“You’re a sight to cure sick folks!” shouted another, pressing to “Forty-niner’s” side, and slapping the veteran’s shoulder in high good will.
But Ephraim had no feeling at present, save anxiety to know what their discussion had meant; and, all talking, they laid a succinct history of the last few days before him. He listened in increasing alarm and amazement and his old limbs tottered beneath him, so that he called out, hastily:
“Give me a seat, somebody, quick, before I fall. I––I––to think of my little gell––my own sweet-faced, lovin’ little gell–––Oh, I can’t believe it! I can’t and I won’t. It’s some plaguey Californy yarn’ you’re passin’ the time with. Atlantic! But you might have chose a likelier subject to fool over, you might.”
But Aleck himself had seen the arrival through the window and came out to greet him with the heartiness accorded all the Sobrante people, and to assure him that the story was all true; and that, after all, it were better that he had not been at home when the trouble came; “for it would have broke your heart, ‘Forty-niner,’ into more pieces than old Stiffleg broke your bones, and it wouldn’t have healed so soon, neither. But, come in, come in, boy, and have a mouthful of dinner. Janet has as fine a dish of haggis as ever I tasted in Aberdeen at home, and it should relish to you, after all that hospital fare and so on. Janet! Janet! Here’s Ephraim Marsh! Come welcome him!”
And Janet came quickly, like her husband cordial and sympathetic, and led the deeply moved frontiersman 102 into her own kitchen, where no uninvited ranchman dared intrude, and there served him well with good things, including the haggis. And as she served she talked in a wise, womanly way that soothed his agitation and turned his thoughts from enmity against the dwarf into thanksgiving that now all was well.
“For since it is over and done with we can reckon the gain. The sweet bit bairnie has won for herself fresh friends. In all the countryside there was but one feeling, ‘The child must be found.’ No other thing was of any moment, and found she was, by a man so much older than any of the rest that nobody, not even you, can grudge him the honor. More hot milk? Oat cake? Nothing? Well, well; for a man that’s traveling you’ve a small appetite. Must be off already and pack your own bundle? Why, friend, you would better leave that till one the boys rides up for the mail. Due before this, indeed, for Sobrante ranchers are ever keen for their post stuff. No? A horse, then? Aleck was going to do a bit of plowing with her, later on, but he’ll eagerly give over that for you.”
But Ephraim felt that he could delay for nothing more, not even for the arrival of a Sobrante messenger; and as for Jean, the sorrel mare––he and she were old acquaintances, and he declined her services with a grim smile, saying:
“Thank you, Janet, it’s kindly offered, but I’m in haste and I’d rather trust my own lame leg than her four lagging ones. Besides, if Aleck has been afield in this search he’ll be behindhand in his work, and he’s a hand to keep things up to the level line. Good-by, good-by. Oh! wait a bit, though. I’d clean forgot that I put a scrap of white Scotch linen 103 and a yard or two of plaid bodice stuff in my pack for you. This business of my captain getting lost has shaken my wits.”
Though Janet protested against the trouble her face glowed at prospect of her gifts, and as she assisted him to unstrap and refasten his canvas sack, and even begged to be shown the simple remembrances he had procured for everybody he knew “at home;” not least among them being calicoes of brilliantly unwashable colors for Aunt Sally’s patchwork. Then he set off alone, staff in hand, stolidly yet swiftly covering the ground with that halting stride of his that soon took him out of sight.
The assembled ranchmen received their own mail matter, mounted and rode away; and there settled over the little town that monotonous quiet which would not be broken again until the arrival of the evening train, when, possibly, some chance passenger might alight on the deserted platform.