酷兔英语

章节正文

their tents the boy remained until morning. He was here in church now,
keeping his promise to see the bishop with the girl of yesterday; and

while he gravely looked at the bishop, Miss Sabina Stone allowed his arm
to circle" target="_blank" title="vt.环绕;包围">encircle her waist. No soldier had achieved this yet, but Lin was the

first cow-puncher she had seen, and he had given her the handkerchief
from round his neck.

The quiet air blew in through the windows and door, the pure, light
breath from the mountains; only, passing over their foot-hills it had

caught and carried the clear aroma of the sage-brush. This it brought
into church, and with this seemed also to float the peace and great

silence of the plains. The little melodeon in the corner, played by one
of the ladies at the post, had finished accompanying the hymn, and now it

prolonged a few closing chords while the bishop paused before his
address, resting his keen eyes on the people. He was dressed in a plain

suit of black with a narrow black tie. This was because the Union Pacific
Railroad, while it had delivered him correctly at Green River, had

despatched his robes towards Cheyenne.
Without citing chapter and verse the bishop began:

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way
off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his

neck and kissed him."
The bishop told the story of that surpassing parable, and then proceeded

to draw from it a discourse fitted to the drifting destinies in whose
presence he found himself for one solitary morning. He spoke unlike many

clergymen. His words were chiefly those which the people round him used,
and his voice was more like earnest talking than preaching.

Miss Sabina Stone felt the arm of her cow-puncher loosenslightly, and
she looked at him. But he was looking at the bishop, no longer gravely

but with wide-open eyes, alert. When the narrative reached the elder
brother in the field, and how he came to the house and heard sounds of

music and dancing, Miss Stone drew away from her companion and let him
watch the bishop, since he seemed to prefer that. She took to reading

hymns vindictively. The bishop himself noted the sun-browned boy face and
the wide-open eyes. He was too far away to see anything but the alert,

listening position of the young cow-puncher. He could not discern how
that, after he had left the music and dancing and begun to draw morals,

attention faded from those eyes that seemed to watch him, and they filled
with dreaminess. It was very hot in church. Chief Washakie went to sleep,

and so did a corporal; but Lin McLean sat in the same alert position till
Miss Stone pulled him and asked if he intended to sit down through the

hymn. Then church was out. Officers, Indians, and all the people
dispersed through the great sunshine to their dwellings, and the

cow-puncher rode beside Sabina in silence.
"What are you studying over, Mr. McLean?" inquired the lady, after a

hundred yards.
"Did you ever taste steamed Duxbury clams?" asked Lin, absently.

"No, indeed. What's them?"
"Oh, just clams. Yu' have drawn butter, too." Mr. McLean fell silent

again.
"I guess I'll be late for settin' the colonel's table. Good-bye," said

Sabina, quickly, and swished her whip across the pony, who scampered away
with her along the straight road across the plain to the post.

Lin caught up with her at once and made his peace.
"Only," protested Sabina, "I ain't used to gentlemen taking me out and--

well, same as if I was a collie-dog. Maybe it's Wind River politeness."
But she went riding with him up Trout Creek in the cool of the afternoon.

Out of the Indian tepees, scattered wide among the flat levels of
sage-brush, smoke rose thin and gentle, and vanished. They splashed

across the many little running channels which lead water through that
thirsty soil, and though the range of mountains came no nearer, behind

them the post, with its white, flat buildings and green trees, dwindled
to a toy village.

"My! but it's far to everywheres here," exclaimed Sabina, "and it's
little you're sayin' for yourself to-day, Mr. McLean. I'll have to do the

talking. What's that thing now, where the rocks are?"
"That's Little Wind River Canyon," said the young man. "Feel like goin'

there, Miss Stone?"
"Why, yes. It looks real nice and shady like, don't it? Let's."

So Miss Stone turned her pony in that direction.
"When do your folks eat supper?" inquired Lin.

"Half-past six. Oh, we've lots of time! Come on."
"How many miles per hour do you figure that cayuse of yourn can travel?"

Lin asked.
"What are you a-talking about, anyway? You're that strange to-day," said

the lady.
"Only if we try to make that canyon, I guess you'll be late settin' the

colonel's table," Lin remarked, his hazel eyes smiling upon her. "That
is, if your horse ain't good for twenty miles an hour. Mine ain't, I

know. But I'll do my best to stay with yu'."
"You're the teasingest man--" said Miss Stone, pouting. "I might have

knowed it was ever so much further nor it looked."
"Well, I ain't sayin' I don't want to go, if yu' was desirous of campin'

out to-night."
"Mr. McLean! Indeed, and I'd do no such thing!" and Sabina giggled.

A sage-hen rose under their horses' feet, and hurtled away heavily over
the next rise of ground, taking a final wide sail out of sight.

"Something like them partridges used to," said Lin, musingly.
"Partridges?" inquired Sabina.

"Used to be in the woods between Lynn and Salem. Maybe the woods are gone
by this time. Yes, they must be gone, I guess."

Presently they dismounted and sought the stream bank.
"We had music and dancing at Thanksgiving and such times," said Lin, his

wiry length stretched on the grass beside the seated Sabina. He was not
looking at her, but she took a pleasure in watching him, his curly head

and bronze face, against which the young mustache showed to its full
advantage.

"I expect you used to dance a lot," remarked Sabina, for a subject.
"Yes. Do yu' know the Portland Fancy?"

Sabina did not, and her subject died away.
"Did anybody ever tell you you had good eyes?" she inquired next.

"Why, sure," said Lin, waking for a moment; "but I like your color best.
A girl's eyes will mostly beat a man's."

"Indeed, I don't think so!" exclaimed poor Sabina, too much expectant to
perceive the fatal note of routine with which her transient admirer

pronounced this gallantry. He informed her that hers were like the sea,
and she told him she had not yet looked upon the sea.

"Never?" said he. "It's a turruble pity you've never saw salt water. It's
different from fresh. All around home it's blue--awful blue in July--

around Swampscott and Marblehead and Nahant, and around the islands. I've
swam there lots. Then our home bruck up and we went to board in Boston."

He snapped off a flower in reach of his long arm. Suddenly all dreaminess
left him.

"I wonder if you'll be settin' the colonel's table when I come back?" he
said.

Miss Stone was at a loss.
"I'm goin' East to-morrow--East, to Boston."

Yesterday he had told her that sixteen miles to Lander was the farthest
journey from the post that he intended to make--the farthest from the

post and her.
"I hope nothing ain't happened to your folks?" said she.

"I ain't got no folks," replied Lin, "barring a brother. I expect he is
taking good care of himself."

"Don't you correspond?"
"Well, I guess he would if there was anything to say. There ain't been

nothin'."
Sabina thought they must have quarrelled, but learned that they had not.

It was time for her now to return and set the colonel's table, so Lin
rose and went to bring her horse. When he had put her in her saddle she

noticed him step to his own.
"Why, I didn't know you were lame!" cried she.

"Shucks!" said Lin. "It don't cramp my style any." He had sprung on his
horse, ridden beside her, leaned and kissed her before she got any

measure of his activity.
"That's how," said he; and they took their homeward way galloping. "No,"

Lin continued, "Frank and me never quarrelled. I just thought I'd have a
look at this Western country. Frank, he thought dry-goods was good enough

for him, and so we're both satisfied, I expect. And that's a lot of years
now. Whoop ye!" he suddenly sang out, and fired his six-shooter at a

jack-rabbit, who strung himself out flat and flew over the earth.
Both dismounted at the parade-ground gate, and he kissed her again when

she was not looking, upon which she very properly slapped him; and he
took the horses to the stable. He sat down to tea at the hotel, and found

the meal consisted of black potatoes, gray tea, and a guttering dish of
fat pork. But his appetite was good, and he remarked to himself that

inside the first hour he was in Boston he would have steamed Duxbury
clams. Of Sabina he never thought again, and it is likely that she found

others to take his place. Fort Washakie was one hundred and fifty miles
from the railway, and men there were many and girls were few.

The next morning the other passengers entered the stage with resignation,
knowing the thirty-six hours of evil that lay before them. Lin climbed up

beside the driver. He had a new trunk now.
"Don't get full, Lin," said the clerk, putting the mail-sacks in at the

store.
"My plans ain't settled that far yet," replied Mr. McLean.

"Leave it out of them," said the voice of the bishop, laughing, inside
the stage.

It was a cool, fine air. Gazing over the huge plain down in which lies
Fort Washakie, Lin heard the faint notes of the trumpet on the parade

ground, and took a good-bye look at all things. He watched the American
flag grow small, saw the circle of steam rising away down by the hot

springs, looked at the bad lands beyond, chemically pink and rose amid
the vast, natural, quiet-colored plain. Across the spreading distance

Indians trotted at wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding

over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.

"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.
"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a

month, I guess."
He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and

during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you were?

But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the bottom
of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided it was a

suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them to change
their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and unharness. Then

they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace was spliced with
rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground, the bishop

proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles. They crossed
through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines, and, reaching

Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That afternoon the
stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform at Green River;

this was the route in those days before the mid-winter catastrophes of
frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was going west. His

robes had passed him on the up stage during the night. When the reverend
gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short moment, and then

laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.
"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but I

can't, you see. Not even at this."
The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.

"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the bishop, giving his hand to
Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting full'

out of your plans?"
Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he said.

"I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added
"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had

enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
in the same place."

He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He walked
up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright lights of

the town shone in the saloon windows. Over across the way piano-music


文章标签:名著  

章节正文