酷兔英语

章节正文

son and I was his mother.' And that's the first regular kiss she ever

gave me I didn't have to take myself. God bless her! God bless her!"
As we ate our supper, young Billy burst out of brooding silence: "I

didn't ask her about Laramie. So there!"
"Well, well, kid," said the cow-puncher, patting his head, "yu' needn't

to, I guess."
But Billy's eye remained sullen and jealous. He paid slight attention to

the picture-book of soldiers and war that Jessamine gave him when we went
over to the station. She had her own books, some flowers in pots, a

rocking-chair, and a cosey lamp that shone on her bright face and dark
dress. We drew stools from the office desks, and Billy perched silently

on one.
"Scanty room for company!" Jessamine said. "But we must make out this

way--till we have another way." She smiled on Lin, and Billy's face
darkened. "Do you know," she pursued to me, "with all those chickens Mr.

McLean tells me about, never a one has he thought to bring here."
"Livin' or dead do you want 'em?" inquired Lin.

"Oh, I'll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will--"
"Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he'll have to steal 'em!" And we all laughed

together.
"You won't make me go back to Laramie, will you?" spoke Billy, suddenly,

from his stool.
"I'd like to see anybody try to make you?" exclaimed Jessamine. "Who says

any such thing?"
"Lin did," said Billy.

Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. "What a way to tease him!"
she said. "And you so kind. Why, you've hurt his feelings!"

"I never thought," said Lin the boisterous. "I wouldn't have."
"Come sit here, Billy," said Jessamine. "Whenever he teases, you tell me,

and we'll make him behave."
"Honest?" persisted Billy.

"Shake hands on it," said Jessamine.
"Cause I'll go to school. But I won't go back to Laramie for no one. And

you're a-going to be Lin's wife, honest?"
"Honest! Honest!" And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.

"Then I guess mother can't never come back to Lin, either," stated Billy,
relieved.

Jessamine let fall the child's hand.
"Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her."

Jessamine gazed at Lin.
"It's simple," said the cow-puncher. "It's all right."

But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.
"It's all right," repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and

looking down. "Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual."
"Billy?" whispered Jessamine. "Then you--But his name is Lusk!"

"Course it is," said Billy. "Father and mother are living in Laramie."
"It's all straight," said the cow-puncher. "I never saw her till three

years ago. I haven't anything to hide, only--only--only it don't come
easy to tell."

I rose. "Miss Buckner," said I, "he will tell you. But he will not tell
you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret.

It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten."
But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine's eyes were fixed on

Lin, and her face remained white.
I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to

the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to
sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I

walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith,
ignorant she was another's, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could

have told Jessamine the same old story myself--or almost; but what had it
to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with

something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the
moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow,

seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of
the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and

near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were
in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the

water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx
emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a

door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up
and spoke in a half-awed voice.

"She's a-crying," said he.
I withhold过去式(分词)">withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: "I'm

sorry. Do you think she's mad with Lin for what he's told her? She just
sat, and when she started crying he made me go away."

"I don't believe she's mad," I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket,
he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the

plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine's window. Soon young
Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he

who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him.
But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened,

and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and
stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the

door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.
"What?" I said at length.

I don't know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him
gently. "Wake, son," said he. "You and I must get to our camp now."

"Now?" said Billy. "Can't we wait till morning?"
"No, son. We can't wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the

saddles on." As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. "She is
in there," he said. "She's in there. So near." He looked, and turned to

the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. "I
understand her words," he continued. "Her words, the meaning of them. But

not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin' over. Why, she don't
blame me!" he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.

"Lin," I answered, "she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile."
"That's not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she

forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I
didn't intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn't been around, and she

never realized about his mother and me. We've talked awful open, but that
was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long--and

I never thought! She don't blame me. She says she understands; but she
says I have a wife livin'."

"That is nonsense," I declared.
"Yu' mustn't say that," said he. "She don't claim she's a wife, either.

She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be
different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don't see her

view; maybe I never can see it; but she's made me feel she has it, and
that she's honest, and loves me true--" His voice broke for a moment.

"She said she'd wait."
"You can't have a marriage broken that was never tied," I said. "But

perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry--"
"No," said the cow-puncher. "Law couldn't fool her. She's thinking of

something back of law. She said she'd wait--always. And when I took it in
that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and the

chickens--well, I couldn't think of things at all, and I came and waked
Billy to clear out and quit."

"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"Tell her? Nothin', I guess. I don't remember getting out of the room.

Why, here's actually her pistol, and she's got mine!"
"Man, man!" said I, "go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll

wait too--always!"
"Would yu'?"

"Look!" I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.
I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the

horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its
black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into

the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the
clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was

weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving,
ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not

yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and
Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded

her in his arms.
"Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!" she sobbed. She could not withhold this

last good-bye.
I do not think he spoke. In a moment thehorses started and were gone,

flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them
were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright

moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's
window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing

over Separ.
DESTINY AT DRYBONE

PART I
Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to

ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people
and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not

guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarilydivine it.
Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine

Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she
been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine. Had this

experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr. McLean
the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said

that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr.
McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what

she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and "yours
sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.' "Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk--if

Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop
quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and

there she would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not
like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would

adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin--until the school
opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about

how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any
man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon--

young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink--
the only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.

"I can write a lot quicker than Lin," said Billy, upon arriving. "He was
fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling

in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to
the cabin for my clothes."

"You don't say!" said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him
again.

When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked
box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at

Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors. But
sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss

Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.
Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages

being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. "Honey
Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls," he remarked. "He says you

couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin
ain't worked it like he done in old times."

"Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right," said Jessamine, buoyantly. "And
that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it

clears, and then we'll go for our ride."
"Yes," said Billy. When does a man get too old to marry?"

"I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know."
"Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he

must be thirty."
"Old!" exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her

table.
"But Lin ain't been married very much," pursued Billy. "Mother's the only

one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?"
"It's better to," said Jessamine.

"Ah, I don't think so," said Billy, with disparagement. "You ought to see
mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though," said

the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. "Why won't you if he
don't mind?"

She continued to parry him, but this was not a very smooth start for
eight in the morning. Moments of lull there were, when the telegraph



文章标签:名著  

章节正文