 | The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches |  |
SKETCHES.
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
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
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 blond 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
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
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
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 mor'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; 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 d—d little cuss!”
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 d—d 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 new-comer. 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 red-wood
tree he paused and retraced his steps, and
again passed the cabin. Half-way 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.”
Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck
had recourse to his finger, which he held up to
Stumpy. “Rastled with it, — the d—d 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 sprung
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
Camp as her home, and the speaker urged
that “they did n'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, — d—m 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 foot-hills, — 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 asses' milk to lime and phosphorus.
Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the
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 Cayote” (an allusion to his vocal
powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive
of “the d—d 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
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,
eying 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 going to understand.
And ef there 's going 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 uttered otherwise 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
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 rosewood 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-defence, 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
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, tranquillizing 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-o-o-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
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 put aside for “The Luck.” It
was wonderful how many treasures the woods and
hillsides yielded that “would do for Tommy.” Surrounded
fairy-land had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy
was content. He appeared to be securely 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 n't 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 cherry-bums.”
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
wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of
bay and resinous gums; to him the tall red-woods
nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees
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
companionship. The sacrifice that this concession
to the sex cost these men, who were
fiercely sceptical 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 foot-hills. 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 débris 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 's
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, crushing 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
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
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.
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 bore 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
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
foot-hills 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 amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides
by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently
toward the crest of another precipice that over-looked
the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most
suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable.
But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half
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 “could n'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,
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 new-comer 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. Did n't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney?
She that used to wait on the table at the Temperance
House? They had been engaged a long
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 loghouse
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
up the cañon 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 d—d 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
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 snow-flakes, that dazzled and confused
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 gayety of the young man, and Mr.
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 whiskey,
which he had prudently cachéd. “And yet
it don't somehow sound like whiskey,” 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 cachéd his cards
with the whiskey as something debarred the free
access of the community, I cannot say. It was
certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he “did n'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
managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from
its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent
on a pair of bone castinets. 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 Covenanters
swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional
quality, caused it speedily to infect the
others, who at last joined in the refrain:—
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,
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, —
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 marvellously
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
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 cal Piney. Piney was no chicken, but
it was a soothing and original theory of the pair
thus to account for the fact that she did n't swear
and was n'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
camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the
aching void left by insufficient food, and a new
diversion was proposed by Piney, — story-telling.
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 cañon seemed to bow to the wrath of the
son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet
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 snow-flakes 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
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 snow-shoes, 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 cañon,” 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 some one 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,
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
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, travelling
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 some
one in the road, — a colloquy of which such fragments
as “bridge gone,” “twenty feet of water,”
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 traveller
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, searcely 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 in 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 did n'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 d—d skunk!” roared the driver,
contemptuously. “Come out of that, Miggles,
and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don't
hide in the dark; I would n'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
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 rose-bushes
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,
“had n'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 further
extremity; the walls curiously papered, and
the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque
pattern; somebody sitting in a large arm-chair
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
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.
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
sceptical. “Thar ain't nobody but him within
ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar d—d 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 a 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.
“O, 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 oil-skin
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, off-hand manner
imaginable.
“You see, boys,” said she, quite out of breath,
and holding one little hand against her side, quite
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 oil-skin
hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that
scattered a shower of rain-drops 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 har-pin,” said
Miggles, gravely. Half a dozen hands were eagerly
stretched forward; the missing hair-pin 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,”
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
arm-chair 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
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.
“O, 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 was n't hanging round when
you dropped in to-night.” “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
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 passionless 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 to-night,” 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,
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 did n'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 could n't last
Frisco to the hospital, for he was no good to any
one 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 could n't get any woman to
help me, and a man I dursent 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
called Jim, and when he 'd go away, he 'd say,
`Miggles; you 're a trump, — God bless you'; and
it did n'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 was n'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 was n'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
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
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 hand-shake. 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 high-road, 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,
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 bar-room 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
from 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
new-comer 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 bar-rooms, — 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
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 cañon 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
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 Cañon; 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
behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little
cañon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and
the decaying drift-wood 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 defence, 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
on general principles, they indulged him with more
latitude of defence 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
carpet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious,
from partially developed legends and inscriptions,
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
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 does n'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 is n'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 bed-rock, 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
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 offence 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 carpet-bag, 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
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 evil-doers, 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
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 did n'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 Cañon, — by this
The redwoods, burying their moccasoned 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 cortége went
by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook
from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, 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
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 could n't help himself; it ain't the first
time that I and `Jinny' have waited for him on
you hill, and picked him up and so fetched him
home, when he could n't speak, and did n'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;
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 could n'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
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 did n'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
whiskey, — 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
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 dog-like 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
school-house 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 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
head-board, 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 new-comer, 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
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
maär, 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 maär?” 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 school-house,
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 has n'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
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 some one 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 school-house
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 school-room,
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
Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground that
he had a habit of “cussin' on up grades,” 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 bar-room. The over-dressed 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
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
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.
— 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 view-point, 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 school-house, her cheek
resting on her hand, her eyes half closed in one
of those day-dreams 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
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 to-morrow, and I could n'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
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
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 a 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 has n'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
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 to-night.”
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, — to-night, — 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 high-road, 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 pocket-knife, 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.
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
meadow-land 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
scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrel-some
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 peron standing midleg 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 could n't make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited
in the reflection that, after all this trouble,
he would n'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
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
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 some one 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
did n'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
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
laid 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
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 towards the centre of the room.
It was n'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 towards 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
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 towards 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
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 would n'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
“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
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 did n'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
could n'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,
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 was n'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 story-teller who wilfully 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 lady-love 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 hotel-keepers; 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 carpet-bag in hand,
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 uneasily, 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,
whom 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
persistency of the clerk at the stage-office
to enter my name misspelt on the way-bill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The inmates
of the Eureka House, from a social view-point,
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
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 way-billed 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 carpet-bag 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
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 painfully
absorb my attention. 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 seriously consider the statement.
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
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, André, not to disturb me,
and dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops
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 André 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.
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 mistle-toe
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
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 hair-pin. 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
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 travelled 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 did n'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
sea-sick 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 could n't bear the sight of him, and we
used to make Fagg think that she had taken a
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!
Did n't she flash up grandly and beautifully and
scornfully? So like “Medora,” Rattler said, — Rattler
knew Byron by heart, — and was n'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 sea-sick.
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 did n'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
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 did n't dine together the next year,
because young Barker swore he would n'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,
did n'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
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 did n'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,
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 did n'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
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 was n'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
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 need n't be hard on him,
you know, if he does n'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
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!”
| The luck of Roaring Camp, and other sketches | |