Have you ever
seen a cockatoo—the white kind with
the top-knot—enraged by insult? The bird erects every available feather upon
its person. So did Uncle Hughey seem to swell, clothes, mustache, and woolly
white beard; and without further speech he took himself on board the Eastbound
train, which now arrived from its siding in time to deliver him…
With him now the
Eastbound departed slowly into that distance whence I had come. I stared after
it as it went its way to the far shores of civilization. It grew small in the
unending gulf of space, until all sign of its presence was gone save a faint trace
of smoke against the evening sky. And now my lost trunk came back into my
thoughts, and Medicine Bow seemed a lonely spot.
A sort of ship had left me
marooned in a foreign ocean; the Pullman was comfortably steaming home to port,
while I—how was I to find Judge Henry's ranch? Where in this unfeatured
wilderness was Sunk Creek? No creek or any water at all flowed here that I
could perceive. My host had written he should meet me at the station and drive
me to his ranch. This was all that I knew. He was not here. The baggage-man had
not seen him lately. The ranch was almost certain to be too far to walk to,
to-night. My trunk—I discovered myself still staring dolefully after the
vanished East-bound; and at the same instant I became aware that the tall man
was looking gravely at me,—as gravely as he had looked at Uncle Hughey
throughout their remarkable conversation.
To see his eye
thus fixing me and his thumb still hooked in his cartridge-belt, certain tales
of travellers from these parts forced themselves disquietingly into my
recollection. Now that Uncle Hughey was gone, was I to take his place and be,
for instance, invited to dance on the platform to the music of shots nicely
aimed?
We cannot see
ourselves as others see us, or I should know what appearance I cut at hearing
this from the tall man. I said nothing, feeling uncertain.
"I reckon I
am looking for you, seh," he repeated politely.
"I am
looking for Judge Henry," I now replied.
He walked toward
me, and I saw that in inches he was not a giant. He was not more than six feet. It was Uncle Hughey that had
made him seem to tower. But in his eye, in his face, in his step, in the whole
man, there dominated a something potent to be felt, I should think, by man or
woman.
"The Judge
sent me afteh you, seh," he now explained, in his civil Southern voice;
and he handed me a letter from my host. Had I not witnessed his teasing
performances with Uncle Hughey, I should have judged him wholly ungifted with
such powers. There was nothing external about him but what seemed the signs of
a nature as grave as you could meet. But I had witnessed; and therefore
supposing that I knew him in spite of his appearance, that I was, so to speak,
in his secret and could give him a sort of wink, I adopted at once a method of
easiness. It was so pleasant to be easy with a large stranger, who instead of
shooting at your heels had very civilly handed you a letter.
"You're
from old Virginia, I take it?" I began.
He answered
slowly, "Then you have taken it correct, seh."
A slight chill
passed over my easiness, but I went cheerily on with a further inquiry.
"Find many oddities out here
like Uncle Hughey?"
"Yes, seh,
there is a right smart of oddities around. They come in on every train."
At this point I
dropped my method of easiness.
"I wish
that trunks came on the train," said I. And I told him my predicament.
It was not to be
expected that he would be greatly moved at my loss; but he took it with no
comment whatever. "We'll wait in town for it," said he, always
perfectly civil. (Adaptación propia)
Vocabulario
Cockatoo: parrot
6 feet: 1,82 metres
Recursos
en internet
The Virginian,
with Gary Cooper. A film from 1929
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