Cushing fetches forth a pair of Russia-leather slippers Mrs. Pendrake had ordered earlier, unbeknownst to me. They were cunning little red things, for she had tiny feet. Cushing come almost to the point of slaver here, a woman’s foot in them days being thought almost unbearably sexy.
“I supervised the dainty work myself,” he says. “You can’t always trust that Eye-talian when it comes to ladies’ items. You see this stitching, madam-”
Mrs. P. says: “Would you be so good as to deliver them to my house, Mr. Cushing?”
“Oh?” says he with a finger to the gold tooth of which he was real proud. “Very well, madam, I’ll send the Eye-talian straight off.”
“You must never do that, Mr. Cushing. I shall require Angelo to take this young gentleman’s measurements for a pair of boots.”
I figured Angelo would get a hard time when the old bastard got back, and I was sorry, for I liked that Italian right away if for no other reason than he was even more a foreigner in that town than me.
He come over from his workbench and took a pattern from my foot. It was then, looking up to smile at Mrs. Pendrake, I saw on her face the same expression she had worn for Kane.
The difference was that Angelo kept his head down mostly, covered with them tight black curls, and if he glanced at Mrs. P., his face was polite, innocent, and ignorant. Italians have the reputation for hot blood, but he didn’t even seem to be lukewarm. Furthermore, he didn’t have much English. He seemed to know two words: “lady” and “yes,” which he pronounced his own way.
She said: “Angelo, I am very happy with these slippers. You have made them as if you held my foot while you worked.”
He answered: “Yayss, leddy.”
“But,” said she.
He looked up under his thick eyebrows. “Leddy?”
“But I think I had rather they were done in blue. Don’t you think blue would become me more?”
“Yayss?” he asked, all the while applying himself to the pattern of my hoof, and shortly had it done, for he was wondrously deft with his fingers.
I don’t think he savvied a word she said, but she nevertheless went on about it and he nodded and said the usual and smiled empty and, making a little bow, went back to his bench, where he picked up a piece of hide and sliced out a sole freehand almost in no longer than it takes to tell it.
Towards Angelo I have never borne any ill will. It’s hard to hate a man on the basis of the one short time you saw him, when he appeared far more interested in leather than he ever could be in Mrs. Pendrake. I was just worn out with the whole business.
So along about three o’clock next morning, with my lamp turned down low, I put on the most usable clothes I could find, got my money together-I had three-four dollars accumulated-put my scalping knife in my waistband, slipped down the stairs, and left forever.
Before I went, though, I wrote a little letter, for they had been all of them right nice to me in their fashion, and stuck it where it would be found.
DEAR REV. AND MRS. PENDRAKE,
I got to go off now, but it ain’t your fault, for you been mighty kind. The trouble is I don’t think I can ever be civilized like you two. For I can’t get onto your ways, though I know they is the right ones. Please don’t send after me. I promise never to reveal my connection with you so you won’t be disgraced. Give my regards to Lucy and Lavender, who I am grateful towards for their many favors.
Believe me, your loving “son,”
JACK
Now you get the reason why I won’t tell the name of that town, nor the faith of the Reverend’s church, and as far as that goes, those people wasn’t named “Pendrake.”
It was partly on account of the promise I made in that note, but mostly because for all the things I done in my life, some of them fairly unrespectable, I never got so low as to speak ill of a lady in public. At least not so’s you could recognize her. The type of fellow who would do that should be shot.
CHAPTER 12 Going for Gold
WHAT I HAD IN MIND on leaving the Pendrakes was of course returning to the Cheyenne. God knows I thought enough about it and kept telling myself I was basically an Indian, just as when among Indians I kept seeing how I was really white to the core.
But when I got to the river’s edge that early morning of my departure, where I figured to take a boat across to the western shore and hit the emigrant trail, I suddenly lost my taste for that venture. I just couldn’t see myself going back to a buffalo robe in Old Lodge Skins’s tepee. I couldn’t stand it at the Pendrakes’ no more, but the answer to my problem didn’t seem to be returning to savagery after that nine or ten months out of it. Being primitive ain’t the easiest thing in the world to get used to if you know better. You get showed a more regular manner of obtaining your grub, for example, and it’s pretty hard to return to a method that ain’t guaranteed.
I reckon that was one consideration that changed my mind. I was too ignorant to reflect that I ate on schedule with the Pendrakes because I didn’t have to provide the food myself. Then another thing was that in our town you heard a lot about St. Louie, and I figured so long as I was in the same state I ought to see that great city. I could always go west, and I oughtn’t pass up a chance to take in the local sights while I was here.
So I went east to St. Louie, walking most of the route so as to save my money, which nevertheless had dwindled out by the time I reached the city and the rest of it went for my first meal there, for which they took fifty cents off me, prices being criminal high in St. Louie.
I ain’t going into detail how I survived there, but it was barely. I sold my clothes, I cleaned outhouses, I begged, and I stole. Within a month after I stopped being Mrs. Pendrake’s pampered son, I was a dirty old bum sleeping in the back of stables.
Don’t ask me about the theatrical exhibitions they had in St. Louie or the fine stores or the great eating places or the luxurious boats that plied the Mississippi River, for my knowledge of them extended no further than the outside, where I’d stand as a ragged beggar, collecting very little, until rousted by the police constables.
But St. Louie was quite a center for the trade going west, and in time I had a bit of luck: got myself hired on as guide for a mule train of yardgoods and such heading for Santa Fe in New Mexico. Which took some lying, though of course I could back it up with my fluent Cheyenne. I had never been to Santa Fe, but I found out that from years of travel the trail was plainly marked, so figured to have no trouble in guiding along it. Anyway, them fellows what owned the train was dumb as hell and not hard to convince of anything unlikely. They hadn’t never been west of St. Joe, but had raised all the money they could for this expedition, on which they expected to make a pile in one shot out of what they believed to be a bunch of stupid greasers. Their names was the Wilkerson Brothers.
What happened to change their plans was that the Comanche jumped us, killed both Wilkersons along with all the mule skinners, and stole the goods and burned the wagons. This disaster occurred along the Cimarron River after we had crossed the fifty mile of waterless plain from the Arkansas.
You notice I wasn’t myself killed in this set-to. In fact, I wasn’t even wounded. I just knowed how to handle myself, and when everybody else was down, didn’t see no further reason to keep standing off fifty savages when all I had to do it with was one old muzzle-loader.
Well, there I was, within a barricade of cases of our trade goods, and the circle of screeching Comanche was drawing tighter, and you fire once from a muzzle-loader and then spend the next fifteen minutes recharging it: if you’re faced with more than three of the enemy, they could almost have beat you to death with their hands before you found your ramrod. So I was forced to employ that weapon I carried on top of my neck. I remembered that invaluable story of Little Man again!