“Gophers! I guess he ain’t easy killed. I—” He hesitated and uneasily glanced toward his mother. He had never felt so big and clumsy. He thought the little girl wasn’t half as pretty in his sister’s clothes—My! but the mother must have liked her to let her wear them!—as she had been in that queer, Indian attire of her own. Wow! Wouldn’t that plaguey breakfast ever be ready? In his most boyish manner he demanded this and with so much more disrespect than usual that Mrs. Burnham stared, then smiled to herself, as she quietly answered:
“It is ready for those who, also, are ready. But you haven’t finished your preparations, my son.”
“I’d like to know what you mean?”
She touched her head significantly and he understood. The family comb had done faithful duty on Carlos’s curls, but Jack, wishing to impress the “tenderfoot” by his own manly independence had, for once, omitted that part of his toilet which Mrs. Burnham had, hitherto, compelled. Affecting a rude disdain, he now slouched forward to the table, but chanced to look at Carlota.
She still retained that wide, innocent outlook which commonly belongs to earlier childhood, and her blue eyes regarded him with open astonishment. He was a curiosity to her. She had never seen anybody like him. He was on a par with the hand-car, the railway, the Apaches—any and all of the novelties which confronted her in this land of the strangers. All her life she had been accustomed to the exaggerated courtesy of the Spanish dependents at Refugio and to the exact politeness of her gentleman father, who believed in example rather than precept. These little civilities were as natural as the breath in her nostrils and, above all that, the name of “mother” suggested a personality higher than mortal.
She exclaimed, in a low tone:
“He is saying that—to his—mother!”
“Yes. But, for his own sake and in justice, I will explain that he is exhibiting himself in a new character,” observed that lady.
“Why?”
“Ah! why? Probably, my dear, because he is a—boy! A being whose nature, as yet, is all at sixes and sevens; but who will arrive at a true manhood, by and by, please God.”