The New Boy at Hilltop, and Other Stories Part 23

"Oh," I said. "Then--then you're coming back to college?"

"If they'll have me."

"Hope they won't," I said.

But I didn't.

The next Wednesday we had lessons after breakfast, because it was a good deal cooler. Twigg said I had studied first rate, and if I liked we'd have a go at golf. So we did. I beat him one up and two to play. I thought at first he was just letting me win, but he wasn't. He didn't seem to be thinking of golf and looked sort of sober all the way round. When we'd finished he said:

"Raymond, I don't think I'll have an opportunity to use my clubs again this summer, and so, if you'd like me to, I'll leave them here. I dare say you could get some fun out of them. You could get a good deal of practice that would help you a lot later on."

"Leave them?" I asked. "I--I didn't know you were going away."

"You forget that my month's up to-morrow," he answered quietly. "I was to have a month in which to see what I could do. If by the end of that time I had managed to get you in control I was to stay on. That was the agreement with your father."

"Oh," I muttered. We were sitting under the big maple tree on the lawn. I had an iron putter and was digging a hole in the turf.

"Yes," he continued, "to-morrow ends the present arrangement. I wish very much that I could go to Mr. Dale and tell him that I had won. But I can't.

I haven't won, Raymond. I have gained ground, but the victory is still a long way off."

"You--you've done better than the others," I muttered.

"Have I? Well, I'm glad of that; that's something, isn't it? No man likes to acknowledge utter defeat; I'm certain I don't."

I dug away with the putter for a minute. Then I said:

"If I asked dad to let you stay, don't you think he would?"

"Perhaps; but I wouldn't want to."

"Oh, if you want to go away, all right," I grumbled.

"I meant that I wouldn't care to remain just because of a whim of yours. If I believed that by staying I could accomplish something; if I thought that you wanted me to stay, knowing that it meant hard study--much harder than any you've been doing--and cheerful obedience; in short, Raymond, if I knew that I could honestly earn my salary, I'd stay."

He took out his pipe and filled it. I shoved the earth back into the hole in the turf. n.o.body said anything for a while.

"I don't mind study--much," I said presently.

"It hasn't been hard yet," he answered.

"And I don't mind doing what you tell me to. You're--you're not like Simpkins, Browning, and Gabbett."

"I haven't pulled on the curb yet," he said.

I started a new hole.

"There'd be no more Harrisbridge and Nate Golden," he said, after a bit, watching the smoke from his pipe.

I stopped digging.

"No more cigarettes; pipes are better."

"Huh," I muttered.

"No more swearing; there'd be a fine for swearing."

"I--I wouldn't care," I said.

"Sure?"

"Sure!" I looked over at him. He was kind of smiling at me through the smoke. I tried to grin back, but my face got the twitches and there was a lump in my throat.

"You--you just stay here," I muttered.

A RACE WITH THE WATERS

Roy Milford pulled the brim of his faded sombrero further over his blue eyes and urged Scamp into a trot, though it was broiling hot. Roy had left the town two miles behind, and three more miles stretched between him and home. From the cantle of his saddle hung the two paper parcels which, with the mail in his pocket, explained his errand.

Not a breath of air stirred the dusty leaves of the cottonwoods along the road. Roy was barely fourteen years old; but his six years in Colorado had taught him what such weather foretold, and there were plenty of other signs of the approaching storm. In the uncultivated fields the little mounds before the prairie dog holes were untenanted; the silver poplars, weather wise, were displaying the under sides of their gleaming leaves; the birds were silent; and the still, oppressive air was charged with electricity.

But, most unmistakable sign of all, over the flat purple peaks of the Mesa Grande, hung a long bank of sullen, blackish clouds. There was the storm, already marshaling its forces. Roy was certain that, after the month of rainless weather just pa.s.sed, the coming deluge would be something to wonder at.

Where the road crossed the railroad track Roy touched his buckskin pony with the quirt and loped westward until he reached a rail gate leading into an uncultivated field. Here he leaped nimbly out of the saddle, threw open the gate, sent Scamp through with a pat on the shoulder, closed the bars again, remounted, and trotted over the sun-cracked adobe. Two hundred yards away a fringe of greasewood bushes marked what, at this distance, appeared to be a water course. Such, in a way, it was. But Roy had never seen more water in it than he could have jumped across. It was a narrow arroyo or gully, varying in width from twelve to twenty feet, and averaging fifteen feet in depth. It ran almost due north and south for a distance of five miles, through a bare, level prairie tenanted only by roving cattle and horses--if one excepts rabbits, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, owls, lizards, and scorpions. There was no vegetation except grease-wood, cactus, and sagebrush. In heavy rains or during sudden meltings of the snow back on the mountains, each of several small gullies bore its share of water to the junction at the beginning; of the arroyo, from whence it sped, tumbling and churning through the miniature gorge, southward to the river.

To Roy, who loved adventure, the arroyo was ever a source of pleasure, with its twilit depths and firm sandy bed. He knew every inch of it. Many were the imaginary adventures he had gone through in its winding depths, now as a painted Arapahoe on the warpath, now as a county sheriff on the trail of murderous desperadoes, again as a mighty hunter searching the sandy floor for the tracks of bears and mountain lions. He had found strange things in the arroyo--rose-quartz arrow heads, notched like saws; an old, rusted Colt's revolver, bearing the date 1858, and a picture of the holding up of a stagecoach engraved around the chamber; queer, tiny sh.e.l.ls of some long gone fresh-water snail; bits of yellow pottery, their edges worn smooth and round by the water; to say nothing of birds' nests, villages of ugly water-white scorpions; and lizards, from the tiny ones that change their color, chameleonlike, to "racers" well over a foot long.

From end to end of the arroyo there were but two places where it was possible to enter or leave. Both of these had been made by cattle crossing from side to side. One was just back of Roy's home and the other was nearly two miles south. It was toward the latter that Roy was heading his horse.

He thought with pleasure of the comparative comfort awaiting him in the shaded depths. Brushing the perspiration out of his eyes, he glanced northward. Even as he looked the summits of the peaks were blurred from sight by a dark gray veil of rain. Above, all was blackness save when for an instant a wide, white sheet of lightning blazed above the mesa, and was followed a moment later by the first tremendous roar of thunder. Scamp p.r.i.c.ked up his drooping ears and mended his pace.

"We are going to get good and wet before we get home," muttered Roy. "Come on, Scamp!"

They reached the edge of the arroyo and the little pony, lurching from side to side, clambered carefully down the narrow path to the bottom. Once there, Roy used his quirt again, and the horse broke into a gallop that carried them fast over the sandy bed. On both sides the walls of adobe and yellow clay rose as straight as though of masonry. Along the brink grew stunted bushes of greasewood and of sage. Here and there the tap root of a greasewood was half exposed for its entire length, just as it had been left by the falling earth. Many of these yellow-brown roots, tough as hempen rope, descended quite to the bottom of the arroyo, for the greasewood perseveres astonishingly in its search for moisture.

As Scamp hurried along the brown and gray lizards darted across his path, and the mother scorpions, taking the air at the entrances of their holes, scuttled out of sight. Roy took off his hat and let the little draught of air that blew through the chasm dry the perspiration on face and hair.

Presently the sunlight above gave way to a sullen, silent shadow. The air grew strangely quiet; even the lizards no longer moved. Roy gazed straight upward into the slowly rolling depths of a dark cloud, and heartily wished himself at home. He had seen many a storm; but the one that was approaching now made him almost afraid. The little twigs of greasewood shivered and bent, and a cool breath fanned his cheek. There came a great drop, splashing against his bare brown hand; then another; then many, each leaving a spot of moisture on the dry sand as big as a silver dollar. Roy put his sombrero on and drew the string tightly back of his head. He b.u.t.toned his blue-flannel shirt at the throat, patted Scamp encouragingly on his reeking neck, and rode on.

For the last ten minutes the thunder had been roaring at intervals, drawing nearer and nearer, and now it crashed directly overhead with a mighty sound that shook the earth and sent Scamp bounding out of his path in terror.

Then down came the rain. It was as though a million buckets had been emptied upon him; it fell in livid, hissing sheets and walls, taking strange shapes, like pillars and columns that came from a dim nowhere and rushed past him into the gray void behind. He was drenched ere he could have turned in his saddle; his eyes were filled with rain, it ran dripping from his soaking hat brim and coursed down his arms and chest and back. For a moment even Scamp, experienced cow pony that he was, plunged and snorted loudly, until Roy's voice shouted encouragement. Then he raced forward again. But almost at once his gait shortened; the bed of the arroyo was running with water and the softened sand made heavy going. Roy could scarcely distinguish the walls on either side; but he knew that when the storm had broken the path leading up out of the arroyo was about a half mile ahead of him.

As suddenly as it had begun the deluge lessened. The walls, running with mud, were crumbling and falling here and there in miniature landslides.

Scamp was plunging badly in the soft ground, and so Roy slowed him down to a trot. He could not, he told himself grimly, get one speck wetter. There was little use in hurrying. With sudden recollection of his bundles, Roy glanced back. Only a wisp of wet brown paper sticking to the cantle remained; the water had soaked the wrappings--baking powder, flavoring extract, dried fruit, and all the rest of it, had utterly disappeared.

But Roy's regrets were cut short by Scamp. That animal suddenly stopped short, p.r.i.c.ked his ears forward, and showed every symptom of terror. Roy, wondering, urged him onward. But two steps beyond the horse again stopped and strove to turn. Roy quieted him and, peering forward up the gully, through the driving mist of rain, tried to account for the animal's fright.

Was it a bear? he wondered. He knew that there were some in the foothills, and it was quite possible that one had taken shelter here in the arroyo.

Then, as he looked, a roaring sound, which the boy had mistaken for the beat of the rain, rose and grew in volume until it drowned the hissing of the storm and filled the arroyo. Around a bend of the gully only a few yards ahead came a wave of turbid, yellow water, bearing above it a great rolling bank of white froth.