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Page 45
After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I
crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-
brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle.
It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many
birds, so many butter-flies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such
winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields.
I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from base to summit.
I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure.
There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of
the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in
the document of old man Rundle.
I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of
the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a
tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River.
And there I was started to see what I took to be a wild man, with
unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with
brilliant wings.
"Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how he had
strayed so far from seats of education and learning.
And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near
the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha
Mangum plucking wild flowers.
She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew
her I saw her face--which was the color of the white keys of a new
piano--turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the
gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.
"I knew you would come, Jim," she said clearly. "Father wouldn't let
me write, but I knew you would come.
What followed you may guess--there was my wagon and team just across
the river.
I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he
can't use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to
others, where does it come in?
For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in
a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good
start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.
And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in
places where they cannot be found.
But who cares for that? Who cares--who cares?
TO HIM WHO WAITS
The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual
animation.
The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that
had strayed down to the river's edge, and, not having a ferry ticket,
had to stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were
infested by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced
the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a
macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills and the
foamy lace of the river's edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable
road up a rocky height to the hermit's cave. One mile upstream was
the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city came; leaving
cool, electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven about in
burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged
Modreds bearing the blankest of shields.
Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the
personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.
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