Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1900-01-06
CLANCY'S CLAIM
Chris tmas Tale Of the South Fork.
lBY RALPH TURNER,1

|
her as of one that is dead The min
ers looked at each other. then at the
man with his white, haggard face,
holding the child in his arms, and,
with a common impulse they walked
silently away and left him alone
alone with his dead love and his desc
late home and all the cumulated miser-
les That surrounded him as result OF
his wife's misrule and abandonment
And as he had said he proved fatbe,
and mother to the child-cooking
washing and caring for him with al
anxious tireless solicitude that tn,
mother had never shown. While HI
worked the boy sat near him WATCHING
the cleaning pick rise and fall and the
sparks of tire fly from the quartz
every now and then the man would
pausein his task, kiss the child and ask
why he was so quiet or try to inter
est him in some fossil plant or reptil,
of some forgotten age that the pick
was constantly unearthing from the
crypt of the centuries; and when he
was so fortunate as to find pocket
md the auriferious stream of shining
! nuggets scintillated into the sunlight.
| he would gather them up and show
them to the boy, telling him it was this
precious grain that childhood's patron
saint, Santa Claus, fed his fleet rein
| deers, and that they should have such
a Christmas by and by, God willing,
that for mirtn and jollity and rare
gifts had never yet dawned: and to all
this the child listened with grave at
tention, and it was but seldom that the
father could get him to smile or rouse
him from the strange dreamy apathy
that held him in thrall. Toward the
end of Summer the boy lost his appe-
tite and Clancy was in fever of alarm
and tried all sorts of expedients to
make the boy eat. He secured the hills
gathering the large red gooseberries,
that abount there, to make jelly; he
bought gun and fish hooks and shot
grouse and quail and squirrels and
caught trout in the river, and these he
cooked with the skill of practiced
housewife, for his campaigning days
had taught him the principles of cult
nary art pretty thoroughly. But, in
SPITE Of his efforts, the child languish-
ed and he gained hint of the trouble
one night when putting him to bed.
The little fellow kneeling at the head
of his bed lisped out the simple prayer
around which the pleasantest memoir
les of most of us hover, even late in
life: Now / lay me down to sleep"
as he finished with the usual bene-
dictory: God bless papa and man.
ma" he suddenly raised his eyes to his
father, who was standing beside him,
and said, with world of pathos in his
voice: Papa, will my mamma never
come back?" What he answered
Clancy never could remember, but af-
ter the little one had gone to sleep he
stole into the room, shading the light
with his hand, to see If he was resting
quietly; but when he saw the tear
drops that still trembled on the long
lashes, he went silently out and for
the first time since his wfes deser-
ton, as he thought of the deep-eyed
boy with the gentle disposition, who
was slowly fading, like flower when
broken from the parent stem, for love
Of that mother who had never really
loved the child, but had turned away
from the clinging arms and innocent
caresses OF babyhood to the guilty en-
braces of her fathers cowardly assas-
sin, he cursed the hour he first knew
her to love her. From this time on the
man worked from morning till night
with the sole object of diverting the
child's mind from his secret grief. lie
sought out all the rarest plants and
strange insects in the wooded valleys
and on the hills around them and tried
to awaken a new interest in them in
the boys mind. He made him kites
and boats, and miniature waterwheel
to run in sluices, and did barely
enough work on his claim to keep good
the title. For time these expedients
answered well enough, but when The
Fall months came and the rains COM
menced, the boy fell into the old list
less state, and would sit for hours. with
his face resting in his hands, peering
out of the rain-splashed windows into
the gray Autumn dusk. One stormy
November evening as Clancy sat in the
ruddy glow of blazing wood fire in
an omen fire Mace readinp from n