Bret Harte

“ It is needless to say that, without any extraneous thought, the man suffered in Leonidas's estimation by his propinquity to the goddess, and that he deemed him vastly inferior.
It was a still greater reward to his fidelity that she seized an opportunity when her husband's head was turned to wave her hand to him. Leonidas did not approach the fence, partly through shyness and partly through a more subtle instinct that this man was not in the secret. He was right, for only the next day, as he passed to the post-office, she called him to the fence. ”

“ It was she, walking with apparent indifference away from him towards the corner of the clearing and the road. But this he knew would bring her to the end of the stockade fence, where he must pass—and it did. She turned to him with a bright smile of affected surprise. “Why, you're as swift-footed as Mercury!”
Leonidas understood her perfectly. Mercury was the other name for quicksilver—and that was lively, you bet! He had often spilt some on the floor to see it move. She must be awfully cute to have noticed it too—cuter than his sisters. ”

“ It's surprising what a fellow can do when he sets his mind on one thing. And then, you know, they're always telling you that San Francisco is a 'growing place.' That accounts for it!”
Leonidas, dazed, dazzled, but delighted, showed all his white teeth in a shy laugh. At which the enchanting stranger leaped from his horse like a very boy, drew his arm through the rein, and going up to Leonidas, lifted the boy's straw hat from his head and ran his fingers through his curls. ”

“ Occasionally, with a boy's perversity, he permitted one bared foot to protrude beyond the sharply marked shadow until the burning sun forced him to draw it in again with a thrill of satisfaction. There was no earthly reason why he had not sought the larger shadows of the pine-trees which reared themselves against the Ridge on the slope below him, except that he was a boy, and perhaps even more superstitious and opinionated than most boys. ”

“ Burroughs had received that afternoon an anonymous note that his wife was about to elope with the notorious San Francisco gambler, Jack Hamlin.
But Leonidas Boone, albeit half understanding, kept his miserable secret with a still hopeful and trustful heart. It grieved him a little that William Henry was found a few days later dead, with his head crushed. Yet it was not until years later, when he had made a successful “prospect” on Casket Ridge, that he met Mr. Hamlin in San Francisco, and knew how he had played the part of Mercury upon that “heaven-kissing hill.” ”

“ He told of his decline in her affections after his unpardonable sin in keeping her waiting while he went for the trout, and added the miserable mistake of the rattlesnake episode. “For it was a mistake, Mr. Hamlin. I oughtn't to have let a lady like that know anything about snakes—just because I happen to know them.”
“It was an awful slump, Lee,” said Hamlin gravely. “Get a woman and a snake together—and where are you? Think of Adam and Eve and the serpent, you know.” ”

“ Burroughs drew hurriedly back—“see him mind me. Now scoot home, William Henry.” He accompanied the command with a slow, dominant movement of the hickory rod he was carrying. The snake dropped its head, and slid noiselessly out of the cleft across the trail and down the hill.
“Thinks my rod is witch-hazel—which rattlers can't abide,” continued Leonidas, dropping into a boy's breathless abbreviated speech. “Lives down your way—just back of your farm. Show ye some day. Suns himself on a flat stone every day—always cold—never can get warm. ”

“ And come to me to-morrow with your letter—I will have mine ready. Good-by.” She stopped and glanced at the trail. “And you say that if that man had kept on, the snake would have bitten him?”
“Sure pop!—if he'd trod on him—as he was sure to. The snake wouldn't have known he didn't mean it. It's only natural,” continued Leonidas, with glowing partisanship for the gentle and absent William Henry. “You wouldn't like to be trodden upon, Mrs. Burroughs!” ”

“ There's a nice cool spot under these laurels—I'll stake out Pepita—and we'll just lie off there and gab, and not care if school keeps or not.”
“But you know you ain't really Jim Belcher,” said the boy shyly.
“I'm as good a man as he is any day, whoever I am,” said the stranger, with humorous defiance, “and can lick him out of his boots, whoever he is. That ought to satisfy you. But if you want my certificate, here's your own letter, old man,” he said, producing Leonidas's last scrawl from his pocket. ”

“ For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. ”

“ You hear me! I know every letter that comes in and goes outer this office, I reckon, and handle 'em all,”—Leonidas pricked up his ears,—“and if anybody oughter know, it's me. Ye kin paste that in your hat, Mr. Burroughs.” Burroughs, apparently disconcerted by the intrusion of a third party—Leonidas—upon what was evidently a private inquiry, murmured something surlily, and passed out.
Leonidas was puzzled. That big man seemed to be “snooping” around for something! ”

“ Burroughs—but he was evidently only taking a short cut towards the Ridge, where his men were working. Leonidas had seen him take it before. But it was the principal trail on the steep hillside, and they must eventually meet. A man might evade it by scrambling through the brush to a lower and rougher trail, but a woman, never! But an idea had seized Leonidas. ”

“ He had even gone out of his way to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear, although it did not prevent him later from capturing the squirrel by an equally ingenious contrivance, and from eventually eating some of the honey. ”

“ Hamlin. You know I told you William Henry lives down at the bottom of Burroughs's garden, and how I showed Mrs. Burroughs his tricks! Well, only two days ago I was down there looking for him, and couldn't find him anywhere. There's a sort of narrow trail from the garden to the hill, a short cut up to the Ridge, instead o' going by their gate. It's just the trail any one would take in a hurry, or if they didn't want to be seen from the road. Well! I was looking this way and that for William Henry, and whistlin' for him, when I slipped on to the trail. ”