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

The next morning we were up early for a breezy gallop over the three square miles of Enriquez’s estate. I was astounded, when I descended to the patio, to find Enriquez already mounted, and carrying before him, astride of the horn of his saddle, a small child,—the identical papoose of my memorable first visit. But the boy was no longer swathed and bandaged, although, for security, his plump little body was engirt by the same sash that encircled his father’s own waist. I felt a stirring of self-reproach; I had forgotten all about him! To my suggestion that the exercise might be fatiguing to him, Enriquez shrugged his shoulders:—

“Believe me, no! He is ever with me when I go on the pasear. He is not too yonge. For he shall learn ‘to rride, to shoot, and to speak the truth,’ even as the Persian chile. Eet ees all I can gif to him.”

Nevertheless, I think the boy enjoyed it, and I knew he was safe with such an accomplished horseman as his father. Indeed, it was a fine sight to see them both careering over the broad plain, Enriquez with jingling spurs and whirling riata, and the boy, with a face as composed as his father’s, and his tiny hand grasping the end of the flapping rein with a touch scarcely lighter than the skillful rider’s own. It was a lovely morning; though warm and still, there was a faint haze—a rare thing in that climate—on the distant range. The sun-baked soil, arid and thirsty from the long summer drought, and cracked into long fissures, broke into puffs of dust, with a slight detonation like a pistol-shot, at each stroke of our pounding hoofs. Suddenly my horse swerved in full gallop, almost lost his footing, “broke,” and halted with braced fore feet, trembling in every limb. I heard a shout from Enriquez at the same instant, and saw that he too had halted about a hundred paces from me, with his hand uplifted in warning, and between us a long chasm in the dry earth, extending across the whole field. But the trembling of the horse continued until it communicated itself to me. I was shaking, too, and, looking about for the cause, when I beheld the most weird and remarkable spectacle I had ever witnessed. The whole llano, or plain, stretching to the horizon-line, was DISTINCTLY UNDULATING! The faint haze of the hills was repeated over its surface, as if a dust had arisen from some grinding displacement of the soil. I threw myself from my horse, but the next moment was fain to cling to him, as I felt the thrill under my very feet. Then there was a pause, and I lifted my head to look for Enriquez. He was nowhere to be seen! With a terrible recollection of the fissure that had yawned between us, I sprang to the saddle again, and spurred the frightened beast toward that point. BUT IT WAS GONE, TOO! I rode backward and forward repeatedly along the line where I had seen it only a moment before. The plain lay compact and uninterrupted, without a crack or fissure. The dusty haze that had arisen had passed as mysteriously away; the clear outline of the valley returned; the great field was empty!

Presently I was aware of the sound of galloping hoofs. I remembered then—what I had at first forgotten—that a few moments before we had crossed an arroyo, or dried bed of a stream, depressed below the level of the field. How foolish that I had not remembered! He had evidently sought that refuge; there were his returning hoofs. I galloped toward it, but only to meet a frightened vaquero, who had taken that avenue of escape to the rancho.

“Did you see Don Enriquez?” I asked impatiently.

I saw that the man’s terror was extreme, and his eyes were staring in their sockets. He hastily crossed himself:—

“Ah, God, yes!”

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“Gone!”

“Where?”

He looked at me with staring, vacant eyes, and, pointing to the ground, said in Spanish: “He has returned to the land of his fathers!”

We searched for him that day and the next, when the country was aroused and his neighbors joined in a quest that proved useless. Neither he nor his innocent burden was ever seen again of men. Whether he had been engulfed by mischance in some unsuspected yawning chasm in that brief moment, or had fulfilled his own prophecy by deliberately erasing himself for some purpose known only to himself, no one ever knew. His country-people shook their heads and said “it was like a Saltillo.” And the few among his retainers who knew him and loved him, whispered still more ominously: “He will yet return to his land to confound the Americanos.”

Yet the widow of Enriquez did NOT marry Professor Dobbs. But she too disappeared from California, and years afterward I was told that she was well known to the ingenuous Parisians as the usual wealthy widow “from South America.”

End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Stories in Light and Shadow.