And when once more she broke silence—"He hev gone!"—"I reckon not," he said, coolly, still looking with a smile at the end of his cigar, and presently returning it to his lips.
The nervous strain of the moment seemed hardly capable of extension till that most wearing and jarring sound, a fretful child's discordant wail, rose upon the air. Perhaps her rigid arm hurt Moses; perhaps he detected that something was going awry with her; perhaps he merely felt too long overlooked and neglected; but the great Dagon lifted a stentorian and unwelcome cry, and paused only with an air of vengeance, as if he expected all who beheld to be properly dismayed, seized his pink sun-bonnet by the crown, and cast it from him on the ground with a great sweep of his short arm. As he gazed around, bald-headed, to note the effect, his sullen eye encountered Letitia's, who was for once in her life silenced and amazed by the turn affairs had taken. She made an effort to regain her balance.
"I ain't s'prised none ef ye want some water," she said, producing the great brown gourd, and bending down to submerge it in the depths of the cool, gurgling, crystal spring.
"Leetle Mose," emitting a piercing shriek of anger that she should take the liberty of addressing him, flung himself with averted face into his mother's arms. The tone went through Shattuck's head, so to speak; his brows knitted involuntarily with pain; he was about to rise to go in-doors, for the possible embarrassments and discomforts of conversation with old Zack Pettingill were insignificant indeed to the hardships encountered in the society of "leetle Mose," upon whom he cast a look of aversion, forgetting that he was a specific unit of that genus, man, for whom Shattuck felt so largely.
Feminine ears seem curiously callous to that frenzied infantile shrillness. Letitia, all unaffected, brought the brimming gourd close to the shrieking Mose, who turned to find it beside him. Now the way had been long, and the sun was hot, and had burnt the great Dagon as if he had been any common person. The deep coolness of the gourd—it must have been very large to his eye—allured him. He involuntarily gave a bounce and a gurgle of delight. Few people ever saw "leetle Mose" smile, and a most beguiling demonstration it was. His elastic pink lips parted wide; his few teeth, so hardly come by, glittered; his very tongue, coyly dumb—though it was better tutored than it would admit—might be seen frisking between his gums. He waited expectantly for his mother for a moment, and as she did not move he permitted Letitia to serve him; he reached out eagerly, holding the gourd with both hands, lifting his pink feet as if he intended to stay the bottom of the vessel by those members, and after several futile, ill-directed bounces he succeeded in applying his soft lips to the verge. He stopped, sputtering, once to look up, with laughing eyes full of gladness and with a dripping chin, at Letitia, and then, as he plunged his head again to the water, they could hear him laughing and gurgling in the gourd that echoed cavernously. The specific unit became all at once more tolerable to contemplate. Shattuck, in laughing ridicule of him, glanced at Letitia. Her eyes did not meet his. She was staring intently at the section of the road visible at some little distance by the side of the corn-field. He turned to follow her gaze. He had not before noticed the thud of hoofs; the sound was upon the air now. From out the deep shadow about the spring naught was visible in the sun-flooded highway but a cloud of dust, every mote red in the dazzling radiance. The approach had been obscured by the intervening undergrowth that grew close about the river where the road came down to the bank. He could still hear the thud of hoofs. Did he fancy it, he asked himself suddenly, or was there something erratic suggested in the sound? Certainly the interval was strangely long, reckoning by the distance, while they stood and watched the close undergrowth on the opposite bank, and waited for the rider to emerge from the covert. At last, as the horse appeared, the mystery was solved. He was a bay horse, in good condition, with a long stride, and an old-fashioned Mexican saddle with a high-peaked pommel. He came down the slope and waded into the water in a slouching, undetermined way, now and then turning his head to look with wondering dissatisfaction at the heavy, swaying stirrups as his movements caused them to lunge heavily back and forth—for they were empty, and the saddle bore no rider. He paused to drink in the middle of the stream, but as Letitia ran toward him, calling "Cobe! Cobe!" he desisted, looked intelligently at her, and again at his swaying empty stirrups. He could have told much, evidently, if he had not been dumb. Then he came readily trotting through the water, which swept away from his swift strides in foamy circles, and, struggling up the bank, let her catch his bridle and stroke his head. He shook his mane and neighed with pleasure to be at home again.
"THE SADDLE BORE NO RIDER."
Adelaide was standing, her child in her arms, gazing breathlessly at him. Letitia, still stroking the animal's head, had turned a pale face and eyes full of vague appeal upon Shattuck.