The Project Gutenberg EBook of Maruja, by Bret Harte

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Title: Maruja

Author: Bret Harte

Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2185]
Release Date: May, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARUJA ***

MARUJA

by

BRET HARTE

MARUJA

CHAPTER I

Morning was breaking on the high road to San Jose. The long lines of
dusty, level track were beginning to extend their vanishing point in
the growing light; on either side the awakening fields of wheat and
oats were stretching out and broadening to the sky. In the east and
south the stars were receding before the coming day; in the west a few
still glimmered, caught among the bosky hills of the canada del
Raimundo, where night seemed to linger. Thither some obscure,
low-flying birds were slowly winging; thither a gray coyote, overtaken
by the morning, was awkwardly limping. And thither a tramping wayfarer
turned, plowing through the dust of the highway still unslaked by the
dewless night, to climb the fence and likewise seek the distant cover.

For some moments man and beast kept an equal pace and gait with a
strange similarity of appearance and expression; the coyote bearing
that resemblance to his more civilized and harmless congener, the dog,
which the tramp bore to the ordinary pedestrians, but both exhibiting
the same characteristics of lazy vagabondage and semi-lawlessness; the
coyote's slouching amble and uneasy stealthiness being repeated in the
tramp's shuffling step and sidelong glances. Both were young, and
physically vigorous, but both displayed the same vacillating and
awkward disinclination to direct effort. They continued thus half a
mile apart unconscious of each other, until the superior faculties of
the brute warned him of the contiguity of aggressive civilization, and
he cantered off suddenly to the right, fully five minutes before the
barking of dogs caused the man to make a detour to the left to avoid
entrance upon a cultivated domain that lay before him.

The trail he took led to one of the scant water-courses that issued,
half spent, from the canada, to fade out utterly on the hot June p