Then: "Them"s fer ketridges," he announced solemnly.
He scowled judiciously and nodded.
And, "I"ll hev to git me some, the first thing in the mornin"," he said.
That was his only remark then, and yet Caleb felt amply repaid. Later he had more to say, but for the time being he merely followed Caleb back downstairs, walking very stiff and straight except when, with every few steps, he leaned over the better to see the looped webbing across his middle.
And at table that evening the man came to know another trait in the odd little stranger"s odd makeup which, coupled with those which he had already mentally tabulated for future private contemplation, set him to wondering more than a little.
With the appearance of the first dish upon the table that night the boy was very frankly nonplussed at the array of implements upon each side of his plate, placed there for him to manipulate. He scarcely knew one from the other, and the separate uses for each not at all. But the way in which he met the problem made Caleb lift his eyes and meet Sarah"s inscrutable glance with something akin to triumph. For there was no awkwardness in the boy"s procedure, no flushing embarra.s.sment, no shame-facedness nor painfully self-conscious attempt to cover his ignorance. Instead, he sat and waited--sat and watched openly until Miss Sarah had herself selected knife or fork, as the case might be--and then, turning back to those beside his own place, frowning intently, he made painstaking selection therefrom. Nor did he once make a mistake. And Caleb, after he had begun to mark a growing softness in the color of his sister"s thin cheeks, ventured to draw into conversation their small guest.
The boy talked freely and openly, always with his wide eyes upon the face of his questioner, always in the grave and slightly drawling idioms of the woods. Again he confided that he had never before been out of the timber; he explained that "Old Tom"s" untimely taking-off a fortnight back had been alone responsible for this pilgrimage. And that opened the way for a question which Caleb had been eager to ask him.
"I suppose this--this "Old Tom" was some kin of yours?" he observed.
The boy shook his head.
"No," he answered, "no, I ain"t never hed no kin. I ain"t never hed n.o.body--father ner mother, neither!"
Caleb saw Sarah start a little and bite her thin lips. But the bird-like movement of surprise was lost upon the speaker.
"I ain"t never hed n.o.body," he re-averred, and Caleb, straining to catch a note of self-pity or plea for sympathy in the words, realized that the boy didn"t even know what the one or the other was. "I ain"t never hed n.o.body but Old Tom. And he was--he wasn"t nuthin" but what he called my--my"--the sentence was broken while he paused to get the phrase correctly--"he was what he called my "logical custodian.""
Guiltily Caleb knew that his next question would savor of indelicacy, but he had to ask it just the same.
"Still, I suppose his--his taking-off must have been something in the nature of a blow to you?" he suggested.
The boy pursed his lips.
"Wall, no," he exclaimed at last, nonchalantly. "No-o-o! I can"t say"s it was. We"d both been expectin" it, I reckon. Old Tom, he often sed he knew that some day he"d go and git just blind, stavin"
drunk enough to try an" swim the upper rapids--and two weeks ago he done so!"
And the rest of the words were quite casual.
"I kind-a reckon he"d hev made it, at that," he offered his opinion, "if they"d hev been a trifle more water. But the rocks was too close to the surface fer comfortable swimmin". The Jenkinses found him down in the slack water, Sunday noon or thereabouts, and they sed he"d never be no deader, not even if he"d a-died in a reg"lar bed, with a doctor helpin" him along."
Caleb threw his sister one lugubriously helpless glance. Sarah had choked, apparently upon a crumb of bread, and was coughing, stranglingly. And Caleb made to change the drift of the conversation, but he was not quick enough.
"I ain"t never been much of a hand for licker," Steve finished naively.
"Old Tom sed he never could understand it in me, neither, but he reckoned it was lucky in a way fer both of us. He sed he"d whale the life outen me if he ever caught me even smellin" of a cork; and as fer him--well, it come in handy for him, havin" a sober hand round the shack when he wan"t quite hisself!"
This time when Caleb lifted his eyes he met a startled gleam behind Sarah"s half dropped lashes. She was peering steadily into the boy"s lean, untroubled face. Caleb voiced the query which he knew must be behind her quiet intentness.
"You said your name was O"Mara, I believe. I suppose that was--ah--Old Tom"s last name, too?"
Steve laughed; he laughed frankly for the first time since he had halted, hours before, outside in the dusty road.
"Why, Old Tom had a dozen different names in the last few years," he replied. "He had a new one every time he went outen the woods fer a trip. But he always sed he mostly favored Brown or Jones or Smith, they bein" quiet and common and not too hard to remember. He just changed names whenever he got tired of his old one, Old Tom did. But he always did say, too, that if he"d hed as good a one as O"Mara, he"d a kept it--and kept it proud."
At the conclusion of that statement it was Miss Sarah"s gaze which went searching across the table for her brother"s eyes. But the boy just ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances.
He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom went down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt upon blissful days in the spring when he had been allowed to play a man"s part in the small drives which he and Old Tom and the "Jenkinses"
began, and which Old Tom and the Jenkinses alone saw through to market in Morrison. He touched lightly and inconsequentially upon certain days when Old Tom would hang for hours over an old tin box filled with soiled and ink-smeared memoranda, periods which were always followed by days of moody silence and a week or more of "lessons" in a tattered and thumbed reader which the woodsman had brought up-river--lessons as painful and laborious to Old Tom as they were delightful to the starved mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom, the boy explained, was pretty likely to be "lickered up fer quite a spell" after such a session which invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box.
The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail--boasted unconsciously of Old Tom"s super-cunning with trap and deadfall, and even poison bait. And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear trap which he had left outside the door.
"I brung Samanthy along with me," he stated. "I brung her just because somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom"d be glad if I did. Next to me he always sed he set a heap o" store on thet ole critter. He sed Samanthy was as near to hevin" a woman around the house as anything he knew on--she hed a voice like a steel trap, and when she got her teeth sot in a argument she never did let up. I brung her along with me, and the gun he give me, but I didn"t take nuthin" else."
Caleb waited there until he knew that the boy had finished.
"You never bothered about that old tin box?" he inquired casually.
The boy shook his head again.
"Old Tom, whenever he went away for a spell, always sed I wan"t to meddle with it," he explained. "This time I reckoned his goin" was just about the same thing, only he won"t be comin" back, so I--I just locked the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door and come down myself."
By the time that meal was finished the boy"s eyes were so heavy-lidded that, fight as he would, they still persisted in drooping till the long lashes curled over his cheeks. And in spite of Caleb"s remonstrance it was Sarah who saw him upstairs and into the huge guest-room with its four-poster and high-boy and spindle-backed chairs.
When she came back downstairs her eyes were shining more than a little and the flush upon her cheeks was undeniably rose. Her brother, from his seat before the unlighted fireplace, puffed methodically upon his pipe and barely lifted his head at her coming. He was deep in meditation. She stood looking at him for a time from the foot of the stairway.
"He"s asleep," she began finally in a very little voice. "He fell asleep almost before his cheek touched the pillow."
Caleb made no answer. He nodded but his eyes were vacant with thoughts of his own.
"Cal," she went on, "did you give him that old coat of mine?"
Caleb nodded again--an affirmative.
"Well, the last thing he asked before he slept was that I deliver a message to you. "Tell him thanks for me," he said. "Tell him I clean forgot it til now!" And as for me, Cal--why--why, "he"d git me anuther, anytime I took the notion thet I wanted one!""
And still Caleb nodded. The room was quiet for a long time.
"Sarah," he murmured at last.
"Yes, Cal," she answered.
"Has that boy"s--yarn--set you to thinking a little?"
"It was very interesting and unusual," she admitted. Then she rose and crossed over to his chair and perched herself, with odd, elfish, girlish grace upon its arm.
"Do you mean Old Tom"s tin box?" she asked gently.
And he nodded.
"Yes, in part--yes," he said. "But not just that alone, either. I mean everything, Sarah. The way he handles himself; the way he looks one in the face when he is talking. The--the--now what are you grinning over?"
She stroked his spa.r.s.e hair.