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Mormon church," he said, "but I administer a little medicine with my healing.
I learned that from the Navajos." The children ran to him with bruised heads,
and cut fingers, and stubbed toes; and his blacksmith's hands were as gentle
as a woman's. A mustang with a lame leg claimed his serious attention; a sick
sheep gave him an anxious look; a steer with a gored skin sent him running for
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a bucket of salve. He could not pass by a crippled quail. The farm was
overrun by Navajo sheep which he had found strayed and lost on the desert.
Anything hurt or helpless had in
August Naab a friend. Hare found himself looking up to a great and luminous
figure, and he loved this man.
As the days passed Hare learned many other things. For a while illness
confined him to his bed on the porch. At night he lay listening to the roar
of the river, and watching the stars. Twice he heard a distant crash and
rumble, heavy as thunder, and he knew that somewhere along the cliffs
avalanches were slipping. By day he watched the cotton snow down upon him,
and listened to the many birds, and waited for the merry show at recess-time.
After a short time the children grew less shy and came readily to him. They
were the most wholesome children he had ever known. Hare wondered about it,
and decided it was not so much Mormon teaching as isolation from the world.
These children had never been out of their cliff-walled home, and civilization
was for them as if it were not. He told them stories, and after school hours
they would race to him and climb on his bed, and beg for more.
He exhausted his supply of fairy-stories and animal stories; and had begun to
tell about the places and cities which he had visited when the eager-eyed
children were peremptorily called within by Mother Mary. This
pained him and he was at a loss to understand it. Enlightenment came,
however, in the way of an argument between Naab and Mother Mary which he
overheard. The elder wife said that the stranger was welcome to the children,
but she insisted that they hear nothing of the outside world, and that they be
kept to the teachings of the Mormon geography--which made all the world
outside Utah an untrodden wilderness. August Naab did
not hold to the letter of the Mormon law; he argued that if the children could
not be raised as Mormons with a full knowledge of the world, they would only
be lost in the end to the Church.
Other developments surprised Hare. The house of this good Mormon was divided
against itself. Precedence was given to the first and elder wife--Mother
Mary; Mother Ruth's life was not without pain. The men wer e out on the
ranges all day, usually two or more of them for several days at a time, and
this left the women alone. One daughter taught the school, the other
daughters did all the chores about the house, from feeding the stock to
chopping wood. The work was hard, and the girls would rather have been in
White Sage or Lund. They disliked Mescal, and said things inspired by
jealousy. Snap Naab's wife was vindictive, and called Mescal "that Indian!"
It struck him on hearing this gossip that he had missed Mescal. What had
become of her? Curiosity prompting him, he asked little Billy about her.
"Mescal's with the sheep," piped Billy.
That she was a shepherdess pleased Hare, and he thought of her as free on the
open range, with the wind blowing her hair.
One day when Hare felt stronger he took his walk round the farm with new zest.
Upon his return to the house he saw Snap's cream pinto in the yard, and Dave's
mustang cropping the grass near by. A dusty pack lay on the ground. Hare
walked down the avenue of cottonwoods and was about to
turn the corner of the old forge when he stopped short.
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"Now mind you, I'll take a bead on this white-faced spy if you send him up
there."
It was Snap Naab's voice, and his speech concluded with the click of teeth
characteristic of him in anger.
"Stand there!" August Naab exclaimed in wrath. "Listen. You have been
drinking again or you wouldn't talk of killing a man. I warned you. I
won't do this thing you ask of me till I have your promise. Why won't you
leave the bottle alone?"
"I'll promise," came the sullen reply.
"Very well. Then pack and go across to Bitter Seeps."
"That job'll take all summer," growled Snap.
"So much the better. When you come home I'll keep my promise."
Hare moved away silently; the shock of Snap's first words had kept him fast in
his tracks long enough to hear the conversation. Why did Snap threaten him?
Where was August Naab going to send him? Hare had no means of coming to an
understanding of either question. He was disturbed in mind and resolved to
keep out of Snap's way. He went to the orchard, but his stay of an hour
availed nothing, for on his return, after threading the maze of cottonwoods,
he came face to face with the man he wanted to avoid.
Snap Naab, at the moment of meeting, had a black bottle tipped high above his
lips.
With a curse he threw the bottle at Hare, missing him narrowly. He was drunk.
His eyes were bloodshot. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]