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Updated: May 15, 2025
There are only three unmarried men in our village; which of them would you like for your valentine; Jake Spikes, the blind fiddler; Bill Bowen, the deaf mail-boy, or Squire Sloughman? If the squire sends a valentine, I rather guess it will be to me. Oh, I forgot! There's the handsome stranger that boarded last summer with Miss Plimpkins. I noticed him at church Sunday.
There they found Jake. They didn't hail him at once, or clap him into irons, as the constable from Valley Stream would have done. They let him alone and watched awhile to see what he was doing. And the thing that they found him doing was just what they expected: he was herding with thieves. When they had thoroughly fastened this companionship upon the lad, they arrested the band. They were three.
It was evident that Jake's conscience blinded him to the fact of the other's sightless gaze. "What say you, Jake? We can only leave it to the sheriff and be on our guard." The foreman fumbled out his reply almost too eagerly. "Yes," he said, "sure; we must be on our guard. Guess we'd better send out night guards to the different stations." He stretched himself with an assumption of ease.
I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the 'hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine.
"Better come in with us, Jake." "Goin' early. Sleep here," he declined, as he spread a caribou skin upon the ground to protect himself from the damp earth. Then he produced a Hudson's Bay Company blanket, once white but now of uncertain shade, and rolling himself in the blanket, with his feet toward the fire, was soon snoring peacefully.
When the men at last arrived and dislodged them from this delectable spot, they scampered across the fields, trampling through the young corn and potato patch until they reached the peas, beets and carrots, where they stopped for another feast. Jake was almost in despair. He shouted frantically, waved his arms, and hurled stones at his wayward herd.
And I thank you, sir," he went on, turning reluctantly to face the stare of the rancher's eyes again. "You, too, have plainly shown me my duty, and I shall follow it, but if ever " "And you'll do well," broke in Jake, with a rough laugh that jarred terribly. "Your father's paid his pound. If his son's wise, he'll hunt his hole." Archie's eyes flashed ominously.
"I'm going out to the gate I want to see Jake Bondy. He's coming up the coulee," he said. "I won't be far. Poor little girl poor little pal, I wish I could help you." He touched his lips to her hair, so lightly she could not feel it, and left her.
Botcher in his line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark. "Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine Manning sent for him about half an hour ago." It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly. "We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning, he's busy," said the Honourable Jake.
Your mother will need you, Carrie, and I'll need my partner. We have put over some hard jobs and I imagine I'm up against another now. I want you, Jake; you have got to see me out." "Since I don't know your folks and their habits, it isn't plain how I could help," Jake replied. "I don't know much. What about it? We made good prospecting when we had never used the rocker and thawn-out gravel.
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