Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/129

 "Well, you see, she was very sick, and they were going West for her health. And one day, when they were camped beside a river, Tom’s father went in to swim, and had a cramp or something, and was drowned. Tom’s mother saw it, and it made her worse. She was there all alone, till some people found her and drove her on to the next town to a doctor. But when they got her there, she was too sick to leave the wagon. They drove her into the O’Briens’ yard, because that was nearest the doctor’s and Mrs. O’Brien was a kind woman. And she died in a few hours.”

“Does Tom know anything about his father?”

“Nothing except that he was a school-teacher in Missouri. His mother told the O’Briens that much. But the O’Briens were just lovely to him.”

St. Peter had noticed that in the stories Tom told the children there were no shadows. Kathleen and Rosamond regarded his free-lance childhood as a gay adventure they would gladly have shared. They loved to play at being Tom and Roddy. Roddy was the remarkable friend, ten years older than Tom, who knew everything about snakes and panthers and deserts and Indians. “And he gave up a line job firing on the Santa Fe, and went off with Tom to ride after cattle for hardly any wages, just to be with Tom and take care of him after he’d had pneumonia,” Kathleen told them.

“That wasn’t the only reason,” Rosamond added