CHAPTER XXVII. ALONE AND FRIENDLESS.
Leon, who was by no means dull of comprehension, had no difficulty in finding an explanation of the hunter's actions. The latter had deliberately robbed and deserted the boy who had trusted him.
This conviction came upon Leon with stunning force, and literally crushed him to the ground.
He fell down beside the fire, and for a few moments gave way to the most violent grief. Then, suddenly recovering himself, he sprang to his feet and ran swiftly down the trail, shouting the hunter's name and imploring him to come back.
But Eben was out of hearing. In a few seconds more he disappeared over a swell, and Leon was alone on the prairie.
How he managed to exist during the next few hours he never knew.
He was animated with but one idea, and that was to reach Julesburg in the shortest possible space of time.
He knew it was a military post, and he hoped to find the hunter there. If he did, he would seek an interview with the commandant, tell him his story, and have the thief arrested.
"But how much better off will I be then than I am now?" sobbed Leon, after he had thought the matter over. "I shall get my property back, of course; but what use will it be to me? I would not dare start for St. Joe alone, for there are Indians along the route, and I have heard Eben say that it will not be long before the roads will be blocked with snow. I suppose I might find a train of empty freight-wagons going back, but who will feed me when I have no money to pay for what I eat? I can't become a hunter, now that Eben has gone back on me, and I—— Oh, I wish I had never seen or heard of Frank Fuller! I wouldn't be here now if he had stayed at home."
Leon ran until he was all out of breath, and then slackened his speed to a walk.
He had heard the hunter say that the nearest post was only ten miles distant; but the miles on the prairies are longer than they are in the States, and it was past the middle of the afternoon when he came in sight of the little collection of tents and mud-houses that bore the name of Julesburg.
He directed his course toward the stockade, which stood on a hill a little apart from the town, but when he came to the gate he paused, for there was an armed sentinel pacing back and forth in front of it.
"Do you allow strangers in here?" asked the boy timidly.
"Yes; if they come on business," answered the sentry.
Leon, replying that he had come on business, and very important business, too, walked through the gate and paused to see which way he would go next.
He was surprised at the extent of the fortifications. In the center was a parade-ground large enough to admit of the evolutions of a regiment.
This parade-ground was surrounded by broad, level walks, the space between the walks and the stockade being occupied with warehouses, the sutler and trader's stores, barracks, officers' quarters, and stables, all built of sun-dried bricks.
A tall flag-staff arose from the parade-ground, and from it floated the Stars and Stripes.
Leon could see nothing of Eben, but he did see three or four men lounging in front of the open door of one of the buildings, and toward them he bent his steps.
The building proved to be a stable, and the men were government teamsters.
When they saw Leon approaching, they ceased their conversation and looked at him with curiosity.
"Good-afternoon!" said the boy, speaking in as steady a voice as he could command. "Do any of you happen to know a hunter named Eben Webster?"
"I reckon," replied one of the men; "and we don't know nothing good of him, neither."
"Have you seen him about here to-day?" asked Leon.
"About here? About this fort?" exclaimed another teamster. "Not much. He'll never come through one of our gates unless he comes with a guard over him. You don't want no dealings with him, pilgrim. He's a thief."
"I know it," replied Leon, his lips quivering and his eyes filling with tears. "He stripped me of everything I had, except the clothes I stand in, and left me alone on the prairie."
The teamsters began to prick up their ears when they heard this, and two or three of their companions, who were at work in the stable, came to the door to listen to the conversation.
Leon, finding that he had an attentive audience, began and told the story of his troubles, hoping that, if he could get the men interested, they would assist him in some way.
He told nothing but the truth as far as he went, but he omitted one very important thing which the wagon-master, an old, gray-headed man, who had not yet spoken, supplied for him, after asking a few questions.
"Have you got a father?" he asked.
Leon replied that he had.
"And a mother, too?"
The boy nodded his head.
"Then, my young tenderfoot, you're a runaway, that's what you are. No father or mother livin' would let a kid like you come out here to make his bread and bacon by huntin' and trappin'. You're a nice lad to talk about roughin' it in the mountains, aint you, now? Jest step over here 'longside of me and look at yourself."
The old wagon-master spoke seriously, and his words did not raise a laugh at Leon's expense, as the latter expected they would. He hung his head, and it was all he could do to keep his tears from bursting out afresh.
One of the teamsters declared that it was a perfect shame, and this remark brought about a general conversation, during which Leon learned how foolish he had been in taking into his confidence a man with whom he was not acquainted.
Eben had never been post-hunter at Laramie, nor anywhere else. He was nothing but a renegade, who had married an Indian wife that he might share in the annuities that are yearly distributed among the different friendly tribes.
Leon was also informed that Eben had fled the country a few months before to escape arrest; that he had never killed eight hundred buffaloes during all the years he had been on the plains, and that he was too lazy and too big a coward to spend a winter in the mountains, hunting and trapping. He much preferred to settle down in his teepee and eat government rations.
As for the articles he had stolen, the boy might just as well give them up for lost. Eben had doubtless drawn a bee-line for the place where the band to which he belonged was encamped, and Leon would never see him again.
While this conversation was going on, the wagon-master arose and walked away.
He was gone but a few minutes, and when he came back he beckoned to Leon, who promptly joined him.
"Pilgrim," said he, as they walked away together, "I wish I was your father for 'bout half an' hour, so 't I could gin you a good trouncin' to pay you for runnin' away from a good home, and comin' out here where you aint got no sort of business in the world. But seein' I aint your father, I'm kinder sorry for you, though you aint wuth no sorrer, and I've been sayin' a good word to the trader for you. I heard him tell one of the leftenants last night that he reckoned he'd have to send to the States for a boy to help him take care on the store. You see, his last clerk, growin' tired of stayin' here, stole some money of his'n and put for home. Now, mebbe you can work yourself into his place."
Leon's thanks were cut short by their arrival at the door of the trader's store.
He followed the wagon-master in, and was presented to a rough-looking man, who stood behind the counter.
A long conversation followed, and when Leon was asked to tell his story, he omitted nothing. The trader scanned him closely, and finally inquired:
"Can you keep a set of books?"
"Yes, sir," replied Leon. "Either by single or double entry."
"Now, I don't want to hear no more about double-entry!" exclaimed the trader, growing red in the face, and dashing his clenched hand upon the counter. "That's the way my last clerk kept my books, and a nice mess he made of it. He swindled me out of five hundred or a thousand dollars. There's the books, just as he left them," added the trader, waving his hand toward the desk, "and I can't make head nor tail of them."
"Let me try," said Leon.
"Are you honest?"
"Well, I'll tell you what I am willing to do. I will come here on trial, if you will take me, and you can withhold my wages, whatever they are. If you see anything wrong about me, you need not pay me a cent."
"That's a fair proposition," said the trader. "Hang up your overcoat somewhere, and come around here."
Leon paused long enough to thank the kind-hearted wagon master for the assistance he had rendered him, and then, taking his stand behind the desk, set manfully to work to earn the money that was to pay his way back to the States. That was all he had in his mind now. His ambition to become a hunter was dead and buried out of sight.
All the rest of the day, and until twelve o'clock that night, the trader and his new clerk stood at the desk trying to straighten out the accounts, which Leon found to be in the greatest confusion.
And we may add that his mind was in great confusion, too. The sudden blighting of his long-cherished hopes seemed to have stunned him, and that strange malady, homesickness, from which Frank had suffered actually ever since leaving Albany, assailed him with the greatest fury.
Frank had not given way to it, for he had been buoyed up by the thought that, if he could only secure his cousin's money, he could at once turn his face toward Boston; but Leon had absolutely nothing to encourage him.
While they were at work, the trader casually remarked that he had paid his former clerk twenty dollars a month and board, and when Leon thought of the long months he must spend in that dreary place before he could save enough to take him back to Eaton, he felt like crying out in despair.
"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" sobbed the repentant runaway, as he tossed about on his hard bed in the little room off the store that had been occupied by his predecessor. "I shall die—I know I shall. Oh, mother! if I could only see you just one minute!"
Leon's grief was so intense that he seemed to be on the point of suffocating. He threw open the door of the room and walked the floor until he was almost exhausted; but when he went to bed again he did not sleep, and neither did he get up to open the store at six o'clock, as his employer had told him to do. He was too ill to hold up his head.
The trader opened the store himself, and, after holding a few minutes' conversation with his clerk, walked across the parade-ground and entered the doctor's office.
Returning to his store, he found there a party of teamsters who were waiting for him.
While he was attending to their wants, the hospital-steward entered and went into Leon's room.
He stayed there about a quarter of an hour, and when he came out the trader was alone.
"What's the matter with that boy?" he asked.
"Nostalgia; and I suppose that is one of the worst things a poor mortal can be afflicted with," replied the steward. "I have known it to throw every raw recruit in a battalion flat on his back."
"Jerusalem!" cried the trader, his face betraying the greatest consternation. "Is it as bad as that?"
He did not understand the learned term which the steward had applied to Leon's malady, but believing that a disease that bore a name like that must of necessity be something dreadful, he was very badly frightened.
If there was any one thing of which he stood in the most abject fear, it was contagion. He had had some experience with it during his life among the Indians.
The steward, who seemed somewhat surprised at the trader's words and actions, replied:
"Yes, he is a pretty sick boy. He has told me his story, and I'm going to speak to the doctor about him at once. He ought to be shipped back to the States with as little delay as possible."
The steward went out, and the trader paced up and down behind his counter in a state of mind bordering on frenzy.
"If I ever befriend a vagabond again, may I be shot" said he. "He must be got out of here at once, for I might catch it myself. It is a pretty rough thing to do," he added, as he hurried toward Leon's door, "but self-preservation is the first law of nature. Say, pilgrim," he shouted, as he entered the room where his clerk lay tossing and moaning on his bed, "you climb out o' that and waltz!"
"Sir?" said Leon faintly.
"'Sir!'" yelled the trader. "Get up and clear out! Do you understand that?"
"Oh, yes, I understand it; but what have I done? I couldn't possibly get up. I couldn't stand."
"You must, and you will!" roared the trader, flourishing his fists in the air. "The steward says you ought to be kicked out of the fort directly, and that shows you've got something that's catching. Now, you get up and dust. Start this minute, or I'll take you by the collar and drag you out."
This threat put a little life and energy into Leon. He arose to his feet, and although he was so weak that he could scarcely maintain an upright position, he succeeded in putting on his clothes.
Then he picked up his overcoat and staggered through the store and out at the door, the trader shouting after him:
"Now, you go over to the other side of the fort and stay there. Don't let me catch you on this part of the parade-ground again."
Poor Leon! All his hopes of seeing home and friends again were gone now.