Though I wuz sorry for Jack and pitiful towards him, as pitiful could be, I tried to be and wuz about half the time, I should say, sorry for Tamer, or mebby it wuz a quarter of the time I wuz sorry for her, or half a quarter, I can’t tell exactly, because I would have my ups and downs about it, for Jack it wuz a full, deep, complete pity and sympathy and sorrow all the time. But sometimes I would say to myself, now Tamer has got a bad temper, she got it through Heaven only knows by what cause, ancestral or local. If it come down to her with her Roman nose and thin lips from some ancestor, then how fur is she to blame for not subduin’ it entirely? No amount of rubbin’ down and smoothin’ and grindin’ could make that nose of hers into a Greecy one. No amount of stimulatin’ liniment could make them thin lips soften out into more generous and sweeter curves. She might git up early and set up late and she couldn’t make them changes, and who knows whether she could with all her efforts entirely soften and make sweet that sour, dissatisfied disposition and fiery temper?
And then would be the time, for four or five minutes mebby, I would be sorry for Tamer. And then agin I would say to myself she has lived in a onreal, onnatural world and is livin’ there still. And when pirates and burglars and murderers and arsoners and rapiners and robbers and Injuns are continually roamin’ and stalkin’ and war-whoopin’ and murderin’ and dashin’ and skulkin’ and prancin’ through anybody’s brain, hain’t it reasonable that that brain should be tuckered out, too tuckered, too trompled and beat down to take fresh, vigorous thought on any subject?
I would say in such a wild, trompled, dust-blown, whoopin’ highway what chance is there for such a little mite of a lonesome wayfarer as Jack, and I don’t know that it is any wonder that he is sometimes entirely overlooked, and sometimes ridin’ up in high ease, and sometimes stomped and trompled on. Poor little creeter! And then I would think of her different diseases, and wantin’ to do my best for her even in my thoughts (for, though I gin her advice through duty, I always tried to be charitable to her in my mind), I would say over to myself some of her most lengthy distempers and curious ones, I would say, in a low, deep voice, “basler mangetus, sinevetus, singletus, tonsiletus, pironitus,” etc., etc., till sometimes I would git real sorry for her as much as six minutes. Well, just such seens as I have mentioned I would witness from hour to hour and from day to day, and finally I got heartsick with lookin’ at it and wuz glad when the time drawed near for me to return to the bosom of my family (a gingham bosom week days, and a fine linen one Sundays, with five pleats on a side). Jack cried when I spoke of goin’ home, but Cicero didn’t care at all, he wuz to school daytimes, and the very minute he got home at night he wuz pourin’ over them novels, and his mother would proudly say to me:
“Cicero is so much like me, so different from Jack, he is so studious, such a reader, he will make a great thinker.”
Not through the nourishment he gits from such food, I sez to myself. And I tried several times to talk with Cicero about readin’ such books, but he would look up so coldy at me from across “The Boody Gulch” or “The Fiend Haunted Hollow” that it fairly stunted me. He would look up middlin’ respectful to hear my remonstrances about readin’ ’em, would listen with his finger between the pages, and the minute I stopped, resoom his occupation, in the meantime answerin’ me nothin’, not a word, till I declare it stunted me, his looks wuz so cold and resolved and sort o’ blood curdlin’, and his mean so determined that I wuz positively afraid to tackle him.
But he had his thoughts, and while I wuz there one mornin’ it wuz found that Cicero wuz missin’, he wuz searched for one day and two nights; Tamer, in the meantime, fallin’ from one hysterick into another, the third day he wuz found in the woods milds from there, on top of a big rock; he had built a fortification in front of it, and barricaded himself from enemies, had built a sort of an outlook in a tree nigh by, where he could look out for prowlin’ foes, and wuz found there smokin’ cigarettes and readin’ “The Lone Bandit of the Haunted Woods” when he wuz discovered. He wuz made to go home, though he rebelled and wuz moody for days afterwards.
CHAPTER XXI.
Though it is shootin’ ahead of the story and resoomin’ forward, yet I d’no but I may as well tell of Cicero’s adventures, and casualties now as any time, they have got to be told anyway, though I hate to. But seed sown has got to spring up, and somebody has got to harvest it. The cigarettes he smoked constantly weakened and softened his mind, I believe, so the blood curdlin’ and dashin’ idees he partook of in them novels had a good chance to take root. Four times durin’ the next year did he disappear mysteriously, jest as some of his heroes had, to be brought back agin after a long search by his agonized parents. The first time he run away with Arabeller and wuz overtook before they had gone any great distance, and she soon afterwards wuz shipped west by her folks, to the ranch of an uncle in Colorado to be broke in as he broke his mustangs, and I don’t know what did become of her, married some cowboy, I spoze. And, bein’ foiled in his matrimonial ventures as some of his wild ideals had, he lived for booty. He soon afterwards disappeared into the forest, taking a neighbor’s little boy with him, little Teddy Dewey, and sent back a note to the boy’s parents demandin’ ransom: “Teddy would be sent home if the sum of seventy-five cents wuz put at the foot of a dead tree where the shadow at midnight made the shape of a coffin; if the money wuz deposited there at midnight Teddy would be found on their back doorsteps in the mornin’.” Of course they hid at this rondevoo and ketched Cicero and his victim, too.