Vesty of the Basins Part 15

"'S I sums it up," said the impa.s.sively listening collector, "ef ye don't pa.s.s away some o' yer time on yer roads down here, ye'll break some o' yer d--d necks."

Renewed unresentful laughter from the group.

"Grarsshoppers, neow," said Captain Leezur, seriously and reflectively, "makes better treoutin' bait 'n angle-worms (I know 't we don't have no sech grarsshoppers nor angle-worms neither as they dew in Californy).

"Nason was over t'other day, helpin' me shingle my barn. 'Twas a dreadful warm day, and we was takin' our noonin' arfter dinner, settin'

thar' on the log, 'nd there was a lot o' these 'ere little green grarsshoppers hoppin' areound in the grarss: so arfter a spall, we speared up some on 'em and----"

"'S I sums it up, ef ye want to stay here and ketch the last fish 't G.o.d ever made, 'ste'd o' bracin' up and mendin' yer roads and takin'

yer part in a shyer town, ye must do so."

"Sho!" said Captain Leezur, regarding him with wistful compa.s.sion; "I hain't seen as fish was gittin' skeerce."

By winks and insinuations of n.i.g.g.ardliness, through Captain Rafe, father of Fluke, he was moved to take a nervine lozenge out of his pocket and display it temptingly before the sapient, immovable countenance of the collector. The latter, cold pipe in mouth, solemnly shook his head.

"They _dew_ come kind o' high, I know," said Captain Leezur, "but I'm all'as willin' to sheer 'em with a friend. I ain't one o' that kind that's all'as peerin' anxiously into the futur'."

"The furderest time 't I ever looked into the futur'," said Captain Dan Kirtland, "was once when I was a boy 'bout nineteen, and my father told me not to take the colt out. He was a stallion colt (I know 't we don't have no sech colts here as they do in Californy), jest three years and two months old, and sperrited--oh, no; I guess he wa'n't sperrited none! Wal, my father was gone one day, and I tackled him up and off I went. Might 'a' fetched up all right, but 't happened jest as I was pa.s.sin' by them smoke-houses to Herrinport, some boys 't was playin' with a beef's blawder had hove her up onto the roof, and she bounded down right atween that stallion's ears and eyes. In jest about one second I looked so far into the futur' that I run my nose two inches into the 'arth, and she 's been broke ever since."

"Never mind, Kirtland, she 's all thar'. The furderest time 't I ever looked ahead," said the voice of Shamgar, "was once in war time. Flour fifteen dollars a barrel, seven girls and five boys (I know 't we don't raise no sech families here as they do in Californy), everything high.

All to once the thought come to me, 'Mebbe herrin'll be high tew.' And sure enough herrin' was high!"

"The furderest time 't I ever looked ahead----" deliciously began Captain Leezur.

"G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye old skate!"

Admiral 'S I Sums-it-up was turning his horse about.

"I believe you and me 's got a bet on, ain't we, adm'r'l?" said Captain Pharo.

"I told 'em 'twas wastin' waggin ile to come down here to c'lect.

G'long! ye old fool! Git up! ye old skate! 'S I sums it up, bet ye, goin' 'tween here and the Point I could sc.r.a.pe twenty-five pound o' mud off 'n yer kerridge time ye gits thar', Kobbe. G'long! ye old fool!

Git up! ye old skate!"

His unbaffled monotone grew gradually faint in the distance.

"Roads _be_ all porridge up there a piece, I reckon," chuckled Captain Pharo; "but as long as Crooked River runs, I don't calk'late to lose no bet. Poo! poo!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: 'My days are as the gra.s.s, Or as--']

"Jest give me time," beamed Captain Leezur, sounding mellifluously, "'n' I can row any Pointer ash.o.r.e in an argyment 't ever was born yit.

I takes a moderate little spall to dew it in. Forced-to-go----"

"Ye be a lazy, yarn-reelin' set, all on ye," said Captain Rafe, grinning with affection and delight on the group. "I'm going to have ye all posted and put on the teown!"

Murmurs of rich and deep laughter.

A tall, dark form, shifty-eyed, had been insensibly moving and disintegrating me from the group. I found myself drifting strangely ever farther and farther away. I was sitting beside him on a rock in the covert of the woods, the sun setting over the bay, and all was still save his voice.

"I went to Californy minding" (mining), said he. "She ain't nothin' so wonderful of a State as you might think: she ain't no bigger 'n Maine 'n' New York and Alabamy, 'n' Afriky 'n' Bar Harbor all put into one!"

"Great heavens!" said I, scratching my feeble little cane into the earth, "is she that?"

Of all that had been denied him in the recent general conversation, of colossal hunks of salt, of gra.s.shoppers "no larger than Dorking hens,"

of fishes, women, horses fabulous, I listened, rapt with wonder and admiration.

The sun went down, the moon arose, and still I listened. I was not weary, I was not hungry; I was absorbed in sincere and awful attention.

But the world is callous and cold, and I shall not repeat those tales.

The world is callous and cold; but, as the shifty spectre at last pointed me, unwilling, homeward, he murmured, with tears in his eyes: "I never found sech an intellergent listener as you be--not in the whole length and breadth of Californy."

VIII

"VESTY 'S MARRIED"

"Vesty 's married Gurd! Vesty 's gone and got married to Gurd!" said the children, big and joyful with news, on their way to school.

Yes, that was what she had done! I leaned heavily for a moment where I stood. That was Vesty!

Oh, child-madness! Sweet, lost child! Oh, pity of the world! and I crawling on with such a hurt; I did not think that should have wrung me so.

I was getting near her door; not anywhere else could I have gone. She would be at the Rafes' cottage now--so easily do the Basin brides move, without wedding journey or trousseau.

The wash-tubs and cooking-stove stood at one end of the long, low-raftered room, the cabinet organ and violins at the other. Captain Rafe and the boys were out, hauling their sea-traps, and Vesty had been doing the washing that they were wont to do for themselves; the mother, like her own, being dead.

The room was nice as I had never seen it before, and Vesty was putting some pitiful little ornaments to rights at the cabinet-organ end.

She turned to me with so strange and febrile a look, yet with so wild and startled a welcome in her eyes.

"Hush!" I said. "You wanted me, child; I am here."

I saw that she had turned to lean against the organ, and that she was shaken with sobs.

"What have you done, Vesty? Wicked and false beyond any woman I know--_you_!"

"Have you seen him?" she sobbed.

"No, I have not seen Notely. You were married only last night."

"I wrote to him. There was only one way to save Notely from marrying me--only one way."

"You might have waited."

"Notely would never have waited. Notely meant to marry me."

"You should have married him, and not been false."