第68章 A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS(2)

"No," said the master, "I came here first.There are two other boys missing,--Providence Smith and Julian Fleming.Did either of them"--But Mrs.Tribbs had interrupted him with a gesture of impatient relief."Oh, that's all, is it? Playin' hookey together, in course.'Scuse me, I must go back to my bakin'." She turned away, but stopped suddenly, touched, as the master fondly believed, by some tardy maternal solicitude.But she only said: "When he DOEScome back, you just give him a whalin', will ye?" and vanished into her kitchen.

The master rode away, half ashamed of his foolish concern for the derelicts.But he determined to try Smith's father, who owned a small rancho lower down on a spur of the same ridge.But the spur was really nearer Hemlock Hill, and could have been reached more directly by a road from there.He, however, kept along the ridge, and after half an hour's ride was convinced that Jackson Tribbs could have communicated with Provy Smith without coming nearer Hemlock Hill, and this revived his former belief that they were together.He found the paternal Smith engaged in hoeing potatoes in a stony field.The look of languid curiosity with which he had regarded the approach of the master changed to one of equally languid aggression as he learned the object of his visit.

"Wot are ye comin' to ME for? I ain't runnin' your school," he said slowly and aggressively."I started Providence all right for it mornin' afore last, since when I never set eyes on him.That lets ME out.My business, young feller, is lookin' arter the ranch.Yours, I reckon, is lookin' arter your scholars.""I thought it my business to tell you your son was absent from school," said the master coldly, turning away."If you are satisfied, I have nothing more to say." Nevertheless, for the moment he was so startled by this remarkable theory of his own responsibility in the case that he quite accepted the father's callousness,--or rather it seemed to him that his unfortunate charges more than ever needed his protection.There was still the chance of his hearing some news from Julian Fleming's father; he lived at some distance, in the valley on the opposite side of Hemlock Hill; and thither the master made his way.Luckily he had not gone far before he met Mr.Fleming, who was a teamster, en route.Like the fathers of the other truants, he was also engaged in his vocation.But, unlike the others, Fleming senior was jovial and talkative.He pulled up his long team promptly, received the master's news with amused interest, and an invitation to spirituous refreshment from a demijohn in his wagon.

"Me and the ole woman kind o' spekilated that Jule might hev been over with Aunt Marthy; but don't you worry, Mr.Schoolmaster.

They're limbs, every one o' them, but they'll fetch up somewhere, all square! Just you put two fingers o' that corn juice inside ye, and let 'em slide.Ye didn't hear what the 'lekshun news was when ye was at Smith's, did ye?"The master had not inquired.He confessed he had been worried about the boys.He had even thought that Julian might have met with an accident.

Mr.Fleming wiped his mouth, with a humorous affectation of concern."Met with an ACCIDENT? Yes, I reckon not ONE accident, but TWO of 'em.These yer accidents Jule's met with had two legs, and were mighty lively accidents, you bet, and took him off with 'em; or mebbe they had four legs, and he's huntin' 'em yet.

Accidents! Now I never thought o' that! Well, when you come across him and THEM ACCIDENTS, you just whale 'em, all three! And ye won't take another drink? Well, so long, then! Gee up!" He rolled away, with a laugh, in the heavy dust kicked up by his plunging mules, and the master made his way back to the schoolhouse.

His quest for that day was ended.

But the next morning he was both astounded and relieved, at the assembling of school, to find the three truants back in their places.His urgent questioning of them brought only the one and same response from each: "Got lost on the ridge." He further gathered that they had slept out for two nights, and were together all the time, but nothing further, and no details were given.The master was puzzled.They evidently expected punishment; that was no doubt also the wish of their parents; but if their story was true, it was a serious question if he ought to inflict it.There was no means of testing their statement; there was equally none by which he could controvert it.It was evident that the whole school accepted it without doubt; whether they were in possession of details gained from the truants themselves which they had withheld from him, or whether from some larger complicity with the culprits, he could not say.He told them gravely that he should withhold equally their punishment and their pardon until he could satisfy himself of their veracity, and that there had been no premeditation in their act.They seemed relieved, but here, again, he could not tell whether it sprang from confidence in their own integrity or merely from youthful hopefulness that delayed retribution never arrived!

It was a month before their secret was fully disclosed.It was slowly evolved from corroborating circumstances, but always with a shy reluctance from the boys themselves, and a surprise that any one should think it of importance.It was gathered partly from details picked up at recess or on the playground, from the voluntary testimony of teamsters and packers, from a record in the county newspaper, but always shaping itself into a consecutive and harmonious narrative.

It was a story so replete with marvelous escape and adventure that the master hesitated to accept it in its entirety until after it had long become a familiar history, and was even forgotten by the actors themselves.And even now he transcribes it more from the circumstances that surrounded it than from a hope that the story will be believed.