“If you get it before I am ready to give it to you,” returned George, “just send me word, will you?”
Before this defiance had fairly left his lips the bully was rolling over and over in the gutter, which was in a very moist condition, owing to the heavy rain that had fallen during the previous night, while his antagonist stood erect on the sidewalk, flushed and excited, but without even a wrinkle in his clean, white wristbands, or a spot of mud on his well-blacked boots. In falling, George dropped the match-box, which Henry caught up and put into his pocket.
This proceeding was witnessed by two women—Henry’s mother and Guy’s step-mother. The latter made no move, but treasured up the scene in her memory to be repeated in a greatly exaggerated form to Mr. Harris when he came home to dinner, while Henry’s mother hurried down the stairs and out to the gate. She called to her son, who promptly answered the summons, and in reply to her anxious inquiries repeated the story of Guy’s troubles.
I do not know what his mother said to him, but I am sure it could not have been anything very harsh, for a moment afterward Henry came gayly down the walk, winked at Guy as he passed, and looked pleasantly toward the discomfited bully, who, having picked himself up from the gutter, was making the best of his way to the other side of the street, holding one hand to his head and the other to his back, both of which had been pretty badly bruised by the hard fall he had received.
“Now, that Hank Stewart is the right sort!” thought Guy, gazing admiringly after the erect, slender figure of his friend as it moved rapidly down the street. “If it hadn’t been for him I should never have seen this box again. I shouldn’t like to lose it, for I shall have use for matches after I become a hunter and trapper, and I shall need something to carry them in. This box is just the thing. If I wasn’t afraid Hank would refuse, I would ask him to go with me, I must have a companion, for of course I don’t want to go riding about over those prairies on my wild mustang all by myself while there are so many hostile Indians about, and Hank is the fellow I’d like to have with me. He knows everything about animals and the woods; he’s the best fisherman in Norwall; he never misses a double shot at ducks or quails; and I never saw a boy that could row or sail a boat with him. Why, it wouldn’t be long before he would be the best hunter and trapper that ever tracked the prairie. I’ll think about it, and perhaps I shall make up my mind to ask him to go with me instead of Bob Walker.”
Thus soliloquizing Guy made his way through the yard to the carriage-house and mounted the stairs leading to the rooms above. There were three of them. The first and largest served in summer as a place of storage for Mr. Harris’ sleighs and buffalo-robes, and in winter for his buggy and family carriage. The second was the room in which the coachman slept, and the third Guy had appropriated to his own use.
Here he had collected a lot of trumpery of all sorts, which he called his “curiosities,” and of which he took the greatest possible care. The members of the family, and those of his young friends who had seen the inside of this room, thought that Guy had shown strange taste in making his selections, for there was not an article in it that was worth saving as a curiosity, and but few that could under any circumstances be of the least use to him.
On a nail opposite the door hung a rubber blanket with a hole in the center, so that it could be worn over one’s shoulders like a cloak; from another was suspended a huge powder-horn; and on a third hung a rusty carving-knife, which one of Guy’s companions had sold to him with the assurance that it was a hunting-knife. Then there was a portion of an old harpoon which Guy said was a spear-head, a pair of well-worn top-boots, an old horse-blanket and a clothes-line with an iron ring fastened to one end of it. This last Guy called a lasso. He spent many an hour in practicing with it, whirling it around his head and trying to throw the running noose over a stake he had planted in the yard.
One corner of the room was occupied by a pile of old iron, to which horseshoes, broken frying-pans and articles of like description were added from time to time. Whenever this pile attained a certain size it would always disappear, no one seemed to know how or when, and Guy would go about for a day or two jingling some coppers in his pocket. When he had handled them and feasted his eyes on them to his satisfaction, he would stow them in an old buckskin purse which he kept in his trunk.
In another corner of the room was a large bag, into which Guy put everything in the shape of rags that he could pick up about the house. When filled it was emptied somehow, and Guy had a few more coppers to be put away in his purse. It was well for our hero that his father and mother did not know what he intended to do with the money he earned in this way.