第62章 THE YOUNGEST PROSPECTOR IN CALAVERAS(2)

"So be it, Sister Medliker," said Staples, drawing a long, satisfactory breath; "and let us trust that when you have rastled with his flesh and spirit, you will bring us joyful tidings to Wednesday's Mother's Meeting."He clapped his soft hat on his head, cast another glance at the wicked Johnny, opened the door with his hand behind him, and backed himself into the road.

"Now, Johnny," said Mrs.Medliker, setting her lips together as the door closed, "look me right in the face, and say where you stole that gold."But Johnny evidently did not think that his mother's face at that moment offered any moral support, for he did not look at her; but, after gazing at the kettle, said slowly, "I didn't steal no gold.""Then," said Mrs.Medliker triumphantly, "if ye didn't steal it, you'd say right off HOW ye got it."Children are often better logicians than their elders.To John Bunyan the stealing of gold and the mere refusal to say where he got it were two distinct and separate things; that the negation of the second proposition meant the affirmation of the first he could not accept.But then children are also imitative, and fearful of the older intellect.It struck Johnny that his mother might be right, and that to her it really meant the same thing.So, after a moment's silence he replied more confidently, "I suppose I stoled it."But he was utterly unprepared for the darkening change in his mother's face, and her furious accents."You stole it?--you STOLEit, you limb! And you sit there and brazenly tell me! Who did you steal it from? Tell me quick, afore I wring it out of you!"Completely astounded and bewildered at this new turn of affairs, Johnny again fell back upon the dreadful truth, and gasped, "Idon't know."

"You don't know, you devil! Did you take it from Frazer's?""No."

"From the Simmons Brothers?"

"No."

"From the Blazing Star Company?"

"No."

"From a store?"

"No."

"Then, in created goodness!--WHERE did you get it?"Johnny raised his brown-gooseberry eyes for a single instant to his mother's and said, "I found it."Mrs.Medliker gasped again and stared hopelessly at the ceiling.

Yet she was conscious of a certain relief.After all, it was POSSIBLE that he had found it--liar as he undoubtedly was.

"Then why don't you say where, you awful child?""Don't want to!"

Johnny would have liked to add that he saw no reason why he should tell.Other people who found gold were not obliged to tell.There was Jim Brody, who had struck a lead and kept the locality secret.

Nobody forced him to tell.Nobody called him a thief; nobody had dragged him about by the arm until he showed it.Why was it wrong that a little boy should find gold? It wasn't agin the Commandments.Mr.Staples had never got up and said, "Thou shalt not find gold!" His mother had never made him pray not to find it!

The schoolmaster had never read him awful stories of boys who found gold and never said anything about it, and so came to a horrid end.

All this crowded his small boy's mind, and, crowding, choked his small boy's utterance.

"You jest wait till your father comes home," said Mrs.Medliker, "and he'll see whether you 'want to' or not.And now get yourself off to bed and stay there."Johnny knew that his father--whose teams had increased to five wagons, and whose route extended forty miles further--was not due for a week, and that the catastrophe was yet remote.His present punishment he had expected.He went into the adjoining bedroom, which he occupied with his sister, and began to undress.He lingered for some time over one stocking, and finally cautiously removed from it a small piece of flake gold which he had kept concealed all day under his big toe, to the great discomfort of that member.But this was only a small, ordinary self-martyrdom of boyhood.He scratched a boyish hieroglyphic on the metal, and when his mother's back was turned scraped a small hole in the adobe wall, inserted the gold in it, and covered it up with a plaster made of the moistened debris.It was safe--so was his secret--for it need not, perhaps, be stated here that Johnny HAD told the truth and HAD honestly found the gold! But where?--yes, that was his own secret! And now, Johnny, with the instinct of all young animals, dismissed the whole subject from his mind, and, reclining comfortably upon his arm, fell into an interesting study of the habits of the red ant as exemplified in a crack of the adobe wall, and with the aid of a burnt match succeeded in diverting for the rest of the afternoon the attention of a whole laborious colony.

The next morning, however, brought trouble to him in the curiosity of his sisters, heightened by their belief that he could at any moment be taken off to prison--which was their understanding of their mother's story.I grieve to say that to them this invested him with a certain romantic heroism, from the gratification of which the hero himself was not exempt.Nevertheless, he successfully evaded their questioning, and on broader impersonal grounds.As girls, it was none of their business! He wasn't a-going to tell them HIS secrets! And what did they know about gold, anyway? They couldn't tell it from brass! The attitude of his mother was, however, still perplexing.She was no longer actively indignant, but treated him with a mysterious reserve that was the more appalling.The fact was that she no longer believed in his theft,--indeed, she had never seriously accepted it,--but his strange reticence and secretiveness piqued her curiosity, and even made her a little afraid of him.The capacity for keeping a secret she believed was manlike, and reminded her--for no reason in the world--of Jim Medliker, her husband, whom she feared.Well, she would let them fight it out between them.More than that, she was finally obliged to sink her reserve in employing him in the necessary "chores" for the house, and he was sent on an errand to the country store at the cross-roads.But he first extracted his gold-flake from the wall, and put it in his pocket.