The Boy Who Found Christmas by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2015-11-05T23:00:00+00:00

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VI. — GETTING INSIDE

THAT let the cat out of the bag. She wasn’t no traveler coming through, like she said. She was there on purpose. This fitted in with the name she’d called me, taking me for one of the nephews of the judge. She knowed all the folks in that big house. She was one of their own kind. I could tell that by her voice—and by her kindness. Her being silly and being took in by my lies didn’t matter very much, seemed like.

I hate a man that’s a boob. If he gets trimmed, let him take what’s coming to him, but I can’t say that I like these here sharp women that can’t be beat and that have two hard words and two hard tricks for every one of your own! I never knew it before I talked to this lady, but she opened my eyes. I felt like laughing at her for being so simple, but just the same she tickled something in me by being so silly. I part wanted to laugh and I part wanted to cry, which is mighty queer.

She was trying to explain away what she’d said. “Of course, I mean he wouldn’t take money now, because he’s a man. But at your age, if he were poor, of course, he’d take it! Why not?”

But I’d heard her the first time, and I told her so.

“And does the judge keep you from doing this?” she asks, very interested. “Are you imitating the judge?”

“Lady,” says I, “I’m shy about ninety pounds. If I was that big, though, I’d try to step where he stepped, but he’s got a long stride!”

“Does he know that you’re his pupil?” she asks me.

“Nope.”

“Are you going to try to be like him in every way?” she says.

“If I could,” I says, speaking right out from my heart, “I’d be so like him that folks would think that we was brothers!”

“Then you’d have to be very proud.”

“Is he proud?” I asks her.

“The very proudest man in the world, the hardest, the sternest, the most unforgiving!” cries she, all in a breath and with her voice shaking.

It made me stare to hear that. “I guess you hate him,” says I, feeling mighty sorry for her and also for the judge, them both being fine folks.

“I hate him! Yes,” she says, “I do, because I have cause to… oh, what am I saying?”

“I dunno that I would put money on anybody, having real cause to hate the judge,” I couldn’t help telling her. “What’s he done to you?”

“What has he done to you, to make you so fond of him?” she asks right back at me.

“He treated me like I was his age and his size,” I explains, trying to figure out just what he had done. “He talked like I could understand easy anything he had to say. He was square as a gun with me. Dog-gone me if I ever met such a man!”

The lady had come a little closer, so’s I could see through the dark beneath the hood the shining of her eyes.

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