"Yes, I do wish to see him above all things!"
"And do you know what happened the rash girl who wished to see the
devil!"
"No--what did?"
"She saw him!"
"Oh, if that's all, I dare it! And if wishing will bring me the sight of
this notorious outlaw, lo, I wish it! I wish to see Black Donald!" said
Capitola.
The peddler deliberately arose and put down his pack and his hat; then
he suddenly tore off the scarf from his neck and the handkerchief from
his head, lifted his chin and shook loose a great rolling mass of black
hair and beard, drew himself up, struck an attitude, called up a look,
and exclaimed:
"Behold Black Donald!"
With a piercing shriek, Mrs. Condiment swooned and fell to the floor;
the poor negroes, men and maids, were struck dumb and motionless with
consternation; Capitola gazed for one lost moment in admiration and
curiosity; in the meantime Black Donald quickly resumed his disguises,
took up his pack and walked out of the room.
Capitola was the first to recover her presence of mind; the instinct of
the huntress possessed her; starting forward, she exclaimed:
"Pursue him! catch him! come with me! Cowards, will you let a robber and
murderer escape?" and she ran out and overtook the outlaw in the middle
of the hall. With the agile leap of a little terrier she sprang up
behind him, seized the thick collar of his pea-jacket with both hands,
and, drawing up her feet, hung there with all her weight, crying:
"Help! murder! murder! help! Come to my aid! I've caught Black Donald!"
He could have killed her instantly in any one of a dozen ways. He could
have driven in her temples with a blow of his sledge-hammer fist; he
could have broken her neck with the grip of his iron fingers; he only
wished to shake her off without hurting her--a difficult task, for there
she hung, a dead weight, at the collar of his coat at the back of his
neck.
"Oh, very well!" he cried, laughing aloud! "Such adhesiveness I never
saw! You stick to me like a wife to her husband. So if you won't let go,
I shall have to take you along, that's all! So here I go like Christian
with his bundle of sin on his back!"
And loosing the upper button of his pea-jacket so as to give him more
breath, and, putting down his peddler's pack to relieve himself as much
as possible, the outlaw strode through the hall door, down the steps,
and down the evergreen avenue leading to the woods.
Capitola still clinging to the back of his coat-collar, with feet drawn
up, a dead weight, and still crying:
"Help! Murder! I've caught Black Donald, and I'll die before I'll let
him go!"
"You're determined to be an outlaw's bride, that's certain! Well, I've
no particular objection!" cried Black Donald, roaring with laughter as
he strode on.
It was a "thing to see, not hear"--that brave, rash, resolute imp
clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that
gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she was
determined not to release.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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