David Dunne Part 2

"I am not hunting to kill, my lad. I am hunting old scenes and memories of other days. I used to live about here. I ran away eight years ago when I was just your age."

"What is your name?" asked David interestedly.

"Joe Forbes."

"Oh," was the eager rejoinder. "I know. You are Deacon Forbes' wild son that ran away."

"So that's how I am known around here, is it? Well, I've come back, to settle up my father's estate."

"What did you run away for?" inquired David.

"Combination of too much stepmother and a roving spirit, I guess. Here we are."

He sprang on the platform of the shanty boat and helped David on board. The boy inspected this novel house in wonder while his host set saucers and spoons on the table.

"Would you mind," asked David in an embarra.s.sed manner as he wistfully eyed the coveted luxury, "if I took my dishful home?"

"What's the matter?" asked Forbes, his eyes twinkling. "Eaten too much already?"

"No; but you see my mother likes it and she hasn't had any since last summer. I'd rather take mine to her."

"There's plenty left for your mother. I'll put this pail in a bigger one and pack ice about it. Then it won't melt."

"But you paid me for it," protested David.

"That's all right. Your mother was pretty good to me when I was a boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not know I'd been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you were right about Miss M'ri making the best cream in the country. It used to be a chronic pastime with her. That's how I guessed what you had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream.

Isn't she married yet?"

"No."

"Doesn't she keep company with some lucky man?"

"No," again denied the boy emphatically.

"What's the matter? She used to be awfully pretty and sweet."

"She is now, but she don't want any man."

"Well, now, David, that isn't quite natural, you know. Why do you think she doesn't want one?"

"I heard say she was crossed once."

"Crossed, David? And what might that be?" asked Forbes in a delighted feint of perplexity.

"Disappointed in love, you know."

"Yes; it all comes back now--the gossip of my boyhood days. She was going with a man when Barnabas' wife died and left two children--one a baby--and Miss M'ri gave up her lover to do her duty by her brother's family. So Barnabas never married again?"

"No; Miss M'ri keeps house and brings up Jud and Janey."

"I remember Jud--mean little shaver. Janey must be the baby."

"She's eight now."

"I remember you, David. You were a little toddler of four--all eyes.

Your folks had a place right on the edge of town."

"We left it when I was six years old and came out here," informed David.

Forbes' groping memory recalled the gossip that had reached him in the Far West. "Dunne went to prison," he mused, "and the farm was mortgaged to defray the expenses of the trial." He hastened back to a safer channel.

"Miss M'ri was foolish to spoil her life and the man's for fancied duty," he observed.

David bridled.

"Barnabas couldn't go to school when he was a boy because he had to work so she and the other children could go. She'd ought to have stood by him."

"I see you have a sense of duty, too. This county was always strong on duty. I suppose they've got it in for me because I ran away?"

"Mr. Brumble says it was a wise thing for you to do. Uncle Larimy says you were a brick of a boy. Miss Rhody says she had no worry about her woodpile getting low when you were here."

"Poor Miss Rhody! Does she still live alone? And Uncle Larimy--is he uncle to the whole community? What fishing days I had with him! I must look him up and tell him all my adventures. I have planned a round of calls for to-night--Miss M'ri, Miss Rhody, Uncle Larimy--"

"Tell me about your adventures," demanded David breathlessly.

He listened to a wondrous tale of western life, and never did narrator get into so close relation with his auditor as did this young ranchman with David Dunne.

"I must go home," said the boy reluctantly when Joe had concluded.

"Come down to-morrow, David, and we'll go fishing."

"All right. Thank you, sir."

With heart as light as air, David sped through the woods. He had found his Hero.

CHAPTER II

David struck out from the shelter of the woodland and made his way to his home, a pathetically small, rudely constructed house. The patch of land supposed to be a garden, and in proportion to the dimensions of the building, showed a few feeble efforts at vegetation. It was not positively known that the Widow Dunne had a clear t.i.tle to her homestead, but one would as soon think of foreclosing a mortgage on a playhouse, or taking a nest from a bird, as to press any claim on this fallow fragment in the midst of prosperous farmlands.

Some discouraged looking fowls picked at the scant gra.s.s, a lean cow switched a lackadaisical tail, and in a pen a pig grunted his discontent.

David went into the little kitchen, where a woman was bending wearily over a washtub.

"Mother," cried the boy in dismay, "you said you'd let the washing go till to-morrow. That's why I didn't come right back."