Selected Stories of Bret Harte

INTRODUCTION

The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing,

into four quite distinct parts. First, we have the precocious boyhood,

with its eager response to the intellectual stimulation of cultured

parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility;

devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving,

Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable success, attempted

various forms of composition. Then, compelled by economic necessity, he

left school at thirteen, and for three years worked first in a lawyer's

office, and then in a merchant's counting house.

The second period, that of his migration to California, includes all

that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving in

California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-teacher, drug-store

clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. He

worked for a while on the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he was

dismissed for objecting editorially to the contemporary California sport

of murdering Indians), then on the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved

his first moderate acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswold

of New York. In 1864 he was given the secretaryship of the California

mint, a virtual sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.

The first volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES,

CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS

were published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which

had aspirations of becoming “the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West,” was

established, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he wrote

most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF ROARING

CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES,

among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor and

Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel material,

with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editors

began to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointed

him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him

the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to one

year's literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the ascendant.

However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial

policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed, were

the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the OVERLAND

MONTHLY. Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the East, he

left California (permanently, as it proved). The East, however, was

financially unappreciative. Harte wrote an unsuccessful novel and

collaborated with Mark Twain on an unremunerative play. His attempts

to increase his income by lecturing were even less rewarding. From

his departure from California in 1872 to his death thirty years later,

Harte's struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and

to these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of “a

peculiarly characteristic Western American literature.” Henceforth Harte

accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, “the role of entertainer, and as an

entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an artist.”

The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself

appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a

throat cancer. He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--perhaps

intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him when

circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his death, the

separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained permanent. Harte,

however, continued to provide for them as liberally as he was able. In

Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION,

and UNSER KARL. In 1880 he transferred to the more lucrative consulship

of Glasgow, and ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of

his stay there. In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably

for political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.

He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his death.

Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp. His mining

experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his portraits of

mining life are wholly impressionistic. “No one,” Mark Twain wrote,

“can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and

shovel and drill and fuse.” Yet, Twain added elsewhere, “Bret Harte got

his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put

both of them into his tales alive.” That is, perhaps, the final comment.

Much could be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over

the life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings

are obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.

Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that “There

are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons which

we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte.” The figure is

perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for admiration. First,

Harte originated a new and incalculably influential type of story: the

romantically picturesque “human-interest” story. “He created the local

color story,” Prof. Blankenship remarks, “or at least popularized

it, and he gave new form and intent to the short story.” Character

motivating action is central to this type of story, rather than mood

dominating incident. Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful

one, admirably suited to his subjects. He can manage the humorous or the

pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more remarkable than

his excesses. His sentences have both force and flow; his backgrounds

are crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures have

their own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of the

theatric finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings down

his curtain dramatically and effectively.

ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP

There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,

for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire

settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle's

grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,

calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot

each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp

was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.

Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman

was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the

camp,--“Cherokee Sal.”

Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to

be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman

in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she

most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and

irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear

even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her

loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation

which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so

dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a

moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she

met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet

a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy

Tipton thought it was “rough on Sal,” and, in the contemplation of her

condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and

two bowers in his sleeve.

It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no

means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had

been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of

return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced AB

INITIO. Hence the excitement.

“You go in there, Stumpy,” said a prominent citizen known as “Kentuck,”

addressing one of the loungers. “Go in there, and see what you kin do.

You've had experience in them things.”

Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes,

had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to

some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp--a city of

refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and

Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the

extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked

its pipe, and awaited the issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these

were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were

reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives

and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion

of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and

intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous

man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an

embarrassed, timid manner. The term “roughs” applied to them was a

distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of

fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but

these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The

strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had

but one eye.

Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around

the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a

river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that

faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman

might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding

like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.

A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By

degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely

offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that “Sal would

get through with it;” even that the child would survive; side bets as

to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an

excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and

the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines,

the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp,

querulous cry,--a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The

pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to

crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a

barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the

mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were

discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some

other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had

climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so

passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think

that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as

to the fate of the child. “Can he live now?” was asked of Stumpy. The

answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex

and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some

conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less

problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and

apparently as successful.

When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the

door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed

themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or

shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below

the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed,

and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at

Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was

soon indicated. “Gentlemen,” said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of

authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--“gentlemen will please pass in

at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as

wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy.”

The first man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he

looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In

such communities good and bad actions are catching. As the procession

filed in comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather

to Stumpy in the character of showman; “Is that him?” “Mighty small

specimen;” “Has n't more 'n got the color;” “Ain't bigger nor a

derringer.” The contributions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco

box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a

very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst the

gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin,

with the remark from the giver that he “saw that pin and went two

diamonds better”); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a

golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not

the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England

note for 5 pounds; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During

these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead

on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his

right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious

procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the

child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger,

and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed.

Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten

cheek. “The damned little cuss!” he said, as he extricated his finger,

with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed

capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows

as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the

same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to

enjoy repeating it. “He rastled with my finger,” he remarked to Tipton,

holding up the member, “the damned little cuss!”

It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the

cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night.

Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his

experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of

the newcomer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of

sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When

everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and

whistled reflectingly. Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin,

still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood-tree he

paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down

to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at

the door. It was opened by Stumpy. “How goes it?” said Kentuck, looking

past Stumpy toward the candle-box. “All serene!” replied Stumpy.

“Anything up?” “Nothing.” There was a pause--an embarrassing one--Stumpy

still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which

he held up to Stumpy. “Rastled with it,--the damned little cuss,” he

said, and retired.

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp

afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was

a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her

infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an

animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing

for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument

partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions

were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should

send the child to Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female

attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce

and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed

parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained.

“Besides,” said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and

ring in somebody else on us.” A disbelief in the honesty of other camps

prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection.

It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring

Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that “they didn't want any more

of the other kind.” This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as

it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the

camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain

delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in

office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and “Jinny”--the

mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There was

something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased

the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to

Sacramento. “Mind,” said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust

into the expressman's hand, “the best that can be got,--lace, you know,

and filigree-work and frills,--damn the cost!”

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of

the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature

took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the

Sierra foothills,--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal

cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,--he may have found food and

nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime

and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter

and good nursing. “Me and that ass,” he would say, “has been father and

mother to him! Don't you,” he would add, apostrophizing the helpless

bundle before him, “never go back on us.”

By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became

apparent. He had generally been known as “The Kid,” “Stumpy's Boy,”

“The Coyote” (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's

endearing diminutive of “The damned little cuss.” But these were felt

to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another

influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and

Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought “the luck” to

Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful.

“Luck” was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater

convenience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was

unknown. “It's better,” said the philosophical Oakhurst, “to take a

fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair.” A day was

accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this

ceremony the reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of

the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies

was one “Boston,” a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the

greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days

in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local

allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand

godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music

and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar,

Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. “It ain't my style to spoil

fun, boys,” said the little man, stoutly eyeing the faces around him,

“but it strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's

playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that

he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any godfathers

round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights than me.” A silence

followed Stumpy's speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that

the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped

of his fun. “But,” said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,

“we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas

Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of

California, so help me God.” It was the first time that the name of the

Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in the camp. The form

of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had

conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed.

“Tommy” was christened as seriously as he would have been under a

Christian roof and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost

imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to

“Tommy Luck”--or “The Luck,” as he was more frequently called--first

showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and

whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered. The rose wood

cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy's way of putting it,

“sorter killed the rest of the furniture.” So the rehabilitation of the

cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging

in at Stumpy's to see “how 'The Luck' got on” seemed to appreciate

the change, and in self-defense the rival establishment of “Tuttle's

grocery” bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The

reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to

produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a

kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of

holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck--who, in the

carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had

begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's,

only sloughed off through decay--to be debarred this privilege from

certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of

innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a

clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral

and social sanitary laws neglected. “Tommy,” who was supposed to spend

his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be

disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp

its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of

Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity.

Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout

the camp a popular form of expletive, known as “D--n the luck!” and

“Curse the luck!” was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing.

Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing,

tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by “Man-o'-War Jack,” an

English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular

as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of “the

Arethusa, Seventy-four,” in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged

dying fall at the burden of each verse, “On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa.”

It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side

to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval

ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his

song,--it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious

deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the desired

effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees

in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in

the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral

happiness pervaded the camp. “This 'ere kind o' think,” said the Cockney

Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, “is 'evingly.” It reminded

him of Greenwich.

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from

whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket

spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the

ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower

with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would

bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted

blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact

that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they

had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering

mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of

the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened,

and were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many

treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that “would do for Tommy.”

Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had

before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be

serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a

contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried

Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once,

having crept beyond his “corral,”--a hedge of tessellated pine boughs,

which surrounded his bed,--he dropped over the bank on his head in

the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that

position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was

extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other

instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the

statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge

of superstition. “I crep' up the bank just now,” said Kentuck one

day, in a breathless state of excitement “and dern my skin if he was

a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was,

just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each

other just like two cherrybums.” Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine

boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to

him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed.

Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between

the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp;

she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and

resinous gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily,

the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were “flush times,” and

the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp

was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No

encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion

more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that

surrounded the camp they duly preempted. This, and a reputation for

singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring

Camp inviolate. The expressman--their only connecting link with the

surrounding world--sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He

would say, “They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over

any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses,

and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on

strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby.”

With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.

It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite

one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who

might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this

concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in

regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for

by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve

could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority

meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.

And it did.

The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow

lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river,

and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a

tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant

trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had

been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. “Water put

the gold into them gulches,” said Stumpy. “It been here once and will

be here again!” And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its

banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber,

and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the

fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp.

When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was

gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but

the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared.

They were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled

them.

It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they

said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did

anybody know them, and did they belong here?

It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed

and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As

they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was

cold and pulseless. “He is dead,” said one. Kentuck opened his eyes.

“Dead?” he repeated feebly. “Yes, my man, and you are dying too.” A

smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. “Dying!” he repeated; “he's

a-taking me with him. Tell the boys I've got The Luck with me now;” and

the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to

cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever

to the unknown sea.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker

Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was

conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding

night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he

approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull

in the air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked

ominous.

Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these

indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was

another question. “I reckon they're after somebody,” he reflected;

“likely it's me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which

he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat

boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.

In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately

suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and

a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,

quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked

it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper

persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then

hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in

the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to

say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however,

to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in

such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to

sit in judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this

category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible

example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets

of the sums he had won from them. “It's agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler,

“to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry

away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the

breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst

overruled this narrower local prejudice.

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the

less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was

too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an

uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the

dealer.

A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to

the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to

be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed

escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman

familiarly known as the “Duchess”; another, who had won the title of

“Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and

confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the

spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch

which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader

spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at

the peril of their lives.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a

few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother

Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The

philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother

Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements

of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths

that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the

easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging

his own riding horse, “Five Spot,” for the sorry mule which the Duchess

rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy.

The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble,

faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five Spot” with

malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping

anathema.

The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the

regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some

invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It was

distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon

passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into

the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and

difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the

ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party

halted.

The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater,

surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped

gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley.

It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been

advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy

Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned

for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a

philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before

the game was played out.” But they were furnished with liquor, which in

this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.

In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or

less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose

state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton

snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock,

calmly surveying them.

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which

required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own

language, he “couldn't afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent fellow

exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life,

his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred

himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and

other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a

moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and

more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not

help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was

most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He

looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the

circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley

below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard

his own name called.

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the

newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the

“Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over

a “little game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire

fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth. After

the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind

the door and thus addressed him: “Tommy, you're a good little man, but

you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again.” He then handed

him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a

devoted slave of Tom Simson.

There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting

of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek

his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had

run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that

used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged

a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away,

and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they

were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and

company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout,

comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she

had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.

Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with

propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.

He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle

Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough

to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not

bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying

further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no

provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met

this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra

mule loaded with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a

log house near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,” said the

Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from

bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire

up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the

joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of

his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he

found them seated by a fire--for the air had grown strangely chill

and the sky overcast--in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was

actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who

was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many

days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect,

to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into

amiability. “Is this yer a damned picnic?” said Uncle Billy with inward

scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the

tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the

alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular

nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist

into his mouth.

As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the

tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.

The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart

for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a

kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the

swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were

probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,

and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the

men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and

cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing

strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave

it--snow!

He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers,

for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been

lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse

to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they

were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in

the snow.

The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with

his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered

peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin

Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended

by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his

shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly

in a whirling mist of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What

could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He

looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two

words--“snowed in!”

A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,

had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious fingers of

Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might

last ten days longer. “That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the

Innocent, “if you're willing to board us. If you ain't--and perhaps

you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with

provisions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring

himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the

hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally

stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother

Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.

“They'll find out the truth about us all when they find out anything,”

he added, significantly, “and there's no good frightening them now.”

Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.

Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.

“We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll

all go back together.” The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and Mr.

Oakhurst's calm, infected the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine

boughs extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess

directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and

tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their

fullest extent. “I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat,”

said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that

reddened her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton

requested Piney not to “chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a

weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter

echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first

naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cached. “And

yet it don't somehow sound like whisky,” said the gambler. It was not

until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still-blinding

storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it

was “square fun.”

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as something

debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain

that, in Mother Shipton's words, he “didn't say cards once” during that

evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat

ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some

difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney

Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to

an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the

crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting

hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and

vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing

to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to

infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:

“I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I'm bound to die in His army.”

The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable

group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of

the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the

stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose

professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible

amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed

to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself

to the Innocent by saying that he had “often been a week without sleep.”

“Doing what?” asked Tom. “Poker!” replied Oakhurst, sententiously; “when

a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired. The luck

gives in first. Luck,” continued the gambler, reflectively, “is a mighty

queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to

change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you.

We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you come along,

and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along

you're all right. For,” added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,

“'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,

And I'm bound to die in His army.'”

The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained

valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of

provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that

mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry

landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed

drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted,

trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the

castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of

the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw

it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that

direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and

perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.

It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. “Just you go out

there and cuss, and see.” She then set herself to the task of amusing

“the child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney

was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair

thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.

When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the

accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the

flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching

void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by

Piney--storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions

caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed

too but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray

copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed

to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly

mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current

vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric

demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in

the winds, and the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath

of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.

Most especially was he interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the

Innocent persisted in denominating the “swift-footed Achilles.”

So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed

over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again

from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day

closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from

their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty

feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish

their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in

the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary

prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst

settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess,

more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother

Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At

midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. “I'm going,”

she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, “but don't say anything

about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and

open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for

the last week, untouched. “Give 'em to the child,” she said, pointing to

the sleeping Piney. “You've starved yourself,” said the gambler. “That's

what they call it,” said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again

and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.

The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was

forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the

snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of

snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. “There's one

chance in a hundred to save her yet,” he said, pointing to Piney; “but

it's there,” he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. “If you can reach

there in two days she's safe.” “And you?” asked Tom Simson. “I'll stay

here,” was the curt reply.

The lovers parted with a long embrace. “You are not going, too?” said

the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him.

“As far as the canyon,” he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the

Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid

with amazement.

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the

whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone

had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.

The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.

The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's

faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the

position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the

Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That

night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the

protecting pines, invaded the very hut.

Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which

gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept

closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: “Piney, can you

pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing

exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,

spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the

head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,

shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and

settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds

looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace

of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully

flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices

and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers

brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from

the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even

the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them

still locked in each other's arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they

found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore

the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:

BENEATH THIS TREE

LIES THE BODY

OF

JOHN OAKHURST,

WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK

ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,

AND

HANDED IN HIS CHECKS

ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.

And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his

heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at

once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.

MIGGLES

We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the

passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle

over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last poetical

quotation. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed

through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it--altogether a

limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut

down too late. The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet in

a half-conscious propriety of attitude, shown even in the disposition

of the handkerchief which she held to her forehead and which partially

veiled her face. The lady from Virginia City, traveling with her

husband, had long since lost all individuality in a wild confusion of

ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls. There was no sound but the rattling

of wheels and the dash of rain upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped

and we became dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently in the

midst of an exciting colloquy with someone in the road--a colloquy of

which such fragments as “bridge gone,” “twenty feet of water,” “can't

pass,” were occasionally distinguishable above the storm. Then came

a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the parting

adjuration:

“Try Miggles's.”

We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of a

horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our way to

Miggles's.

Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our authority, did not remember

the name, and he knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe traveler

thought Miggles must keep a hotel. We only knew that we were stopped by

high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was our rock of refuge.

A ten minutes splashing through a tangled by-road, scarcely wide enough

for the stage, and we drew up before a barred and boarded gate in a

wide stone wall or fence about eight feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and

evidently Miggles did not keep a hotel.

The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely locked. “Miggles!

O Miggles!”

No answer.

“Migg-ells! You Miggles!” continued the driver, with rising wrath.

“Migglesy!” joined the expressman, persuasively. “O Miggy! Mig!”

But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles. The Judge,

who had finally got the window down, put his head out and propounded

a series of questions, which if answered categorically would have

undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, but which the driver evaded by

replying that “if we didn't want to sit in the coach all night, we had

better rise up and sing out for Miggles.”

So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately. And when

we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called for

“Maygells!” whereat we all laughed. While we were laughing, the driver

cried “Shoo!”

We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of “Miggles” was

repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and

supplemental “Maygells.”

“Extraordinary echo,” said the Judge.

“Extraordinary damned skunk!” roared the driver, contemptuously. “Come

out of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don't hide

in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,” continued Yuba Bill,

now dancing about in an excess of fury.

“Miggles!” continued the voice. “O Miggles!”

“My good man! Mr. Myghail!” said the Judge, softening the asperities of

the name as much as possible. “Consider the inhospitality of refusing

shelter from the inclemency of the weather to helpless females. Really,

my dear sir--” But a succession of “Miggles,” ending in a burst of

laughter, drowned his voice.

Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he

battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure.

We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that

we could distinguish was that we were in a garden--from the rosebushes

that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves--and

before a long, rambling wooden building.

“Do you know this Miggles?” asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.

“No, nor, don't want to,” said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage

Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.

“But, my dear sir,” expostulated the Judge as he thought of the barred

gate.

“Lookee here,” said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, “hadn't you better go

back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in,” and he

pushed open the door of the building.

A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the

large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and

the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; somebody

sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we

crowded together into the room, after the driver and expressman.

“Hello, be you Miggles?” said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.

The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward

it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face. It was a

man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which

there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had

sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face

to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous object,

without further recognition.

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

“Miggles! Be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know”; and Yuba Bill

shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.

To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable

stranger apparently collapsed--sinking into half his size and an

undistinguishable heap of clothing.

“Well, dern my skin,” said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and

hopelessly retiring from the contest.

The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious invertebrate

back into his original position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to

reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that from the helplessness of

this solitary man there must be attendants near at hand, and we all

drew around the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, and had

never lost his conversational amiability--standing before us with his

back to the hearth--charged us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:

“It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has reached

that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,'

or has suffered some premature abatement of his mental and physical

faculties. Whether he is really the Miggles--”

Here he was interrupted by “Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!” and, in

fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key as it had

once before been delivered unto us.

We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm. The Judge, in

particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to come

directly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon discovered in

a large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and

who immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence which contrasted

singularly with his previous volubility. It was, undoubtedly, his voice

which we had heard in the road, and our friend in the chair was not

responsible for the discourtesy. Yuba Bill, who re-entered the room

after an unsuccessful search, was loath to accept the explanation, and

still eyed the helpless sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in

which he had put up his horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical.

“Thar ain't nobody but him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar

damned old skeesicks knows it.”

But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based. Bill had

scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the porch,

the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and with flash of

white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony or

diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned

back against it.

“Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!”

And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman, whose

wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of the feminine

curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of whose head, topped

by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little feet and ankles, hidden

somewhere in the recesses of her boy's brogans, all was grace--this was

Miggles, laughing at us, too, in the most airy, frank, offhand manner

imaginable.

“You see, boys,” said she, quite out of breath, and holding one little

hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of

our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose

features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile

cheerfulness--“you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed

down the road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the

whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--and--and--I'm out of

breath--and--that lets me out.”

And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with

a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us;

attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt;

laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on

her lap.

The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant

compliment.

“I'll trouble you for that thar harpin,” said Miggles, gravely. Half

a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing hairpin was

restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the room, looked

keenly in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes looked back at hers

with an expression we had never seen before. Life and intelligence

seemed to struggle back into the rugged face. Miggles laughed again--it

was a singularly eloquent laugh--and turned her black eyes and white

teeth once more toward us.

“This afflicted person is--” hesitated the Judge.

“Jim,” said Miggles.

“Your father?”

“No.”

“Brother?”

“No.”

“Husband?”

Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady passengers

who I had noticed did not participate in the general masculine

admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, “No; it's Jim.”

There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers moved closer to each

other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and the

tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at this

emergency. But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious, broke the

silence. “Come,” she said briskly, “you must be hungry. Who'll bear a

hand to help me get tea?”

She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba Bill was engaged

like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the expressman was

grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the arduous duty of slicing

bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each man his good-humored

and voluble counsel. And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and

our Hibernian “deck passenger,” set the table with all the available

crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of the rain that beat

against windows, the wind that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies

who whispered together in the corner, or the magpie who uttered a

satirical and croaking commentary on their conversation from his perch

above. In the now bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were

papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and

discrimination. The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from candle

boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the skin of

some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious variation

of a flour barrel. There was neatness, and even a taste for the

picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the long low room.

The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a social

triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in

guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet bearing

throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any concealment on

her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our prospects, of the

journey, of the weather, of each other--of everything but our host and

hostess. It must be confessed that Miggles's conversation was never

elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she employed expletives

the use of which had generally been yielded to our sex. But they were

delivered with such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually

followed by a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest

that it seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.

Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy body

against the outer walls of the house. This was shortly followed by a

scratching and sniffling at the door. “That's Joaquin,” said Miggles, in

reply to our questioning glances; “would you like to see him?” Before

we could answer she had opened the door, and disclosed a half-grown

grizzly, who instantly raised himself on his haunches, with his

forepaws hanging down in the popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked

admiringly at Miggles, with a very singular resemblance in his manner to

Yuba Bill. “That's my watch dog,” said Miggles, in explanation. “Oh,

he don't bite,” she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into

a corner. “Does he, old Toppy?” (the latter remark being addressed

directly to the sagacious Joaquin). “I tell you what, boys,” continued

Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA MINOR, “you

were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when you dropped

in tonight.” “Where was he?” asked the Judge. “With me,” said Miggles.

“Lord love you; he trots round with me nights like as if he was a man.”

We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind. Perhaps we

all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking through the rainy

woods, with her savage guardian at her side. The Judge, I remember, said

something about Una and her lion; but Miggles received it as she did

other compliments, with quiet gravity. Whether she was altogether

unconscious of the admiration she excited--she could hardly have been

oblivious of Yuba Bill's adoration--I know not; but her very frankness

suggested a perfect sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the

younger members of our party.

The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to the

opinions of those of her own sex who were present. In fact, the repast

over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers that no pine

boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth

could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and, suddenly declaring that

it was time to “turn in,” offered to show the ladies to their bed in an

adjoining room. “You boys will have to camp out here by the fire as well

as you can,” she added, “for thar ain't but the one room.”

Our sex--by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger

portion of humanity--has been generally relieved from the imputation of

curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say

that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than we crowded together,

whispering, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises,

and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her

singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic,

who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene

indifference of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels.

In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and

Miggles re-entered.

But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had flashed

upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment on

the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left behind

her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a moment before. Coming

into the room, she drew a low stool beside the paralytic's chair, sat

down, drew the blanket over her shoulders, and saying, “If it's all the

same to you, boys, as we're rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight,”

took the invalid's withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon

the dying fire. An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory

to more confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous

curiosity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the roof, wandering

gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary brightness, until, in a

lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly lifted up her head, and, throwing

her hair over her shoulder, turned her face upon the group and asked:

“Is there any of you that knows me?”

There was no reply.

“Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53. Everybody knew me there, and

everybody had the right to know me. I kept the Polka saloon until I came

to live with Jim. That's six years ago. Perhaps I've changed some.”

The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned her

head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she again spoke,

and then more rapidly:

“Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's

no great harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim

here”--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--“used to know me,

if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he spent all

he had. And one day--it's six years ago this winter--Jim came into my

back room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and

never moved again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and never

seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said as how it

was caused all along of his way of life--for Jim was mighty free and

wild-like--and that he would never get better, and couldn't last long

anyway. They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he

was no good to anyone and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was

something in Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I

said 'No.' I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen

like yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and

bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel,

you see, and I brought my baby here.”

With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke, slowly

shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the ruined man

between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if

she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and

expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten

with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm around

her.

Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:

“It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about yer, for

I was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any woman to help

me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the Indians hereabout,

who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North

Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The Doctor would run up from

Sacramento once in a while. He'd ask to see 'Miggles's baby,' as

he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd say, 'Miggles; you're a

trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem so lonely after that. But

the last time he was here he said, as he opened the door to go, 'Do you

know, Miggles, your baby will grow up to be a man yet and an honor to

his mother; but not here, Miggles, not here!' And I thought he went away

sad--and--and--” and here Miggles's voice and head were somehow both

lost completely in the shadow.

“The folks about here are very kind,” said Miggles, after a pause,

coming a little into the light again. “The men from the fork used to

hang around here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the women are

kind--and don't call. I was pretty lonely until I picked up Joaquin in

the woods yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and taught him to beg

for his dinner; and then thar's Polly--that's the magpie--she knows no

end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of evenings with her talk,

and so I don't feel like as I was the only living being about the ranch.

And Jim here,” said Miggles, with her old laugh again, and coming out

quite into the firelight, “Jim--why, boys, you would admire to see how

much he knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he

looks at 'em just as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're

sitting alone, I read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord!” said

Miggles, with her frank laugh, “I've read him that whole side of the

house this winter. There never was such a man for reading as Jim.”

“Why,” asked the Judge, “do you not marry this man to whom you have

devoted your youthful life?”

“Well, you see,” said Miggles, “it would be playing it rather low down

on Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then, too, if we

were man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound to do what I do

now of my own accord.”

“But you are young yet and attractive--”

“It's getting late,” said Miggles, gravely, “and you'd better all turn

in. Good night, boys”; and, throwing the blanket over her head, Miggles

laid herself down beside Jim's chair, her head pillowed on the low stool

that held his feet, and spoke no more. The fire slowly faded from the

hearth; we each sought our blankets in silence; and presently there was

no sound in the long room but the pattering of the rain upon the roof

and the heavy breathing of the sleepers.

It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream. The storm had

passed, the stars were shining, and through the shutterless window the

full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines without, looked into

the room. It touched the lonely figure in the chair with an infinite

compassion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood the lowly head of

the woman whose hair, as in the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him

she loved. It even lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba

Bill, half-reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with

savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then I fell asleep

and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me, and “All

aboard” ringing in my ears.

Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone. We

wandered about the house and lingered long after the horses were

harnessed, but she did not return. It was evident that she wished to

avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we had

come. After we had helped the ladies into the coach, we returned to

the house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic Jim, as solemnly

settling him back into position after each handshake. Then we looked for

the last time around the long low room, at the stool where Miggles had

sat, and slowly took our seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked,

and we were off!

But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six

horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk. For

there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her hair

flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and her white

teeth flashing a last “good-by.” We waved our hats in return. And then

Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination, madly lashed his horses

forward, and we sank back in our seats. We exchanged not a word until we

reached the North Fork, and the stage drew up at the Independence House.

Then, the Judge leading, we walked into the barroom and took our places

gravely at the bar.

“Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?” said the Judge, solemnly taking

off his white hat.

They were.

“Well, then, here's to MIGGLES. GOD BLESS HER!”

Perhaps He had. Who knows?

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it

certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in

1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were

derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of “Dungaree

Jack”; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in “Saleratus Bill,”

so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread;

or for some unlucky slip, as exhibited in “The Iron Pirate,” a mild,

inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate

mispronunciation of the term “iron pyrites.” Perhaps this may have been

the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that

it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own

unsupported statement. “Call yourself Clifford, do you?” said Boston,

addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; “hell is full of such

Cliffords!” He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened

to be really Clifford, as “Jay-bird Charley”--an unhallowed inspiration

of the moment that clung to him ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other

than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and

distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he

left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He

never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by

a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his

meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile

not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over

his upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He

followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast

and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of the peace,

and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be

made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy

Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all sentiment was modified by a

strong sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason

that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took occasion to

say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said,

she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--this time as far

as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to

housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's

Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his

fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned

from Marysville, without his Partner's wife--she having smiled and

retreated with somebody else--Tennessee's Partner was the first man to

shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered

in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their

indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look

in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous

appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to

practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar.

He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these

suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued

intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be

accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last

Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his

way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled

the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically

concluded the interview in the following words: “And now, young man,

I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see

your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a

temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was

San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call.” It may be stated here that

Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation

could wholly subdue.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause

against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same

fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him,

he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the

crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon; but at its

farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The

men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both

self-possessed and independent; and both types of a civilization that

in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the

nineteenth, simply “reckless.” “What have you got there?--I call,”

said Tennessee, quietly. “Two bowers and an ace,” said the stranger,

as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife. “That takes me,”

returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers' epigram, he threw away his

useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the

going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that

evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with

heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth

faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce

passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank

of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.

Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the

express office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless

panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then

deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark

firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter

passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a

judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in

their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The

law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and

personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their

hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they

were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their

own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any

that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged,

on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense

than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more

anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took

a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. “I don't take any

hand in this yer game,” had been his invariable but good-humored reply

to all questions. The Judge--who was also his captor--for a moment

vaguely regretted that he had not shot him “on sight” that morning,

but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial

mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said

that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was

admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the

jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed

him as a relief.

For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a

square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck

“jumper” and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect

under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even

ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he

was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and

inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched

had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he

advanced with great gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each

person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious,

perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his

complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and

thus addressed the Judge:

“I was passin' by,” he began, by way of apology, “and I thought I'd

just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--my

pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the

Bar.”

He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological

recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket handkerchief, and for

some moments mopped his face diligently.

“Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?” said the Judge,

finally.

“Thet's it,” said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. “I come yar

as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet

and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but

thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness

as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez

you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez you, 'Do you know

anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--confidential-like, as

between man and man--'What should a man know of his pardner?'”

“Is this all you have to say?” asked the Judge impatiently, feeling,

perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize

the Court.

“Thet's so,” continued Tennessee's Partner. “It ain't for me to say

anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants

money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner.

Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches

that stranger. And you lays for HIM, and you fetches HIM; and the

honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you,

gentlemen, all, as far-minded men, ef this isn't so.”

“Prisoner,” said the Judge, interrupting, “have you any questions to ask

this man?”

“No! no!” continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. “I play this yer hand

alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has

played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer

camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more; some

would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a

watch--it's about all my pile--and call it square!” And before a hand

could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the

carpetbag upon the table.

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their

feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to

“throw him from the window” was only overridden by a gesture from the

Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement,

Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with

his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use

of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be

condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue,

and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled

slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the

gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated

sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the

belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and

saying, “This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,”

he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him

back. “If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it

now.” For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his

strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and,

saying, “Euchred, old man!” held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took

it in his own, and saying, “I just dropped in as I was passin' to see

how things was gettin' on,” let the hand passively fall, and adding that

it was a warm night, again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and

without another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled

insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak,

or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that

mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and

at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the

top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how

perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,

with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future

evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was present, and

to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty

of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky,

the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and

promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled

through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social

lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life,

with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the

misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the

flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the

RED DOG CLARION was right.

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous

tree. But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular

appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road.

As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable “Jenny” and

the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner--used by him

in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner

of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the

perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he

had come for the body of the “diseased,” “if it was all the same to the

committee.” He didn't wish to “hurry anything”; he could “wait.” He

was not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the

“diseased,” he would take him. “Ef thar is any present,” he added, in

his simple, serious way, “as would care to jine in the fun'l, they

kin come.” Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already

intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar--perhaps it was from something even

better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation

at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of

his Partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that

it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a section of

sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was

further decorated with slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye

blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner

drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow

seat in front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey

forward. The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which

was habitual with “Jenny” even under less solemn circumstances. The

men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled

along beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the

homely catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the road or some

present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to the

rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external show

of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a

funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from

a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not having, perhaps, your true

humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Canyon--by this time clothed in funereal

drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in

the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth

benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,

surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the

ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain

a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their

wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of

Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a

cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,

the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the

California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay

superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,

which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity

had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we

approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a

recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.

The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of

assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed

throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back and

deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down

the board which served as a lid; and mounting the little mound of

earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his

handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech; and they

disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.

“When a man,” began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, “has been running free

all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And

if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do?

Why, bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we

brings him home from his wandering.” He paused, and picked up a fragment

of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: “It ain't

the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now.

It ain't the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he

couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have

waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home,

when he couldn't speak, and didn't know me. And now that it's the last

time, why”--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--“you

see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen,” he added,

abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, “the fun'l's over; and my

thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble.”

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave,

turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments' hesitation

gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy

Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's

Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his

knees, and his face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief. But it was

argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief

at that distance; and this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,

Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had

cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a

suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on

him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses. But from

that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline;

and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were

beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took

to his bed. One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in

the storm, and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the

roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's

Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, “It is time to go for

Tennessee; I must put 'Jinny' in the cart”; and would have risen from

his bed but for the restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still

pursued his singular fancy: “There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old

girl. How dark it is! Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,

old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down right

in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill.

Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--all by himself,

sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!”

And so they met.

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH

Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much

the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long

he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long

he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered.

A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and

saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular,

was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to

attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a

temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, “Effects

of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods,” with a hand pointing to

McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire,

personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process

rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this

facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,

released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and

sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep

sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty

boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one

eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious

and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until

they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with

gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted

by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon

the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred

not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other

philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.

“Miss Mary,” as she was known to the little flock that she had just

dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her

afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the

azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking her

way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of

disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon

Sandy!

Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she

had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and

halted for a moment--at least six feet from this prostrate monster--with

her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither

sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then

overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered “Beasts!”--an epithet

which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the

entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of

certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated

the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly

celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps

fairly earned the reputation of being “stuck-up.”

As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were

heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature,

and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to

place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly

as his eyes were open. Yet she did it, and made good her retreat. But

she was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was

removed, and that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.

The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied

that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from

childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but

condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right

to dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the

statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward

expression was vague, being limited to a repetition of the following

formula--“Su'shine all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?”

Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of

distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.

“Wass up? Wasser maar?” continued Sandy, in a very high key.

“Get up, you horrid man!” said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; “get

up, and go home.”

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary

trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.

“Wass I go home for?” he suddenly asked, with great gravity.

“Go and take a bath,” replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with

great disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest,

threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly

forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.

“Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!” said Miss Mary; and then,

with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked

herself in.

That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's

wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got

drunk. “Abner,” responded Mrs. Stidger, reflectively, “let's see: Abner

hasn't been tight since last 'lection.” Miss Mary would have liked to

ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold

bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation,

which she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with

opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger--a fine

specimen of Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject

altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston:

“I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least

objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know

anything that could make the women tolerable.”

In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that

her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another

direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of

azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not

strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and

invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines;

but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the

azaleas. A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest

to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous

laughter that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss

Mary could get from him was, that someone had been “looking in the

winder.” Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle

with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came

plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly

sheepish and guilty-looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in

her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also,

that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was

amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored,

silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor

or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on

her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with

receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the

gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom,

her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And

then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all

unconsciously very happy.

It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged boys

came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,

which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary

compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At

the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm

dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both

embarrassed and angry. “If you carried more of that for yourself,” she

said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes

to its owner, “you'd do better.” In the submissive silence that followed

she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that

he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which

Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.

The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as

mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.

“Profane Bill,” driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the

newspapers for his “gallantry” in invariably offering the box seat to

the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground

that he had a habit of “cussin' on upgrades,” and gave her half the

coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden

with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a

confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother

of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this

astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but

content to worship the priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,

glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red

Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.

Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of

the firs “did her chest good,” for certainly her slight cough was less

frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending

lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful

or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill,

and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling

shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap

finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass,

and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such

localities--what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged

rock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting

woods opened their long files to receive them! How the children--perhaps

because they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the

bounteous Mother--threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with

uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary

herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity of

spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran like a crested

quail at the head of her brood until, romping, laughing, and panting,

with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbon

from her throat, she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the

forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!

The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensued

need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had

already established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough that

he was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with that

quick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized a

friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and

took other liberties--as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had

built a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of

woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such

foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the

schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the sloping

hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same

attitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the similitude

greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature that had found

a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding an

equal intoxication in love.

I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he

longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage,

or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,

gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in a heroic

attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being

only withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction

that it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my

fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some

uninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who

rescues, will forgive the omission.

So they sat there, undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead and

the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.

What they said matters little. What they thought--which might have been

interesting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how

Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house, to come to

California, for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an

orphan, too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived

a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which,

from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and

a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and

when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which

the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the

outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her weary

life.

As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of Red

Gulch--to use a local euphuism--“dried up” also. In another day Miss

Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know her

no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on

her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss

Mary--I fear to the danger of school discipline--was lately in the habit

of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland

memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a

gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the

remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more

distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door.

On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose

dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous

pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;

but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled

her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.

It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a

moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the

dust beside the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long

bench. Her voice was husky as she began:

“I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I

couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my

Tommy.”

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor

attention she could give him.

“Thank you, miss; thank ye!” cried the stranger, brightening even

through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her “war paint,”

and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the

schoolmistress. “I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,

there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't

much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives

than he's got.”

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her

shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.

“It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,” she

went on, hurriedly. “It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to

do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,

but for the darling boy.”

Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her

lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees,

she went on, in a low voice:

“You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I

ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of

sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing

a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all

right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And O, miss, he loves

you so much; and if you could hear him talk about you, in his pretty

way, and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse

him.

“It is natural,” she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled

strangely between pride and humility--“it's natural that he should

take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a

gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I ain't

goin' to cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy--God

bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--to--take him

with you.”

She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had

fallen on her knees beside her.

“I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some good

school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to forget his

mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be kindness

to what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this wicked life,

this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will; I know you

will--won't you? You will--you must not, you cannot say no! You will

make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown up, you

will tell him his father's name--the name that hasn't passed my lips

for years--the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy! Miss

Mary!--do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You will take

my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to look on

such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!”

Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her way to

the open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, her

eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky.

There was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on her

white collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly away.

The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her.

“I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but I

cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see it in

your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in

your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!”

The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with something

of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Red

Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded pleasantly.

“I will take the boy. Send him to me tonight.”

The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. She

would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not.

She rose to her feet.

“Does--this man--know of your intention?” asked Miss Mary, suddenly.

“No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it.”

“Go to him at once--tonight--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell him

I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the child

again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, he

must not follow! There, go now, please--I'm weary, and--have much yet to

do!”

They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.

“Good night.”

She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the

young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure

breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.

It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill

took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for the

schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, in

obedience to a pleasant voice from the “inside,” he suddenly reined up

his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy hopped out at the command of

Miss Mary. “Not that bush, Tommy--the next.”

Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a tall

azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.

“All right now?”

“All right.”

And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.

BROWN OF CALAVERAS

A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and boot

heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evident that

one of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the part

of loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and some

concern in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further

indicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the

box seat, noted with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that he

depreciated the sex, but that he recognized therein a deceitful element,

the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equally

uncertain blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr.

Hamlin was a professional exponent.

So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down,

he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil was

fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and grave

indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing to good

breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he

was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish

restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate

of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his overflowing vitality, his

intense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled

with crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside

this lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric

gravity.

The driver called “All aboard!” and Mr. Hamlin returned to the coach.

His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the level of the

open window, when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to be the

finest eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped down

again, addressed a few words to one of the inside passengers, effected

an exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin

never allowed his philosophy to interfere with decisive and prompt

action.

I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the other

passengers--particularly those who were making themselves most agreeable

to the lady. One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed to

her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's profession in a single epithet.

Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he recognized in the informant

a distinguished jurist from whom, but a few evenings before, he had won

several thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed no

sign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the

legal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of

his neighbor. An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from his

maternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling wheels

rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the stage drew up at

the International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentleman and a member of

Congress leaped out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess,

while Colonel Starbottle, of Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and

shawl. In this multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion

and delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach,

took the lady's hand--with that decision and positiveness which a

hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire--and in an instant had

dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again lifted her

to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from

that other cynic, “Yuba Bill,” the driver. “Look keerfully arter that

baggage, Kernel,” said the expressman, with affected concern, as he

looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the

triumphant procession to the waiting-room.

Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled, and

awaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and

out into the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one leaving

pleasant fancy behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by the roadside

shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after him, recognizing the

man by his horse, and speculating what “was up with Comanche Jack.” Yet

much of this interest centered in the horse, in a community where

the time made by “French Pete's” mare in his run from the Sheriff of

Calaveras eclipsed all concern in the ultimate fate of that worthy.

The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself. He

checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used as a

cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly from

his fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape changed and

became more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosed

some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering vine trailed over the

porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled babe under the roses

of another. A little farther on Mr. Hamlin came upon some barelegged

children wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a

badinage peculiar to himself that they were emboldened to climb up

his horse's legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop an

exaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some

kisses and coin. And then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all

signs of habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so

singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender, that I

wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin's voice was not

cultivated; the subject of his song was some sentimental lunacy borrowed

from the Negro minstrels; but there thrilled through all some occult

quality of tone and expression that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it

was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of

cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before

him through the dim woods with a plaint about his “Nelly's grave” in a

way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from

his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit,

stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority of

man. With a superior predatory capacity, HE couldn't sing.

But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and at his

former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps,

and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and

indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in

sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was

clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic

ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and

dismounted before the gilded windows of the “Magnolia” saloon. Passing

through the long barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a

dark passage, opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in

a dimly lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the

locality, showed signs of abuse. The inlaid center table was overlaid

with stained disks that were not contemplated in the original design.

The embroidered armchairs were discolored, and the green velvet lounge,

on which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was soiled at the foot with the red

soil of Wingdam.

Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, looking at a highly

colored painting above him representing a young creature of opulent

charms. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that he had never

seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he should, he would not,

probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he was thinking of another

style of beauty. But just then someone knocked at the door. Without

rising, he pulled a cord that apparently shot back a bolt, for the door

swung open, and a man entered.

The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust--a vigor not borne out in

the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and disfigured by

dissipation. He appeared to be also under the influence of liquor, for

he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, “I thought Kate was here,”

stammered, and seemed confused and embarrassed.

Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam

coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.

“You didn't come up on the stage,” continued the newcomer, “did you?”

“No,” replied Hamlin; “I left it at Scott's Ferry. It isn't due for half

an hour yet. But how's luck, Brown?”

“Damn bad,” said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of weak

despair; “I'm cleaned out again, Jack,” he continued, in a whining tone

that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure, “can't you help me

with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup? You see I've got to send money

home to the old woman, and--you've won twenty times that amount from

me.”

The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack overlooked

it, and handed the sum to his visitor. “The old-woman business is about

played out, Brown,” he added, by way of commentary; “why don't you say

you want to buck agin' faro? You know you ain't married!”

“Fact, sir,” said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere contact

of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some dignity to his

frame. “I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if I do say it--in the

States. It's three year since I've seen her, and a year since I've writ

to her. When things is about straight, and we get down to the lead, I'm

going to send for her.”

“And Kate?” queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.

Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his

confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but poorly

carried out, and said:

“Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know. But

come, what do you say to a little game? Give us a show to double this

hundred.”

Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. Perhaps he knew that

the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred that it should

flow back into his own coffers rather than any other. He nodded his

head, and drew his chair toward the table. At the same moment there came

a rap upon the door.

“It's Kate,” said Mr. Brown.

Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened. But, for the

first time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved and

abashed, and for the first time in his life the hot blood crimsoned his

colorless cheeks to his forehead. For before him stood the lady he had

lifted from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown--dropping his cards with a

hysterical laugh--greeted as:

“My old woman, by thunder!”

They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her

husband. I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the story.

And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head of “Touching

Reunion,” said: “One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar

to California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of

Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the effete civilization of the East

and its inhospitable climate, resolved to join her noble husband

upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention,

she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the

husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said

to have been indescribably affecting. We trust her example may be

followed.”

Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful

speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily

improved. He bought out his partners in the “Nip and Tuck” lead, with

money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two after his

wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's theory that Brown

had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have been furnished by Mr.

Jack Hamlin. He built and furnished the “Wingdam House,” which pretty

Mrs. Brown's great popularity kept overflowing with guests. He was

elected to the Assembly, and gave largess to churches. A street in

Wingdam was named in his honor.

Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate,

he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased,

he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he

was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social

liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and

only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him

into silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex

whom she had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which,

like most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,

whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered,

too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the

unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps not more

ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished an older Greek

democracy. I think that Brown was dimly conscious of this. But his only

confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX reputation naturally precluded

any open intimacy with the family, and whose visits were infrequent.

It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,

large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense

of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense

which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent. Beside her sat Colonel

Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a later addition to her court in

the shape of a foreign tourist. She was in good spirits.

“What do you see down the road?” inquired the gallant Colonel, who had

been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's attention

was diverted.

“Dust,” said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. “Only Sister Anne's 'flock of

sheep.'”

The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther back

than last week's paper, took a more practical view. “It ain't sheep,” he

continued; “it's a horseman. Judge, ain't that Jack Hamlin's gray?”

But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was

growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the parlor.

Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after dinner.

Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's companions; perhaps,

like other weak natures, he found pleasure in the exercise of absolute

power over inferior animals. He had a certain gratification in the

training of a chestnut mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased

him, which he couldn't do with Mrs. Brown. It was here that he

recognized a certain gray horse which had just come in, and, looking

a little farther on, found his rider. Brown's greeting was cordial and

hearty, Mr. Hamlin's somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request,

he followed him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to

a small room looking out upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished

with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.

“This yer's my home, Jack,” said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw himself

upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair. “Her room's t'other

end of the hall. It's more'n six months since we've lived together, or

met, except at meals. It's mighty rough papers on the head of the house,

ain't it?” he said, with a forced laugh. “But I'm glad to see you,

Jack, damn glad,” and he reached from the bed, and again shook the

unresponsive hand of Jack Hamlin.

“I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable; though,

for the matter of that, it's all round town. Don't strike a light. We

can talk here in the moonshine. Put up your feet on that winder, and sit

here beside me. Thar's whisky in that jug.”

Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. Brown of Calaveras

turned his face to the wall and continued:

“If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind. But it's loving her,

and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate, and no one to put

down the brake; that's what gits me! But I'm glad to see ye, Jack, damn

glad.”

In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his

companion's hand again. He would have detained it, but Jack slipped it

into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked, listlessly, “How long

has this been going on?”

“Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the

Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't know how

much I loved her till then. And she hasn't been the same woman since.

“But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about, and

I'm glad you've come. It ain't that she doesn't love me any more; it

ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along, for, perhaps, I

staked her love and lost it, as I did everything else at the Magnolia;

and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some women, and thar ain't no great

harm done, 'cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think--I think she loves

somebody else. Don't move, Jack; don't move; if your pistol hurts ye,

take it off.

“It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and lonesome,

and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I've ketched her

lookin' at me sort of timid and pitying. And she writes to somebody.

And for the last week she's been gathering her own things--trinkets,

and furbelows, and jew'lry--and, Jack, I think she's goin' off. I could

stand all but that. To have her steal away like a thief--” He put his

face downward to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound

but the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and

moved to the open window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and

the bed and its occupant were in shadow. “What shall I do, Jack?” said

the voice from the darkness.

The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: “Spot the

man, and kill him on sight.”

“But, Jack?”

“He's took the risk!”

“But will that bring HER back?”

Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.

“Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table. It's a

comfort to see ye, if nothin' else.”

Jack hesitated, and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from his

pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown's face was

turned to the wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he cut them,

and dealt one card on the opposite side of the table and toward the bed,

and another on his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce,

his own card, a king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time “dummy”

had a queen, and himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third

deal. It brought his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. “Two

out of three,” said Jack, audibly.

“What's that, Jack?” said Brown.

“Nothing.”

Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and his

imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes confusing.

Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the

anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept.

Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on the town

of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully--its harsh outlines softened and

subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that

flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the

ditches, and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked

up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling

field. Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to

Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star

should fall--He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the

phenomenon was not repeated.

The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached the

table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the flickering

candlelight. It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in a

woman's hand:

“Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three.”

The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke. “Are you there Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Don't go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times. I thought

that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack,

was--who do you think?--you!”

The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed--the paper still in

his hand.

“It's a good sign, ain't it?” queried Brown.

“I reckon. Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?”

The “old man,” thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the

assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.

“Smoke?”

Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.

“Light?”

Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his

companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped

the fragment--a fiery star--from the open window. He watched it as it

fell, and then returned to his friend.

“Old man,” he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, “in ten

minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We won't see each

other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice: sell out all you've

got, take your wife with you, and quit the country. It ain't no place

for you, nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go, if she won't.

Don't whine because you can't be a saint, and she ain't an angel. Be a

man--and treat her like a woman. Don't be a damn fool. Good-by.”

He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like

a deer. At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler and

backed him against the wall. “Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I'll--”

The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.

“The missis said you was to have the buggy,” stammered the man.

“Damn the buggy!”

The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded

hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.

“Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?” said the man, who, like all his class,

admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his

welfare.

“Stand aside!”

The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the

road. In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes, he was but a

moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a star just loosed

from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.

But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles away,

heard a voice, pure as a skylark's, singing afield. They who were asleep

turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and love and olden

days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased

their labors and leaned upon their picks, to listen to a romantic

vagabond ambling away against the rosy sunrise.

HIGH-WATER MARK

When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness

was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and

tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open

bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their

scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if

you choose to indulge your fancy--although the flat monotony of the

Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line of scattered drift gave

an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters, and made the dead

certainty of the returning tide a gloomy reflection which no present

sunshine could dissipate. The greener meadowland seemed oppressed with

this idea, and made no positive attempt at vegetation until the work of

reclamation should be complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry

bushes one might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled

and soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.

The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and

depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the

curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome

teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled

complaint of the “killdeer” plover, were beyond the power of written

expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful

and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron standing mid-leg deep in the

water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet

and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or

the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal

contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher--an ornithological

Marius--reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to

and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't

make up his mind whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited

in the reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to

give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a glance that

the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and

that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling

of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of extravagant

anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless

at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was

strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering

expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another

tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous

line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees

arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings,

drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal

at the falling tide or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the

legend; when the glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor

furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and

shut out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;

when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way, started

at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the boat's keel, or

shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like the floating hair

of a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were lost upon Dedlow

Marsh and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that--then you

might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.

Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never failed

to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.

Although the event was briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the

story, in all its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor.

I cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar coloring of

feminine delineation, for my narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give

at least its substance.

She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-sized

river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed by

the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which constituted the

southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was

a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout piles, and

was three miles distant from the settlements upon the river. Her husband

was a logger--a profitable business in a county where the principal

occupation was the manufacture of lumber.

It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb of a

high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower

end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the

voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and

she remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that they must

endeavor to complete their voyage before the coming of the southwesterly

gale which he saw brewing. And that night it began to storm and blow

harder than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees fell

in the forest by the river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.

But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew that

one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand, and

that had he feared for her he would not have left her. This, and her

domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep

her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of course, to hope that

he was safely harbored with the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance.

But she noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and

look after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their

garden-patch, and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles

away, she could hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would

like to have someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that

if it had not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable,

she would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her

nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he might have returned in the

storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long exposure

for baby, who was croupy and ailing.

But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like sleeping

or even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but she still “sat

and sat,” and even tried to read. I don't know whether it was a Bible or

some profane magazine that this poor woman read, but most probably the

latter, for the words all ran together and made such sad nonsense that

she was forced at last to put the book down and turn to that dearer

volume which lay before her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf

as yet unsoiled, and try to look forward to its mysterious future. And,

rocking the cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still

was wide-awake as ever.

It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her clothes.

How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke with a dreadful

choking in her throat, and found herself standing, trembling all over,

in the middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast, and she

was “saying something.” The baby cried and sobbed, and she walked up

and down trying to hush it when she heard a scratching at the door. She

opened it fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their

dog, who crawled, dripping with water, into the room. She would like to

have looked out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to

see how things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she

could hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and then walked

up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a little while.

Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she thought she heard

once or twice something scrape slowly against the clapboards, like the

scraping of branches. Then there was a little gurgling sound, “like the

baby made when it was swallowing”; then something went “click-click”

and “cluck-cluck,” so that she sat up in bed. When she did so she was

attracted by something else that seemed creeping from the back door

toward the center of the room. It wasn't much wider than her little

finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and began

spreading all over the floor. It was water.

She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing but

water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw nothing

but water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that open, she saw

nothing but water. Then she remembered hearing her husband once say that

there was no danger in the tide, for that fell regularly, and people

could calculate on it, and that he would rather live near the bay than

the river, whose banks might overflow at any time. But was it the tide?

So she ran again to the back door, and threw out a stick of wood. It

drifted away toward the bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it

eagerly to her lips. It was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not

the tide!

It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither faint

nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his merciful

hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful moment--that fear

dropped from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased. It was then

and thereafter that she never lost her self-command, through all the

trials of that gloomy night.

She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a table

upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the floor

was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so

perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew

open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall,

and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near

the road at the upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the house.

Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as

rapidly as the current, for had it struck the house in its full career,

even the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not have withstood

the shock. The hound had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched

near the roots shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her

mind. She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about

the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung

again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she

leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining a

footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots,

she held in the other her moaning child. Then something cracked near the

front porch, and the whole front of the house she had just quitted fell

forward--just as cattle fall on their knees before they lie down--and at

the same moment the great redwood tree swung round and drifted away with

its living cargo into the black night.

For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her crying

babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of

her situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water-swept

cabin. She remembered even then, and she wonders how foolish she was to

think of it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress

and the baby's best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would

be spared so that he, when he returned, would have something to come to,

and it wouldn't be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what

had become of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint.

But she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the

long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half a

revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water. The hound, who kept

distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last

fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time beside her,

and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he “acted silly”

and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her

baby were left alone. The light which had burned for a few minutes

in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then

tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white dunes on the

peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a

line with the river. It must be about slack water, and she had

probably reached the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the

overflowing waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was

present danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to

sea or crushed in the floating drift. That peril averted, if she were

carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one

of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till daylight.

Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from the river, and

the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again it was only

the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her heart. She found at about

this time that she was so chilled and stiffened in her cramped position

that she could scarcely move, and the baby cried so when she put it to

her breast that she noticed the milk refused to flow; and she was so

frightened at that, that she put her head under her shawl, and for the

first time cried bitterly.

When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind her, and

she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped up the water to

cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt as her tears. There

was a relief, though, for by this sign she knew that she was drifting

with the tide. It was then the wind went down, and the great and awful

silence oppressed her. There was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed

sides of the great trunk on which she rested, and around her all was

black gloom and quiet. She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak,

and to know that she had not lost her voice. She thought then--it was

queer, but she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the

night when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of

creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of mariners

clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to rafts, and

beaten to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank God that she was

thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby, who had fallen into a

fretful sleep. Suddenly, away to the southward, a great light lifted

itself out of the gloom, and flashed and flickered, and flickered and

flashed again. Her heart fluttered quickly against the baby's cold

cheek. It was the lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet

wondering, the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and

then seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and the current

gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by the position of the

light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.

Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not been

for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would have

felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to make all her

impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock

of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the plover

flew up and piped mournfully as they wheeled around the trunk, and at

last fearlessly lit upon it like a gray cloud. Then the heron flew over

and around her, shrieking and protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt

legs only a few yards from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white

bird, larger than a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled

around and around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite

over her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white

neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that she

thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to attract her

attention. But when she did so, the child was so chilled and cold, and

had such a blue look under the little lashes which it didn't raise at

all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird flew away, and she fainted.

Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much, after

all, to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses it was bright

sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused noise of guttural

voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an Indian “hushaby,” and

rocking herself from side to side before a fire built on the marsh,

before which she, the recovered wife and mother, lay weak and weary. Her

first thought was for her baby, and she was about to speak, when a young

squaw, who must have been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and

brought her the “mowitch,” pale but living, in such a queer little

willow cradle all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that

she laughed and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw

showed their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,

“Plenty get well, skeena mowitch,” “wagee man come plenty soon,” and she

could have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then she found that

they had been gathering berries on the marsh in their queer, comical

baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown fluttering on the tree from afar,

and the old squaw couldn't resist the temptation of procuring a new

garment, and came down and discovered the “wagee” woman and child. And

of course she gave the garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and

when HE came at last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older

in his anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to

the canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met

the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman was

his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away back home,

although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another house, using the

old tree for the foundation and props, and called it after her, “Mary's

Ark!” But you may guess the next house was built above high-water mark.

And that's all.

Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the Dedlow

Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at

high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog, as I have,

to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to appreciate duly the

blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.

A LONELY RIDE

As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night,

a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the

reader that I have no ulterior design in making this assertion. A

long course of light reading has forewarned me what every experienced

intelligence must confidently look for from such a statement. The

storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such obvious beginnings; who is

to the expectant reader in danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or

frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his ladylove for the

first time, deserves to be detected. I am relieved to say that none of

these things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew

no other banditti than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had

not yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free

will in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as

she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these depressing

circumstances long enough to have made the slightest impression on me.

I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on the

vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible on its

roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion clung tenaciously to

its wheels. I opened the door; the stage creaked easily, and in the

gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly hands, to come

in now and have my sufferings out at once.

I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which struck

me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,

who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected with the stage

company, gravely descended, and walking toward the conveyance, tried

the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated in the carriage, and

returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed

his position when another individual, equally disinterested, impassively

walked down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it,

expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to

the hotel. A third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of

the Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a

moment in serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then

returned to his column. There was something so weird in this baptism

that I grew quite nervous.

Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal annoyances,

winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk at the stage

office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had not predisposed

me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka House, from a social

viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion--so

common to many honest people--that a serious style of deportment and

conduct toward a stranger indicates high gentility and elevated station.

Obeying this principle, all hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper,

and general remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of

several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left

the dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively

on mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A

piano, harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to

a diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an

old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy

curls. “I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the face is open

disgrace.'” I heard no more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere

expression on the subject of female loveliness, I walked away, checking

the compliment that otherwise might have risen unbidden to my lips, and

have brought shame and sorrow to the household.

It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me that

I stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about to mount,

was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the hotel. He had

the wearied look which was the distinguishing expression of Wingdam.

Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and receipted for, he took no

further notice of me. I looked longingly at the box seat, but he did

not respond to the appeal. I flung my carpetbag into the chasm, dived

recklessly after it, and--before I was fairly seated--with a great

sigh, a creaking of unwilling springs, complaining bolts, and harshly

expostulating axle, we moved away. Rather the hotel door slipped behind,

the sound of the piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved

solemnly upon us.

To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity

that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely

distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the

peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the

open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that,

leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the fragrant sigh

of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon the highway we

had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our progress, more the

guidance of some mysterious instinct than any apparent volition of

our own, gave an indefinable charm of security to our journey that a

moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of the driver would have

destroyed.

I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that rest

so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion.

When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary

conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were

distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms

on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently

composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs

of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat

which began to absorb my attention painfully. Slowly this thumping

merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious female of

the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into this awful and

benumbing axiom--“Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.

Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.” Inequalities of the road only

quickened its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating length.

It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no

use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the many

instances where praise to the face had redounded to the everlasting

honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell sentimentally

on modest genius and courage lifted up and strengthened by open

commendation; of no use to except to the mysterious female, to picture

her as rearing a thin-blooded generation on selfish and mechanically

repeated axioms--all this failed to counteract the monotonous repetition

of this sentence. There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was

about to accept it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of

darkness and necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some

other annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few

moments. How quiet the driver was!

Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not lying

gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with blackened face

who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither? The thing is perfectly

feasible. And what is this fancy now being jolted out of me? A story?

It's of no use to keep it back--particularly in this abysmal vehicle,

and here it comes: I am a Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because

the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better adapted to

romantic incident--a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in

the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my

country seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep

and tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an

angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so dark that

when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who holds the

carriage door. But what of that?--PESTE! I am heavy with sleep. The same

obscurity also hides the old familiar indecencies of the statues on the

terrace; but there is a door, and it opens and shuts behind me smartly.

Then I find myself in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has

quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There

is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say,

“PARBLEU!” draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two

after outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through

my ruffled linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I

am rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the

assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an intimate

friend.

Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing the

driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. I

could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky woods, relieving a

lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this picture glimmered sadly.

I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene

faces; and I hope that the vandal who first applied the flippant

“twinkle” to them may not be driven melancholy-mad by their reproachful

eyes. I noticed again the mystic charm of space that imparts a sense

of individual solitude to each integer of the densest constellation,

involving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of

this calm and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern.

When I awoke the full moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an

indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full moon of

NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so palpably to

a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the CASTA DIVA is

sung--the “inconstant moon” that then and thereafter remains fixed in

the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated

by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that

improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills

ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping

springs essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of

the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast

improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond delusion.

My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A familiar

sound had assured me of his presence in the full possession of at least

one of his most important functions. Frequent and full expectoration

convinced me that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of

highwaymen, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted from my

mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana, who left, as when

she visited Endymion, much of her splendor outside my cavern--I looked

around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I

picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated. There was no

scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No

bend or twist in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's

character. I tried to think that it might have been “Mariar's.” I tried

to imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might

have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which provoked the

wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was reticent and unswerving in

its upright fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through my fingers.

I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by

contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I was

unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my childish

recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist those

impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens,

had begun to separate the formless masses of the shadowy landscape.

Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages, changed places before

my window. The sharp outlines of the distant hills came back, as

in daylight, but little softened in the dry, cold, dewless air of a

California summer night. I was wondering how late it was, and thinking

that if the horses of the night traveled as slowly as the team before

us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden

spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings,

like a pack of Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage

leaped forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long

white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.

It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I addressed the

driver:

“I thought you changed horses on the road?”

“So we did. Two hours ago.”

“That's odd. I didn't notice it.”

“Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully place

for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!”

THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT

His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us,

in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous way. He

probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows

would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and how

sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show daguerreotypes and

locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the man of no account used to

sit by and listen with a pained, mortified expression on his plain face,

and say nothing. I think he had nothing to say. He had no associates

except when we patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal

of sport to us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind.

He never got his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how

we all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,

and--But you know that time-honored joke. And then we had such a

splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the sight of

him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a fancy to him,

and send him little delicacies and books from the cabin. You ought

to have witnessed the rich scene that took place when he came up,

stammering and very sick, to thank her! Didn't she flash up grandly and

beautifully and scornfully? So like “Medora,” Rattler said--Rattler knew

Byron by heart--and wasn't old Fagg awfully cut up? But he got over it,

and when Rattler fell sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him.

You see he was a good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and

spirit.

He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly by,

mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring apostrophe

of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite seriously, if he

thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember Rattler's reply, but I

know we all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was something good

for Rattler was smart.

When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand “feed.”

We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course we

didn't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary,

you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old

Fagg, as we called him--he was only about twenty-five years old, by the

way--was the source of immense amusement to us that day. It appeared

that he had conceived the idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and

actually started off afoot. We had a good time, and shook hands with one

another all around, and so parted. Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet

some of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each

other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know that

we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker swore

he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a very

contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money

at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter in a restaurant,

didn't like to meet such people.

When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at Mugginsville,

in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it. I stopped at the

Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and rode round the town and

out to the claim. One of those individuals whom newspaper correspondents

call “our intelligent informant,” and to whom in all small communities

the right of answering questions is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed

out to me. Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and

he never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and

added: “You see, stranger,” (he addressed the bank before him) “gold is

sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his pick)

but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his

pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period).

He was green, and let the boys about here jump him”--and the rest of his

sentence was confided to his hat, which he had removed to wipe his manly

brow with his red bandanna.

I asked him who was the original proprietor.

“His name war Fagg.”

I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer. He had worked

hard, he said, and was getting on “so-so.” I took quite a liking to

him and patronized him to some extent. Whether I did so because I was

beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as Rattler and Mixer is

not necessary for me to state.

You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we

shareholders were done! Well, the next thing I heard was that Rattler,

who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at Mugginsville keeping

bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville Hotel, and that old Fagg had

struck it rich, and didn't know what to do with his money. All this was

told me by Mixer, who had been there, settling up matters, and likewise

that Fagg was sweet upon the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid

hotel. And so by hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old

Robins, the hotel man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie

Robins and Fagg. Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing,

and would do just as her father wished. I thought it would be a good

thing for Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man

he might be of some account. So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to look

after things.

It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for

me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had

tried to snub me two years ago. I talked to him about old Fagg and

Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful. He never

liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't. Did Nellie

like anybody else? He turned around to the mirror behind the bar and

brushed up his hair! I understood the conceited wretch. I thought I'd

put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry up matters. I had a long talk

with him. You could see by the way the poor fellow acted that he was

badly stuck. He sighed, and promised to pluck up courage to hurry

matters to a crisis. Nellie was a good girl, and I think had a sort of

quiet respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already

taken captive by Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and

pleasing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I. We are more

apt to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic

worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them, quite

as convenient. The difficulty with women is that their feelings are apt

to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you know, reasoning is out

of the question. This is what old Fagg would have known had he been of

any account. But he wasn't. So much the worse for him.

It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when in

walked old Fagg. I was surprised to see him down, but we talked over the

current topics in that mechanical manner of people who know that they

have something else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that formal

way. After an interval Fagg in his natural manner said:

“I'm going home!”

“Going home?”

“Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States. I came

to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I have executed

a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs. I have some papers I'd

like to leave with you. Will you take charge of them?”

“Yes,” I said. “But what of Nellie?”

His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in one

of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld. At length he

said:

“I shall not marry Nellie--that is”--he seemed to apologize internally

for the positive form of expression--“I think that I had better not.”

“David Fagg,” I said with sudden severity, “you're of no account!”

To my astonishment his face brightened. “Yes,” said he, “that's it!--I'm

of no account! But I always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved

that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than she did

me, and would be happier I dare say with him. But then I knew that old

Robins would have preferred me to him, as I was better off--and the

girl would do as he said--and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the

way--and so I left. But,” he continued, as I was about to interrupt him,

“for fear the old man might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough

to set him up in business for himself in Dogtown. A pushing, active,

brilliant fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be

in his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know, if

he doesn't. Good-by.”

I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be at all

amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to attend to

it, and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer arrived, and a

terrible incident occupied the papers for days afterward. People in all

parts of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful shipwreck, and

those who had friends aboard went away by themselves, and read the long

list of the lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant,

the noble, and loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was

the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the “man of no account”

had “gone home!”

MLISS

CHAPTER I

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,

and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red

mountain, stands “Smith's Pocket.” Seen from the red road at sunset,

in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the

outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside. The red stage topped

with red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the

tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and

vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably

owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger

at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance.

Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident

traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the impression that

it lies in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel

men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers

with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of

“Civilization and Refinement,” plodding along over the road he had just

ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.

An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his

disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge

fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling

more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of

man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and

disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some

forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road,

hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a

clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and here and

there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone left intact

and the hearthstone open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a

“pocket” on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were

taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were

expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling. And

then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject like

other pockets to depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of the

great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last

return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets,

and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.

Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into

hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloonkeeping.

Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it

was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then people began to

think, as they are apt to, that he had never been anything else. But the

settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily

not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected

tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with

its two fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its

two first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was

overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,

imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making outraged

Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface, look still more

homely, and putting personal insult on that greater portion of the

population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely

the necessity of cleanliness without the luxury of adornment. Then there

was a Methodist Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond,

on the mountainside, a graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.

“The Master,” as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night

in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully

making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the

extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as

“Riches are deceitful,” and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity

of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a

gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during

the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening of the

door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look

up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty

and shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed,

lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms

and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was

Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.

“What can she want here?” thought the master. Everybody knew “Mliss,”

as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.

Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable

disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way

as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as

philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought

the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She

followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met

her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the

mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with

subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.

Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.

The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, “stated” preacher, had placed her in the

hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced

her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally

at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the

guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so

inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution

that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished

morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families,

the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the

antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the

master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding

feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and

commanded his respect.

“I come here tonight,” she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard

glance on his, “because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when

them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. You keep

school, don't you? I want to be teached!”

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled hair

and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master would

have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But

with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his species, her

boldness awakened in him something of that respect which all original

natures pay unconsciously to one another in any grade. And he gazed at

her the more fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on that door

latch and her eyes on his:

“My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My

father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with him.

Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!”

“Well?” said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for

no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the

master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped; she began

to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line

of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered

slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush struggled up

to her cheek and tried to assert itself through the splashes of redder

soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward,

calling on God to strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless,

with her face on the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart

would break.

The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass. When,

with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs the MEA

CULPA of childish penitence--that “she'd be good, she didn't mean to,”

etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left Sabbath school.

Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why? Oh, yes. What did he

(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell her

that God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to go to

Sabbath school for? SHE didn't want to be “beholden” to anybody who

hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in the

little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the

sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected himself with

a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a

moment of serious silence he asked about her father.

Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for her?

Why did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks say, “Old

Bummer Smith's Mliss!” when she passed? Yes; oh yes. She wished he was

dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could what you

or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories from childish

lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I the unnatural

facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow

of her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his

shawl around her, and, bidding her come early in the morning, he walked

with her down the road. There he bade her “good night.” The moon shone

brightly on the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the bent

little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited until it had

passed the little graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it

turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against

the far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines

of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of never-ending

road, over which childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and crying into

the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he

shut the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed, and her

coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb,

in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone

occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.

Then began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in which

master and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence

and sympathy between them. Although obedient under the master's eye,

at times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss

would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,

finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek

the master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the

dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on

the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil

companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the master

in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that

seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back afterward, the master

drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it

were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had

set her feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the

experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock

of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.

But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those

few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older,

the wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith

that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes,

it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had

made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was enabled to assume

the garments of respect and civilization; and often a rough shake of

the hand, and words of homely commendation from a red-shirted and burly

figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the young master, and set him to

thinking if it was altogether deserved.

Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and the

master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious

copies, when there came a tap at the door and again Mliss stood before

him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps

but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his

former apparition. “Are you busy?” she asked. “Can you come with

me?”--and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she

said, “Come, then, quick!”

They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they

entered the town the master asked her whither she was going. She

replied, “To see my father.”

It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or

indeed anything more than “Old Smith” or the “Old Man.” It was the first

time in three months that she had spoken of him at all, and the master

knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him since her great change.

Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose,

he passively followed. In out-of-the-way places, low groggeries,

restaurants, and saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses, the

master, preceded by Mliss, came and went. In the reeking smoke and

blasphemous outcries of low dens, the child, holding the master's hand,

stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one

absorbing nature of her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing

Mliss, called to the child to sing and dance for them, and would have

forced liquor upon her but for the interference of the master. Others,

recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour slipped

by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a cabin on the

other side of the creek crossed by the long flume, where she thought he

still might be. Thither they crossed--a toilsome half-hour's walk--but

in vain. They were returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume,

gazing at the lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly,

sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear night air. The echoes

caught it, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the

dogs to barking all along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and move

quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream

rippled quite audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from

the hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge

the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to fall

thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master turned toward Mliss with an

unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had gone. Oppressed by

a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail to the river's bed, and,

jumping from boulder to boulder, reached the base of Red Mountain and

the outskirts of the village. Midway of the crossing he looked up and

held his breath in awe. For high above him on the narrow flume he saw

the fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in

the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central

point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of

awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the child appeared,

and, taking the master's hand, led him silently before what seemed a

ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited

manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected

event had at last happened--an expression that to the master in his

bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were

partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared

to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late

occupant. The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent

over them. It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a

bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.

CHAPTER II

The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a “change of

heart” supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described

in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had

“struck a good lead.” So when there was a new grave added to the

little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board

and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite

handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of “our oldest

Pioneers,” alluding gracefully to that “bane of noble intellects,” and

otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. “He leaves

an only child to mourn his loss,” says the BANNER, “who is now an

exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley.” The

Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,

and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of

her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial

effects of the “silent tomb,” and in this cheerful contemplation

drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the

pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse

to be comforted.

The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little

whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing

breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which

in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and

hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of

a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers

plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude

wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were

formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in

their desks, intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,

and the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the

dark-blue cowl of the monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something

in the odd association of this noxious plant with these memorials which

occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic

sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came

upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on

a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches,

her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to herself one of

the Negro melodies of her younger life. Recognizing him at a distance,

she made room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave

assumption of hospitality and patronage that would have been ridiculous

had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab

apples. The master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious

and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her

lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as long

as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had tested her

integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had

overcome him on seeing them died away.

Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known,

the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted

specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the

“Per-rairie Rose.” Being one of those who contend resolutely against

their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and

struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to

principles of “order,” which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope,

as “Heaven's first law.” But she could not entirely govern the orbits

of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own

“Jeemes” sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature asserted

itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard “between

meals,” and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those

important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted

walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were “keerless” of their

clothes. So with but one exception, however much the “Prairie Rose”

might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance,

the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling. That

one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She was the

realization of her mother's immaculate conception--neat, orderly, and

dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that “Clytie” was

a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher

threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was “bad,” and set her up

before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,

therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to

school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss

and others. For “Clytie” was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's

physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red

Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket,

to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and

languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour

of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes

to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that

in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were

uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the

request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat

disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that

she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on

his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung

back her blond curls when she did so. I don't remember whether I have

stated that the master was a young man--it's of little consequence,

however; he had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie

was taking her first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible

curves and factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he

was. Perhaps an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this

asceticism. He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she

returned to the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and

did not find it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he

endeavored to make himself particularly agreeable--partly from the

fact, I imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the

already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to school.

Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared

that they had left the school together, but the willful Mliss had taken

another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he called on

Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had

spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace that might

lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice,

but that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with his

innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the child

would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was almost as terrible,

muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at

heart, the master returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and

seated himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him addressed

to himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be written on a

leaf torn from some old memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious

trifling, had been sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost

tenderly, the master read as follows:

RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my

Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco-box] to

Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don't

you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she is

perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present from

Yours respectfully,

MELISSA SMITH.

The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon lifted

its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the trail that

led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the coming and going

of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he tore the missive into

fragments and scattered them along the road.

At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike

fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its

form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who

had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge

where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and

tasseled branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what

might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling

limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered

itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,

found the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he

met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other without

speaking. She was first to break the silence.

“What do you want?” she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of action. “I want some crab apples,”

he said humbly.

“Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?”

(It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional

syllables to that classical young woman's already long-drawn title.) “O

you wicked thing!”

“I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I am

famished!” and the young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned

against the tree.

Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life

she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his

heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:

“Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind you

don't tell,” for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and squirrels.

But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of

hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she

peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:

“If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch me?”

The master promised.

“Hope you'll die if you do!”

The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid down

the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the munching of the

pine nuts. “Do you feel better?” she asked, with some solicitude. The

master confessed to a recuperated feeling, and then, gravely thanking

her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone far

before she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white,

with tears in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right

moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking

in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, “Lissy, do you remember the first

evening you came to see me?”

Lissy remembered.

“You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn

something and be better, and I said--”

“Come,” responded the child, promptly.

“What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was

lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and

teach him to be better?”

The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited

patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and

raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them.

A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and

there stopped.

“We are waiting, Lissy,” said the master, in a whisper, and the child

smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long

pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the

doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the

master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but

the master, putting the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her;

and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest

odors into the open sunlit road.

CHAPTER III

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss

still retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps

the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little

breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline

offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions

were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and

irrepressible form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not

conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many

other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a

priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's

doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a

secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time

companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering.

Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and

anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in

days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers

had been. Mliss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of

endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It

was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only

allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her

doll, as she would to herself, it knew no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll

and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The

master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a slight resemblance

in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became

evident before long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance.

Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was

alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from

school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion

of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge

of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's

excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of

the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that “fetish”

ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away

and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing

in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous

perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.

Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of

course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing

beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around

her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are

not better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the

little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,

and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own

experience and judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained

his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see

that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but

one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition--the

faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though

not always an attribute of the noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both

fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were

synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had

arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that

he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined

to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat

humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he

thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps

with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that

had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a

complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked

back his dislike and went to McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed

that the master was looking “peartish,” and hoped he had got over the

“neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb

“ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method

of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain,

Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an

adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young family,”

added Mr. McSnagley; “and there's that mannerly young gal--so well

behaved--Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect

him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The

master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced

contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there

was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs.

Morpher's earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile

efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another

engagement, and left without asking the information required, but in his

after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the

full benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close

communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in the master's

manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long

postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked

full in his face with big, searching eyes. “You ain't mad?” said she,

with an interrogative shake of the black braids. “No.” “Nor bothered?”

“No.” “Nor hungry?” (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that might attack

a person at any moment.) “No.” “Nor thinking of her?” “Of whom, Lissy?”

“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who

was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) “No.” “Upon your

word?” (A substitute for “Hope you'll die!” proposed by the master.)

“Yes.” “And sacred honor?” “Yes.” Then Mliss gave him a fierce little

kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after

that she condescended to appear more like other children, and be, as she

expressed it, “good.”

Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket, and as

his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually

becoming the capital of the State not entirely definite, he contemplated

a change. He had informed the school trustees privately of his

intentions, but educated young men of unblemished moral character being

scarce at that time, he consented to continue his school term through

the winter to early spring. None else knew of his intention except his

one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people

of Wingdam as “Duchesny.” He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,

Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of

a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared

the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never

really believed he was going to do anything before it was done.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,

which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,

romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do

better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was

nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would

be a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed

letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister

of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of

leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few

months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the

master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some

loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better

guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,

Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and

afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent

Clytemnestra, labeled “the white girl,” to prevent mistakes, and impaled

them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered

in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few

ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or

Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were

gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children

in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a witness box. As

usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the

lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the

present instance Mliss and Clytie were preeminent, and divided

public attention; Mliss with her clearness of material perception

and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike

correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and

blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the

greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents

had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose

athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded

faces looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by

an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing

entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and

most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and

Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our

spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the

spheres, and defining the tethered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley

impressively arose. “Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of

this yere yearth and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it

had been a doing of it since the creashun, eh?” Mliss nodded a scornful

affirmative. “Well, war that the truth?” said McSnagley, folding his

arms. “Yes,” said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips tightly. The

handsome outlines at the windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a

saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging

to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and

whispered, “Stick to it, Mliss!” The reverend gentleman heaved a

deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at the master, then at the

children, and then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman softly

elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a

gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest

worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary

silence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big

eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin

rested softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the

master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:

“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!” There

was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on

McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and a comical look of

disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over

her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst

from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, a

yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk,

with the emphatic declaration:

“It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!”

CHAPTER IV

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were

visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests

exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, the

ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland

which climbed Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the

monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook

its dark-blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and

green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.

The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,

and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they

reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General superstition

had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that,

at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for

a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and “screaming farces”; that,

alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a

grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These

announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk,

and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the

master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of

thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous

evening the master and Mliss “assisted.”

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the

melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.

But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt

something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her

excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of

her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted

to give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and

arched her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities

of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly

affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief,

as was the tender-hearted “Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller”

and ogling the master at the same moment. But when the performance was

over, and the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a

long deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a

half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, “Now take me

home!” and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more

in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to ridicule

the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss thought that the

young lady who acted so beautifully was really in earnest, and in love

with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love

with him it was a very unfortunate thing! “Why?” said Mliss, with an

upward sweep of the drooping lid. “Oh! well, he couldn't support his

wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine clothes,

and then they wouldn't receive as much wages if they were married as if

they were merely lovers--that is,” added the master, “if they are not

already married to somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty

young countess takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain,

or snuffs the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As

to the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and must

cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of that

mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for I bought

some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty

good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think people

ought to take advantage of it and give him black eyes and throw him in

the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a

long time, before I would throw it up in his face, as the fellow did the

other night at Wingdam.”

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his

eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint

idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic

humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But

the young man continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs.

Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving

the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading

his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren

glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company, Mliss

was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was

for once omitted, owing to the absence of his trustworthy guide. As he

was putting away his books and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a

small voice piped at his side, “Please, sir?” The master turned and

there stood Aristides Morpher.

“Well, my little man,” said the master, impatiently, “what is it?

quick!”

“Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away

agin.”

“What's that, sir?” said the master, with that unjust testiness with

which we always receive disagreeable news.

“Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her

talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now; and

please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a speech

as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted right off by

heart,” and the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.

“What actor?” asked the master.

“Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold chain,”

said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke out his

breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness

in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted

along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the

master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped

up against him. “Where were they talking?” asked the master, as if

continuing the conversation.

“At the Arcade,” said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master paused. “Run down home,”

said he to the boy. “If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.

If she isn't there, stay home; run!” And off trotted the short-legged

Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building containing

a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young man crossed the

plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by turned and looked

after him. He looked at his clothes, took out his handkerchief, and

wiped his face before he entered the barroom. It contained the usual

number of loungers, who stared at him as he entered. One of them looked

at him so fixedly and with such a strange expression that the master

stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only his own reflection in

a large mirror. This made the master think that perhaps he was a little

excited, and so he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of

the tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of

advertisements.

He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and into the

billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter apartment a person

was standing by one of the tables with a broad-brimmed glazed hat on his

head. The master recognized him as the agent of the dramatic company;

he had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, from the peculiar

fashion of wearing his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his

search was not there, he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had

noticed the master, but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in

which vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand,

he pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The master

stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their glances met,

the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to speak,

something kept rising in his throat and retarded his utterance, and his

own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and resonant. “I

understand,” he began, “that Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my

scholars, has talked with you about adopting your profession. Is that

so?”

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an imaginary

shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions. Then, walking round

the table, he recovered the ball and placed it upon the spot. This duty

discharged, getting ready for another shot, he said:

“S'pose she has?”

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table in

his gloved hand, he went on:

“If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her guardian,

and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do the kind of

life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I have already

brought her out of an existence worse than death--out of the streets and

the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like

men. She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking

to give her an equivalent for these?”

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then

looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

“I know that she is a strange, willful girl,” continued the master, “but

she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over

her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further

steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I

am willing--” But here something rose again in the master's throat, and

the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his

head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

“Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!”

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance

than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The

best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master

felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in

the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow

sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove

and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up

the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his

beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many

feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports

followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about

his opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking

bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone

was holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding

from the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a

glittering knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master

to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well

as he could with his parched throat about “Mliss.” “It's all right,

my boy,” said Mr. Morpher. “She's home!” And they passed out into the

street together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had

come running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him

out, saying that somebody was trying to kill the master at the Arcade.

Wishing to be alone, the master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not

seek the agent again that night, and parted from him, taking the road

toward the schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door

open--still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most sensitive

organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late

adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he thought, that

such a construction might be put upon his affection for the child,

which at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily

abnegated his authority and affection? And what had everybody else said

about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last

obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had

been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked

his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the

people say? What would his friends say? What would McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to meet was

Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk, told the child, in

a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to be alone. As she

rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, buried his head in his

hands. When he looked up again she was still standing there. She was

looking at his face with an anxious expression.

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“No!” said the master.

“That's what I gave you the knife for!” said the child, quickly.

“Gave me the knife?” repeated the master, in bewilderment.

“Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit him.

Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why

didn't you stick him?” said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle of

the black eyes and a gesture of the little red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

“Yes,” said Mliss. “If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with the

play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you wouldn't

tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doctor so.

I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers. I'd rather die

first.”

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her

character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding

them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and in the queer

pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into when unduly excited:

“That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the

play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I won't

stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you let me, if

you didn't hate and despise me too!”

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over the

edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the corner of

her apron as if they had been wasps.

“If you lock me up in jail,” said Mliss, fiercely, “to keep me from the

play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why shouldn't

I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always carry it

here,” and she struck her breast with her clenched fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of

the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his and

looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:

“Lissy, will you go with ME?”

The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, “Yes.”

“But now--tonight?”

“Tonight.”

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that had

once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it seemed

she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered brightly above

them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them the

school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a

southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by

the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam

clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air

was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante,

Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the

Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a

color into his smoke-dried cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window of

the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the year now

about to pass away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there

was little to review; the year, like its predecessors, had been

uneventful--the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple

duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring

feasts and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the

rare transport ship and rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of

his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly

no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the

wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations,

the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last

earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the

other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short, it

was that glorious Indian summer of California history around which so

much poetical haze still lingers--that bland, indolent autumn of

Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican

independence and the reviving spring of American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire that

burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the

work of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the

leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture

text--the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos--an audible

commentary fell from his lips: “'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah,

little one, excellent!--'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ!

that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see

it!” A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right,

alas! twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed

it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: “'The

Ishmaelites having arrived--'”

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the

threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,

the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned quickly toward

the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But

it was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen that

weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant

son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented

himself with frowning upon the intruder.

But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful. He

was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of

a mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there was little about

him that was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent

than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of

the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on

a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather

into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale

under the headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he

did not need, having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict

surveillance of the Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign

vessels, and would do nothing against the severe discipline and good

order of the settlement. There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone

as he glanced toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the

open unguarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had

discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and was

then sound asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he was

accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order

issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there

was no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of

humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to

the Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not

weigh with his decision. He would have denied with equal disregard of

consequences that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded

so gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only

that there should be no communication between the ship and shore. “For

yourself, Senor Captain,” he continued, “accept my hospitality. The

fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your distinguished

presence”; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of

withdrawing from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort,

the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the

shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer

literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let

slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely

reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transaction checked

him. He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely

drew a settle before the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the

black-silk handkerchief that bound his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me

not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate.

I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under

the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became

still more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years' budget

of gossip! The Commander learned, for the first time, how Great Britain

lost her colonies; of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon,

whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the

Commander's superiors would have liked. And when Peleg turned

questioner, the Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself

master of the gossip of the Mission and Presidio, the “small-beer”

chronicles of that pastoral age, the conversion of the heathen, the

Presidio schools, and even asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!

It is said that at this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced

from about his person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled

trifles, and even forced some of them upon his host. It is further

alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of

aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in

a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown Spanish

poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers madrigals and

heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a

“little one” who was his, the Commander's, “soul”! These allegations,

perhaps unworthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should be received

with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the

Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest

the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous

manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of

this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many

protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated,

took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT.

When the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that the

holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the

plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for

many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement;

that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were

found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several

bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but

were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender, were discovered

in the stable of the blacksmith. But when the reader reflects upon the

sacredness of a Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of

the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my

countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at

once reject this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander. The sun

was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in bed, and

through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of

the previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran

to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden thought seemed to

strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with this, he

consulted the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There

was no mistake; the Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as

good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but

one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles

vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen,

through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their

beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the

recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly. The

Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood--he dared

not tell the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed

that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise and

discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in his life the

Commander thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text

which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of

being “all things to all men.” Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement.

The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise

a baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could look at it without

winking. It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that,

it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing

through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The

soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their

commander, and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.

The servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that

seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched

their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize

pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood

beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity

took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos.

Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his

miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only

saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg

had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most trusty retainers

stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,

confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses

and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The very children that he

loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be conscious of some hidden

sin. The result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.

For the first half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at variance.

He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however,

his voice took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,

impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain

that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the

Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful

solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the

right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of

the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency

of Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo

Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local

authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no

power over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual

advice failed signally. He retired baffled and confused from his first

interview with the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction

in the fateful power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted

himself, exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is

asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies. When the

Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that

skeptical and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined. Even the

power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the

affections of the people and the good order of the settlement departed

from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white

walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern

jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his

dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight

had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed

and ardently prayed for, came not. The sky was as tearless as the

right eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and

plotting among the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the

more firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and

looked up his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the hour

of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer attended

the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such times to some

solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The

firelight played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed

figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand

touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little

Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of all,” said the Commander,

with something of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing

diminutives of his native speech--“sweet one, what doest thou here? Art

thou not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?”

“No,” said the little Indian, readily, “not in the dark. I hear your

voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I see not

your eye, Senor Commandante. That only I fear--and that, O senor, O my

father,” said the child, lifting her little arms towards his--“that I

know is not thine own!”

The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself, he

kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A few hours

later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own

couch and slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the

low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting

through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he

not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and

listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in

the firelight as the savage lifted his arm; another moment and the sore

perplexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when

suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The

Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and

unaltered, glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the

earth in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast upon

the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of a moment.

Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily

driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a

blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ,

it was gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or

bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The rain

returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored between

priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over the sere

hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their martial

preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral

content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos. And

far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master, Peleg Scudder,

trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering glass

eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to the chiefs.

NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD

PART I--IN THE FIELD

It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably

conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and

my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape

affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,

performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena--a California sky.

The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures

in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and the

herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering

stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have

removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long

since given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under

that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons

were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry

atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic

which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical

for such thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the

spectator, with the old diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted

features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any

but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and

the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was

consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,

with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the

plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I

urged my horse forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought me to a

corral, and a little beyond a house, so low and broad it seemed at first

sight to be half-buried in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like some

monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the

vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls

for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No

projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle,

or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking

tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the

sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded

existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed

against the rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the

rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a

slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and

met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led

the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were

reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect

repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound

started from a dark corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by

the old man into obscurity, and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I

instantly received the impression that for a long time the group by the

fire had not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly

stated my business.

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo

Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so

as to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been

some intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted

adjacent--“settled land warrants,” interrupted the old man. “Ah, yes!

Land warrants--and then this was Mr. Tryan?”

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other

public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face. It was

certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of

that mining operation known as “ground sluicing”; the harder lines of

underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and

soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere

of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement of the contest,

with a fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent and

unrestrained expression. He told me--what I had already learned--that

the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the

loose phraseology of the DESENO as beginning in the VALDA or skirt

of the hill, its precise location long the subject of litigation.

I listened and answered with little interest, for my mind was still

distracted by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as

by his odd face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the

silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the

wind was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark

addressed to the recumbent figures.

“Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar's,

tomorrow?”

There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided

answer.

“Kin you go, Kerg?”

“Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?”

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another

hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was

lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.

“Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?”

“Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to pack

her and the baby agin.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for

the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the

finest things I had ever seen.

“Wise?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched

boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.

“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down

the river.”

“Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum teeth

to get the money from you even then.”

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's parsimony,

and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in

honorable retirement.

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with wimmin

and children, p'r'aps you'll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,

intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:

“Got no saddle.”

“Wot's gone of your saddle?”

“Kerg, there”--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might

have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his

head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met

his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side,

and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take

the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance

that I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his

voice:

“Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and introduce you

to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic

allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a

light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger

present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again,

and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped

lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly

on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made

upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he

cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the

prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame, listening

to the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair

which had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered

a crazy table in one corner, with an ink bottle and pen; the latter

in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and

farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked

the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild

flavor of the horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the

inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the shadowy

gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it difficult to

believe I had ever known a different existence. My profession had often

led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained

habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable

I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts--which I think occur

naturally to people in like situations--that this was the general rule

of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It

was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl

caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark

platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was

occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed woman was

already taking her repast as she at the same time gave nourishment to

a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed

with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat

without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace,

and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and

dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the

table often betrayed the presence of the “wellspring of pleasure.” The

conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing

notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a

vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that when a chance

allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder

Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed

bitterly against the system of ranch-holding by the “greasers,” as he

was pleased to term the native Californians. As the same ideas have

been sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be

worthy of record.

“Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer doors.

Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants--most of 'em

made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More fools the 'Merrikans for

lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan and blood money.

“Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot

for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not

so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home

and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and

crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wurent

allowed in Mizzoori.”

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and

met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act did not

escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the

rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.

“It was agin Nater, and agin God,” added Tryan. “God never intended

gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.

That's why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate

for lazy lopers. She never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and

smoked away.”

How long he continued and with what further illustration I could not

say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I

was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a

smaller room, and pointed to a bed.

“You'd better sleep there tonight,” he said; “you'll be more

comfortable, and I'll call you early.”

I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were

then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The “boys”

returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was

thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it

did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it

lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by

day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its

owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed

George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and

shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the

wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place

insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly

into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind,

whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar

faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran

not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house

was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before

me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I

noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress

was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as

resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of

the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous

interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears,

and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought the

house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The

door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside

the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as

though he were hunting up prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to

enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying

beside the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy

slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had

given up his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake

him, but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I

went to bed with a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil

figure soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and

grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed,

ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the

day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been

magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash

of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin basin, helped to

brighten me. It was still early, but the family had already breakfasted

and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in the distance showed that the

unfortunate Tom had already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more

cheerful--there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of

a good night's rest. After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,

in a few moments we were mounted and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked

with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its

banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride, the

far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the

crisp dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by

the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and

picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed,

untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty

were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which

levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel

bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we

again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be “Chu Chu,” staid and

respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of plank

roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white

feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust. “Give her her

head; don't you see she likes it?” and Chu Chu seems to like it, and

whether bitten by native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of

the roan, “blood” asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude

of years is beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek

widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side,

carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are

scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded together in vast

restless herds. George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as

if to include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, “Ours!”

“About how many, George?”

“Don't know.”

“How many?”

“'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head,” says George, reflecting. “We don't

know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run.”

“What are they worth?”

“About thirty dollars a head.”

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing

George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan

household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says,

apologetically:

“I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says

it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact,

he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through,

and we'd have to get up and move stakes further down.”

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are

passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center of

the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and in a few

moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.

“TORO!” shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a

way for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their

spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might

have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of

Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to

meet the exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to

wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.

“That's not our brand,” says George; “they're strange stock,” and he

points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of

Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But

the herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again

recourse to the authoritative “TORO,” and with swinging riata divides

the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When we are free, and breathing

somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack

anyone.

“Never horsemen--sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but

curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a

chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the

pursuit of knowledge. But,” adds George, “here's the lower bench of the

foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that White building you see

yonder is the casa.”

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe building,

baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the

charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the

sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable

coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water,

from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the center of a

low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied

about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving

his gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added to

the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George

advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness

and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much

devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by

the effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white

teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we

entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which

would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had

just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened

calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the smoke curling

placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had

finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation.

George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in

broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity.

When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far

the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his

black-silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native

Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he

was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in

half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again “loping” in the

staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by

restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by

way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further

intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned

with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “QUE

BUENO?--Your courts are always just.”

The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing

monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find

the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview

the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I

was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as

clearly as my recollection served.

“The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this initial

point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.”

Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried

grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose

from his stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph

Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:

“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land

in the fashion of my country.”

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

“I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take the

LLANO!--and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till

their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it

be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it

of mine!”

We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the

passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill

concealing his triumph, interrupted:

“Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than the

cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side

of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.”

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet

sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his

native invective.

“Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!--open not, I say, your lying, Judas

lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-r-r-ramba!”

With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant

thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had

been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle and

galloped away.

George turned to me:

“Will you go back with us tonight?”

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and

the roaring wind, and hesitated.

“Well then, goodby.”

“Goodby, George.”

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far when I

turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was

already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it,

and a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last

indistinct impression of George Tryan.

PART II--IN THE FLOOD

Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was again

in the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation

had erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had

obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of

1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning, I took

my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the

GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the

pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks,

and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they

silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to

friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed soberly on

the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by curiosity

listened eagerly to newer details. But with that human disposition to

seize upon any circumstance that might give chance event the exaggerated

importance of instinct, I was half-conscious of something more than

curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted

us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of

Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the

hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a

dripping rubber-cased mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself in a

shining cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as

court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his

boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to

most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between

us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the

city, stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy

thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water

which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles

in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on

the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses

on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or

by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in

and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the

fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels

and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as

roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the

visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed

to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the occasional

splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life

and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie

lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to

the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of

the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of

earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors

of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion,

occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca

or Laura had been snatched, half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is

otherwise peculiar, and refuses the proffered fare, for--am I not a

citizen of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering

cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard

Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money. Still, if I

must spend it, there is the Howard Society, and the women and children

without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal, bleak

place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,

and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here

Giuseppe tells me of the “Relief Boat” which leaves for the flooded

district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has

taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of

others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the

afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from

me until I stand on the slippery deck of “Relief Boat No. 3.”

An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was once

the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by

tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a

vast inland sea. Stretches of “tule” land fertilized by its once regular

channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The

cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in

symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the

turbid flood. The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and

there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows

an undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds

waiting the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or

swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are

stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the

moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the

lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows,

hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in

rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their

suggestive quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows

oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the

few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary

rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual

misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number

of our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report

to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles

beyond the bar. There is a voluntary contribution taken among the

generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company

with a hearty “Godspeed” on either side. But our signal lights are not

far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable

Yankee cheer--which scatters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks

far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us--the

wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward

the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we

penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our

party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I

borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise

am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way

northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars

in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer

is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken

by the “bow oar”:

“Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling

light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the

shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon

us.

“Stern, all; a steamer!”

“Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply of the coxswain.

“It's a house, and a big one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the

darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a

window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back

to me with it as I listen with beating heart.

“There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside.

Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's

another!”

In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor

to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end

of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in

one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I

spring toward him with an exclamation:

“Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on

his shoulder, and say:

“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The

boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we

involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance,

free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling

through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no

further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their

peace. I make one more effort:

“Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your

ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he

repeated to himself “The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--Espiritu

Santo” over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to

fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully

by the hand and said:

“Hush!”

We were silent.

“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, “I'm a

MOVING OFF!”

“Moving off?”

“Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you

hear?--there! listen!”

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

“It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night.

I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to

move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the

door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why

don't they quit?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further

traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so

much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious

feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them

briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:

“Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone, gone

for the hides and hoofs,” and he groans bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and

perhaps the family are safe by this time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to

the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its

strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the

stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky

shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had

seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket

near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of

the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about

George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened

at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one

of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board.

“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.

“Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is,” adds the engineer,

with a smile at some luscious remembrance. “You'll find him for'ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the

irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and

rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes

that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that

circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me

at my ease by at once addressing me:

“These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's

become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of

admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at

last pulled on his feet.

“So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must

have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old

woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!”

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was

evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the

contending emotions to ask about George.

“Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about

the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved

suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you,” to a

passing boatman, “when are you goin' to give us some grub? I'm hungry

'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn butcher when things is

dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”

I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer

climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.

“Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?” I ask.

“Thar ain't much to do now,” says the practical young man. “I'll have to

lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain't

worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the

ole man'll drive stakes next.”

“I meant as to your father and George, Wise.”

“Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the old

woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween this and

Altascar's ef he ain't thar now.”

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

“Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if

George helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built

too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah,” says Wise, with

reflective admiration, “those greasers ain't the darned fools people

thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy.”

But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody short.

“I shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to find George.”

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon

him.

“I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage--workin' on

shares, eh!”

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me,

and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might

warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of George's

self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he had helped

and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen

him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the

foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade

farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting

by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head

swung round, pulled by sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay

nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the

creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns

were seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming

implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the “LLANO DE ESPIRITU

SANTO.” As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water

into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October

over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant

hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing

silently, and I find my mind, released from its tension, growing

benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too, is getting more shallow

as we leave the banks of the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly

over the thwarts, I detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide

to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to the north of

the line of alder, making an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the

right to avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside and I call to the

men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, “L. E. S.

I.” Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was George's. It

had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of

the mound was deeply dented with horses' hoofs. The stake was covered

with horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.

The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,

resting and rowing by turns, and oftener “poling” the shallower surface,

but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My recollection of the

old survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings

of the creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to

determine the distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability.

Night overtakes us in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more

dangerous than it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still

new in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of

perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about

eight o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few

hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white

walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving

in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose characterizes

the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar met

me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had

dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously

held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him about George and

my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely

laid his hand on my shoulder.

“POCO A POCO, senor--not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you have

cold. Necessary it is you should have peace.”

He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he

gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves

before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was

intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the

corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity

was deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as

the whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn

inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two

smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my men

ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept

down the instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.

“You have eat?”

I said, “Yes,” to please him.

“BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always.”

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his

countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than

a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly

before him.

“It was made by me, senor.”

“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said. “If I could find

him--”

“He is here.”

“Here! and”--but I could not say “well!” I understood the gravity of

the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the

building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the

broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor

to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before

the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and

sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the

humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their

household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him

once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that he

had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

“He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and turned away. There

was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful

outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her

downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently,

left the loving and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows

of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the

horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he

found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his

person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and

that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that

help he had so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed

his horse. These incidents were corroborated by many who collected

in the great chamber that evening--women and children--most of them

succored through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless

above.

He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange perennial

greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty plain. A

little slab of sandstone with the initials “G. T.” is his monument,

and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the

“Espiritu Santo Rancho.”

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a

quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion,

and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness.

She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the

latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes,

when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a

small scar left by a single drop of vitriol--happily the only drop of

an entire phial--thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that

reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer

had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was

generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek

was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of

THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was “an exaggerated

dimple.” Colonel Starbottle was instantly “reminded of the beautifying

patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the

blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank

eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a

scar--a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And

this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent

your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I

said to her, 'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar,

blank you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man

that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I

did, blank me.' These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it

a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank sum you can name and prove

it, blank me.”

Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in

love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love

was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone

had been known to express skepticism.

The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was

Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this

Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted

that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made

it perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have

it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of

its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the

occasion of her second divorce), “The cold world does not understand

Clara yet”; and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the

exception of a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul

than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read

those lines entitled “Infelissimus,” commencing “Why waves no cypress

o'er this brow?” originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the

signature of “The Lady Clare,” without feeling the tear of sensibility

tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his

cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT

INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character

of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable

answer to the query.

Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical

manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the

newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick.

Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a

too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which

an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced

in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a

six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out

the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a

certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some

reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several mining

camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the dreariness of the

dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in

sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as

brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities--they were

married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or

“Fideletown,” as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.

The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.

Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while

freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that

which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery

and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to

beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to

a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr.

Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly

to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel

Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the

genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a

two-columned criticism, signed “A. S.,” also published in the AVALANCHE,

and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess

a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian

numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel

Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept

the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language with which the

colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to

be familiar. Indeed, the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile

doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly

written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing

eulogium signed “A. S. S.”

The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the

AVALANCHE. “An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last,

between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the

well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon.

Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although

it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the

calves of his legs from the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which

were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of

Melican man's firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known,

although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that

points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have

often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are

posted.”

Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying

circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. “The old man's

head is level,” said one long-booted philosopher. “Ef the colonel

kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel,

Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure thing.” During

this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her

husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the

clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during

which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the

strictest propriety.

It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended,

left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of

dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few

loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the

Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick

reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation.

Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the

main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.

It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The

dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she

was joined by Colonel Starbottle.

The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port

which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and

his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm,

swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,

vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes;

and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his

place at her side.

“The coast is clear,” said the colonel, “and Tretherick is over at Dutch

Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you

need fear no trouble from him. I,” he continued, with a slight inflation

of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, “I will see that

you are protected in the removal of your property.”

“I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!” simpered the

lady as they walked along. “It's so pleasant to meet someone who

has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and

heartless as this.” And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not

until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.

“Yes, certainly, of course,” said the colonel, glancing nervously up and

down the street--“yes, certainly.” Perceiving, however, that there

was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.

Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the

possession of too much soul. That many women--as a gentleman she would

excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--but many beautiful women

had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely

deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two

natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of

a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a

hypocritical society--when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled

in poetical union, then--but here the colonel's speech, which had been

remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost

inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have

heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.

Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite

virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.

It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very

pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost

files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in

which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,

uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At

the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there

was no other sign of occupancy. “The coast,” as the colonel had said,

was indeed “clear.” Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel

would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. “Come for me

in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed,” she said,

as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it

with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the

gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as

smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had

gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted

hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.

Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the

dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it

when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she

had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were

half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay

her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her

I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened

with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to

the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers

the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came

upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty

head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast

in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned

away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where

hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing

suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,

thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant

lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness

to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time

sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could

not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the

dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she

became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And

then the child's voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”

Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a

little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was

torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled

seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque

little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain

self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much

to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently

of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a

cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long

shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders

and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had

but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in

the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it

isn't,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,

said in deliciously imperfect speech:

“Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?”

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the

child's shoulders, and said angrily:

“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”

“Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!” she

continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had

dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was

dancing up and down before her.

“What's your name, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the

small and not very white hands from her garments.

“Tarry.”

“Tarry?”

“Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.”

“Caroline?”

“Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.”

“Whose child ARE you?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to

keep down a rising fear.

“Why, yours,” said the little creature with a laugh. “I'm your little

durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn

away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I

live wid you and Papa.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.

“I fink it's free days,” said Carry reflectively.

“You think! Don't you know?” sneered Mrs. Tretherick. “Then, where did

you come from?”

Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a

great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:

“Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last week.”

“Last week! You said three days just now,” returned Mrs. Tretherick with

severe deliberation.

“I mean a monf,” said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness

and confusion.

“Do you know what you are talking about?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick

shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her

and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.

But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs.

Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.

“There now--stop that sniffling,” said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating

her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly

uncomfortable. “Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.

Stop,” she continued, as Carry moved away. “Where's your papa?”

“He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn”--she hesitated--“two,

free, days.”

“Who takes care of you, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her

curiously.

“John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.”

“Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,”

said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. “Stop--where

are you going?” she added as the child began to ascend the stairs,

dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

“Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.”

“I ain't your mamma,” shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly

re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to

work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her

best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched

her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an

indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to

herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first

wife--this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care--just

to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would

follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn,

but RED--of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother,

and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been

prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been

kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when

needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--business, as he

said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to

dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious,

also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely

no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched

a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among

the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful

attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious

coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon

the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem

describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came

upon her husband and “another” flaunting in silks and diamonds. She

pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a beautiful

wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the

AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all

this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He--she

laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her

face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so

quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied

that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings

and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor

above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been

used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly

upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small

window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the

barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's

glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor

with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking

to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was

rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the

doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its

stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.

Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation

almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had

informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the

interview she added pathetically, “that if she was dood, very dood, she

might be her mamma, and love her very much.”

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of

humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected

her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her

cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.

The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose

very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,

the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these

touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.

She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and

thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the

room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a

dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she

suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of

the colonel's cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the

hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated

statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. “Don't

tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!”

she almost screamed. “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of

the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”

“It's a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea

of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to

comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of

her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He

stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but

all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a

sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.

“It's of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer

to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from

the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. “It's of no use:

my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I

shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I

will put him face to face with his infamy.”

I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the

convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded

by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in

his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle

to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental

nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing

above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.

“That's her,” said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions,

in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical

construction.

“Ah!” said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection

and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. “Ah! pretty

little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find

yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?” The colonel's impulse

also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to

him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven.

Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further

discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick

and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.

Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into

an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous

resemblance to the “Madonna and Child.” Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but

did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a

moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child,

said in a whisper: “Go now. Don't come here again, but meet me tonight

at the hotel.” She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly

and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.

“Do you think,” said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a

prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls just

visible in the folds of her dress--“do you think you will be 'dood' if I

let you stay in here and sit with me?”

“And let me tall you Mamma?” queried Carry, looking up.

“And let you call me Mamma!” assented Mrs. Tretherick with an

embarrassed laugh.

“Yeth,” said Carry promptly.

They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught sight of

the trunk.

“Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?” she said with a quick nervous look,

and a clutch at the woman's dress.

“No-o,” said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.

“Only playing your dowin' away,” suggested Carry with a laugh. “Let me

play too.”

Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and presently

reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely proceeded to

pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A

question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from

the child; and before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in

possession of all her earlier history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick

had been obliged to take Carry upon her lap, pending the most

confidential disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs.

Tretherick had apparently ceased to be interested in Carry's

disclosures; and when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle

on unheeded, and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls.

“You don't hold me right, Mamma,” said Carry at last, after one or two

uneasy shiftings of position.

“How should I hold you?” asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,

half-embarrassed laugh.

“Dis way,” said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm around

Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--“dis

way--dere.” After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small

animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in

that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in

the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her.

She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old

horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled

days of sickness and distrust--days of an overshadowing fear--days of

preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented,

with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have

been--she dared not say HAD been--and wondered. It was six years ago;

if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were

folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten

their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a

half-sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the

sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if

she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the gust that

shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.

A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily in

her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to do it

now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might

have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining

sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and abandonment, yet a

desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay, or despair.

Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in

vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks,

he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes and sunbeams.

When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr.

Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much

diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER openly

alluded to the “forcible abduction” of the child with the same freedom,

and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized

the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps

a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not,

however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the

INTELLIGENCER. The majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that

Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty

slippers was enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair

abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick as

an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to

openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an

ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent

man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons,

and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display

of sentiment. “She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel,” said one

sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great

readiness of illustration; “and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away

someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU,

Kernel, diet she should jist shake you--is what gits me. And they do

say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them

corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered

in and out o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?” It was another generous

and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine

on the colonel's wounds. “The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick

prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the

stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and

offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud

employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well, I'll tell the boys

it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories DO get round.”

Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in

Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,

stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further

deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach,

and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was

true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted

it. Even those who were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize

the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced

unconcern. But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of

this veracious chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.

It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that

Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing

Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped with long

poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation

at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother Mongolians--a conversation

characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity

which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who

did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with

which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was

passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply

kicked them out of his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a

stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips

of yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a

small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim

solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed,

ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials “C. T.”

Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash

his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.

Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. “Me no likee

Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now.” Mr. Tretherick violently

suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.

Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel

Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently

interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a

letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. “If you bring me an answer, I'll

double that--sabe, John?” Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental,

with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another

gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the

AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance

on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after

trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into

accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother

Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony

of Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten

side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean

clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his

letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry

of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly

affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the

levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details

of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the

difficulties that subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of

the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose

moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.

At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger--purely an act of

Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known

hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on

suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe

reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of

justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public

schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened

progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese

quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the

strong arm of the law.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and

on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy

Fook's several clients.

It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill

of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the

summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy. There

was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or

without, only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over everything.

There was a fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets: there was a

dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of

the hill, the Mission Ridge was already hidden, and the chill sea

breeze made him shiver. As he put down his basket to rest himself, it

is possible that, to his defective intelligence and heathen experience,

this “God's own climate,” as was called, seemed to possess but

scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah

Fe illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the

schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at this

hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and turning a

corner, at last stopped before a small house.

It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the little

strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and

above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat. Ah Fe rang

the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly

admitted him, as if he were some necessary domestic animal. Ah Fe

silently mounted the stairs, and entering the open door of the front

chamber, put down the basket and stood passively on the threshold.

A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with a

child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe instantly

recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his immobile face

changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly. She

evidently did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes. But

the child, curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.

“Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in Fiddletown.”

For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The child

clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said shortly: “Me

John--Ah Fe--allee same. Me know you. How do?”

Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at Ah Fe.

Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Carry's

perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows.

With a recollection of past pain, and an obscure suspicion of impending

danger, she asked him when he had left Fiddletown.

“Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San Flisco.

Likee washee. Likee Tally.”

Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to consider

how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his curt directness

and sincerity. But she said, “Don't tell anybody you have seen me,” and

took out her pocketbook.

Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe,

without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily furnished.

Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy, saw that both Mrs.

Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet it is my duty to

state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly and firmly over the

half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to him.

Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of extraordinary

contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from apparently no

particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon the basket with the

remark:

“One piecee washman flagittee.”

Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his efforts

were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right ear, a

many-folded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this carefully, he at

last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he handed to Mrs.

Tretherick.

“You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money. Me

fetchee money to you. All lightee.”

“But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John,” said Mrs.

Tretherick earnestly. “There must be some mistake. It belongs to some

other person. Take it back, John.”

Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's extended

hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.

“Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He say,

'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.' Me no takee

back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me fetchee money you.

Me no takee back.”

Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she MIGHT

have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event, she had no

right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by refusing it. So she

said: “Very well, John, I will keep it. But you must come again and see

me--” here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated with a new and sudden revelation

of the fact that any man could wish to see any other than herself--“and,

and--Carry.”

Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic laugh

without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he shut the door

carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower hall he, however,

found an unexpected difficulty in opening the front door, and, after

fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment, looked around for some help

or instruction. But the Irish handmaid who had let him in was

contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and did not appear.

There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall simply

record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a scarf,

evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was lying.

As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested lightly on the

table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own volition, the scarf began to

creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up

his sleeve slowly, and with an insinuating, snakelike motion; and then

disappeared somewhere in the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying

the least interest or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated

his experiments upon the lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red

damask, moved by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered

itself under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same

hidden channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;

for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was

enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps upon

the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but patiently

shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind him again, and

stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that now shrouded earth

and sky.

From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's figure

until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present loneliness, she

felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may have ascribed to

the higher emotions and the consciousness of a good deed that certain

expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of the bosom, that was really

due to the hidden presence of the scarf and tablecloth under his blouse.

For Mrs. Tretherick was still poetically sensitive. As the gray fog

deepened into night, she drew Carry closer toward her, and, above

the prattle of the child, pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic

recollection at once bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah

Fe linked her again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary

interval between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,

thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry stopped

suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw her small arms

around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.

Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever dedicated

to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs.

Tretherick's own theory of this interval and episode, with its feeble

palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak

apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard.

Her slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she

found that the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest

emotions of the human heart, and compelling the editorial breast to the

noblest commendation in the editorial pages, was singularly inadequate

to defray the expenses of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage,

but failed signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was

different from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it

was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was

not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough

in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience.

In this strait, it occurred to her that she had a voice--a contralto of

no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching;

and she finally obtained position in a church choir. She held it for

three months, greatly to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much

to the satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward

her during the singing of the last hymn.

I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that slanted

through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall very tenderly on

her beautiful head with its stacked masses of deerskin-colored hair, on

the low black arches of her brows, and to deepen the pretty fringes

that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet. Very pleasant it was to watch

the opening and shutting of that small straight mouth, with its quick

revelation of little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly

deepen her satin cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very

sweetly conscious of admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered

herself under your eye like a racer under the spur.

And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano--a

little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment

of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful; that her

conceit was unbearable; that, if she considered the rest of the choir

as slaves, she (the soprano) would like to know it; that her conduct on

Easter Sunday with the basso had attracted the attention of the whole

congregation; and that she herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up

during the service; that her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her

singing in the choir with a person who had been on the stage, but

she had waived this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs.

Tretherick had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child

who sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to

me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a note

at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger longer with

the congregation--an act that could be attributed only to a defective

moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular dry goods clerk on

weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently behind his eyebrows on

the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would put up with it no longer.

The basso alone--a short German with a heavy voice, for which he seemed

reluctantly responsible, and rather grieved at its possession--stood up

for Mrs. Tretherick, and averred that they were jealous of her because

she was “bretty.” The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel,

wherein Mrs. Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement

and epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to

be supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act was

marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the usual

soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with triumph, but

on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they were beggars

henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the very bread out

of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a flood of penitent

tears. They did not come so quickly as in her old poetical days; but

when they came they stung deeply. She was roused by a formal visit from

a vestryman--one of the music committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long

lashes, put on a new neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She staid

there two hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that

the vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When

Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the glass

and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.

It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies received a

powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's wife. That lady

called upon several of the church members and on Dr. Cope's family.

The result was that, at a later meeting of the music committee, Mrs.

Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to the size of the building

and she was invited to resign. She did so. She had been out of a

situation for two months, and her scant means were almost exhausted,

when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was tossed into her lap.

The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into

shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.

Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had slipped away

unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in

her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her back to an active

realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was wont to scan

the advertisements in the faint hope of finding some avenue of

employment--she knew not what--open to her needs; and Carry had noted

this habit.

Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights, and

opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following paragraph

in the telegraphic column:

FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this place,

died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was addicted to

intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble.

Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another page of

the paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in a book. Mrs.

Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was

unusually silent and cold. When Carry was undressed and in bed, Mrs.

Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, taking

Carry's flaming head between her hands, said:

“Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?”

“No,” said Carry, after a moment's thought.

“But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give you

nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?”

Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. “Should YOU, Mamma?”

Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. “Go to

sleep,” she said sharply, and turned away.

But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around her,

and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was

broken up by sobs.

“Don't ky, Mamma,” whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of their

recent conversation. “Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new papa, if he

loved you very much--very, very much!”

A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was

married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently

elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils of the

State. As I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by

the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture to quote some of

his graceful periods. “The relentless shafts of the sly god have been

lately busy among our gallant Solons. We quote 'one more unfortunate.'

The latest victim is the Hon. C. Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair

enchantress in the case is a beautiful widow, a former votary of

Thespis, and lately a fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most

fashionable churches of San Francisco, where she commanded a high

salary.”

THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact

with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press. “The

new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately advented in the

legislature with a little bill to change the name of Tretherick

to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate down there. Mr.

Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we presume the gallant

colonel is not afraid of ghosts.” It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick

to state that the colonel's victory was by no means an easy one. To

a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the

impediment of a rival--a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who

had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theater and church, his

professional habits debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and

indeed any other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As

this gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence

of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous rival.

Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in professionally to lay

out a brother senator, who had unhappily fallen by the colonel's pistol

in an affair of honor; and either deterred by physical consideration

from rivalry, or wisely concluding that the colonel was professionally

valuable, he withdrew from the field.

The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward incident.

During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the charge of

Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the city, immediately on

reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle announced her intention of at

once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's to bring the child home. Colonel

Starbottle, who had been exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness

which he had endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally

buttoned his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking

unsteadily once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife

with his most imposing manner.

“I have deferred,” said the colonel with an exaggeration of port that

increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of speech--“I

have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash my duty ter

dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal happ'ness, to

bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by unpleasht revelashun.

Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now. The chile is gone!”

“Gone!” echoed Mrs. Starbottle.

There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden

drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment nearly

sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.

“I'll splain all in a minit,” he said with a deprecating wave of the

hand. “Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly event

wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish releash

you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile. The mom't Tretherick

die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too. Thash law. Who's

chile b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead. Chile can't b'long dead

man. Damn nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh your chile? no! whose chile

then? Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Unnerstan?”

“Where is she?” said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a very

low voice.

“I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm lawyer,

leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as leshlator, and

'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother at any coss--any

coss.”

“Where is she?” repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed on

the colonel's face.

“Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by fav'rin

gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!”

Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly

collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to beam

with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her

as she sat.

“Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.

Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's.” The colonel paused,

and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently in his

breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles, on

the woman before him. “Why should dark shed-der cass bligh on two sholes

with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good chile, but summonelse chile!

Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht,

you all's have me!”

Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. “YOU!” she cried, bringing out a

chest note that made the chandeliers ring--“You that I married to give

my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I whistled to my side to

keep the men off me--YOU!”

She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had

been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom, and then

suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a burning fire

over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and

mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening of the head.

“Listen!” she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. “Hear me! If

you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child. If you

ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back.

For where she goes, I go; you hear me! Where she has gone, look for me.”

She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her

arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary

bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door.

Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear

of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady

foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two

unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from

time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests,

until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions,

and the narcotic quantity of his potations.

Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables

and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course

of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her

mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if

she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard

once more a childish voice asking, “Is it Mamma?” But the epithet now

stung her to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed

it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced

that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper

with a broken sandal string. She uttered a great cry here--the first she

had uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again

and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her

sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through

her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing

that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish

lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede

before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and staggering to the

bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed

to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and

there was a spot upon her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still

another on the white counterpane of the bed.

The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white

curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the

roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-wrapping all things

in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very

quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the

other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary

couch, snored peacefully.

A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the

State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any other

time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm

that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole,

played around this soft Italian Capital, whirled in and out of the great

staring wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the

cold green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff,

dark figures in its streets. From the level of the street, the four

principal churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their

misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near

the railroad station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to

an enormous locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a

pyramidal row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for

a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter

location. But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for Young

Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola plainly

from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue. There was

no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it was a public

institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty face at its window,

were clearly visible all over the township.

The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express brought

but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger

alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting sleigh toward the

Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again, with that passionless

indifference to human sympathies or curiosity peculiar to express

trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into the station again; the

station door was locked; and the stationmaster went home.

The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness

of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then

surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and confectionery

saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the admirable

regulations of the Institute failed to entirely develop the physical

and moral natures of its pupils. They conformed to the excellent dietary

rules in public, and in private drew upon the luxurious rations of their

village caterer. They attended church with exemplary formality, and

flirted informally during service with the village beaux. They received

the best and most judicious instruction during school hours, and

devoured the trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was

an aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young

creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even Mistress

Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant

spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of

“them young things” did her good, and had even been known to shield them

by shameless equivocation.

“Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll

be missed,” said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with an aquiline

nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader, as she rose

from her seat. “Have you got the books, Addy?” Addy displayed three

dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof. “And the provisions,

Carry?” Carry showed a suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack.

“All right, then. Come, girls, trudge--Charge it,” she added, nodding to

her host as they passed toward the door. “I'll pay you when my quarter's

allowance comes.”

“No, Kate,” interposed Carry, producing her purse, “let me pay; it's my

turn.”

“Never!” said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, “even if you do

have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California. Never!

Come, girls, forward, march!”

As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their feet.

Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. “Sakes alive, galls! ye mussn't

go out in sich weather. Better let me send word to the Institoot, and

make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor.” But the last sentence was

lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks as the girls, hand in hand,

ran down the steps into the storm, and were at once whirled away.

The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast. It

was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow. For

some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience kept them

bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut from the highroad

across an open field, their strength gave out, the laugh grew less

frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's brown eyes. When they

reached the road again, they were utterly exhausted. “Let us go back,”

said Carry.

“We'd never get across that field again,” said Addy.

“Let's stop at the first house, then,” said Carry.

“The first house,” said Addy, peering through the gathering darkness,

“is Squire Robinson's.” She darted a mischievous glance at Carry that,

even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick blood to her cheek.

“Oh, yes!” said Kate with gloomy irony, “certainly; stop at the squire's

by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home after by your

dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from Mrs. Robinson, and

hopes that the young ladies may be excused this time. No!” continued

Kate with sudden energy. “That may suit YOU; but I'm going back as I

came--by the window, or not at all” Then she pounced suddenly, like a

hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a tendency to sit down on a snowbank

and whimper, and shook her briskly. “You'll be going to sleep next.

Stay, hold your tongues, all of you--what's that?”

It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the

darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. “Hold down your heads,

girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost.” But it was not, for a

voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked

if its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him,

they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing

a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same

material, disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen

dark eyes. “It's a son of old Santa Claus!” whispered Addy. The girls

tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh; they had regained

their former spirits. “Where shall I take you?” said the stranger

quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, “To

the Institute.” They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic

building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. “You

know the way better than I,” he said. “Where do you go in?” “Through the

back window,” said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. “I see!”

responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting quickly, removed

the bells from the horses. “We can drive as near as you please now,”

he added by way of explanation. “He certainly is a son of Santa Claus,”

whispered Addy. “Hadn't we better ask after his father?” “Hush!” said

Kate decidedly. “He is an angel, I dare say.” She added with a delicious

irrelevance, which was, however, perfectly understood by her feminine

auditors, “We are looking like three frights.”

Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from

a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There

was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he handed his fair

companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense

though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window,

and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and

somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window.

“Thank you and good night!” whispered three voices. A single figure

still lingered. The stranger leaned over the window sill. “Will you

permit me to light my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck

a match outside.” By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate

very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out

in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had

detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the

head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years' tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the

eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat

was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,

affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of

Carry, her neighbor. “HE has come,” she gasped in a thrilling whisper.

“Who?” asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when

Kate was in earnest. “Who?--Why, the man who rescued us last night! I

saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in

a moment--there!” she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand

pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.

“What can he want?” asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. “I don't

know,” said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. “Possibly to

put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and

warn her against us.”

“He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,” rejoined

Addy thoughtfully.

“That was his art, you poor creature!” returned Kate scornfully. “You

can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful. Besides,

it's just my fate!”

“Why, Kate,” began Carry, in serious concern.

“Hush! Miss Walker is saying something,” said Kate, laughing.

“The young ladies will please give attention,” said a slow, perfunctory

voice. “Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor.”

Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various

letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the

somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the “reception parlor” and

privately to the pupils as “purgatory.” His keen eyes had taken in the

various rigid details, from the flat steam “radiator,” like an enormous

japanned soda cracker, that heated one end of the room to the monumental

bust of Dr. Crammer that hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's

Prayer, executed by a former writing master in such gratuitous variety

of elegant calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious

value of the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute,

which nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher;

from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English letter, so

gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human interest, to a

large photograph of the senior class, in which the prettiest girls were

Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each other's heads

and shoulders. His fingers had turned listlessly the leaves of

school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer, the POEMS of Henry Kirke

White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF CELEBRATED WOMEN. His

fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had gone over the partings

and greetings that must have taken place here, and wondered why the

apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of humanity; indeed, I

am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his visit when the door

opened, and Carry Tretherick stood before him.

It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier even

than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of some

disappointment, without knowing exactly why. Her abundant waving hair

was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a peculiar flowerlike

delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of seaweed in deep water. It

certainly was not her beauty that disappointed him.

Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her

part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men

whom the sex would vaguely generalize as “nice,” that is to say, correct

in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and

feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he

was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as

the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract

people, she was not entirely prepossessed in his favor.

“I can hardly hope,” he began pleasantly, “that you remember me. It is

eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl. I am afraid I cannot

even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that might exist between a

child of six and a young man of twenty-one. I don't think I was fond

of children. But I knew your mother very well. I was editor of the

AVALANCHE in Fiddletown when she took you to San Francisco.”

“You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know,” interposed

Carry hastily.

Mr. Prince looked at her curiously. “I mean your stepmother,” he said

gravely. “I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”

“No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years.”

There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its distinction

that began to interest coldly Prince after his first astonishment was

past.

“As I come from your stepmother now,” he went on with a slight laugh,

“I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point. After your

father's death, your mother--I mean your stepmother--recognized the fact

that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick, was legally and morally

your guardian and, although much against her inclination and affections,

placed you again in her charge.”

“My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and sent

me home,” said Carry with great directness, and the faintest toss of her

head.

Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically, that

Carry began to like him. With no other notice of the interruption

he went on, “After your stepmother had performed this act of simple

justice, she entered into an agreement with your mother to defray the

expenses of your education until your eighteenth year, when you were to

elect and choose which of the two should thereafter be your guardian,

and with whom you would make your home. This agreement, I think, you are

already aware of, and, I believe, knew at the time.”

“I was a mere child then,” said Carry.

“Certainly,” said Mr. Prince, with the same smile. “Still the

conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your mother;

and the only time they are likely to give you the least uneasiness will

be when you come to make up your mind in the choice of your guardian.

That will be on your eighteenth birthday--the twentieth, I think, of the

present month.”

Carry was silent.

“Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if it

be already made. I only came to inform you that your stepmother, Mrs.

Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will pass a few days at the

hotel. If it is your wish to see her before you make up your mind, she

will be glad to meet you. She does not, however, wish to do anything to

influence your judgment.

“Does Mother know she is coming?” said Carry hastily.

“I do not know,” said Prince gravely. “I only know that if you conclude

to see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's permission. Mrs.

Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the agreement, made ten years

ago. But her health is very poor; and the change and country quiet of

a few days may benefit her.” Mr. Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon

the young girl, and almost held his breath until she spoke again.

“Mother's coming up today or tomorrow,” she said, looking up.

“Ah!” said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.

“Is Colonel Starbottle here too?” asked Carry, after a pause.

“Colonel Starbottle is dead. Your stepmother is again a widow.”

“Dead!” repeated Carry.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Prince. “Your stepmother has been singularly

unfortunate in surviving her affections.”

Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so. Mr. Prince smiled

reassuringly.

Presently Carry began to whimper.

Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.

“I am afraid,” he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a

singular dropping of the corners of his mustache--“I am afraid you are

taking this too deeply. It will be some days before you are called upon

to make a decision. Let us talk of something else. I hope you caught no

cold last evening.”

Carry's face shone out again in dimples.

“You must have thought us so queer! It was too bad to give you so much

trouble.”

“None whatever, I assure you. My sense of propriety,” he added demurely,

“which might have been outraged had I been called upon to help three

young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night, was deeply gratified

at being able to assist them in again.” The doorbell rang loudly, and

Mr. Prince rose. “Take your own time, and think well before you make

your decision.” But Carry's ear and attention were given to the sound of

voices in the hall. At the same moment, the door was thrown open, and a

servant announced, “Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson.”

The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant protest at

stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the outskirts of the

town, and drove toward his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive

of a dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small

economic farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious

taste, had, I fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind.

He would have even avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the

door; but that functionary waylaid him on the steps. “There's a lady

in the sittin'-room, waitin' for ye.” Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and

entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew toward him.

She had changed sadly in the last ten years. Her figure was wasted

to half its size. The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders were

broken or inverted. The once full, rounded arm was shrunken in its

sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists almost

slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed convulsively

around Jack's. Her cheekbones were painted that afternoon with the

hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of those cheeks were buried

the dimples of long ago, but their graves were forgotten. Her lustrous

eyes were still beautiful, though the orbits were deeper than before.

Her mouth was still sweet, although the lips parted more easily over the

little teeth, even in breathing, and showed more of them than she was

wont to do before. The glory of her blond hair was still left: it was

finer, more silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to

cover the hollows of the blue-veined temples.

“Clara!” said Jack reproachfully.

“Oh, forgive me, Jack!” she said, falling into a chair, but still

clinging to his hand--“forgive me, dear; but I could not wait longer. I

should have died, Jack--died before another night. Bear with me a little

longer (it will not be long), but let me stay. I may not see her, I

know; I shall not speak to her: but it's so sweet to feel that I am at

last near her, that I breathe the same air with my darling. I am better

already, Jack, I am indeed. And you have seen her today? How did

she look? What did she say? Tell me all, everything, Jack. Was she

beautiful? They say she is. Has she grown? Would you have known

her again? Will she come, Jack? Perhaps she has been here already;

perhaps”--she had risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at

the door--“perhaps she is here now. Why don't you speak, Jack? Tell me

all.”

The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an

infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed them

capable of. “Clara,” he said gently and cheerily, “try and compose

yourself. You are trembling now with the fatigue and excitement of your

journey. I have seen Carry; she is well and beautiful. Let that suffice

you now.”

His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often done

before. Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, “Did Carry ever

write to you?”

“Twice, thanking me for some presents. They were only schoolgirl

letters,” she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his eyes.

“Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the

sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes and

jewels, of your--”

“No, no!” interrupted the woman quickly: “no! How could she? I have no

enemy cruel enough to tell her that.”

“But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it? If Carry thought

you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might influence

her decision. Young girls are fond of the position that wealth can give.

She may have rich friends, maybe a lover.”

Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence. “But,” she said eagerly,

grasping Jack's hand, “when you found me sick and helpless at

Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to help me to

the East, you said you knew of something, you had some plan, that would

make me and Carry independent.”

“Yes,” said Jack hastily; “but I want you to get strong and well first.

And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit to the

school.”

It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the interview

already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion that shames

my own account of that proceeding. Without suppressing a single fact,

without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to throw a poetic veil

over that prosaic episode, to invest the heroine with a romantic roseate

atmosphere, which, though not perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear,

exhibited that genius which ten years ago had made the columns of THE

FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not

until he saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of

his eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach. “God help her

and forgive me!” he muttered between his clinched teeth; “but how can I

tell her ALL now!”

That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her pillow,

she tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment sleeping

peacefully in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it was a rare

comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she was so

near. But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of her bed,

half-undressed, pouting her pretty lips and twisting her long, leonine

locks between her fingers as Miss Kate Van Corlear--dramatically

wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes sparkling, and her

thoroughbred nose thrown high in air--stood over her like a wrathful and

indignant ghost; for Carry had that evening imparted her woes and her

history to Miss Kate, and that young lady had “proved herself no friend”

by falling into a state of fiery indignation over Carry's “ingratitude,”

and openly and shamelessly espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.

“Why, if the half you tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons

are making of you not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.

Respectability, forsooth! Look you, my family are centuries before the

Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and then

asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them down the

wind;” and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black brows, and

glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van Corlear.

“You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.

Prince,” said Carry.

In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way

into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as she

afterward expressed it, instantly “went for her.”

First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one

shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like

a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely exaggerated

classic stride. “And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a

gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know that among a thousand

such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers

as Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent,

individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray

to Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and

grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you

such a friend as Kate Van Corlear.” Yet, after an imposing dramatic

exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed

Carry between the brows, and was gone.

The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince. He was convinced in his

mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness from

Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal degree of

apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to

divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that

Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to

admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring

clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind--to put off day

by day from contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner

consciousness. He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his

management. He recalled every incident of his interview with Carry, and

half-believed that its failure was due to himself. Yet Mrs. Starbottle

was very patient and confident; her very confidence shook his faith in

his own judgment. When her strength was equal to the exertion, she was

propped up in her chair by the window, where she could see the school

and the entrance to the hotel. In the intervals she would elaborate

pleasant plans for the future, and would sketch a country home. She had

taken a strange fancy, as it seemed to Prince, to the present location;

but it was notable that the future, always thus outlined, was one of

quiet and repose. She believed she would get well soon; in fact, she

thought she was now much better than she had been, but it might be long

before she should be quite strong again. She would whisper on in this

way until Jack would dash madly down into the barroom, order liquors

that he did not drink, light cigars that he did not smoke, talk with men

that he did not listen to, and behave generally as our stronger sex is

apt to do in periods of delicate trials and perplexity.

The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind. With

the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow. She was still content

and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to the fire,

she explained to him how that, as the school term was drawing near its

close, Carry was probably kept closely at her lessons during the day,

and could only leave the school at night. So she sat up the greater part

of the evening, and combed her silken hair, and as far as her strength

would allow, made an undress toilet to receive her guest. “We must not

frighten the child, Jack,” she said apologetically, and with something

of her old coquetry.

It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received a

message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to see him

for a moment downstairs. As Jack entered the grim, dimly lighted parlor,

he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the fire. He was about to

withdraw again when a voice that he remembered very pleasantly said:

“Oh, it's all right! I'm the doctor.”

The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and

black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.

“Don't ask any questions. I'm the doctor, and there's my prescription,”

and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing Carry in the

corner--“to be taken at once.”

“Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?”

“Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady,” replied Kate saucily.

“Then how did you get away?” asked Prince gravely.

“BY THE WINDOW.”

When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he

returned to the parlor.

“Well?” demanded Kate.

“She will stay--YOU will, I hope, also--tonight.”

“As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth, and

as I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't.”

“Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through the

window again?”

When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a low

stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet. Her head was in her stepmother's lap,

and she had sobbed herself to sleep. Mrs. Starbottle put her finger

to her lip. “I told you she would come. God bless you, Jack! and good

night.”

The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,

principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently

respectable, called upon Mr. Prince. There was a stormy meeting, ending

in a demand for Carry. “We certainly cannot admit of this interference,”

said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed, indistinctive-looking

woman. “It is several days before the expiration of our agreement; and

we do not feel, under the circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs.

Starbottle from its conditions.” “Until the expiration of the school

term, we must consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its

rules and discipline,” imposed Dr. Crammer. “The whole proceeding is

calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of Miss

Tretherick in society,” suggested Mr. Robinson.

In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle, her

absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the pardonable

and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance that they were

willing to abide by her decision. And then, with a rising color in

his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a singular calmness in his

speech, he added:

“One word more. It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance which

would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr. Tretherick,

in fully resisting your demands. A few months after Mr. Tretherick's

death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his employment, it was

discovered that he had made a will, which was subsequently found among

his papers. The insignificant value of his bequest--mostly land, then

quite valueless--prevented his executors from carrying out his wishes,

or from even proving the will, or making it otherwise publicly known,

until within the last two or three years, when the property had

enormously increased in value. The provisions of that bequest are

simple, but unmistakable. The property is divided between Carry and

her stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall

become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all details

stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS.”

“What is the value of this bequest?” asked Mr. Robinson. “I cannot

tell exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say,” returned

Prince. “Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of Miss Tretherick

I must say that her conduct is as judicious as it is honorable to her,”

responded Mr. Robinson. “I shall not presume to question the wishes,

or throw any obstacles in the way of carrying out the intentions, of my

dead husband,” added Mrs. Tretherick; and the interview was closed.

When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised Jack's

hand to her feverish lips. “It cannot add to MY happiness now, Jack; but

tell me, why did you keep it from her?” Jack smiled, but did not reply.

Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were concluded, and

Carry was restored to her stepmother. At Mrs. Starbottle's request, a

small house in the outskirts of the town was procured; and thither they

removed to wait the spring, and Mrs. Starbottle's convalescence. Both

came tardily that year.

Yet she was happy and patient. She was fond of watching the budding

of the trees beyond her window--a novel sight to her Californian

experience--and of asking Carry their names and seasons. Even at this

time she projected for that summer, which seemed to her so mysteriously

withheld, long walks with Carry through the leafy woods, whose gray,

misty ranks she could see along the hilltop. She even thought she

could write poetry about them, and recalled the fact as evidence of her

gaining strength; and there is, I believe, still treasured by one of the

members of this little household a little carol so joyous, so simple,

and so innocent that it might have been an echo of the robin that called

to her from the window, as perhaps it was.

And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so tender, so

mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and alive with the

fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and bounteously overflowing

with an awakening and joyous resurrection not taught by man or limited

by creed, that they thought it fit to bring her out and lay her in that

glorious sunshine that sprinkled like the droppings of a bridal torch

the happy lintels and doors. And there she lay beatified and calm.

Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.

Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head. Presently

she called Jack to her side.

“Who was that,” she whispered, “who just came in?”

“Miss Van Corlear,” said Jack, answering the look in her great hollow

eyes.

“Jack,” she said, after a moment's silence, “sit by me a moment; dear

Jack: I've something I must say. If I ever seemed hard, or cold, or

coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved you, Jack, too

well to mar your future by linking it with my own. I always loved you,

dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of you. That is gone now. But

I had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish woman's dream--that you might find

what I lacked in HER,” and she glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl at

her side; “that you might love her as you have loved me. But even that

is not to be, Jack, is it?” and she glanced wistfully in his face. Jack

pressed her hand, but did not speak. After a few moments' silence, she

again said: “Perhaps you are right in your choice. She is a goodhearted

girl, Jack--but a little bold.”

And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her struggling

spirit, she spoke no more. When they came to her a moment later, a tiny

bird that had lit upon her breast flew away; and the hand that they

lifted from Carry's head fell lifeless at her side.

BARKER'S LUCK

A bird twittered! The morning sun shining through the open window was

apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had only caused

the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his blankets. Barker's eyes

opened instantly upon the light and the bird on the window ledge. Like

all healthy young animals he would have tried to sleep again, but with

his momentary consciousness came the recollection that it was his turn

to cook the breakfast that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of

his bunk to the floor. Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and

stepped outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by

the Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold

water that stood by the door. Then he began to clothe himself, partly in

the cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse between the putting

on of his trousers and coat which he employed in bringing in wood.

Raking together the few embers on the adobe hearth, not without a

prudent regard to the rattlesnake which had once been detected in

haunting the warm ashes, he began to prepare breakfast. By this time the

other sleepers, his partners Stacy and Demorest, young men of about his

own age, were awake, alert, and lazily critical of his progress.

“I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for breakfast,”

said Stacy, with a yawn; “and you needn't serve with red wine. I'm not

feeling very peckish this morning.”

“And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish

mackerel for ME,” said Demorest gravely. “The fact is, that last bottle

of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am this morning.”

Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no direct

reply. Presently, looking up from the fire, he said, “There's no more

saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit is extra heavy. I told

you we had none when you went to the grocery yesterday.”

“And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with,” said Stacy, who

was also treasurer. “Put these two negatives together and you make the

affirmative--saleratus. Mix freely and bake in a hot oven.”

Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down to

what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the mountain

air and the regretful fastidiousness born of the recollection of better

things. Jerked beef, frizzled with salt pork in a frying-pan, boiled

potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed the repast. The biscuits,

however, proving remarkably heavy after the first mouthful, were used

as missiles, thrown through the open door at an empty bottle which had

previously served as a mark for revolver practice, and a few moments

later pipes were lit to counteract the effects of the meal and take

the taste out of their mouths. Suddenly they heard the sound of horses'

hoofs, saw the quick passage of a rider in the open space before the

cabin, and felt the smart impact upon the table of some small object

thrown by him. It was the regular morning delivery of the county

newspaper!

“He's getting to be a mighty sure shot,” said Demorest approvingly,

looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper, rolled

into a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began to

straighten it out. This was no easy matter, as the sheet had evidently

been rolled while yet damp from the press; but Demorest eventually

opened it and ensconced himself behind it.

“Nary news?” asked Stacy.

“No. There never is any,” said Demorest scornfully. “We ought to stop

the paper.”

“You mean the paper man ought to. WE don't pay him,” said Barker gently.

“Well, that's the same thing, smarty. No news, no pay. Hallo!” he

continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper. Then, after the

fashion of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the interesting

item to himself. When he had finished he brought his fist and the paper,

together, violently down upon the table. “Now look at this! Talk of

luck, will you? Just think of it. Here are WE--hard-working men with

lots of sabe, too--grubbin' away on this hillside like niggers, glad

to get enough at the end of the day to pay for our soggy biscuits and

horse-bean coffee, and just look what falls into the lap of some lazy

sneakin' greenhorn who never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are

WE, with no foolishness, no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do

credit to twice that amount of luck--and seem born to it, too--and we're

set aside for some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to

sit down on his office stool and hold on to a bit of paper.”

“What's up now?” asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of

familiarity with his partner's extravagance.

“Listen,” said Demorest, reading. “Another unprecedented rise has taken

place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension Mine' since

the sinking of the new shaft. It was quoted yesterday at ten thousand

dollars a foot. When it is remembered that scarcely two years ago the

original shares, issued at fifty dollars per share, had dropped to only

fifty cents a share, it will be seen that those who were able to hold on

have got a good thing.”

“What mine did you say?” asked Barker, looking up meditatively from the

dishes he was already washing.

“The Yellow Hammer First Extension,” returned Demorest shortly.

“I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them still,”

said Barker musingly.

“Yes,” said Demorest promptly; “the paper speaks of it here. 'We

understand,'” he continued, reading aloud, “'that our eminent fellow

citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as “Get Left Barker” and

“Chucklehead,” is one of these fortunate individuals.'”

“No,” said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, “it can't

say that. How could it know?”

Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: “You didn't hear all.

Listen! 'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his apparently

useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for corn plasters,

at a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'”

“You may laugh, boys,” said Barker, with simple seriousness; “but I

really believe I have got 'em yet. Just wait. I'll see!” He rose and

began to drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk. “You see,” he

continued, “they were given to me by an old chap in return--”

“For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward blew

up,” returned Demorest briefly. “We know it all! His hair was white, and

his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares in yours, saying, and

you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young man--and'--”

“For lending him two thousand dollars, then,” continued Barker with

a simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out the

valise.

“TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!” repeated Stacy. “When did YOU have two thousand

dollars?”

“When I first left Sacramento--three years ago,” said Barker,

unstrapping the valise.

“How long did you have it?” said Demorest incredulously.

“At least two days, I think,” returned Barker quietly. “Then I met that

man. He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those shares. He

died afterward.”

“Of course he did,” said Demorest severely. “They always do. Nothing

kills a man more quickly than an action of that kind.” Nevertheless

the two partners regarded Barker rummaging among some loose clothes

and papers with a kind of paternal toleration. “If you can't find them,

bring out your government bonds,” suggested Stacy. But the next moment,

flushed and triumphant, Barker rose from his knees, and came toward them

carrying some papers in his hands. Demorest seized them from him, opened

them, spread them on the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures,

and transfers, glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked

wildly at Stacy and then at Barker, and gasped:

“By the living hookey! it is SO!”

“B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!” echoed Stacy.

“Twenty shares,” continued Demorest breathlessly, “at ten thousand

dollars a share--even if it's only a foot--is two hundred thousand

dollars! Jerusalem!”

“Tell me, fair sir,” said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, “hast still left

in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links of fine

gold? Peradventure a pearl or two may have been overlooked!”

“No--that's all,” returned Barker simply.

“You hear him! Rothschild says 'that's all.' Prince Esterhazy says he

hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand dollars.”

“What ought I to do, boys?” asked Barker, timidly glancing from one to

the other. Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for many

a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish joy and

affection at that supreme moment.

“Do?” said Demorest promptly. “Stand on your head and yell! No! stop!

Come here!” He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand, and ran out

into the open air. Here they danced violently with clasped hands around

a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then returned to the cabin,

grave but perspiring.

“Of course,” said Barker, wiping his forehead, “we'll just get some

money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which belongs to

old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the indication.”

“We'll do nothing of the kind,” said Demorest decidedly. “WE ain't in

it. That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property acquired

before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is to be damned

before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this Godforsaken hole. No!”

“But we're partners,” gasped Barker.

“Not in THIS! The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it ill

becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with Dives--is

perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass of Malvoisie, at

some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got things fixed, in honor of

your return to affluence. But more would ill become us!”

“But what are YOU going to do?” said Barker, with a half-hysteric,

half-frightened smile.

“We have not yet looked through our luggage,” said Demorest with

invincible gravity, “and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to my

portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been disturbed

since I left my ancestral home in Faginia. There may be a few First

Debentures of Erie or what not still there.”

“I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the other

day, but belike they are but poker chips,” said Stacy thoughtfully.

An uneasy feeling crept over Barker. The color which had left his fresh

cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away. Yet he had

seen nothing in his companions' eyes but affection--with even a certain

kind of tender commiseration that deepened his uneasiness. “I suppose,”

he said desperately, after a pause, “I ought to go over to Boomville and

make some inquiries.”

“At the bank, old chap; at the bank!” said Demorest emphatically. “Take

my advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE. Don't breathe a word of your luck

to anybody. And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to sell just now; you

don't know how high that stock's going to jump yet.”

“I thought,” stammered Barker, “that you boys might like to go over with

me.”

“We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're only

two to work today,” said Demorest, with a slight increase of color and

the faintest tremor in his voice. “And it won't do, old chap, for us to

be seen bumming round with you on the heels of your good fortune. For

everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later everybody'll know you

WERE rich even when you first came to us.”

“Nonsense!” said Barker indignantly.

“Gospel, my boy!” said Demorest shortly.

“The frozen truth, old man!” said Stacy.

Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the door.

Here he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to communicate

itself to his partners. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then

Demorest suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a grip that was

half a caress, and walked him rapidly to the door. “And now don't stand

foolin' with us, Barker boy; but just trot off like a little man, and

get your grip on that fortune; and when you've got your hooks in it hang

on like grim death. You'll”--he hesitated for an instant only, possibly

to find the laugh that should have accompanied his speech--“you're sure

to find US here when you get back.”

Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his hat

on his head and walked quickly away. The two partners stood watching him

in silence until his figure was lost in the underbrush. Then they spoke.

“Like him--wasn't it?” said Demorest.

“Just him all over,” said Stacy.

“Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and never

even bothering his dear old head about it!”

“And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten

hillside with us!”

“And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again. That's

Barker.”

“Dear old man!”

“Good old chap!”

“I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him? He's

just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,”

said Stacy.

“The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,”

said Demorest almost fiercely. “There will be knaves and fools enough

who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart

without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be

himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the

money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God

put into him and make him more like others.”

The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that

Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: “Well! we shall miss him on the

hillside--won't we?”

Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched

off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the

leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in

the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: “Come, let's

get to work!” and strode away.

Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his

manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost

sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were

less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the

eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of

his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with

him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him

had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this

money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared

so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was

the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over

a prospective “strike” in mining and speculated what THEY would do

together with the money! And now that “luck” had occurred to one of

them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not

make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now

of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was

rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free

now to think only of himself and Kitty.

For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity

and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his

FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of his wealth was of

a young lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at

Boomville, who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted.

That a pretty girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that

he was now a rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners,

whom he would still have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his

half-hurt, half-vengeful state, that they had often joked him about

Kitty, and perhaps further confidence with them was debarred. And it was

only due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.

This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the

economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the

hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the

other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat.

For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met

with in Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original

refinement of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast

a doubt on the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of

the other, yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained

that she was slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her

stumpy, commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the

dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The

three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and

refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some

occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious

or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker was particularly

favored.

He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose

before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not

better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance

on them to buy a new necktie or a “boiled shirt” in which to present

himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his

word to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present,

he abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected

confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions

of secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that

breach of faith.

But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The

dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of breakfast and

before the flow of the preparation for the midday meal. He could not

have his interview with Kitty in that dreary waste of reversed chairs

and bare trestlelike tables, and she was possibly engaged in her

household duties. But Miss Kitty had already seen him cross the road,

and had lounged into the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of

casually examining it. At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in

the sweetest and freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.

Then, partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through

the working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with

a simple inquiry for her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled

slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the office. Opening

the door, without raising her lashes to either her father or the

visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of the professional

manner, “Mr. Barker to see you on business,” and tripped sweetly away.

And this slight incident precipitated the crisis. For Barker instantly

made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for his partners

of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to confide to him the

details of his good fortune, and as a proof of his sincerity and his

ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly. Carter was a shrewd business

man, and the well-known simplicity of Barker was a proof of his

truthfulness, to say nothing of the shares that were shown to him. His

selling price for his claim had been two hundred dollars, but here was

a rich customer who, from a mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt

willing to pay more. He hesitated with a bland but superior smile. “Ah,

that was my price at my last offer, Mr. Barker,” he said suavely; “but,

you see, things are going up since then.”

The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity. Barker,

thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened at his own

presumption--not for the amount of the money involved, but from the

possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--quickly took

advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE. “No matter, then,” he said

hurriedly; “perhaps I had better consult my partners first; in fact,”

he added, with a gratuitous truthfulness all his own, “I hardly know

whether they will take it of me, so I think I'll wait.”

Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do! He recovered himself

with an insinuating smile. “You pulled me up too short, Mr. Barker;

I'm a business man, but hang it all! what's that among friends? If you

reckoned I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred--why, I'm there! Say no more

about it--the claim's yours. I'll make you out a bill of sale at once.”

“But,” hesitated Barker, “you see I haven't got the money yet, and--”

“Money!” echoed Carter bluntly, “what's that among friends? Gimme your

note at thirty days--that's good enough for ME. An' we'll settle the

whole thing now--nothing like finishing a job while you're about it.”

And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor could protest, he had

filled up a promissory note for Barker's signature and himself signed a

bill of sale for the property. “And I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like

to take your partners by surprise about this little gift of yours,” he

added smilingly. “Well, my messenger is starting for the Gulch in five

minutes; he's going by your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o'

sale, as a kind o' settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything,

see! There's nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things.

And don't you hurry 'bout them either! You see, you sorter owe us

a friendly call--havin' always dropped inter the hotel only as a

customer--so ye'll stop here over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old

woman is busy, why Kitty will try to make the time pass till then by

playin' for you on her new pianner.”

Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and opportunity,

Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as mechanically

addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to Demorest, which Carter

gave to the messenger. Then he followed his host across the hall to the

apartment known as “Miss Kitty's parlor.” He had often heard of it as a

sanctum impervious to the ordinary guest. Whatever functions the young

girl assumed at the hotel and among her father's boarders, it was

vaguely understood that she dropped them on crossing that sacred

threshold, and became “MISS Carter.” The county judge had been

entertained there, and the wife of the bank manager. Barker's admission

there was consequently an unprecedented honor.

He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in

various charming little ways of the young girl's presence. There was

the cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the backs of

mules from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon head of Minerva

done by the fair occupant at the age of twelve; there was a profile

of herself done by a traveling artist; there were pretty little china

ornaments and many flowers, notably a faded but still scented woodland

shrub which Barker had presented to her two weeks ago, and over which

Miss Kitty had discreetly thrown her white handkerchief as he entered. A

wave of hope passed over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr.

Carter's roughly playful voice introduced him:

“Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch, Kitty.

You kin let him see what you're doing in that line. But you'll have to

sit up now, for this young man's come inter some property, and will

be sasheying round in 'Frisco afore long with a biled shirt and a

stovepipe, and be givin' the go-by to Boomville. Well! you young folks

will excuse me for a while, as I reckon I'll just toddle over and get

the recorder to put that bill o' sale on record. Nothin' like squaring

things to onct, Mr. Barker.”

As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink. Carter had not only

bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his excuse for a

confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious construction on his

visit. What could she think of him now? He stood ashamed and embarrassed

before her.

But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden concern

regarding the “horrid” untidiness of the room, which made her cheeks

quite pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and set down in

exactly the same place several articles, was exceedingly delighted. In

fact, she did not remember ever having been so pleased before in her

life! These things were always so unexpected! Just like the weather, for

instance. It was quite cool last night--and now it was just stifling.

And so dusty! Had Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch? Or

perhaps, being a rich man, he--with a dazzling smile--was above walking

now. It was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.

“I really wanted to tell only--YOU, Miss Carter,” stammered Barker. “You

see--” he hesitated. But Miss Kitty saw perfectly. He wanted to tell

HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER! Not that it made the

slightest difference to her, for her father would have been sure to

have told her. It was also kind of her father to invite him to luncheon.

Otherwise she might not have seen him before he left Boomville.

But this was more than Barker could stand. With the same desperate

directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father, he

now blurted out his whole heart to her. He told her how he had loved

her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken together at the

church picnic. Did she remember it? How he had sat and worshiped her,

and nothing else, at church! How her voice in the church choir had

sounded like an angel's; how his poverty and his uncertain future had

kept him from seeing her often, lest he should be tempted to betray his

hopeless passion. How as soon as he realized that he had a position,

that his love for her need not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes,

he came to tell her ALL. He did not even dare to hope! But she would

HEAR him at least, would she not?

Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple, outspoken

declaration. In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at her pink cheeks

in the glass, and stopped to look out of the window. The room was filled

with his love--it was encompassing her--and, despite his shy attitude,

seemed to be almost embracing her. But she managed at last to turn upon

him a face that was now as white and grave as his own was eager and

glowing.

“Sit down,” she said gently.

He did so obediently, but wonderingly. She then opened the piano and

took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose sheets

of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Thus

intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and for the first

time raised her eyes to his.

“Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt! There!--not so near; you

can hear what I have to say well enough where you are. That will do.”

Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat

down.

“Now,” said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before

her, “I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--or at least

SAY it--but I do. There! But because I do believe you--it seems to me

all wrong! For the very reasons that you give for not having spoken to

me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same reasons

why you should not speak to me now. You see, all this time you have let

nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me. In everybody's eyes

YOU and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive,

college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally

came here to this hotel as customers. In everybody's eyes I have been

only the rich hotel-keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon

you--but nothing more. But at least we were then pretty much alike,

and as good as each other. And now, as soon as you have become suddenly

rich, and, of course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to

acknowledge it by accepting you!”

“You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty,” burst out Barker vehemently,

but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the young lady's

fingers on the keys. He sank back in his chair.

“Of course you never MEANT it,” she said with an odd laugh; “but

everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to everybody

in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have just made to me.

Everybody will say I accepted you for your money; everybody will say

it was a put-up job of my father's. Everybody will say that you threw

yourself away on me. And I don't know but that they would be right. Sit

down, please! or I shall play again.

“You see,” she went on, without looking at him, “just now you like to

remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter girl,

but if I became your wife it's just what you would like to FORGET. And

I shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the time when you came

here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes when you couldn't, just

to see me; and how we used to make excuses to speak with each other over

the dishes. You don't know what these things mean to a woman who”--she

hesitated a moment, and then added abruptly, “but what does that matter?

You would not care to be reminded of it. So,” she said, rising up with a

grave smile and grasping her hands tightly behind her, “it's a good deal

better that you should begin to forget it now. Be a good boy and take my

advice. Go to San Francisco. You will meet some girl there in a way

you will not afterward regret. You are young, and your riches, to say

nothing,” she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat inconsistent

with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips, “of your kind

and simple heart, will secure that which the world would call unselfish

affection from one more equal to you, but would always believe was only

BOUGHT if it came from me.”

“I suppose you are right,” he said simply.

She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened. He had risen,

his face white and his gray eyes widely opened. “I suppose you are

right,” he went on, “because you are saying to me what my partners said

to me this morning, when I offered to share my wealth with them, God

knows as honestly as I offered to share my heart with you. I suppose

that you are both right; that there must be some curse of pride or

selfishness upon the money that I have got; but I have not felt it yet,

and the fault does not lie with me.”

She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently toward the

window. When she turned back again he was gone. The room around her was

empty; this room, which a moment before had seemed to be pulsating with

his boyish passion, was now empty, and empty of HIM. She bit her lips,

rose, and ran eagerly to the window. She saw his straw hat and brown

curls as he crossed the road. She drew her handkerchief sharply away

from the withered shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once

treasured remains in the hearth. Then, possibly because she had it

ready in her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking

sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its back,

and buried her face in her hands.

It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to make

no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them! So it

seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal directness.

It was the possession of this wealth that had in some way hopelessly

changed his relations with the world. He did not love Kitty any the

less; he did not even think she had wronged him; they, his partners and

his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there must be some occult quality

in this wealth that he would understand when he possessed it, and

perhaps it might even make him ashamed of his generosity; not in the way

they had said, but in his tempting them so audaciously to assume a wrong

position. It behoved him to take possession of it at once, and to take

also upon himself alone the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities

it would incur. His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to

tempt an innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not

seen in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'

refusal. He resolved to wait no longer, but sell his dreadful stock at

once. He walked directly to the bank.

The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known already,

received him graciously in recognition of his well-known simple honesty,

and respectfully as a representative of the equally well-known poor but

“superior” partnership of the Gulch. He listened with marked attention

to Barker's hesitating but brief story, only remarking at its close:

“You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?”

“No,” said Barker; “I mean the 'First'--and it said First in the

Boomville paper.”

“Yes, yes!--I saw it--it was a printer's error. The stock of the 'First'

was called in two years ago. No! You mean the 'Second,' for, of course,

you've followed the quotations, and are likely to know what stock you're

holding shares of. When you go back, take a look at them, and you'll see

I am right.”

“But I brought them with me,” said Barker, with a slight flushing as

he felt in his pocket, “and I am quite sure they are the 'First'.” He

brought them out and laid them on the desk before the manager.

The words “First Extension” were plainly visible. The manager glanced

curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.

“Did anybody put this up on you?” he said sternly. “Did your partners

send you here with this stuff?”

“No! no!” said Barker eagerly. “No one! It's all MY mistake. I see it

now. I trusted to the newspaper.”

“And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the quotations, nor

followed it in any way, since you had it?”

“Never!” said Barker. “Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw the

newspaper. So it's not worth anything?” And, to the infinite surprise of

the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish face.

“I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on,” said the

manager gently.

The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which his

wondering companion could not help joining. “Thank you,” said Barker

suddenly, and rushed away.

“He beats everything!” said the manager, gazing after him. “Damned if he

didn't seem even PLEASED.”

He WAS pleased. The burden of wealth had fallen from his shoulders; the

dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and parted his friends from

him was gone! And he had not got rid of it by spending it foolishly. It

had not ruined anybody yet; it had not altered anybody in HIS eyes.

It was gone; and he was a free and happy man once more. He would go

directly back to his partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but

they could not look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes.

Perhaps even Kitty--but here a sudden chill struck him. He had forgotten

the bill of sale! He had forgotten the dreadful promissory note given to

her father in the rash presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be

paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money

when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from

those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a

stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but,

horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now,

while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering

upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR--COULD NOT PAY FOR--and in the

guise of a benefactor he was dishonoring them. Yet it was Carter he

must meet first; he must confess all to him. He must go back to the

hotel--that hotel where he had indignantly left her, and tell the father

he was a fraud. It was terrible to think of; perhaps it was part of that

money curse that he could not get rid of, and was now realizing; but

it MUST be done. He was simple, but his very simplicity had that

unhesitating directness of conclusion which is the main factor of what

men call “pluck.”

He turned back to the hotel and entered the office. But Mr. Carter had

not yet returned. What was to be done? He could not wait there; there

was no time to be lost; there was only one other person who knew his

expectations, and to whom he could confide his failure--it was Kitty. It

was to taste the dregs of his humiliation, but it must be done. He ran

up the staircase and knocked timidly at the sitting-room door. There was

a momentary pause, and a weak voice said “Come in.” Barker opened the

door; saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful

eyes that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful but

stiffening figure. But he was past all insult now.

“I would not intrude,” he said simply, “but I came only to see your

father. I have made an awful blunder--more than a blunder, I think--a

FRAUD. Believing that I was rich, I purchased your father's claim for my

partners, and gave him my promissory note. I came here to give him back

his claim--for that note can NEVER be paid! I have just been to the

bank; I find I have made a stupid mistake in the name of the shares upon

which I based my belief in my wealth. The ones I own are worthless--am

as poor as ever--I am even poorer, for I owe your father money I can

never pay!”

To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her troubled

eyes which he had never seen before. “This is a feeble trick,” she said

bitterly; “it is unlike you--it is unworthy of you!”

“Good God! You must believe me. Listen! it was all a mistake--a

printer's error. I read in the paper that the stock for the First

Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second. I

had some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and only

thought of when I read the announcement in the paper this morning. I

swear to you--”

But it was unnecessary. There was no doubting the truth of that

voice--that manner. The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give place

to a stare, and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue wells of

laughter. She went to the window and laughed. She sat down to the piano

and laughed. She caught up the handkerchief, and hiding half her rosy

face in it, laughed. She finally collapsed into an easy chair, and,

burying her brown head in its cushions, laughed long and confidentially

until she brought up suddenly against a sob. And then was still.

Barker was dreadfully alarmed. He had heard of hysterics before. He felt

he ought to do something. He moved toward her timidly, and gently drew

away her handkerchief. Alas! the blue wells were running over now.

He took her cold hands in his; he knelt beside her and passed his arm

around her waist. He drew her head upon his shoulder. He was not sure

that any of these things were effective until she suddenly lifted

her eyes to his with the last ray of mirth in them vanishing in a big

teardrop, put her arms round his neck, and sobbed:

“Oh, George! You blessed innocent!”

An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.

“But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be

time; perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's

claim.”

“Yes, George dear,” said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; “and tell

them to do so AT ONCE!”

“What?” gasped Barker.

“At once--do you hear?--or it may be too late! Go quick.”

“But your father--Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all yourself,

and spare me.”

“I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey. Nor shall you! Don't you see

the note isn't due for a month? Stop! Have you told anybody but Paw and

me?”

“Only the bank manager.”

She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most

enchanting of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin. “I'll run over and

fix him,” she said.

“Fix him?” returned Barker, aghast.

“Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical joke

on you, and he mustn't give you away. He'll do anything for me.”

“But my partners didn't! On the contrary--”

“Don't tell me, George,” said Miss Kitty severely. “THEY ought never to

have let you come here with that stuff. But come! You must go at once.

You must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out everything to him; I know you!

I'll tell him you could not stay to luncheon. Quick, now; go. What?

Well--there!”

Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so protracted

that Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the front landing

before she could disappear by the back stairs. But once in the street,

Barker no longer lingered. It was a good three miles back to the Gulch;

he might still reach it by the time his partners were taking their

noonday rest, and he resolved that although the messenger had preceded

him, they would not enter upon the new claim until the afternoon. For

Barker, in spite of his mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking

what he couldn't pay for; he would keep the claim intact until something

could be settled. For the rest, he walked on air! Kitty loved him!

The accursed wealth no longer stood between them. They were both poor

now--everything was possible.

The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he

reached the Gulch. Here a new trepidation seized him. How would his

partners receive the news of his utter failure? HE was happy, for he had

gained Kitty through it. But they? For a moment it seemed to him that he

had purchased his happiness through their loss. He stopped, took off his

hat, and ran his fingers remorsefully through his damp curls.

Another thing troubled him. He had reached the crest of the Gulch, where

their old working ground was spread before him like a map. They were not

there; neither were they lying under the four pines on the ridge where

they were wont to rest at midday. He turned with some alarm to the new

claim adjoining theirs, but there was no sign of them there either. A

sudden fear that they had, after parting from him, given up the claim

in a fit of disgust and depression, and departed, now overcame him. He

clapped his hand on his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.

He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of “Who's there?” from

the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the trail.

But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he was wearing

vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of “All right, it's

only Barker! Hooray!” he ran toward him. In an instant he was joined by

Stacy from the cabin, and the two men, catching hold of their returning

partner, waltzed him joyfully and breathlessly into the cabin. But the

quick-eyed Demorest suddenly let go his hold and stared at Barker's

face. “Why, Barker, old boy, what's up?”

“Everything's up,” gasped the breathless Barker. “It's all up about

these stocks. It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of that newspaper.

I never had the right kind of shares. The ones I have are worthless

rags”; and the next instant he had blurted out his whole interview with

the bank manager.

The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's infinite

perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty

fell upon them. They laughed, holding on each other's shoulders; they

laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling figure; they went out and

laughed with their backs against a tree. They laughed separately and in

different corners. And then they came up to Barker with tears in their

eyes, dropped their heads on his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:

“You blessed ass!”

“But,” said Stacy suddenly, “how did you manage to buy the claim?”

“Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys. I've NEVER PAID FOR IT,” groaned

Barker.

“But Carter sent us the bill of sale,” persisted Demorest, “or we

shouldn't have taken it.”

“I gave my promissory note at thirty days,” said Barker desperately,

“and where's the money to come from now? But,” he added wildly, as the

men glanced at each other--“you said 'taken it.' Good heavens! you don't

mean to say that I'm TOO late--that you've--you've touched it?”

“I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing,” drawled Demorest.

“It looks uncommonly like it,” drawled Stacy.

Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other. “Shall we pass our

young friend in to see the show?” said Demorest to Stacy.

“Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,”

returned Stacy.

They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the

corner of the cabin. There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large tin

prospecting pan, in which the partners also occasionally used to knead

their bread. A dirty towel covered it. Demorest whisked it dexterously

aside, and disclosed three large fragments of decomposed gold and

quartz. Barker started back.

“Heft it!” said Demorest grimly.

Barker could scarcely lift the pan!

“Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!” said Stacy, in short

staccato sentences. “In a pocket! Brought it out the second stroke of

the pick! We'd been awfully blue after you left. Awfully blue, too, when

that bill of sale came, for we thought you'd been wasting your money on

US. Reckoned we oughtn't to take it, but send it straight back to you.

Messenger gone! Then Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be

undone, and we ought to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and

strike a single stroke for you. And there it is. And there's more on the

hillside.”

“But it isn't MINE! It isn't YOURS! It's Carter's. I never had the money

to pay for it--and I haven't got it now.”

“But you gave the note--and it is not due for thirty days.”

A recollection flashed upon Barker. “Yes,” he said with thoughtful

simplicity, “that's what Kitty said.”

“Oh, Kitty said so,” said both partners, gravely.

“Yes,” stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, “and, as I

didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting it ready.”

He picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as his two partners

stepped beyond the door.

“Wasn't it exactly like him?” said Demorest.

“Him all over,” said Stacy.

“And his worry over that note?” said Demorest.

“And 'what Kitty said,'” said Stacy.

“Look here! I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said.”

“Of course not.”

“What luck!”

A YELLOW DOG

I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be

proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency,

nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social

standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we

accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownership

was more difficult to settle; and although the dog I have in my mind at

the present writing attached himself impartially and equally to everyone

in camp, no one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the

perpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with