“A dun!—I’ll bet you mean a gun,” laughed Jean. “Well, you four-year-old Texas gunman! Make another guess.”
That appeared too momentous and entrancing for the other two youngsters, and, adding their shrill and joyous voices to Lee’s, they besieged Jean.
“Dad, where’s my pack?” cried Jean. “These young Apaches are after my scalp.”
“Reckon the boys fetched it onto the porch,” replied the rancher.
Guy Isbel opened the door and went out. “By golly! heah’s three packs,” he called. “Which one do you want, Jean?”
“It’s a long, heavy bundle, all tied up,” replied Jean.
Guy came staggering in under a burden that brought a whoop from the youngsters and bright gleams to the eyes of the women. Jean lost nothing of this. How glad he was that he had tarried in San Francisco because of a mental picture of this very reception in far-off wild Arizona.
When Guy deposited the bundle on the floor it jarred the room. It gave forth metallic and rattling and crackling sounds.
“Everybody stand back an’ give me elbow room,” ordered Jean, majestically. “My good folks, I want you all to know this is somethin’ that doesn’t happen often. The bundle you see here weighed about a hundred pounds when I packed it on my shoulder down Market Street in Frisco. It was stolen from me on shipboard. I got it back in San Diego an’ licked the thief. It rode on a burro from San Diego to Yuma an’ once I thought the burro was lost for keeps. It came up the Colorado River from Yuma to Ehrenberg an’ there went on top of a stage. We got chased by bandits an’ once when the horses were gallopin’ hard it near rolled off. Then it went on the back of a pack horse an’ helped wear him out. An’ I reckon it would be somewhere else now if I hadn’t fallen in with a freighter goin’ north from Phoenix to the Santa Fe Trail. The last lap when it sagged the back of a mule was the riskiest an’ full of the narrowest escapes. Twice my mule bucked off his pack an’ left my outfit scattered. Worst of all, my precious bundle made the mule top heavy comin’ down that place back here where the trail seems to drop off the earth. There I was hard put to keep sight of my pack. Sometimes it was on top an’ other times the mule. But it got here at last.... An’ now I’ll open it.”
After this long and impressive harangue, which at least augmented the suspense of the women and worked the children into a frenzy, Jean leisurely untied the many knots round the bundle and unrolled it. He had packed that bundle for just such travel as it had sustained. Three cloth-bound rifles he laid aside, and with them a long, very heavy package tied between two thin wide boards. From this came the metallic clink. “Oo, I know what dem is!” cried Lee, breaking the silence of suspense. Then Jean, tearing open a long flat parcel, spread before the mute, rapt-eyed youngsters such magnificent things, as they had never dreamed of—picture books, mouth-harps, dolls, a toy gun and a toy pistol, a wonderful whistle and a fox horn, and last of all a box of candy. Before these treasures on the floor, too magical to be touched at first, the two little boys and their sister simply knelt. That was a sweet, full moment for Jean; yet even that was clouded by the something which shadowed these innocent children fatefully born in a wild place at a wild time. Next Jean gave to his sister the presents he had brought her—beautiful cloth for a dress, ribbons and a bit of lace, handkerchiefs and buttons and yards of linen, a sewing case and a whole box of spools of thread, a comb and brush and mirror, and lastly a Spanish brooch inlaid with garnets. “There, Ann,” said Jean, “I confess I asked a girl friend in Oregon to tell me some things my sister might like.” Manifestly there was not much difference in girls. Ann seemed stunned by this munificence, and then awakening, she hugged Jean in a way that took his breath. She was not a child any more, that was certain. Aunt Mary turned knowing eyes upon Jean. “Reckon you couldn’t have pleased Ann more. She’s engaged, Jean, an’ where girls are in that state these things mean a heap.... Ann, you’ll be married in that!” And she pointed to the beautiful folds of material that Ann had spread out.