CHAPTER VI.

FLORENCE BRANDON.

Loss of property, grief and misfortune is almost always sure to affect the appetite. A hearty vigorous digestion is incompatible with depression of spirits, or sudden paralysis of sorrow.

But Leonidas Swipes was subject to no such weakness, so far as the loss of his magnificent drove of sheep was concerned. How remote the prospect of his recovering a tithe of his property, he was resolved that it should interfere in no way with the meal before him.

Himself and his two companions seated themselves upon the ground, near one of the large baggage wagons, while several of the females occupied themselves with placing their food upon a matting before them.

In the caravan were a couple of fine milch cows which, although they had traveled all the way from the States were in good condition and gave excellent milk. When a large pitcher of the cool delightful liquid was placed before the hungry horsemen, their eyes expanded in amazement; but neither Mr. Doolittle nor Mr. Birchem uttered a syllable, except when Swipes asked them whether it was not splendid, whereupon they replied with a grunt and nod of the head.

“Well, I swan if it doesn’t beat all I ever seed or heerd tell on. That’s the first drop of decent milk I’ve tasted since leaving Connecticut,” said he, addressing the elderly woman who was acting the part of a waiter. “We had some in Santa Fe, but it couldn’t begin with this.”

At this point, Swipes poured out a large cup-full, and slowly drank off its contents, gradually lifting the cup until it was inverted over his face thrown back so far as to be horizontal. In this position, he held it for some time until sure the last drop had descended into his mouth, when he lowered it again with a great sigh and a prolonged—“A——hem!”

“But that is splendid now! _splendid_, by jingo! if it isn’t. When I had that up to my mouth, I just shut my eyes, and there! I was back in Connecticut agin, a sitting under the old mulberry tree, at noon, after we have been mowing hay, and was taking our lunch! Ah! I was a boy again.”

While the hunters were eating, most of the emigrants were consulting together, making the arrangements for the day’s journey, and debating the proposition, the Yankee had made for some of them to join in the pursuit of the thieving Comanches.

Fred Wainwright, feeling somewhat interested in Swipes, sauntered slowly toward him, and took a seat on the ground near the party, while they ate, that he might relieve his depression of spirit somewhat by conversing with the quaint New Englander, who, as has been seen was more disposed to be loquacious than anything else.

“I say Mr.——also Mr.——what did you tell me was your name?” remarked the latter, as he suddenly cast his eyes toward the young hunter.

“Wainwright.”

“I say, Mr. Wainwright, you belong to them trappers; don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Wal, what do you think of my proposition. Fine chance for a spec,” said he, speaking rapidly and looking shrewdly. “’Taint often you have such a chance.”

“I have no particular feeling about it either way,” replied Wainwright. “It is a big loss for you, but we are bound to this emigrant party, having made an engagement to accompany them through the mountains, and don’t believe Lancaster or Harling will join you without the free consent of this party.”

“Hang the Comanches!” exclaimed Swipes, as well as he could, with his mouth full of meat, bread and milk; “hang ’em I say, they’re up to all kinds of tricks, I understand, but I think they have served us just about the meanest one I ever heerd tell 'on. I swan if they haint. I say, Mr. Wainwright, are you much acquainted with the place over the mountains where you’re going!”

“Never have been there in my life.”

“Don’t say; how in creation then are you going to act as guide; that’s what I should like to know?”

“I am not the guide; it is Lancaster; he has been on the mountains several times.”

“O—ah! I understand; then he could tell me all about the country. Have you ever heard him speak of the place?”

“Oh! yes; he has referred to it many times.”

“Do you know whether there is a good opening for a talented young man?”

“It isn’t likely these emigrants would be traveling there through all this danger, unless there was a prospect of their bettering themselves. But what sort of business do you expect engaging in?”

“Well, anything most; I’m handy at everything; served my time as shoemaker, worked some at tailoring and blacksmithing and on the farm, and teached school in the winter. Say, you now,” exclaimed Swipes, with a sudden gleam of eagerness. “What kind of a place would it be to open a select school?”

The young hunter could not forbear a laugh at the simplicity of the question.

“I don’t think I could give you much encouragement in that direction. The country is most too young to give much attention to their schools, as yet, but I’ve no doubt there will be a fine chance in a short time, for such an institution. I am quite aware there is nothing more beneficial to a new settlement than a church and school.”

“Say Mr. Wainwright,” said Mr. Swipes, looking up in the face of the young hunter, with no little interest. “You look to me and you talk just as if you’ne been a school teacher.”

“No,” laughed Fred, “I never taught school a day in my life.”

“You’ve got larning enough to do so. I swan if you haint! when I hear a man say _taught_ for _teached_, and _beneficial_, and all them kind of words, I always set him down as knowing enough to teach school. Perhaps you notice I don’t allers speak grammatically and call my words exactly right; but don’t let that give you the idea that I havn’t got no education. I’m sensible of the mistakes after I make them, and when it’s too late to help ’em——Jingo!”

Leonidas Swipes raised his hands in the most profound amazement, as Florence Brandon suddenly walked around the wagon, came up to where they were sitting, and asked in the most musical of tones, “Is there anything more to which you will be helped?”

The discomfited Yankee for a time was unable to find his tongue. He sat gazing at the picture as one enraptured. His companions now found their tongues, and both replied that they were amply provided and wished for nothing more, whereupon she turned and disappeared.

Poor Fred Wainwright was in a dilemma fully as sore as that of Swipes. He had no thought of the girl until the exclamation of the latter. She halted within a few feet of where he was reclining upon the ground, and when Swipes became confused she turned toward the young hunter, and looked in his face with a smile as if she would like to have him join her in the enjoyment of the scene. But Fred’s face was as red as a Comanche’s when he looked up and encountered those soulful eyes.

Ah! those eyes with their deep heavenly blue! had he not looked into them before? Those red lips! had he not heard the sweetest words of his life come from them? and that queenly head; had he not bent over that! But stay! this will never do.

The minute he felt the eye of the young lady fastened upon him he let his own fall to the ground, and had his life depended on it he could not have raised them again. He could feel that his countenance was burning and fiery red, and his heart was thumping as it never thumped before. Indeed he feared that he should really faint unless he could recover himself.

He was enraged at himself for displaying such an unmanly weakness, and by a strong effort of the will he overcame his emotion—not enough to raise his eyes, to catch a glimpse at the hem of her dress as she flitted from sight again.

“Can it be that she suspected me?” he asked himself where she had gone. “No, I think she would not recognize me in this dress. Then my beard conceals my features, so that when I look into a spring, as I am about to drink, I cannot believe that I am the person I was a year ago. And my cap; I would hardly know my own brother in it. I would not have her know me at this time for the world, and I do hope that her look at me raised no suspicion in her mind.”

“By jingo!” exclaimed Leonidas Swipes, as soon as he could find tongue to express himself, “isn’t she a picter? If I wan’t engaged now, I—ahem! might sail in.”

“So you are engaged?” remarked Wainwright, glad to find an excuse for directing the attention from his own awkwardness.

“Yes,” replied the Yankee, resuming his eating in a serious matter-of-fact matter. “Yes, I’m fast; and if them Comanches hadn’t stolen them sheep, I calculated being in San Francisco in ten months from now, to take passage in the steamer for hum, and to buy Deacon Poplair’s farm and settle down with Araminty—but hangnation, the sheep are gone, and where’s the use of talking?”

And as if to draw his griefs clean out of his remembrance, he ate more ravenously than ever.

But all that is temporal must have an end, and so did the enormous meal of the three half famished sheep dealers. When they had finally gorged themselves, and were remounted on their animals, they by no means were the woebegone-looking wretches that might have been imagined, in those who had just seen a hundred thousand dollars slip and escape off on the prairies. On the contrary they seemed quite cheerful. Messrs. Doolittle and Birchem were silent, as a matter of course, but Leonidas looked greasy and rather jovial.

As soon as the meal was concluded and the march was resumed, the train heading a little toward the north west, as Leonidas remarked they were some distance north of the pass by which they hoped to make their way through the mountains into Lower California, which in reality was Southern California, a considerable ways north of the Gulf, and not the peninsula known by that name.

Leonidas Swipes was informed by the trappers that they truly sympathized with the loss borne by him and his friends, but their engagement with Mr. Bonfield and the leaders of the train forbade them to unite with them in the attempt to secure the sheep. In fact, the trapper informed them that it was useless for them to expect to regain their property. It would require but a short time for the Comanches to reach one of their villages, where they could marshal a hundred warriors with which to defend their property; and mounted on their swift mustangs, it was almost impossible to compete with them.

It was a hard dose to swallow, but Swipes took it philosophically, and persisted in believing there was some hope of recovering them. At least, as the Comanches took the same direction that the train was following, he concluded to remain with the latter for the present.