The Eagles Heart | Page 3

fiendish temper. No matter what I say or do, keep us apart till I am
calm. By God's grace I will never touch his flesh again in anger."
Nevertheless he dared not trust himself to refer to the battles which
shamed them all. The boy was deeply repentant, but uttered no word of
it. And so they grew ever more silent and vengeful in their intercourse.
Harold early developed remarkable skill with horses, and once rode in
the races at the County Fair, to the scandal of the First Church. He not
only won the race, but was at once offered a great deal of money to go
with the victor to other races. To his plea the father, with deep-laid
diplomacy, replied:
"Very well; study hard this year and next year you may go." But the
boy was just at the age to take on weight rapidly, and by the end of the
year was too heavy, and the owner of the horse refused to repeat his
offer. Harold did not fail to remark how he had been cheated, but said
nothing more of his wish to be a jockey.
He was also fond of firearms, and during his boyhood his father tried in
every way to keep weapons from him, and a box in his study contained
a contraband collection of his son's weapons. There was a certain

pathos in this little arsenal, for it gave evidence of considerable labor
on the boy's part, and expressed much of buoyant hope and restless
energy.
There were a half-dozen Fourth of July pistols, as many cannons for
crackers, and three attempts at real guns intended to explode powder
and throw a bullet. Some of them were "toggled up" with twine, and
one or two had handles rudely carved out of wood. Two of them were
genuine revolvers which he had managed to earn by working in the
harvest field on the Burns' farm.
From his fifteenth year he was never without a shotgun and revolver.
The shotgun was allowed, but the revolver was still contraband and
kept carefully concealed. On Fourth of July he always helped to fire the
anvil and fireworks, for he was deft and sure and quite at home with
explosives. He had acquired great skill with both gun and pistol as
early as his thirteenth year, and his feats of marksmanship came now
and then to the ears of his father.
The father and son were in open warfare. Harold submitted to every
command outwardly, but inwardly vowed to break all restraint which
he considered useless or unjust.
His great ambition was to acquire a "mustang pony," for all the
adventurous spirits of the dime novels he had known carried revolvers
and rode mustangs. He did not read much, but when he did it was
always some tale of fighting. He was too restless and active to continue
at a book of his own accord for any length of time, but he listened
delightedly to any one who consented to read for him. When his sister
Maud wished to do him a great favor and to enjoy his company (for she
loved him dearly) she read Daredevil Dan, or some similar story, while
he lay out on his stomach in the grass under the trees, with restless feet
swinging like pendulums. At such times his face was beautiful with
longing, and his eyes became dark and dreamy. "I'm going there,
Beauty," he would say as Maud rolled out the word Colorado or Brazos.
"I'm going there. I won't stay here and rot. I'll go, you'll see, and I'll
have a big herd of cattle, too."

His gentlest moments were those spent with his sister in the fields or
under the trees. As he grew older he became curiously tender and
watchful of her. It pleased him to go ahead of her through the woods, to
pilot the way, and to help her over ditches or fences. He loved to lead
her into dense thickets and to look around and say: "There, isn't this
wild, though? You couldn't find your way out if it wasn't for me, could
you?" And she, to carry out the spirit of the story, always shuddered
and said, "Don't leave me to perish here."
Once, as he lay with his head in the grass, he suddenly said: "Can't you
hear the Colorado roar?"
The wind was sweeping over the trees, and Maud, eager to keep him in
this gentle mood, cried: "I hear it; it is a wonderful river, isn't it?"
He did not speak again for a moment.
"Oh, I want to be where there is nobody west of me," he said, a look of
singular beauty on his face. "Don't you?"
"N--no, I don't," answered Maud. "But, then, I'm a girl, you