Stories of the Foot-hills Part 22

There was no mistaking the bundle. It was of that peculiar bulky shapelessness which betokens a very small infant.

"Yes, I'm the postmaster," answered Enoch kindly; "is there anything I can do for thee?"

The young creature looked down, and a faint color came into her transparent face.

"I've just come in on the train," she faltered. "I thought you might be able to tell me where to go. I haven't very much money. I was sick on the way, and spent more than I expected. I--I"--she hesitated, and glanced at Enoch with a little expectant gasp.

"Is thee alone?" inquired the old man.

"Yes. That is--only Baby. My husband has just--just"--her voice fluttered and died away helplessly.

"Oh, thee's a widow," said Enoch gently.

"Yes." The poor young thing looked up with a smile of wistful grat.i.tude.

"I'm not very strong. I heard this was a healthy place. They thought it would be good for us--Baby and me. I'm Mrs. Josie Hart. Baby's name is Gerald."

"Would thee be afraid to stay in a house alone?" inquired Enoch thoughtfully.

The stranger gave him a look of gentle surprise.

"Why, no, of course not--not with Baby; he's so much company."

There was a note of profound compa.s.sion for his masculine ignorance in her young voice.

The old man's mouth quivered into a smile. He went to the back of the room, and took a key from a nail.

"I think I can find thee a real cosy little place," he said; "shan't I carry the baby for thee?"

She hesitated, and looked up into his solemn, kindly face. Then she held the precious bundle toward him.

"I guess I'll have to let you. I didn't really know it till I got here, but I begin to feel, oh! so awful tired," she said, with a long, sighing breath, as Enoch folded his gaunt arms about the baby.

They went up the street together, and Enoch unlocked Jerry's house and showed the stranger in. She walked straight across the room to the cradle. When she turned around her eyes were swimming.

"Oh, I think it's just _lovely_ here," she said; "I feel better already.

This is such a nice little house, and so many wild flowers everywhere, and they smell so sweet--I _know_ Baby will like it."

She relieved Enoch of his burden and laid it on the bed.

The old man lingered a little.

"Thee needn't worry about provisions or anything," he said hesitatingly; "some of the neighbors will come in and help thee get started. Thee'll want to rest now. I guess I'll be going."

"Oh, you mustn't go without seeing Baby!" insisted the young mother, beginning to unswathe the shapeless bundle on the bed.

Enoch moved nearer, and waited until the tiny crumpled bud of a face appeared among the wrappings.

"_Isn't_ he sweet?" pleaded the girl rapturously.

Enoch bent over and gazed into the quaint little sleeping countenance.

"He's a very nice baby," he said, with gentle emphasis.

"And _so_ good," the girl-voice rippled on; "he never cried but once on the way out here, and that time I didn't blame him one bit; I wanted to cry myself,--we were so hot and tired and dusty. But he sleeps--oh, the way he _does_ sleep. There! did you notice him smile? I think he knows my voice. He often smiles that way when I am talking to him."

She caught him out of his loosened sheath and held him against her breast with the look on her face that has baffled the art of so many centuries.

It was thus that Enoch remembered her as he went down the street to the store.

"I would have taken her right home to Rachel," he said to himself, "but women folks sometimes ask a good many unnecessary questions, and the poor thing is tired."

V.

So the little widow and her baby became the wards of the town of Muscatel. After one or two unsuccessful attempts to learn the particulars of her husband's last illness, the good women of the place decided that her bereavement was too recent to be made a subject of conversation.

The baby, on the contrary, being a topic all the more absorbing by reason of its newness, they held long and enthusiastic conferences with the young mother concerning his care, clothing, and diet. With that gentle receptivity which makes some natures the defenseless targets of advice, the inefficient little mother felt herself at times between the upper and the nether millstones of condensed milk and Caudle's food, but her weak, appealing face always brightened into tremulous delight when the rival factions united, as they invariably did, on the subject of the baby's undoubted precocity in the matter of "noticing."

Enoch was called in many times to give counsel which seemed to gain from his masculinity what it might be supposed to lack by reason of his ignorance concerning the ailments and accomplishments of the small stranger who held the heart of the community in his tiny purple fist. It was to Enoch that the young mother brought her small woes, and it was with Enoch that she left them.

The song of the hay-balers and the whir of the thres.h.i.+ng-machine had died out of the valley, and the raisin-making had come on. The trays were spread in the vineyards, and the warm white air was filled with the fruity smell of the grapes, browning and sweetening beneath the October sun.

One drowsy afternoon Enoch was in the back room of the store, weighing barley and marking the weight on the sacks. Suddenly there was a quick step, and a voice in the outer room, and the old man turned slowly, with the brush in his hand, and confronted a man in the doorway.

"Jerry!"

"Yes, uncle, here I am; slightly disfigured, but still in the ring.

How's the market? Long on barley, I see. I"--he broke off suddenly, and a.s.sumed an air of the deepest dejection. "I've had a great deal of trouble since I saw you, uncle. I've lost my wife."

He turned to the window and pretended to look through the cobwebbed gla.s.s.

"She went off very sudden, but she was conscious to the last."

Enoch stood still and slowly stirred the paint in the paint-pot until his companion turned and caught the glance of his keen blue eye.

"Does thee think she will stay lost, Jerry?" he asked quietly.

The young fellow came close to Enoch's side.

"You bet," he said, with low, husky intensity; "the law settled that.

She was a cursed fraud anyway," he went on, with hurrying wrath; "she ran away with--I thought she was dead--I'll swear by"--

"Thee needn't swear, Jerry," interrupted Enoch quietly; "if thy word is good for nothing, thy blasphemy will not help it any."

The young man's face relaxed. There was a little silence.

"Has thee been up to thy house?" asked Enoch presently.