Trout's Treasure - Deep Water

Trout's Treasure - Deep Water download +128k Moses capitalized his bulk to effectively fill the large chair into which he sank. He surveyed with approval the new trousers presented to him by Miss Gordon, and tried to blot from his mind the ignominy that had attended the wearing of the ill-fitting pair. Those discarded checked monstrosities languished under Moses’ bed in close consultation with a pair of decrepit and muddy shoes. It was so sweet to the boy to see signs of convalescence in Betty that he took great comfort in just gazing on her pale face with its wisps of fair hair across the forehead. He summed up his general attitude to life by whispering to himself, “I don’t give a doughnut fer orl the check pants in Alberta.”,“She’s there, old dog!” Billy caught Bouncer’s nose tight in his hand to prevent a repetition; and at that instant May Nell herself appeared at the window!,“My conscience! You can’t eat all—” May Nell stopped, conscious of an unkindness. But the boy only laughed; he was used to comments on his appetite.,After these followed Jean as Rain. Wherever she passed the singers bowed their heads and sang more softly, and Frost retreated in haste.,“Well, Miss Smith, are you alone here?”，Relieved, yet with his nerves quivering Billy plunged into the deep woods of the higher altitudes. The air was unusually hot and stifling, and his eyes watered. “Fire in the woods somewhere,” he murmured, recognizing the odor of smoke.，“Do you know how ice cream is made, May Nell?” Jimmy asked to break the oppression.，“Cows have a long tale. They wave it and it keeps there back cool, sometimes they wave it to keep off flies and other insecks. Cows cannot run as fast as a hoarse but if she is chasing you she seems to be running very fast. If she chases you pick up a tin can or pale and hit on it with a stone. The cow will then stampeed. Cows have four feet called hoofs. They are useful for walking this is all I know about cows.”His boyish knowledge and imagination, equal to many pictures of danger for the girl, did not extend to her captors. He never stopped to consider, nor would he have understood if he had, the plight of the criminals. He knew that two had been captured, one of whom before that had carried off May Nell; but his small newspaper reading of “gangs” of counterfeiters had given him visions of dozens of desperate criminals, terrorizing communities, and equal to any bold crime. Now in his mind’s eye he could see men skulking in the brush, listening in rooms below, only waiting to pounce on May Nell the moment she smashed the window. Oh, yes, he must hurry—hurry!

“Now, Moses, look sharp. Quit yer foolin’ an’ git busy,” called Mrs. Wopp, to the son and heir, whose toilet was not even begun. She herself was busy braiding Betty’s fair hair. “Be sure to warsh yer neck an’ ears. Larst party we was to, Mis’ Williams says to me, she says, ‘Is that your Moses settin’ on that bench? La me! he seems darker complected than I ever seed him before. I thort he were some Arfrican,’ she says. I hev always been a godly woman, Moses, ef I do go to a dance now an’ agin. Anyhow, the good book says there is a time to dance, but it aint got no patience with dirt. Git yerself cleaned up, then go an’ hook up the team.”,Enjoying the spectacle, Henry the pet rooster stood on the rail-fence crowing lustily in chanticleer derision.,The captivating music of Grieg’s “Butterfly” floated through the room and Moses watched the white supple fingers of the player with breathless eagerness.,“Now Mosey, you be ticket man at the gate an’ I’ll hev the circus all ready,” cried Betty bounding into the house in the shortest possible time after the departure of the elderly merrymakers.,“She must come to visit us sometime.”,“But you said you would take me to him. I thought you knew where he is.”,While the strains of this enlivening classic were issuing from the asthmatic instrument, Moses and Betty in the more secular atmosphere of the hall were trying to fit the time to “Old Dan Tucker” their favorite dance.,Involved and intricate variations of “Holy smoke!” made the air sulphureous as a swaying piece of wire caught his shoulder and tore a large gash in his shirt.,“This froth looks like soapsuds,” he complained.,“Ebenezer Wopp, no wonder you talk sich ridicilsome nonsense in yer sleep, eatin’ cheese at night. It’s ’nough to make you dream of boer-constructors.”,“Can’t stop. It’s private anyway.” He waved his hand, ran across the foot-bridge and down the road, dodged into the brush for his wheel; and in a moment they heard his shout as he sped by toward town.,THINGS happened very fast the next few days. “Something doing every minute,” Billy put it. Billy had neither been ill nor injured,—only exhausted. The wound on his scalp had been worse in appearance than in fact; and a couple of long nights in sleep, and easy days at home mended him completely..