“But where did she go?” inquired another anxious auditor.
“Keep your foot off the drag, and I’ll tell you. Arter we left Ring Tail Canon, Dusenberry, as usual, got on. Presently one of the outsides turned round to me, and says he, ‘D—d if Ugly Mug ain’t got the inside track of all of you this time!’ I looked down, and dern my skin if there wasn’t Dusenberry a-sittin’ up alongside of the lady, quite comfortable, as if they had ben children together. At the next station Dusenberry gets off. So does the lady. ‘Ain’t you goin’ on to Wingdam,’ says I. ‘No,’ says she. ‘Mayn’t we have the pleasure of your kempany further?’ says the judge, taking off his hat. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind,’ says she, and off she got, and off she walked arm in arm with him as cool as you please.”
“Wonder if that wa’n’t the party that passed through here last July?” asked the blacksmith, joining the loungers in front of the stage-office. “Waters brought up a buggy to get the axle bolted. There was a woman setting in the buggy, but the hood was drawn down, and I didn’t get to see her face.” During this conversation Aristides, after a long, lingering glance at the stage, had at last torn himself away from its fascinations, and was now lounging down the long straggling street in a peculiarly dissipated manner, with his hat pushed on the back part of his head, his right hand and a greater portion of his right arm buried in his trousers pocket. This might have been partly owing to the shortness of his legs and the comparative amplitude of his trousers, which to the casual observer seemed to obviate the necessity of any other garment. But when he reached the bottom of the street, and further enlivened his progress by whistling shrilly between his fingers, and finally drew a fragment of a cigar from his pocket and placed it between his teeth, it was evident that there was a moral as well as physical laxity in his conduct. The near fact was that Aristides had that afternoon evaded the Sunday-school, and was open to any kind of infant iniquity.
The main street of Smith’s Pocket gradually lost its civilized character, and after one or two futile attempts at improvement at its lower extremity, terminated impotently in a chaos of ditches, races, and trailings. Out of this again a narrow trail started along the mountain side, and communicated with that vast amphitheatre which still exhibited the pioneer efforts of the early settlers. It was this trail that Aristides took that Sunday afternoon, and which he followed until he reached the hillside a few rods below the yawning fissure of Smith’s Pocket. After a careful examination of the vicinity, he cleared away the underbrush beside a fallen pine that lay near, and sat down in the attitude of patient and deliberate expectancy.
Five minutes passed—ten, twenty—and finally a half-hour was gone. Aristides threw away his cigar, which he had lacked determination to light, and peeled small slips from the inner bark of the pine-tree, and munched them gravely. Another five, ten, and twenty minutes passed, and the sun began to drop below the opposite hillside. Another ten minutes, and the whole of the amphitheatre above was in heavy shadow. Ten minutes more, and the distant windows in the settlement flamed redly. Five minutes, and the spire of the Methodist church caught the glow—and then the underbrush crackled.
Aristides, looking up, saw the trunk of the prostrate pine slowly lifting itself before him.
A second glance showed the fearless and self-possessed boy that the apparent phenomenon was simply and easily explained. The tree had fallen midway and at right angles across the trunk of another prostrate monarch. So accurately and evenly was it balanced that the child was satisfied, from a liberal experience of the application of these principles to the game of “seesaw,” that a very slight impulse to either end was sufficient to destroy the equilibrium. That impulse proceeded from his end of the tree, as he saw when the uplifted trunk disclosed an opening in the ground beneath it, and the head and shoulders of a man emerging therefrom.
Aristides threw himself noiselessly on his stomach. The thick clump of an azalea hid him from view, though it did not obstruct his survey of the stranger, whom he at once recognized as his former enemy,—the man with the red handkerchief,—the hopeful prospector of Red Mountain, and the hypothetical “Dusenberry” of the stage-driver.
The stranger looked cautiously round, and Aristides shrank close behind the friendly azalea.
Satisfied that he was unobserved, the subterranean proprietor returned to the opening and descended, reappearing with a worn black enameled traveling-bag which he carried with difficulty. This he again enveloped in a blanket and strapped tightly on his back, and a long-handled shovel, brought up from the same mysterious storehouse, completed his outfit. As he stood for a moment leaning on the shovel, it was the figure of the hopeful prospector in the heart of the forest. A very slight effort was sufficient to replace the fallen tree in its former position. Raising the shovel to his shoulder, he moved away, brushing against the azalea bush which hid the breathless Aristides. The sound of his footsteps retreating through the crackling brush presently died out, and a drowsy Sabbath stillness succeeded.