While the boy was washing,
utterly lost to everything but that none-too-simple task, he went out
of the room on a still-hunt of his own, and came back presently with
the thing for which he had gone searching. He found the boy wrestling
a little desperately with a mop of wavy chestnut hair which only grew
the more hopeless with every stroke of the brush.
"Never mind that." Caleb met the misapprehension in the boy's eyes.
"Never mind that! And I--I've taken the liberty of digging out this
old canvas shooting coat. It's one I got for Sarah--for my
sister--but, as you say, women folks are mighty skittish about anything
that has to do with a gun. She never would go even so far as to try it
on, but if you don't mind---- That coat of yours must be a trifle hot
for this weather, I should say."
Steve reached out a hand that trembled a little and took the coat. He
took it and stared at it with that same strained and hungry look which
he had bestowed a half hour before upon the "City."
"Do you mean," he asked, and his lips remained parted breathlessly upon
the question, "do you mean--this yere's for me?"
Caleb thought of the "injine"--the "_steam_ injine."
"I mean just that, if you'll have it," he replied. The boy slipped his
little body into the garment and wheeled to survey himself in a mirror.
In comparison with the dismembered swallowtail it was the purple of a
Solomon.
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