第24章

"You can't pay for anything while you are with me, Chad."The whole earth wore a smile when they started out again. The swelling hills had stretched out into gentler slopes. The sun was warm, the clouds were still, and the air was almost drowsy. The Major's eyes closed and everything lapsed into silence. That was a wonderful ride for Chad. It was all true, just as the school-master had told him; the big, beautiful houses he saw now and then up avenues of blossoming locusts; the endless stone fences, the whitewashed barns, the woodlands and pastures; the meadow-larks flitting in the sunlight and singing everywhere; fluting, chattering blackbirds, and a strange new black bird with red wings, at which Chad wondered very much, as he watched it balancing itself against the wind and singing as it poised.

Everything seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands--and never a mountain in sight. What a strange country it was.

"Maybe some of your friends are looking for you in Frankfort," said the Major.

"No, sir, I reckon not," said Chad--for the man at the station had told him that the men who had asked about him were gone.

"All of them?" asked the Major.

Of course, the man at the station could not tell whether all of them had gone, and perhaps the school-master had stayed behind--it was Calebazel if anybody.

"Well, now, I wonder," said Chad--"the school-teacher might'a' stayed."Again the two lapsed into silence--Chad thinking very hard. He might yet catch the school-master in Lexington, and he grew very cheerful at the thought.

"You ain't told me yo' name," he said, presently. The Major's lips smiled under the brim of his hat.

"You hain't axed me."

"Well, I axe you now." Chad, too, was smiling.

"Cal," said the Major. "Cal what?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, yes, you do, now--you foolin' me"--the boy lifted one finger at the Major.

"Buford, Calvin Buford."

"Buford--Buford--Buford," repeated the boy, each time with his forehead wrinkled as though he were trying to recall something.

"What is it, Chad?"

"Nothin'--nothin'."

And then he looked up with bewildered face at the Major and broke into the quavering voice of an old man.

"Chad Buford, you little devil, come hyeh this minute or I'll beat the life outen you!""What--what!" said the Major excitedly. The boy's face was as honest as the sky above him. "Well, that's funny--very funny.""Well, that's it," said Chad, "that's what ole Nathan used to call me. Ireckon I hain't naver thought o' my name agin tell you axed me." The Major looked at the lad keenly and then dropped back in his seat ruminating.

Away back in 1778 a linchpin had slipped in a wagon on the Wilderness Road and his grandfather's only brother, Chadwick Buford, had concluded to stop there for a while and hunt and come on later--thus ran an old letter that the Major had in his strong box at home--and that brother had never turned up again and the supposition was that he had been killed by Indians. Now it would be strange if he had wandered up in the mountains and settled there and if this boy were a descendant of his. It would be very, very strange, and then the Major almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea. The name Buford was all over the State. The boy had said, with amazing frankness and without a particle of shame, that he was a waif--a "woodscolt," he said, with paralyzing candor. And so the Major dropped the matter out of his mind, except in so far that it was a peculiar coincidence--again saying, half to himself--"It certainly is very odd!"