His Name His Fortune - ebook

I. THE NAME WAS FRENCH

It was all the result, in the first place, of a name. The name originated in a little family conversation some twenty years before.

“But what,” said the doctor, “are you going to call the boy?”

“I dunno,” said the father. “I dunno that we’ve made up our minds about nothing just yet.”

“I’ve never heard anything like that,” said the doctor. “A couple not having at least a dozen names picked for their first baby. You’d better decide right away. It’s bad luck to let a child wait a long time without a name.”

“You don’t mean it,” breathed the father. “Well, I’ll be talking to Martha, and maybe we can pick something out. We’ll sure try. But d’you think it ain’t going to do no harm for me to talk to her now?”

“Why, man, she’s half crying for you. Go in and see her now, don’t talk about her. Come, now, you do what I say,” he directed, “or I’ll double my fee. You go into that room and pick up that little baby–”

“Doc, you don’t mean for me to go right in and pick it up in these here hands of mine?”

“I mean just that.”

“But–I mean–suppose–suppose it was to–to slip, Doc–?”

“You talk like an idiot,” said the doctor. “Get in there, and do what I tell you to do.”

“Would you mind coming along in with me?” pleaded the father.

The doctor grinned again. “And the first thing you’re going to say–do you know what it is to be?”

“Ain’t got the least idea, Doc.”

“You’re going to say–Martha, he’s the image of you!”

“Him? I never seen a baby yet,” said the father, “that looked like anybody special.”

“Of course, you haven’t,” said the doctor, “but I tell you that you are going to say–Martha, he’s the image of you. And she’ll answer–Oh, you silly boy, he’s a perfect picture of you.”

“And what do I say next?” said the father, clearing his throat and staring with great eyes.

“You suggest a name for it.”

“I dunno nothing about the sort of names folks use for babies.”

“They’re about the same as the names people use for grown-ups. Call him Bob–Bill–anything you please.”

“I ain’t gonna call any child o’ mine Bob or Bill!”

“Let’s see,” said the doctor, “Delapin is your name, and that’s a French name, I suppose.”

“French!” cried the father. “I’ll have you savvy that I’m American clean from the hair on my head to the soles of my feet. French! Wha’d’ya mean by that?”

The doctor rubbed his nose and grinned again.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “some of the greatest men that ever lived here have been Frenchmen.”

“They’re dead now,” said the father, “and let ‘em stay dead. I’m an American. That’s all. French? You talk plumb ridiculous, Doc!”

“Why, of course,” said the doctor. “Anyone can see at a glance that you are American.” And here he eyed the broad, square chin of the father and his terrible, pale-blue eyes. “Anyone can see that. But if you want a front name to go along smoothly with your last name of Delapin, I say that you’ll have to have a French name.”

“Well,” said the father, “lemme hear what you mean by that?” And he clenched his big fists.

“You might call him, for instance, Pierre. Pierre Delapin. That’s a good name, my friend.”

And the father rolled it over his tongue, first cautiously, as though it were a stinging acid, and then with a great abandon. And finally he smiled.

“Pierre Delapin! Doc, you’ve sure got a great head on your shoulders. I never could’ve thought of a name like that for him.”

“Go in quick, now,” urged the doctor. “You go right ahead in and do what I tell you to. Don’t forget a thing.”

Delapin stole cautiously into the room. And the doctor, listening, heard a weak, happy voice greet the big miner. The doctor stepped nearer and listened still harder.

“Oh, Sam,” cried the girl, “I was afraid that you wouldn’t want even to see him! Ain’t he lovely?”

The shaken voice of Sam Delapin answered with a mighty effort: “Sure he’s lovely. He’s a dead ringer for you, Martha. He’s sure the image of you.”

A faint, sweet laughter answered him, and then the joyous voice: “Oh, you silly boy, he’s a perfect picture of you!”

And a minute later the name of Pierre had been selected for the child and voted the finest name that was ever discovered by the brilliant mind of man. Therefore the doctor was really responsible for about half of what followed.

There is no denying the influence of a name. There was no reason why Pierre, when his father’s hair was red and his mother’s was black, should have had brown hair himself. And when his mother’s eyes were a pale battle-gray, there was no reason why the eyes of Pierre should have been a rich, deep-sea blue. Such, however, were the eyes of Pierre Delapin. He had the middle height of his father, but he lacked the leviathan limbs and the massive muscles and the huge bones of the elder Delapin. Compared with the father, the son was the lightly, toughly made Arab compared with the lumbering Shire horse. He looked, in short, as if he might be bent, but never broken.

When he was four, diphtheria killed his mother and father. After that, he was raised haphazard until he was thirteen–nearly fourteen–years old. At that period he had his full growth–he had in his hands the speed of a cat’s paw, and in his arms he had almost the strength of a man. His education consisted of those choice bits that a boy will pick up when he had been a vagabond north and south and east and west over the continent. He could swear in six languages and speak in three. He could use a gun or a rope or a knife with a mature skill and a barbarous delight, and he loved battle with all the passionate worship of a boy. Whether with fists standing straight, or rough-and-tumble on the ground, he was perfectly at home. He had battled with grown men when he was twelve. And if they beat him with their fists, he beat them with a club. And if they drew a knife, he drew a gun. And if they drew a gun, he drew his a little faster.

Such was Pierre Delapin when he came into the vision of Mrs. Charles Hancock Winton. She was a widow and was, as Pierre often said afterward, foolishly rich. In a word, she had so much money that she never had to ask prices, and, since she hated to be troubled reinvesting her surplus income, she only strove to spend her dollars as fast as they came in.

It was the precious influence of the doctor that riveted her attention to Pierre, for it was that name, so unusual among the Leftys and the Shortys and the Missouris of the cowpunchers, that drew her attention to the boy in the beginning. It struck her eye and her heart as she was reading the town newspaper at her breakfast table in the great, over-luxurious ranch house.

“Pierre Delapin, arrested for the shooting of Albert Lee, who is lying seriously wounded in his home, is fourteen years old and–”

Mrs. Charles Hancock Winton read no further. The boy was French–and how pleasantly that name rolled over the tongue: Pierre Delapin–and in the second place, he was an infant. Fourteen years old!

A red mist of anger rose before her eyes. She clenched her hand and struck the table with it–lightly, for Mrs. Winton was a lady. But two hours later she was in the sheriff’s office, and had the pleasure of seeing that dignitary remove his spurred heels from the top of his desk, his hat from the top of his head, and his pipe from between his yellow teeth.

“Sheriff Maine,” she said, “I have just finished reading of last night’s atrocity.”

“Which?” said the sheriff, smoothing his hair politely and vainly.

“I mean,” said Mrs. Winton, “that I have been reading about the persecution of that poor foreign child.”

“I dunno that I’m following you, Missus Winton,” said the sheriff.

He had always called her husband Charlie, but he would never have been so bold as to have dreamed of giving such a familiar title to the widow. She was an important luxury, so to speak. Charlie had brought her in from Philadelphia Some few years before he died. She had been ten years younger than her spouse. She was even now a scant thirty-five, and still as freshly and delicately youthful as many a woman ten years her junior. She was as vain as a peacock and as impulsive as a bull terrier. She would have advanced her ideas in the very presence of the Father of Agriculture, although she knew nothing about the West or its ways.

And yet everyone respected her for the sufficient reason that she had loved big, rough Charlie Winton devoutly, and that she still kept his memory close about her heart, and that it was apparent that she would never spend the rest of her youth with a second husband. Because of this, there was not a man in the wide ranges who would not cheerfully have lain in the mud to give her dry footing. And the sheriff listened to her tirade.

“I am afraid,” she said, “that you do know what I mean, and that you are attempting to deceive me, Sheriff. But–I shall insist on seeing this poor, persecuted child. Accused of shooting that great brute, Albert Lee! I have heard his name before–and he probably needed the shooting.”

“Sure he did,” admitted the sheriff.

“Then why–?”

“Arrest the kid? Because, otherwise, some of Lee’s relatives are apt to go gunning for him.”

“Oh, the murderers!” cried Mrs. Winton.

“They’d be the murdered, not the murderers, if they hunted that Pierre.”

“What do you mean, Sheriff?”

“Nothing.”

“The poor child–”

“Child?” said the sheriff.

“I must see him at once and find out if his mother–”

“She’s dead,” said the sheriff.

“How terrible! His father, then, must–”

“He’s dead, also.”

“An orphan,” breathed Mrs. Winton. “A poor little orphan!”

She could say no more. Her great eyes became liquid with emotion. Her lips trembled until she pressed her handkerchief against them and looked above the lace edge at the sheriff with a misty glance of pity. The sheriff drew a great breath.

“I’ll see if he’s in the jail or at the court,” said the sheriff. “Just make yourself to home, ma’am.”

He left hastily, and he walked with a weaving gait, like a drunken man, toward the jail. It had been a long time since he had been so close to the widow. And she was like a rose, or a garden of roses–she left him dazed. When he reached the jail, he kicked the bottom step half a dozen times until the pain of a bruised toe brought him back to the earth. Yet he was still smiling faintly as he passed through the heavy door.