Stories in Light and Shadow by Bret Harte (classic books for 10 year olds txt) 📕

She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a guttering candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust himself out of the house until she returned from her search, and leaving the note open on the table, swiftly ran out into the growing day.

Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud knocking. At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as his daughter’s regular morning summons, and was responded to by a grunt of recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets. Then he awoke with a start and a muttered oath, remembering the events of last night, and his intention to get up early, and rolled out of bed. Becoming aware by this time that the knocking was at the outer door, and hearing the shout of a familiar voice, he hastily pulled on his boots, his jean trousers, and fastening a single suspender over his shoulder as he clattered downstairs, stood in the lower room. The door was open, and waiting upon the threshold was his kinsman, an old ally in many a blood-feud—Breckenridge Clay!

“You ARE a cool one, Mad!” said the latter in half-admiring indignation.

“What’s up?” said the bewildered Madison.

“YOU ought to be, and scootin’ out o’ this,” said Breckenridge grimly. “It’s all very well to ‘know nothin’;’ but here Phil Larrabee’s friends hev just picked him up, drilled through with slugs and deader nor a crow, and now they’re lettin’ loose Larrabee’s two half-brothers on you. And you must go like a derned fool and leave these yer things behind you in the bresh,” he went on querulously, lifting Madison Clay’s dust-coat, hat, and shotgun from his horse, which stood saddled at the door. “Luckily I picked them up in the woods comin’ here. Ye ain’t got more than time to get over the state line and among your folks thar afore they’ll be down on you. Hustle, old man! What are you gawkin’ and starin’ at?”

Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered—horror-stricken. The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him clearly—hopelessly! The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the taking of his hat and coat for a disguise! SHE had killed Phil Larrabee in that disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot! She, his own child, Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man’s crime; had disgraced him by usurping his right, and taking a mean advantage, by deceit, of a foe!

“Gimme that gun,” he said hoarsely.

Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering suspicion. Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been discharged. It was true! The gun dropped from his hand.

“Look here, old man,” said Breckenridge, with a darkening face, “there’s bin no foul play here. Thar’s bin no hiring of men, no deputy to do this job. YOU did it fair and square—yourself?”

“Yes, by God!” burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice. “Who says I didn’t?”

Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his memory, Breckenridge said curtly, “Then wake up and ‘lite’ out, ef ye want me to stand by you.”

“Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss,” said Madison slowly, yet not without a certain dignity of manner. “I’ve suthin’ to say to Salomy Jane afore I go.” He was holding her scribbled note, which he had just discovered, in his shaking hand.

Struck by his kinsman’s manner, and knowing the dependent relations of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away. Left to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her note, turned it over, and wrote on the back:—

You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole father to find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too, by a low-down, underhanded, woman’s trick! I’ve said I done it, and took the blame myself, and all the sneakiness of it that folks suspect. If I get away alive—and I don’t care much which—you needn’t foller. The house and stock are yours; but you ain’t any longer the daughter of your disgraced father,

MADISON CLAY.

He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and a led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and triumphant. “You’re in nigger luck, Mad! I found that stole hoss of Judge Boompointer’s had got away and strayed among your stock in the corral. Take him and you’re safe; he can’t be outrun this side of the state line.”

“I ain’t no hoss-thief,” said Madison grimly.

“Nobody sez ye are, but you’d be wuss—a fool—ef you didn’t take him. I’m testimony that you found him among your hosses; I’ll tell Judge Boompointer you’ve got him, and ye kin send him back when you’re safe. The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and call it quits. So ef you’ve writ to Salomy Jane, come.”

Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return at any moment,—it would be part of her “fool womanishness,”—and he was in no mood to see her before a third party. He laid the note on the table, gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly believed he was leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on the stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.

But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view of the open door. The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones, birds, and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at night by shy, stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by any of the Clay family. It was known in the district that Clay had flown across the state line, his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day, and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the main road, and few passed that way. The starving cattle in the corral at last broke bounds and spread over the woods. And one night a stronger blast than usual swept through the house, carried the note from the table to the floor, where, whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.

But though the sting of her father’s reproach was spared her, Salomy Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened. For as she entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she saw the figure of Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected cry of joy that rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of his face in the open light.

“You are hurt,” she said, clutching his arm passionately.

“No,” he said. “But I wouldn’t mind that if”—

“You’re thinkin’ I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the shootin’, but I DID come,” she went on feverishly. “I ran back here when I heard the two shots, but you were gone. I went to the corral, but your hoss wasn’t there, and I thought you’d got away.”

“I DID get away,” said Dart gloomily. “I killed the man, thinkin’ he was huntin’ ME, and forgettin’ I was disguised. He thought I was your father.”

“Yes,” said the girl joyfully, “he was after dad, and YOU—you killed him.” She again caught his hand admiringly.

But he did not respond. Possibly there were points of honor which this horse-thief felt vaguely with her father. “Listen,” he said grimly. “Others think it was your father killed him. When I did it—for he fired at me first—I ran to the corral again and took my hoss, thinkin’ I might be follered. I made a clear circuit of the house, and when I found he was the only one, and no one was follerin’, I come back here and took off my disguise. Then I heard his friends find him in the wood, and I know they suspected your father. And then another man come through the woods while I was hidin’ and found the clothes and took them away.” He stopped and stared at her gloomily.

But all this was unintelligible to the girl. “Dad would have got the better of him ef you hadn’t,” she said eagerly, “so what’s the difference?”

“All the same,” he said gloomily, “I must take his place.”

She did not understand, but turned her head to her master. “Then you’ll go back with me and tell him ALL?” she said obediently.

“Yes,” he said.

She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together. She foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not love as she did. SHE would not have taken these risks against their happiness.

But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from the wood they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.

Salomy Jane turned to her lover.

… …

And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty, passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal, fastidious parent. But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this romance is based. A month later a handbill was posted on one of the sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold by auction to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay, Esq., and it was sold accordingly. Still later—by ten years—the chronicler of these pages visited a certain “stock” or “breeding farm,” in the “Blue Grass Country,” famous for the popular racers it has produced. He was told that the owner was the “best judge of horse-flesh in the country.” “Small wonder,” added his informant, “for they say as a young man out in California he was a horse-thief, and only saved himself by eloping with some rich farmer’s daughter. But he’s a straight-out and respectable man now, whose word about horses can’t be bought; and as for his wife, she’s a beauty! To see her at the ‘Springs,’ rigged out in the latest fashion, you’d never think she had ever lived out of New York or wasn’t the wife of one of its millionaires.”

He was such a large, strong man that, when he first set foot in the little parallelogram I called my garden, it seemed to shrink to half its size and become preposterous. But I noticed at the same time that he was holding in the open palm of his huge hand the roots of a violet, with such infinite tenderness and delicacy that I would have engaged him as my gardener on the spot. But this could not be, as he was already the proud proprietor of a market-garden and nursery on the outskirts of the suburban Californian town where I lived. He would, however, come for two days in the week, stock and look after my garden, and impart to my urban intellect such horticultural hints as were necessary. His name was “Rutli,” which I presumed to be German, but which my neighbors rendered as “Rootleigh,” possibly from some vague connection with his occupation. His own knowledge of English was oral and phonetic. I have a delightful recollection of a bill of his in which I was