Selected Stories of Bret Harte, Bret Harte [read aloud books .TXT] 📗

wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the “bow oar”:

“Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon us.

“Stern, all; a steamer!”

“Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply of the coxswain. “It's a house, and a big one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart.

“There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys—lay her alongside. Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's another!”

In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I spring toward him with an exclamation:

“Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on his shoulder, and say:

“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The boys—George! Are they here? are they safe?”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their peace. I make one more effort:

“Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your ranch—the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he repeated to himself “The surveyor who surveyed your ranch—Espiritu Santo” over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully by the hand and said:

“Hush!”

We were silent.

“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, “I'm a MOVING OFF!”

“Moving off?”

“Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you hear?—there! listen!”

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

“It's them wot he sent!—Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night. I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the door, and I saw their eyes on the step—their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why don't they quit?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:

“Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock—all gone—gone, gone for the hides and hoofs,” and he groans bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and perhaps the family are safe by this time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board.

“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.

“Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is,” adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious remembrance. “You'll find him for'ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me at my ease by at once addressing me:

“These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at last pulled on his feet.

“So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!”

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the contending emotions to ask about George.

“Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you,” to a passing boatman, “when are you goin'