“Well, if this doesn’t bang me completely! Who in the world would ever have dreamed of seeing that boy out here? I can’t describe the feelings I experienced when he first came in sight. I knew that I was neither asleep nor dreaming, and I was really afraid that my senses were deserting me. If I haven’t passed through enough since I left home to unsettle almost anybody’s mind I don’t want a cent. This much I know—I’ll never be surprised at anything that happens hereafter.” It was Tom Preston who spoke. The last time we saw him he was hurrying into a thicket, with an axe on his shoulder, ostensibly for the purpose of cutting some wood for the fire, which he had allowed to burn itself nearly out; but his real object was to get 308away from his brother, whose presence he could no longer endure.
He now stood in the edge of the thicket, listening to the echoes made by the pony’s feet as Oscar rode away from the camp. As soon as the sound ceased he walked out of the bushes, threw his axe spitefully down upon the ground, and seated himself on his log again. He had never been so nearly overcome with rage before in his life.
“This is a pretty state of affairs, I must say!” he exclaimed aloud. “Here’s Oscar, with a thousand dollars in clean cash at his command, a fine hunting rig of his own, a pony to ride, and living like a gentleman at the fort, with those gold-bespangled officers, who wouldn’t so much as look at me if they met me on the trail, or even speak of me, unless it was to say, ‘There goes some worthless vagabond.’ And he even had the impudence to tell me that he has a guide, and is going to the mountains in style; while I——It’s a lucky thing for him that he left his money at the fort,” said Tom, grinding his teeth in his fury. “I’d have choked some of 309it out of him in short order. He must have seen at a glance how miserable I am, and yet he seemed to take delight in telling me how comfortably he is situated.”
For a long time Tom sat on his log, making himself miserable with such thoughts as these, and the longer he indulged them the madder he became. He could see very plainly that there was a wide gulf between him and his brother, and it hurt him terribly to know that he had made that gulf by his own acts.
He had never dreamed that there was anything in Oscar, or “Old Sober Sides,” as he used to call him; but here he was, the associate of a college faculty and the daily companion of officers who held high and honorable positions under the government.
As for himself, there was only one person in the world he could lean upon, or to whom he could look for a kind word; and he was so low down in the scale of humanity that, had he presumed to intrude among those with whom Oscar associated on terms of the closest intimacy, he would have been promptly kicked out of doors.
310When Tom thought his brother had been allowed time enough to ride to the fort, and purchase the blankets and clothing he had promised to give him, he arose to his feet and walked slowly down the ravine.
“If there were any way in which I could smash up that expedition of his, and send him back to the States with as heavy a heart as I carry at this moment, I’d do it,” said Tom, who was so envious of Oscar that he would gladly have injured him by every means in his power; and, this being his state of mind, he was quite eager to fall in with a plan that was suggested to him a few days afterward. “It must be broken up, for it would never do to allow him to go back to Eaton and Yarmouth, and earn honors and money there, while I am out here in this deplorable condition. I’ll speak to Lish about it as soon as he comes back.”
While Tom was ready to throw all the obstacles he could in the way of his brother’s success, he was equally ready to accept from him a suit of thick clothes and a pair of blankets to keep him warm of nights. He 311thought Oscar ought to be on his way back by this time, and so he was, as Tom found when he reached the mouth of the ravine.
He was coming at a gallop along the path that led through the sage-brush. Tom did not want to meet him again, so he sought a hasty concealment among the bushes on the side of the ravine opposite to that on which stood the rock he had described to his brother.
He heard Oscar pronounce his name and say that he had news for him, but he could not be coaxed out of his hiding-place. He saw the bundle that Oscar carried on the horn of his saddle, watched him as he rode up the bank toward the rock behind which the bundle was to be left, and wondered what it was that kept him there so long.
He also saw his worthy partner when he went by, and was somewhat surprised that Lish, whose eyes were as sharp as an Indian’s, did not see the trail that Oscar’s pony made when passing through the bushes. Oscar, too, saw the wolfer, as we know, and made all haste to quit the ravine as soon as he had passed out of hearing.
312“He’s gone at last,” said Tom, as he drew a long breath of relief, sprang to his feet, and ran across the ravine toward the rock. “If he had stayed here much longer I should have thought that he was making the clothes or weaving the blankets for me. Oh, I see what it was that kept him,” he added, snatching up the note that Oscar had thrust under the string with which the bundle was tied. “Perhaps I shall now find out what it was he wanted to tell me, and perhaps, too, he has been thoughtful enough to put a ten-dollar note into this. No, he hasn’t! I might have known better than to expect it.”
Tom opened the letter, but there was nothing but writing in it. He quickly made himself master of its contents; and, after cramming it into his pocket, untied the bundle, threw out the blankets, which were on the top, and ............