The Valiant Runaways [47]
'un, I'm not from no such high-toned place as Boston. I'm a Yank though,
and no mistake. Vermont."
"Is that in America?"
"In Meriky? Something's wrong with your geography, young man. It's one
of the U. S. and no slouch, neither."
He spoke in a curious mixture of English and of Spanish that he adapted
as freely as he did his native tongue. The boys stared at him,
fascinated. They thought him the most picturesque person they had ever
met.
"When did you come?" asked Roldan.
"I'll answer any more questions you've got when I've got this yere
rabbit inside of me. P'r'aps as you've been hungry you know that it
doesn't make the tongue ambitious that way. I'll have a pipe while it's
cookin'."
He was shortly invisible under a rolling grey cloud. The tobacco was the
rank stuff used by the Indians. The boys wanted to cough, but would have
choked rather than be impolite, and finally stole out with a muttered
remark about the scenery.
When they returned their host had eaten his breakfast and smoked his
second pipe.
"Come in," he said heartily. "Come right in and make yourselves ter
home. My name's Jim Hill. I won't ask yourn as I wouldn't remember them
if I did. These long-winded Spanish names are beyond me. Set. Set. Boxes
ain't none too comfortable, but it's the best I've got."
"Oh, this box is most comfortable," Roldan hastened to assure him. "And
we are very thankful to have anything to sit on at all, senor. You could
not guess the many terrible adventures we have had in the last few
weeks."
"Indeed! Adventures? I want ter know! You look as if hammocks was more
to your taste. Oh, no offence," as Roldan's eyes flashed. "But you are
fine looking birds, and no mistake. Howsomever, we'll hear all about
them presently. It's polite to answer questions first. You was asking me
a while back how I come here. I come over those mountains, young man,
and I don't put in the adjectives I applied to them in the process outer
respect to your youth. But they'd make a man swear if he'd spent his
life psalm singin' before."
"We know," said Roldan, grimly. "We've been in them. What did you eat?
And did you get lost?"
"I ate red ants mor' 'n once, and I usually was lost. When I arrived at
that Mission down yonder the amount of flesh I had between my bones and
my skin wouldn't have filled a thimble. But that priest--he's a great
man if ever there was one--soon fixed me up. I lived like a prince for
a month, and I could be there yet if I liked, but I'd kinder got used to
livin' alone and I liked it, so I come here. Besides, I found so much
prayin' and bell ringin' wearin' on the nerves, to say nothin' of too
many Indians. I ain't got no earthly use for Indians. Why priests or
anybody else run after Indians beats me. Where I was brought up 't was
the other way. They're after us with a scalpin' knife, and if we're
after them at all it's with all the lead we kin git. If the murderin'
dirty beasts is willin' to stay where they belong, well, I for one
believe in lettin' 'em."
"Do you--ah--like the priest, Don Jim?"
"What? Well, that's better than 'Don Himy,' as they call me down there.
You bet I like the priest. He's a gentleman, and as square as they make
'em, that is, with a poor devil like me; I guess he's one too much for
your dons when he feels that way. But he's a man every inch of him,
afraid of nothin' under God's heaven, and as kind and generous as a--as
some women. What he rots in this God-forsaken place for I can't make
out."
"What did you come to California for?"
"Well, that ain't bad. I come here, my son, because I was lookin' for a
cold climate. My own was warm, accordin' to my taste, and somehow
Californy seemed as if it ought to be fur enough away to be cool and
nice."
"It's very hot in the valleys."
"So it is. So it is. But as you see, I prefer the mountains."
"Do you often go to the Mission?"
"Every month or so I go down and have a chin with Padre Osuna. It keeps
my Spanish in, and I shouldn't like to lose sight of him. I got word
from