Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
Firio said: "Sí, Señor Jack!" with no change of expression except a brighter gleam than usual in his velvety eyes. Perhaps we may best describe this as a chapter of Incidents; or, to use a simile, a broad, eddying bend in a river on a plateau, with cataracts and canyons awaiting it on its route to the sea.
"Señor Jack and Mister Prather, they no look alike," said Firio one day, evidently bound to make an end of the father's company. "Anybody say that got bad eyes. Mister Prather" and Firio smiled peculiarly "I call him the mole! He burrow in the sand, so! His hand tremble, so!
In his favor: Firstly, children were fond of him; but his extravagance of phrase and love of applause accounted for that. Secondly, Firio was devoted to him. Such worshipful attachment on the part of a native Indian to any Saxon was remarkable.
Now he could talk as freely and happily of the desert to his father as to Burleigh and Mathewson. He told of the long rides; of Firio and Wrath of God. He made the tinkle of Jag Ear's bells heard in the silence of the dining-room as it was heard in the silences of the trail. He mentioned how he was afraid to come back after he was strong. "Afraid?" queried his father. "Yes.
Firio had in his hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute, which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store his overflow of books there forever. Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization taken from the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store!
When he came out of the bedroom he was without the jaunty freedom of manner that Little Rivers always associated with his full regalia. In place of the dreamy distances in his eyes on such occasions were a sad preoccupation and determination. When they went outside to Firio and the waiting ponies, the Eternal Painter was in his evening orgy of splendor.
"And Firio rides Wrath of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think? always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many theories about the psychology of his ego.
"Where? Have you no tongue?" snapped Ignacio. Firio gazed all around as if looking for Jack; then nodded in the direction of rising ground which broke at the edge of a depression about fifty yards away. Her impatience had made the delay of a minute seem hours, while the brilliance of the light had now become that of broad day. She forgot all constraint.
But there were certain persons whom he must inform of the crossing. First, he wrote a telegram to Jim Galway: "Sorry, but overwhelming duty here will not permit. Luck and my prayers with you." Then to Firio a letter, which did not come quite so easily: "You see by now that you are mistaken, Firio. I am not coming back. Make the most of the ranch your ranch that you can."
"I understand!" he said, half to himself; and then aloud: "Firio, we will not go into town to-night. We will camp on the other side by the river." "Sí! I shot enough quail this afternoon for dinner." But Jack did not have much appetite, and after dinner he did not amuse Firio with inventions of his fancy. He lay long awake, his head on his clasped hands, looking at the stars.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking