Then Ill Come Back to You | Page 9

Jenkinses found him down in
the slack water, Sunday noon or thereabouts, and they sed he'd never be
no deader, not even if he'd a-died in a reg'lar bed, with a doctor helpin'
him along."
Caleb threw his sister one lugubriously helpless glance. Sarah had

choked, apparently upon a crumb of bread, and was coughing,
stranglingly. And Caleb made to change the drift of the conversation,
but he was not quick enough.
"I ain't never been much of a hand for licker," Steve finished naively.
"Old Tom sed he never could understand it in me, neither, but he
reckoned it was lucky in a way fer both of us. He sed he'd whale the
life outen me if he ever caught me even smellin' of a cork; and as fer
him--well, it come in handy for him, havin' a sober hand round the
shack when he wan't quite hisself!"
This time when Caleb lifted his eyes he met a startled gleam behind
Sarah's half dropped lashes. She was peering steadily into the boy's lean,
untroubled face. Caleb voiced the query which he knew must be behind
her quiet intentness.
"You said your name was O'Mara, I believe. I suppose that
was--ah--Old Tom's last name, too?"
Steve laughed; he laughed frankly for the first time since he had halted,
hours before, outside in the dusty road.
"Why, Old Tom had a dozen different names in the last few years," he
replied. "He had a new one every time he went outen the woods fer a
trip. But he always sed he mostly favored Brown or Jones or Smith,
they bein' quiet and common and not too hard to remember. He just
changed names whenever he got tired of his old one, Old Tom did. But
he always did say, too, that if he'd hed as good a one as O'Mara, he'd a
kept it--and kept it proud."
At the conclusion of that statement it was Miss Sarah's gaze which
went searching across the table for her brother's eyes. But the boy just
ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances.
He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom
went down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt
upon blissful days in the spring when he had been allowed to play a
man's part in the small drives which he and Old Tom and the

"Jenkinses" began, and which Old Tom and the Jenkinses alone saw
through to market in Morrison. He touched lightly and
inconsequentially upon certain days when Old Tom would hang for
hours over an old tin box filled with soiled and ink-smeared
memoranda, periods which were always followed by days of moody
silence and a week or more of "lessons" in a tattered and thumbed
reader which the woodsman had brought up-river--lessons as painful
and laborious to Old Tom as they were delightful to the starved
mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom, the boy explained, was pretty
likely to be "lickered up fer quite a spell" after such a session which
invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box.
The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail--boasted
unconsciously of Old Tom's super-cunning with trap and deadfall, and
even poison bait. And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear
trap which he had left outside the door.
"I brung Samanthy along with me," he stated. "I brung her just because
somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom'd be glad if I did. Next to
me he always sed he set a heap o' store on thet ole critter. He sed
Samanthy was as near to hevin' a woman around the house as anything
he knew on--she hed a voice like a steel trap, and when she got her
teeth sot in a argument she never did let up. I brung her along with me,
and the gun he give me, but I didn't take nuthin' else."
Caleb waited there until he knew that the boy had finished.
"You never bothered about that old tin box?" he inquired casually.
The boy shook his head again.
"Old Tom, whenever he went away for a spell, always sed I wan't to
meddle with it," he explained. "This time I reckoned his goin' was just
about the same thing, only he won't be comin' back, so I--I just locked
the box up in the cubberd and hitched the staple into the door and come
down myself."
By the time that meal was finished the boy's eyes were so heavy-lidded

that, fight as he would, they still persisted in drooping till the long
lashes curled over his cheeks. And in spite of Caleb's remonstrance it
was Sarah who saw him upstairs and into the huge guest-room with its
four-poster