CHAPTER II
HIS LOVE AFFAIRS
Naturally a lad of this temper had his loves. He made no secret of them,and all the young people in the town knew his sweethearts and theprecise time when his passion changed its course. If a girl pleased himhe courted her with the utmost directness, but he was by nointerpretation a love-sick youth. His likings were more in the nature ofproprietary comradeship, and were expressed without caresses or ordinarywords of endearment.
His courtship amounted to service. He waited about to meet and help hislove, he hastened to defend her and to guide her; and if the favored oneknew her role she humored his fancies, permitting him to aid her infinding her way across a weedy pasture lot or over a tiny little brookwhich he was pleased to call a torrent. A smile of derision was fatal.He would not submit to ridicule or joking. At the first jocular word hishands clinched and his eyes flamed with anger. His was not a face oflaughter; for the most part it was serious in expression, and his eyeswere rapt with dreams of great deeds.
He had one mate to whom he talked freely, and him he chose often to behis companion in the woods or on the prairies. This was John Burns, sonof a farmer who lived near the town. Harry spent nearly every Saturdayand Sunday during the summer months on the Burns farm. He helped Jackduring haying and harvest, and when their tasks were done the two boyswandered away to the bank of the river and there, under some greatbasswood tree on delicious sward, they lay and talked of wild animalsand Indians and the West. At this time the great chieftains of theSioux, Sitting Bull and Gall, were becoming famous to the world, and thefirst reports of the findings of gold in the Black Hills were beingmade. A commission appointed by President Grant had made a treaty withthe Sioux wherein Sitting Bull was told, "If you go to this newreservation and leave Dakota to the settlers, you shall be unmolested solong as grass grows and water runs."
But the very guard sent in to protect this commission reported "gold inthe grass roots," and the insatiate greed of the white man broke allbounds--the treaty was ignored, and Sitting Bull, the last chieftain ofthe Sioux, calling his people together, withdrew deeper into thewilderness of Wyoming. The soldiers were sent on the trail, and thepress teemed for months with news of battles and speeches and campaigns.
All these exciting events Harry and his friend Jack read and discussedhotly. Jack was eager to own a mine. "I'd like to pick up a nugget," hesaid, but Harold was not interested. "I don't care to mine; I'd like tobe with General Custer. I'd like to be one of the scouts. I'd like tohave a coat like that." He pointed at one of the pictures wherein two orthree men in fringed buckskin shirts and wide hats were galloping acrossa rocky plain.
Many times as the two boys met to talk over these alluring matters thelittle town and the dusty lanes became exceedingly tame and commonplace.
Harold's eyes glowed with passion as he talked to his sweetheart ofthese wild scenes, and she listened because he was so alluring as he layat her feet, pouring out a vivid recital of his plans.
"I'm not going to stay here much longer," he said; "it's too dull. Ican't stand much more school. If it wasn't for you I'd run away rightnow."
Dot only smiled back at him and laid her hand on his hair. She was hislatest sweetheart. He loved her for her vivid color, her abundant andbeautiful hair, and also because she was a sympathetic listener. She, onher part, enjoyed the sound of his eager voice and the glow of his deepbrown eyes. They were both pupils in the little seminary in the town,and he saw her every day walking to and from the recitation halls. Heoften carried her books for her, and in many other little ways insistedon serving her.
Almost without definable reason the "Wild West" came to be a land ofwonder, lit as by some magical light. Its canons, _arroyos_, andmesquite, its bronchos, cowboys, Indians, and scouts filled the boy'smind with thoughts of daring, not much unlike the fancies of a boy inthe days of knight errantry.
Of the Indians he held mixed opinions. At times he thought of them as anoble race, at others--when he dreamed of fame--he wished to kill agreat many of them and be very famous. Most of the books he read werebased upon the slaughter of the "redskins," and yet at heart he wishedto be one of them and to taste the wild joy of their poetic life, filledwith hunting and warfare. Sitting Bull, Chief Gall, Rain-in-the-Face,Spotted Tail, Star-in-the-Brow, and Black Buffalo became wonder-workingnames in his mind. Every line in the newspapers which related to thelife of the cowboys or Indians he read and remembered, for his plan wasto become a part of it as soon as he had money enough to start.
There were those who would have contributed five dollars each to sendhim, for he was considered a dangerous influence among the village boys.If a window were broken by hoodlums at night it was counted against theminister's son. If a melon patch were raided and the fruit scattered andbroken, Harold was considered the ringleader. Of the judgments of theirelders the rough lads were well aware, and they took pains that no wordof theirs should shift blame from Harold's shoulders to their own. Byhints and sly remarks they fixed unalterably in the minds of theirfathers and mothers the conception that Harold was a desperately bad andreckless boy. In his strength, skill, and courage they really believed,and being afraid of him, they told stories of his exploits, even amongthemselves, which bordered on the marvelous.
In reality he was not a leader of these raids. His temperament was notof that kind. He did not care to assume direction of an expeditionbecause it carried too much trouble and some responsibility. His mindwas wayward and liable to shift to some other thing at any moment;besides, mischief for its own sake did not appeal to him. The realleaders were the two sons of the village shoemaker. They wereunder-sized, weazened, shrewd, sly little scamps, and appeared not tohave the resolution of chickadees, but had a singular genius for gettingothers into trouble. They knew how to handle spirits like Harold. Theydared him to do evil deeds, taunted him (as openly as they felt it safeto do) with cowardice, and so spurred him to attempt some triflingdepredation merely as a piece of adventure. Almost invariably when theytouched him on this nerve Harold responded with a rush, and whendiscovery came was nearly always among the culprits taken and branded,for his pride would not permit him to sneak and run. So it fell out thattime after time he was found among the grape stealers or the melonraiders, and escaped prosecution only because the men of the town laidit to "boyish deviltry" and not to any deliberate intent to commit acrime.
After his daughter married Mr. Excell made another effort to win thelove of his son and failed. Harold cared nothing for his father'sscholarship or oratorical powers, and never went to church after he wassixteen, but he sometimes boasted of his father among the boys.
"If father wasn't a minister, he'd be one of the strongest men in thistown," he said once to Jack. "Look at his shoulders. His arms are hard,too. Of course he can't show his muscle, but I tell you he can box andswing dumb-bells."
If the father had known it, in the direction of athletics lay the roadto the son's heart, but the members of the First Church were notsufficiently advanced to approve of a muscular minister, and so Mr.Excell kept silent on such subjects, and swung his dumb-bells inprivate. As a matter of fact, he had been a good hunter in his youth inMichigan, and might have won his son's love by tales of the wood, but hedid not.
For the most part, Harold ignored his father's occasional moments oftenderness, and spent the larger part of his time with his sister or atthe Burns' farm.
Mr. and Mrs. Burns saw all that was manly and good in the boy, and theystoutly defended him on all occasions.
"The boy is put upon," Mrs. Burns always argued. "A quieter, morepeaceabler boy I never knew, except my own Jack. They're good, helpfulboys, both of 'em, and I don't care what anybody says."
Jack, being slower of thought and limb, worshiped his chum, whosealertness and resource humbled him, though he was much the betterscholar in all routine work. He read more than Harold, but Harold seizedupon the facts and transmitted them instantly into something vivid anddramatic. He assumed all leadership in the hunting, and upon J
ack fellall the drudgery. He always did the reading, also, while Harold listenedand dreamed with eyes that seemed to look across miles of peaks. His wasthe eagle's heart; wild reaches allured him. Minute beauties of gardenor flower were not for him. The groves along the river had long sincelost their charm because he knew their limits--they no longer appealedto his imagination.
A hundred times he said: "Come, let's go West and kill buffalo.To-morrow we will see the snow on Pike's Peak." The wild country was sonear, its pressure day by day molded his mind. He had no care or thoughtof cities or the East. He dreamed of the plains and horses and herds ofbuffalo and troops of Indians filing down the distant slopes. Every poemof the range, every word which carried flavor of the wild country, everypicture of a hunter remained in his mind.
The feel of a gun in his hands gave him the keenest delight, and tostalk geese in a pond or crows in the cornfield enabled him to imaginethe joy of hunting the bear and the buffalo. He had the hunter'spatience, and was capable of creeping on his knees in the mud for hoursin the attempt to kill a duck. He could imitate almost all the birds andanimals he knew. His whistle would call the mother grouse to him. Hecould stop the whooping of cranes in their steady flight, and hishonking deceived the wary geese. When complimented for his skill inhunting he scornfully said:
"Oh, that's nothing. Anyone can kill small game; but buffaloes andgrizzlies--they are the boys."
During the winter of his sixteenth year a brother of Mr. Burns returnedfrom Kansas, which was then a strange and far-off land, and from himHarold drew vast streams of talk. The boy was insatiate when the plainswere under discussion. From this veritable cattleman he secured many newwords. With great joy he listened while Mr. Burns spoke of _cinches_,ropes, corrals, _buttes_, _arroyos_ and other Spanish-Mexican wordswhich the boys had observed in their dime novels, but which they hadnever before heard anyone use in common speech. Mr. Burns alluded to an_aparejo_ or an _arroyo_ as casually as Jack would say "singletree" or"furrow," and his stories brought the distant plains country very near.
Harold sought opportunity to say: "Mr. Burns, take me back with you; Iwish you would."
The cattleman looked at him. "Can you ride a horse?"
Jack spoke up: "You bet he can, Uncle. He rode in the races."
Burns smiled as a king might upon a young knight seeking an errant.
"Well, if your folks don't object, when you get done with school, andJack's mother says _he_ can come, you make a break for Abilene; we'llsee what I can do with you on the 'long trail.'"
Harold took this offer very seriously, much more so than Mr. Burnsintended he should do, although he was pleased with the boy.
Harold well knew that his father and mother would not consent, and verynaturally said nothing to them about his plan, but thereafter he laid byevery cent of money he could earn, until his thrift became a source ofcomment. To Jack he talked for hours of the journey they were to make.Jack, unimaginative and engrossed with his studies at the seminary, tookthe whole matter very calmly. It seemed a long way off at best, and hisstudies were pleasant and needed his whole mind. Harold was thrown backupon the company of his sweetheart, who was the only one else to whom hecould talk freely.
Dot, indolent, smiling creature of cozy corners that she was, listenedwithout emotion, while Harold, with eyes ablaze, with visions of thegreat, splendid plains, said: "I'm going West sure. I'm tired of school;I'm going to Kansas, and I'm going to be a great cattle king in a fewyears, Dot, and then I'll come back and get you, and we'll go live onthe banks of a big river, and we'll have plenty of horses, and go ridingand hunting antelope every day. How will you like that?"
Her unresponsiveness hurt him, and he said: "You don't seem to carewhether I go or not."
She turned and looked at him vacantly, still smiling, and he saw thatshe had not heard a single word of his passionate speech. He sprang up,hot with anger and pain.
"If you don't care to listen to me you needn't," he said, speakingthrough his clinched teeth.
She smiled, showing her little white teeth prettily. "Now, don't getmad, Harry; I was thinking of something else. Please tell me again."
"I won't. I'm done with you." A big lump arose in his throat and heturned away to hide tears of mortified pride. He could not have put itinto words, but he perceived the painful truth. Dot had considered him aboy all along, and had only half listened to his stories and plans inthe past, deceiving him for some purpose of her own. She was a smiling,careless hypocrite.
"You've lied to me," he said, turning and speaking with the bluntness ofa boy without subtlety of speech. "I never'll speak to you again;good-by."
Dot kept swinging her foot. "Good-by," she said in her sweet,soft-breathing voice.
He walked away slowly, but his heart was hot with rage and woundedpride, and every time he thought of the tone in which she said"Good-by," his flesh quivered. He was seventeen, and considered himselfa man; she was eighteen, and thought him only a boy. She had neverlistened to him, that he now understood. Maud had been right. Dot hadonly pretended, and now for some reason she ceased to pretend.
There was just one comfort in all this: it made it easier for him to goto the sunset country, and his wounded heart healed a little at thethought of riding a horse behind a roaring herd of buffaloes.