The shoemaker : $b A powerful picture of nature, adapted from Hal Reid's famous drama of the same name — John Shaqi
The shoemaker : $b A powerful picture of nature, adapted from Hal Reid's famous drama of the same nameHarper, Olive
General
The shoemaker : $b A powerful picture of nature, adapted from Hal Reid's famous drama of the same name
Harper, Olive
Abduction -- Fiction; Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Shoemakers -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Fiction
The tops of the somber mountains took on a mellow tinge of golden
brown, and birds began to sing in every direction. Here and there along
the rugged mountains a thin line of smoke ascended, showing that there
were inhabitants along the range. The distant sound of the lowing of
cattle came faintly to the ears in the peaceful stillness of the early
morning.
Then some one began to chop wood out back of the hotel, and this
strange sound aroused the sleeping shoemaker, and it awoke him to all
the miseries of what is vulgarly called “the morning after.”
One bird, with a louder, more insistent song than the others, perched
on a twig near the tent, and it seemed to poor Morris Goldberg, who had
never felt anything like the agony he was now enduring, that its voice
was louder and shriller than a steam calliope.
The suffering man crawled feebly from the tent, leaving the child
sleeping peacefully there. Slowly, and painfully holding his hand to
his splitting head, Morris crept along to the watering-trough and to
the little stream that trickled cool and clear from far up in the
mountains.
Letting the cold water run over his aching head, and drinking a
quantity of the blessed water from the hollow of his hands, Morris sat
down on an upturned bucket and gave vent to his feelings in these words:
“I vish dot pirt vould shut up. I nefer t’ougt a pirt in der vorld haf
such a voice--so lout. I nefer haf such a headache like dis. I vonder
if dere is any ice in Vyoming. Oh, my! oh, my! I vonder”--here he
laid his burning head against the moist rock down which the water was
trickling, and found it cool. He continued his lament: “Dank Gott! de
rocks are colt. Ah, go avay, birtie; you annoy me! Go to de Sout’--to
de pottom of it. I feel so sick, und de ice on de mountains is a
million miles avay.”
Loney had been awakened by the birds, and now came from the tent with
an empty, black whiskey-bottle in his hands, and this he extended
toward Morris, saying:
“Look, Mr. Goldberg, what I found in the tent.”
“Vat is it? Money?”
“No; it is this bottle. I know we never had one like this before.”
“Dake it avay, Loney, und proke it against de rocks. It makes me sick
as I nefer vos yust to look at it!”
“Yes, sir, I will. Can I do anything for you, Mr. Goldberg?”
“No. Yes, go und look after de Jakey. Gif him some vater--oh, yes, some
vater!”
Loney, with an uneasy fear tugging at his heart lest Mr. Goldberg
should die, went after the horse, which he found, after a long search,
in the rough stable back of the place, with his nose against a bundle
of hay which he was not even trying to eat. He looked so round and
comfortable that Loney, little as he knew of horses, was glad, for no
one can travel in the lonely places of earth with a horse as companion
without learning to love him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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