Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1917 — Then I'll Come Back to you [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Then I'll Come Back to you

By Larry Evans

SYNOPSIS Caleb Hunter and his sister Sarah welcome to their home Stephen O'Mara, a homeless and friendless bpy, starting from the wilderness to see’the city. CHAPTER 11. The Logical Custodian. T HEN, with a logical attempt at disingenuousness, Caleb said: ' “I—l’ve a friend here, Safah, whom I’d like to—er—present to you. This is my sister, Miss .Hunter.” he announced to the silent boy. “and this, young man, Sardii, this young man is —er—ah—Mr.”— “I’m Steve.” said the boy mildly. “I’m just Stephen O’Mara.” “Certainly!” gasped Caleb. “Quite so—quite so! Sarah, this is just Steve.” The frail little woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed to move. She did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But hard upon the heels of Caleb’s last words the boy went forward unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he stopped in front of her and offered one brown paw. “Haow d’yexlo, Miss Hunter?” he saluted her gravely, and with ’ a slow smile that discovered for her a row of white and even teeth: “Haow d’ye do? I—l reckon you’re the first dressed up lady I ever did git to know!” The calm statement took what little breath there had been left in Caleb’s lungs. It left Sarah breathless too. But after an infinitesimal moment of waiting she held out her own delicate fingers and took the outstretched hand. “Haow d’ye do, Steve?” shfe answered, and Caleb was at a loss to interpret the suppressed quality of her voice. “And I—some day lam sure it wilblbe a great pleasure to remember that I was the—firstf’ Then she faced her brother. “Will your—will your friend, Mr.Steve—remain for supper, Cal?” she asked. And Caleb, quick to see an opening, made the most of this one. “Stay for supper!” he repeated her question, and he laughed. “Stay—for—supper! Well, I should hope he would. Why—why. he’s going to stop for the night” From the vantage place there at the top of the steps Sarah stood and surveyed her brother's wide and guileless face for a second. Then her lips began to twitch. “Very clever. Cal,” she told him. “Quite clever—for you!” And she nodded and withdrew to see that the table was laid for three. Caleb, chuckling, watched her go; then, with a nod to the boy. he started to follow her in. But Sieve paused at the threshold, and when the man stopped and looked back to ascertain the cause of his delay he found that the boy was depositing the bear trap upon the porch floor—found him tugging to free the rusty old revolver from his belt.

“I’g leave Samanthy here,” the one called Steve stated, and Caleb understood that he meant the trap. “An’ I reckon I'd better not lug my weapon Into the house neither, hed I? She might’’— He nodded in the direction of Sarah’s disappearance. “Old Tom says womin folks that’s gentlfe bom air kind-a skittish about havin’ shootin’ irons araound the place. And I don’t reckon it’s the part of men folks to pester ’em.” Caleb didn't know just what to say. so he merely nodded approval. Again he had been made to feel that it was not a boy, but some little old man, who was explaining to him. Silently he led the way upstairs, and after be had seen the blanket pack deposited in one corner of Sarah's beloved guest room, after he had seed the rusty coat peeled off as a preface to removing the dust accumulation of the Tong hot day from hands and face, an inspiration came to him. While, the boy was washing, utterly lost to everything but that none too simple taster he; went out of the room on a still hunt of his own and came back presently with the thing for which he had gone searching. He found the boy wrestling a little desperately with a mop of wavy chestnut hair, which only grew the more helpless with every stroke qf the brush. “Never mind that.” Caleb met the inisappre’.onsion ini. *the boys eye. “Never mind that. And I—l ye taken the liberty of digging out this old canvas shooting coaf. It’s one I got for Sarah—for my si ter—but. as you say. women folks are mighty skittish about anything that has to do with a gun. She never would go even so far its to try it on, but if you don’t mind—- That coat of yours must-be a trifle hot for this weather. I should say.” Steve reached out a hand bled a •bttteuind'Took the coat. He took it and stared at it with that same strained and hungry look which be had bestowed a half'hour before upon the ••city.” “Do you mean.” he asked, and hli lips remained parted breathlessly upon the Question—“do you mean —this yere’s for me?”

Caleb thought of the “injiue”—the “steam injine.” , "I mean just that if you’ll have it,” he replied. ■ The boy slipped hi£-little body into the garment anti wheeled to survey himself ina- mirror. In comparison with hisAfd coat it was the purple of a Solviiion. There was a cartridge web Ticross its front, with loops, and after he had looked long and long at his reflection the boy thrust both his thumbs into the belt it made. Then: “Them's ter ketridges.” he announced solemnly. He scowled judiciously and nodded. And, “I’ll hev to git me some the first thing hi the mornin’,” he said. At table the boj’ talked freely, always with his wide eyes upon the face of his questioner, always in the grave and slightly drawling idioms of the woods. Again he confided that he had never before been out of the timber. He explained that Old Tom’s untimely taking off a fortnight back had been -alone responsible for this pilgrimage. And that opened the, way for a ques twn which" Caleb had been eager to ask him. “I suppose this—this Old Tom was some kin of yours?" he observed. The boy shook his head. “No,” he answered, “nofr I ain’t never hed no kin. I ain't never bed nobody —father ner mother, neither!” Caleb saw Sarah start a little and bite her thin lips. But the birdlike movement of surprise was lost upon the speaker. “I ain’t never hed nobody,” he reaverred, and Caleb, straining to catch a note of self pity or plea for sympathy in the words, realized that the boy didn’t even know what the dne or the other was. *‘l ain’t never hed nobody but old Tom. And he was—he wasn!t nuthin’ but what he called my —my”—the sentence was broken while he paused to get the phrase correctly—“he was what he called my ‘logical custodian.’ ” •Guiltily Caleb knew that his next question would savor of indelicacy, but he had to ask it just the same.■“Still I suppose his—his taking 'off must have been something in the nature of a blow to you?” he (Suggested. The boy pursed his lips. “Wall, no,” he exclaimed at last nonchalantly; “no-o-o. I can’t say’s it was. We’d both been expectin' it, I reckon.

Old Tom he often sed he knew that some day he'd go and git just blind, stavin’ drunk enough to try an’ swim the upper rapids, and two weeks ago he done so.” And the rest of the words were quite casual. “I kind-a reckon he’d hev made it at that,” he offered his opinion, “if they’d hev been a trifle more water. Put the rocks was too close to the surface fer comfortable swimmin’. The .Jenkinses found him down in the slack water Sunday noon or thereabouts, and they sed he’d never be no deader, not even if he’d a-died in a reg’lar bed, with a doctor helpin’ him along.” Caleb threw his Sister one lugubriously helpless glance. Sarah had choked apparently upon a crpmb’of bread and was coughing stranglingly. This time when Caleb lifted his eyes he met a startled gleam behind Sarah’s half dropped lashes. She was peering steadily into the boy’s lean, untroubled face. Caleb voiced the query which he knew must be behind her quiet intentness. “You said your name was O’Mara, I believe. I suppose that was—ah—Old Tom’s last name too?” - Steve laughed. He laughed frankly for the first time since he had halted hours before outside in the dusty road. “Why, Old Tom had a dozen different names in the last few years,” he replied. “He had a new one every time he went oaten the woods fer a trip. But he always sed he paostly favored Brown or Jones or Smith, they bein’ qujet and common and not toojhard to

remember. He just changed mimes whenever he got tired of his old one. Old Tom did. But he always did say, too, that if he’d hed as good a one as O’Mara he’d a-kept it—and kept it proud.” At the conclusion of that statement it was Miss Sarah’s gaze which ’went searching across the table for her brother’s eyes. But the boy just ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances. He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom went down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt upon blissful days in the spring when be had been allowed to play a man’s part in the small drives .which he and Old Tom find the Jenkinses began and which Old Tom and . the Jenkinses alone saw through to market in Morrison. He touched, lightly and inconsequentially upon certain days when Old Tom would hang for hours.oyer an old tin box filled with soiled and ink smeared memoranda—periods which were always followed by days of moody silence and a week or more of “lessons” in a tattered and thumbed reader which ' the woodsman had brought up river—lessons as painful and laborious to Old Tom hs they were delightful to the starved mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom. the boy ex-

piainea, was pretty nkeiy to be “lickered up fer quite a spell” after such a session, which invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box. The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail—boasted unconscously of Old Tom’s supercunning with trap and deadfall and even poisoned bait- And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear trap which he had left outside the door. “I brung Samanthy along with me.” he stated." “I brung her just because somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom’d be glad if I did. Next to me he always sed he set a heap o' store on thet ole critter. He sed Samanthy was as hear to bevin’ a woman around the bouse as anything he knew on—she bed a voice like a steel trap, and when she got her teeth sot in a argument she never did let up. I brung her along with me, and the gun he give me, but I didn’t take nothin’ else.” Caleb waited there until he knew that the boy had finished. •‘You never bothered about that old tin box?” he inquired casually. The boy shook his head again. ‘‘Old Tom, whenever be went away for a spell, always sed I wan’t to meddle with it,” he explained. “This time I reckoned his goin’ was just about the

same ruing, only ne won t oe. comm back, so I—l just locked, the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door and come down myself.” By the time that meal was finished the boy’s eyes were so heavily lidded that, fight as he would, they still persisted in drooping till the long lashes curled over his cheeks. And in spite remonstrances it was Sarah saw him upstairs and into the huge guest room with its four poster and highboy and spindle backed chairs. (To be continued.)

“Do you mean —this yere’s for me?”