The Eagle's Heart

e time when his passion changed its course. If a girl pleased him he courted her with the utmost directness, but he was by no interpretation a lo

aid her in finding her way across a weedy pasture lot or over a tiny little brook which he was pleased to call a torrent. A smile of derision was fatal. He would not submit to ridicule or joking. At t

when their tasks were done the two boys wandered away to the bank of the river and there, under some great basswood tree on delicious sward, they lay and talked of wild animals and Indians and the West. At this time the great chieftains of the Sioux, Sitting Bull and Gall, were becoming famous to the world, and

l bounds-the treaty was ignored, and Sitting Bull, the last chieftain of the Sioux, calling his people together, withdrew deeper into the w

but Harold was not interested. "I don't care to mine; I'd like to be with General Custer. I'd like to be one of the scouts. I'd like to have a coat

se alluring matters the little town and the dus

of these wild scenes, and she listened because he was so alluring

d; "it's too dull. I can't stand much more schoo

se she was a sympathetic listener. She, on her part, enjoyed the sound of his eager voice and the glow of his deep brown eyes. They were both pupils in the little seminary

light. Its ca?ons, arroyos, and mesquite, its bronchos, cowboys, Indians, and scouts filled the boy'

of the "redskins," and yet at heart he wished to be one of them and to taste the wild joy of their poetic life, filled with hunting and warfare. Sitting Bull, Chief Gall, Rain-in-the-Face, Spotted Tail, Star-in-the-Brow, and Black

attered and broken, Harold was considered the ringleader. Of the judgments of their elders the rough lads were well aware, and they took pains that no word of theirs should shift blame from Harold's shoulders to their own. By hints and sly remarks they fixed unalterably in th

weazened, shrewd, sly little scamps, and appeared not to have the resolution of chickadees, but had a singular genius for getting others into trouble. They knew how to handle spirits like Harold. They dared him to do evil deeds, taunted him (as openly as they felt it safe to do) with cowardice, and so spurred him to attempt some trifling depredation merely as a piece of adventure. Almost invariably when they touch

ailed. Harold cared nothing for his father's scholarship or oratorical powers, and never w

he said once to Jack. "Look at his shoulders. His arms are hard, too. Of cou

iciently advanced to approve of a muscular minister, and so Mr. Excell kept silent on such subjects, and swung his dumb-bells in private. As

ional moments of tenderness, and spent the larger pa

manly and good in the boy, and they

e peaceabler boy I never knew, except my own Jack. They're good,

instantly into something vivid and dramatic. He assumed all leadership in the hunting, and upon Jack fell all the drudgery. He always did the reading, also, while Harold listened and dreamed with eyes that seemed to look across miles of peak

ay by day molded his mind. He had no care or thought of cities or the East. He dreamed of the plains and horses and herds of buffalo and troops of Indians f

e hunter's patience, and was capable of creeping on his knees in the mud for hours in the attempt to kill a duck. He could imitate almost all the birds and animals he knew. His whistle would ca

kill small game; but buffaloes a

on. From this veritable cattleman he secured many new words. With great joy he listened while Mr. Burns spoke of cinches, ropes, corrals, buttes, arroyos and other Spanish-Mexican words which the boys had observed in their dime nove

say: "Mr. Burns, take me back

ked at him. "Can

bet he can, Uncle. H

might upon a young kn

ol, and Jack's mother says he can come, you make a break for A

h more so than Mr. Burns intended he shoul

ecame a source of comment. To Jack he talked for hours of the journey they were to make. Jack, unimaginative and engrossed with his studies at the seminary, took the whole matter very calmly. It see

ns, said: "I'm going West sure. I'm tired of school; I'm going to Kansas, and I'm going to be a great cattle king in a few years, Dot, and then I'll come back a

, and he said: "You don't see

nd he saw that she had not heard a single word of his p

me you needn't," he said, spea

ettily. "Now, don't get mad, Harry; I was thi

ot have put it into words, but he perceived the painful truth. Dot had considered him a boy all along, and had only half lis

g with the bluntness of a boy without subtlety of

"Good-by," she said in her

od-by," his flesh quivered. He was seventeen, and considered himself a man; she was eighteen, and thought him only a boy. She had nev

o go to the sunset country, and his wounded heart healed a little a