciliating confidence, as he shelled an ear in the frying-pan, “thar’s nothing like deer meat, and running water, and the free air of heaven, and maybe parched corn oncet in a while, to make a man a man.”

Under this encomium the parched corn was partaken of with gravity. And supper being over, the host cleaned up, a simple process, performed by dashing cold water in the red-hot frying-pan, and hanging it on a nail.

“San Nicolas, you said you’d show him to me,” then politely hinted the patroncito.

“It’s early yet for him,” said Cherokee Sam. “He’s jist about taking the trail in the Sierra, and the drifts is mighty deep, too. But he’ll be here.”

“My stockings, Don – they should be ready; and they’re wet. Will you oblige me by holding them to the fire?” said the princely patroncito.

Cherokee Sam held the damp stockings to the blaze. The patroncito watched him sleepily.

“He’s a long time coming, Don Cherokee Sam,” he murmured, as he nodded – nodded yet again, and slipped down upon the deerskin, fast asleep.

The half-breed lifted him like a feather, and laid him on his bed and drew the covering softly over him. Noiselessly he replenished the fire, and squatted before it, resuming the stocking-drying process.

The resinous boughs burst into flame, and a pungent perfume and a red glow pervaded the smoke-blackened cabin. The light fell on the patroncito as he lay on the couch of skins, caressed the slender foot he had thrust from out the covering, and danced on the silver buttons strung on his gay pantalones. Over him, like an ogre, hovered the wavering shadow of the giant’s head, rendered more grotesque by his towering cap of badger-skin, plumed with a flaunting tail.

As he sat on his heels in the brilliant light, this savage head-covering lent additional fierceness to the half-breed’s hatchet-face. Wild-eyed, too, was he as any denizen of his chosen haunts. But stolid in its composure as his saturnine countenance was, it was free from all trace of the petty passions that cramp the souls of his civilized half-brothers. And as he looked at the soft stockings, now dry in his hands, a smile parted his thin lips.

Just then the firelight flared up and went suddenly out, and the threatening shadow on the wall was lost. And though the door never opened, and even the hunter’s vigilant ears caught no sound, he felt a presence in the cabin. Looking up, he dreamily beheld, shadowed forth dimly in the gloom, the form of San Nicolas, long belated by the drifts. But how that Spanish Christmas saint looked, or what he said to remind the half-breed of that hallowed time when all should be peace on earth and good will towards men, must ever remain a secret between him and his lawless host.

The patroncito awoke, and through the open doorway saw the snow sparkling in the sun of Christmas morning. Over the fire Cherokee Sam was frying venison, and on either side hung the long silk stockings, filled.