The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other TalesHarte, Bret
General
The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales
Harte, Bret
California -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Western stories
They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I fear,
after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of this
slightly sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving now
along the edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly fading
horizon, following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes.
It was growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds had
ceased; even the call of a belated plover had died away inland; the
hush of death lay over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side.
The tide had run out with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled in
this dead slack-water of all nature, as if waiting outside the bar with
the ocean, the stars, and the night.
Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint far
sound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption could
have been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations that seemed
born of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it without break or
discord. Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from the Fort two miles
distant and invisible.
The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth half
opened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with a
confidential sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's so
pow'ful pretty. It allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day, Far
away, With the light, And the night Comes along--Comes along--Comes
along--Like a-a so-o-ong.'" She here lifted her voice, a sweet, fresh,
boyish contralto, in such an admirable imitation of the bugle that her
brother, after the fashion of more select auditors, was for a moment
quite convinced that the words meant something. Nevertheless, as a
brother, it was his duty to crush this weakness. "Yes; and it
says:'shut your head, Go to bed,'" he returned irascibly; "and YOU'D
better come along, if we're goin' to hev any supper. There's Yeller
Bob hez got ahead of us over there with the game already."
The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now appeared
to be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and then looked
attentively towards the Marsh.
"Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.
"No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hev
sworn, Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him only
jest now when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She pointed with a
half-uneasy expression in quite another direction from that in which
the slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.
"Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder muddled
ye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well enuff by
this time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye don't expect
them. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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