CHAPTER THIRTY

“RATTLESNAKE SAM”

“Teacher, Miss Bayley.” The boy who spoke was standing on the doorstep of the small cabin near the inn.

“Why, Ken, good-morning. You are up very early, aren’t you,” the young woman who had opened the door exclaimed in surprise. Then, with sudden anxiety, “Is anything wrong at your home? Are Dixie, Carol, and the baby all right?”

The boy’s freckled face was beaming, and about his manner there was something suggestive of suppressed excitement. “Oh, yes’m, thank you, teacher. ’Tisn’t about the girls I have come.” Then, almost with embarrassment, he twisted one bare foot over the other and looked down. He had sworn an oath to Frederick Edrington that he wouldn’t tell any one who the camper on the peak had been, and it was hard, very hard for the son of Pine Tree Martin to tell anything but the square and honest truth.

Miss Bayley, watching the boy, was indeed puzzled. “Dear,” she said kindly, placing a hand on his shoulder, “come in, won’t you? I’m sure you haven’t had breakfast yet. Please stay and share mine with me.”

The boy’s red-brown eyes lifted quickly. “Oh, no’m, teacher, thanks; I couldn’t do that. I told Dixie I’d be back, and she’ll be waiting, but I—I wanted to tell you that I found the—the man who had made the campfire that you saw.”

Miss Bayley was interested at once. “Oh, Ken,” she said, drawing the lad within and closing the door. “Surely you can spare a minute to tell me about him. Was he a sheep-rustler or a train-robber or a bandit, or whatever it was you hoped he would be?”

The boy shook his mop of red-brown hair and looked away to hide the joy that was in his eyes when he remembered who it had been that he had found. “No’m, Miss Bayley! He said that he was a hermit, and that his name was—er—Rattlesnake Sam.”

“Oh, how interesting, Ken,” the girl-teacher exclaimed. “I’ve always loved to read stories about the West; perhaps that was why I was so eager to come when I was free to do as I pleased; and one of the things that fascinated me was the way the men changed their names. I often wondered what had happened in their lives to cause their comrades to call them the strange things they did. Of course Dick Sureshot, Broncho Bill, and names like that are easy to understand, and ‘Rattlesnake Sam’ merely means, I suppose, that this old hermit has killed a great many rattlers. He is a very, very old man, isn’t he?”

“Yes’m, Miss Bayley. That is, no’m, I mean. I guess he isn’t a hundred yet.”

The girl-teacher laughed. “Ken,” she said, “it’s plain to see that you were terribly disappointed to find merely a hermit when you had hoped to trail a sheep-rustler. Confess now, you are disappointed, aren’t you?”

Miss Bayley insisted that the boy look at her, and when he did, she found herself puzzled at the glow that his eager eyes held. But, before she could question him further, the lad was saying, “Miss Bayley, teacher, the old hermit said he wished he had something to read, and that’s why I came over this morning. After school this afternoon he’s coming halfway down the trail, and I’m going half-way up, and I said I’d ask you to loan me a book for him.”

“Oho, so your old hermit can read! Well, I’m glad to hear that.” Then the girl-teacher turned toward the book-shelves as she said meditatively, “I wonder what kind of books old hermits like best. One about snakes, do you suppose? I sent for one after Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly told me that it was hard for a tenderfoot to tell a stick from a snake just at first. Now, whenever I go out, I take along the book, but as yet I haven’t met a snake.”

“No’m, you’re not likely to,” Ken said; “not till spring comes again.”

While he spoke the boy’s eyes roved about, and suddenly he saw a large volume lying on the window-seat. In it was a mark, for indeed, it was the book Josephine Bayley had been reading but the evening before.

Seizing it, he read the title, then lifted an eager face. “Oh, teacher, this one will be just right if you can spare it.”

The tone of the young woman expressed her mingled surprise and doubt. “Why, no, Ken, an old hermit would not care for Wells.”

But the boy persisted, “Yes’m, teacher, he would. Rattlesnake Sam said he liked history best.”

“Very well, dear,” Miss Bayley replied meekly. Then she added, “Suppose you take along this new current-events magazine that just came yesterday. Perhaps your old hermit would like that, too.”

“Oh, thank you, teacher, Miss Bayley!” How the red-brown eyes were glowing! “An’ I’ll tell him that you sent ’em, and he’ll be just ever so careful of them.”

“I’m sure that he will. Good-by, my boy.” Then for a moment the girl stood in the open doorway, watching the bare brown legs that fairly flew down the trail. Turning back to complete the preparation of her breakfast, she found herself trying to picture what the old hermit looked like. “Perhaps he is some dry-as-dust professor, who is studying fossils and rocks. He probably had a long gray beard, a leathery, wrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes that are near-sighted.” Then she sighed. Perhaps even Miss Bayley was a little disappointed that the builder of the campfire that had so interested her had proved to be so old and fogyish. “Well, what does it matter? I probably shall never see him,” she thought.