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Now, brother, I'm a separATE man, an' I don't inQUIZite into no man's business but you ax me straight an' I tell ye straight. Ole Tom Perkins kin trade with furriners, fer he have l'arned their ways. You watch ole Tom!
How they got together, Heaven only knows, but thar they was, hitched up in that desolate hole. They was on a kinder wild-goose chase, so I l'arned. Some fool had been thar before, found gold, made a map of the place, and then kicked the bucket. "I saw at once thar was bad blood atween the two, an' I hated to leave the lad alone with his beast of a pardner, fer I'd taken a fancy to the kid.
When I wuz 'bout sixteen, 'long comes Mr. Rogers, an' I didn't keer nothin' more 'bout school. So Mason an' me wuz married, an' moved up to Kaintuck. Thet fust wintah, while we wuz a-livin' in the fort, Mason he broke his laig out huntin', an' while he wuz laid up a spaill, he l'arned me to read an' write an' ciphah some.
Lad," he went on, now, with a smile, with a touch of his rough old hand, compelling my confidence and affection, "what's past is done with. Isn't you l'arned that yet? Old sins are as if they never had been. Else what hope is there for us poor sons of men? The weight o' sin would sink us. 'Tis not the dear Lard's way t' deal so with men. To-day is not yesterday. What was, has been; it is not.
"Oh, Davy, 'tis no time to be stubborn," she sobbed, "and eddication is a costly thing. Ever sence I found ye on the trace, years ago, I've thought of ye one day as a great man. And when ye come back to us so big and l'arned, I'd wish to be saying with pride that I helped ye." "And who else, Polly Ann?" I faltered, my heart racked with the parting.
He was their own father when all was said, the Cap'n was, an' I don't know but he was clever to 'em in his way, 'ceptin' when he disappointed Hannah about her marryin' Jake Good'in. She l'arned to respect the old Cap'n's foresight, too." "Sakes alive, Marthy, how you do knock folks down with one hand an' set 'em up with t' other," chuckled Mr. Downs.
He l'arned to read, en when Maizie came, he l'arned to write en cipher after he was a grown man. If Archie got the express company's money en hit sorta looks like he did he was smart enough to 'duck out' with hit. Maizie knows that Archie is smart. She wants "Look thar!" he interrupted to point at wagon tracks in the dust. "Hit looks like a getaway had been vetoed.
But when I l'arned that ye was a-teachin' her, and a-doin' whut I had tried my best to do 'n' failed, I let things run along, thinkin' that mebbe ever'thing would come out right, after all.
"I have always known, Mabel Dunham, that men have their gifts," said he; "but I'd forgotten that it did not belong to mine to please the young, the beautiful, and l'arned. I hope the mistake has been no very heavy sin; and if it was, I've been heavily punished for it, I have. Nay, Mabel, I know what you'd say, but it's unnecessary; I feel it all, and that is as good as if I heard it all.
"Being hit that way, you see, was the last thing I remembered. Folks say I must have wandered about over the plains like a wild animal that didn't know how to do a thing but eat and drink what I could run across. Some cowboys tuck me up and l'arned me to cook, and I followed that for a long time. Then, t'other day, they put me on the back of a bucking bronco, just for the fun o' the thing.
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