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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Devil's Ford by, Bret Harte***
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+Devil's Ford
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+by Bret Harte
+
+August, 2000  [Etext #2286]
+
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+***The Project Gutenberg Etext of Devil's Ford by, Bret Harte***
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+
+DEVIL'S FORD
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+DEVIL'S FORD
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was a season of unequalled prosperity in Devil's Ford.  The half
+a dozen cabins scattered along the banks of the North Fork, as if
+by some overflow of that capricious river, had become augmented
+during a week of fierce excitement by twenty or thirty others, that
+were huddled together on the narrow gorge of Devil's Spur, or cast
+up on its steep sides.  So sudden and violent had been the change
+of fortune, that the dwellers in the older cabins had not had time
+to change with it, but still kept their old habits, customs, and
+even their old clothes.  The flour pan in which their daily bread
+was mixed stood on the rude table side by side with the
+"prospecting pans," half full of gold washed up from their
+morning's work; the front windows of the newer tenements looked
+upon the one single thoroughfare, but the back door opened upon the
+uncleared wilderness, still haunted by the misshapen bulk of bear
+or the nightly gliding of catamount.
+
+Neither had success as yet affected their boyish simplicity and the
+frankness of old frontier habits; they played with their new-found
+riches with the naive delight of children, and rehearsed their
+glowing future with the importance and triviality of school-boys.
+
+"I've bin kalklatin'," said Dick Mattingly, leaning on his long-
+handled shovel with lazy gravity, "that when I go to Rome this
+winter, I'll get one o' them marble sharps to chisel me a statoo o'
+some kind to set up on the spot where we made our big strike.
+Suthin' to remember it by, you know."
+
+"What kind o' statoo--Washington or Webster?" asked one of the
+Kearney brothers, without looking up from his work.
+
+"No--I reckon one o' them fancy groups--one o' them Latin goddesses
+that Fairfax is always gassin' about, sorter leadin', directin' and
+bossin' us where to dig."
+
+"You'd make a healthy-lookin' figger in a group," responded
+Kearney, critically regarding an enormous patch in Mattingly's
+trousers.  "Why don't you have a fountain instead?"
+
+"Where'll you get the water?" demanded the first speaker, in
+return.  "You know there ain't enough in the North Fork to do a
+week's washing for the camp--to say nothin' of its color."
+
+"Leave that to me," said Kearney, with self-possession.  "When I've
+built that there reservoir on Devil's Spur, and bring the water
+over the ridge from Union Ditch, there'll be enough to spare for
+that."
+
+"Better mix it up, I reckon--have suthin' half statoo, half
+fountain," interposed the elder Mattingly, better known as
+"Maryland Joe," "and set it up afore the Town Hall and Free Library
+I'm kalklatin' to give.  Do THAT, and you can count on me."
+
+After some further discussion, it was gravely settled that Kearney
+should furnish water brought from the Union Ditch, twenty miles
+away, at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, to feed a memorial
+fountain erected by Mattingly, worth a hundred thousand dollars, as
+a crowning finish to public buildings contributed by Maryland Joe,
+to the extent of half a million more.  The disposition of these
+vast sums by gentlemen wearing patched breeches awakened no sense
+of the ludicrous, nor did any doubt, reservation, or contingency
+enter into the plans of the charming enthusiasts themselves.  The
+foundation of their airy castles lay already before them in the
+strip of rich alluvium on the river bank, where the North Fork,
+sharply curving round the base of Devil's Spur, had for centuries
+swept the detritus of gulch and canyon.  They had barely crossed
+the threshold of this treasure-house, to find themselves rich men;
+what possibilities of affluence might be theirs when they had fully
+exploited their possessions?  So confident were they of that
+ultimate prospect, that the wealth already thus obtained was
+religiously expended in engines and machinery for the boring of
+wells and the conveyance of that precious water which the exhausted
+river had long since ceased to yield.  It seemed as if the gold
+they had taken out was by some ironical compensation gradually
+making its way back to the soil again through ditch and flume and
+reservoir.
+
+Such was the position of affairs at Devil's Ford on the 13th of
+August, 1860.  It was noon of a hot day.  Whatever movement there
+was in the stifling air was seen rather than felt in a tremulous,
+quivering, upward-moving dust along the flank of the mountain,
+through which the spires of the pines were faintly visible.  There
+was no water in the bared and burning bars of the river to reflect
+the vertical sun, but under its direct rays one or two tinned roofs
+and corrugated zinc cabins struck fire, a few canvas tents became
+dazzling to the eye, and the white wooded corral of the stage
+office and hotel insupportable.  For two hours no one ventured in
+the glare of the open, or even to cross the narrow, unshadowed
+street, whose dull red dust seemed to glow between the lines of
+straggling houses.  The heated shells of these green unseasoned
+tenements gave out a pungent odor of scorching wood and resin.  The
+usual hurried, feverish toil in the claim was suspended; the pick
+and shovel were left sticking in the richest "pay gravel;" the
+toiling millionaires themselves, ragged, dirty, and perspiring, lay
+panting under the nearest shade, where the pipes went out
+listlessly, and conversation sank to monosyllables.
+
+"There's Fairfax," said Dick Mattingly, at last, with a lazy
+effort.  His face was turned to the hillside, where a man had just
+emerged from the woods, and was halting irresolutely before the
+glaring expanse of upheaved gravel and glistening boulders that
+stretched between him and the shaded group.  "He's going to make a
+break for it," he added, as the stranger, throwing his linen coat
+over his head, suddenly started into an Indian trot through the
+pelting sunbeams toward them.  This strange act was perfectly
+understood by the group, who knew that in that intensely dry heat
+the danger of exposure was lessened by active exercise and the
+profuse perspiration that followed it.  In another moment the
+stranger had reached their side, dripping as if rained upon,
+mopping his damp curls and handsome bearded face with his linen
+coat, as he threw himself pantingly on the ground.
+
+"I struck out over here first, boys, to give you a little warning,"
+he said, as soon as he had gained breath.  "That engineer will be
+down here to take charge as soon as the six o'clock stage comes in.
+He's an oldish chap, has got a family of two daughters, and--I--am--
+d----d if he is not bringing them down here with him."
+
+"Oh, go long!" exclaimed the five men in one voice, raising
+themselves on their hands and elbows, and glaring at the speaker.
+
+"Fact, boys!  Soon as I found it out I just waltzed into that Jew
+shop at the Crossing and bought up all the clothes that would be
+likely to suit you fellows, before anybody else got a show.  I
+reckon I cleared out the shop.  The duds are a little mixed in
+style, but I reckon they're clean and whole, and a man might face a
+lady in 'em.  I left them round at the old Buckeye Spring, where
+they're handy without attracting attention.  You boys can go there
+for a general wash-up, rig yourselves up without saying anything,
+and then meander back careless and easy in your store clothes, just
+as the stage is coming in, sabe?"
+
+"Why didn't you let us know earlier?" asked Mattingly aggrievedly;
+"you've been back here at least an hour."
+
+"I've been getting some place ready for THEM," returned the new-
+comer.  "We might have managed to put the man somewhere, if he'd
+been alone, but these women want family accommodation.  There was
+nothing left for me to do but to buy up Thompson's saloon."
+
+"No?" interrupted his audience, half in incredulity, half in
+protestation.
+
+"Fact!  You boys will have to take your drinks under canvas again,
+I reckon!  But I made Thompson let those gold-framed mirrors that
+used to stand behind the bar go into the bargain, and they sort of
+furnish the room.  You know the saloon is one of them patent houses
+you can take to pieces, and I've been reckoning you boys will have
+to pitch in and help me to take the whole shanty over to the laurel
+bushes, and put it up agin Kearney's cabin."
+
+"What's all that?" said the younger Kearney, with an odd mingling
+of astonishment and bashful gratification.
+
+"Yes, I reckon yours is the cleanest house, because it's the
+newest, so you'll just step out and let us knock in one o' the
+gables, and clap it on to the saloon, and make ONE house of it,
+don't you see?  There'll be two rooms, one for the girls and the
+other for the old man."
+
+The astonishment and bewilderment of the party had gradually given
+way to a boyish and impatient interest.
+
+"Hadn't we better do the job at once?" suggested Dick Mattingly.
+
+"Or throw ourselves into those new clothes, so as to be ready,"
+added the younger Kearney, looking down at his ragged trousers.  "I
+say, Fairfax, what are the girls like, eh?"
+
+All the others had been dying to ask the question, yet one and all
+laughed at the conscious manner and blushing cheek of the
+questioner.
+
+"You'll find out quick enough," returned Fairfax, whose curt
+carelessness did not, however, prevent a slight increase of color
+on his own cheek.  "We'd better get that job off our hands before
+doing anything else.  So, if you're ready, boys, we'll just waltz
+down to Thompson's and pack up the shanty.  He's out of it by this
+time, I reckon.  You might as well be perspiring to some purpose
+over there as gaspin' under this tree.  We won't go back to work
+this afternoon, but knock off now, and call it half a day.  Come!
+Hump yourselves, gentlemen.  Are you ready?  One, two, three, and
+away!"
+
+In another instant the tree was deserted; the figures of the five
+millionaires of Devil's Ford, crossing the fierce glare of the open
+space, with boyish alacrity, glistened in the sunlight, and then
+disappeared in the nearest fringe of thickets.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Six hours later, when the shadow of Devil's Spur had crossed the
+river, and spread a slight coolness over the flat beyond, the
+Pioneer coach, leaving the summit, began also to bathe its heated
+bulk in the long shadows of the descent.  Conspicuous among the
+dusty passengers, the two pretty and youthful faces of the
+daughters of Philip Carr, mining superintendent and engineer,
+looked from the windows with no little anxiety towards their future
+home in the straggling settlement below, that occasionally came in
+view at the turns of the long zigzagging road.  A slight look of
+comical disappointment passed between them as they gazed upon the
+sterile flat, dotted with unsightly excrescences that stood equally
+for cabins or mounds of stone and gravel.  It was so feeble and
+inconsistent a culmination to the beautiful scenery they had passed
+through, so hopeless and imbecile a conclusion to the preparation
+of that long picturesque journey, with its glimpses of sylvan and
+pastoral glades and canyons, that, as the coach swept down the last
+incline, and the remorseless monotony of the dead level spread out
+before them, furrowed by ditches and indented by pits, under cover
+of shielding their cheeks from the impalpable dust that rose
+beneath the plunging wheels, they buried their faces in their
+handkerchiefs, to hide a few half-hysterical tears.  Happily, their
+father, completely absorbed in a practical, scientific, and
+approving contemplation of the topography and material resources of
+the scene of his future labors, had no time to notice their
+defection.  It was not until the stage drew up before a rambling
+tenement bearing the inscription, "Hotel and Stage Office," that he
+became fully aware of it.
+
+"We can't stop HERE, papa," said Christie Carr decidedly, with a
+shake of her pretty head.  "You can't expect that."
+
+Mr. Carr looked up at the building; it was half grocery, half
+saloon.  Whatever other accommodations it contained must have been
+hidden in the rear, as the flat roof above was almost level with
+the raftered ceiling of the shop.
+
+"Certainly," he replied hurriedly; "we'll see to that in a moment.
+I dare say it's all right.  I told Fairfax we were coming.
+Somebody ought to be here."
+
+"But they're not," said Jessie Carr indignantly; "and the few that
+were here scampered off like rabbits to their burrows as soon as
+they saw us get down."
+
+It was true.  The little group of loungers before the building had
+suddenly disappeared.  There was the flash of a red shirt vanishing
+in an adjacent doorway; the fading apparition of a pair of high
+boots and blue overalls in another; the abrupt withdrawal of a
+curly blond head from a sashless window over the way.  Even the
+saloon was deserted, although a back door in the dim recess seemed
+to creak mysteriously.  The stage-coach, with the other passengers,
+had already rattled away.
+
+"I certainly think Fairfax understood that I--" began Mr. Carr.
+
+He was interrupted by the pressure of Christie's fingers on his arm
+and a subdued exclamation from Jessie, who was staring down the
+street.
+
+"What are they?" she whispered in her sister's ear.  "Nigger
+minstrels, a circus, or what?"
+
+The five millionaires of Devil's Ford had just turned the corner of
+the straggling street, and were approaching in single file.  One
+glance was sufficient to show that they had already availed
+themselves of the new clothing bought by Fairfax, had washed, and
+one or two had shaved.  But the result was startling.
+
+Through some fortunate coincidence in size, Dick Mattingly was the
+only one who had achieved an entire new suit.  But it was of
+funereal black cloth, and although relieved at one extremity by a
+pair of high riding boots, in which his too short trousers were
+tucked, and at the other by a tall white hat, and cravat of
+aggressive yellow, the effect was depressing.  In agreeable
+contrast, his brother, Maryland Joe, was attired in a thin fawn-
+colored summer overcoat, lightly worn open, so as to show the
+unstarched bosom of a white embroidered shirt, and a pair of
+nankeen trousers and pumps.
+
+The Kearney brothers had divided a suit between them, the elder
+wearing a tightly-fitting, single-breasted blue frock-coat and a
+pair of pink striped cotton trousers, while the younger candidly
+displayed the trousers of his brother's suit, as a harmonious
+change to a shining black alpaca coat and crimson neckerchief.
+Fairfax, who brought up the rear, had, with characteristic
+unselfishness, contented himself with a French workman's blue
+blouse and a pair of white duck trousers.  Had they shown the least
+consciousness of their finery, or of its absurdity, they would have
+seemed despicable.  But only one expression beamed on the five
+sunburnt and shining faces--a look of unaffected boyish
+gratification and unrestricted welcome.
+
+They halted before Mr. Carr and his daughters, simultaneously
+removed their various and remarkable head coverings, and waited
+until Fairfax advanced and severally presented them.  Jessie Carr's
+half-frightened smile took refuge in the trembling shadows of her
+dark lashes; Christie Carr stiffened slightly, and looked straight
+before her.
+
+"We reckoned--that is--we intended to meet you and the young ladies
+at the grade," said Fairfax, reddening a little as he endeavored to
+conceal his too ready slang, "and save you from trapesing--from
+dragging yourselves up grade again to your house."
+
+"Then there IS a house?" said Jessie, with an alarming frank laugh
+of relief, that was, however, as frankly reflected in the boyishly
+appreciative eyes of the young men.
+
+"Such as it is," responded Fairfax, with a shade of anxiety, as he
+glanced at the fresh and pretty costumes of the young women, and
+dubiously regarded the two Saratoga trunks resting hopelessly on
+the veranda.  "I'm afraid it isn't much, for what you're accustomed
+to.  But," he added more cheerfully, "it will do for a day or two,
+and perhaps you'll give us the pleasure of showing you the way
+there now."
+
+The procession was quickly formed.  Mr. Carr, alive only to the
+actual business that had brought him there, at once took possession
+of Fairfax, and began to disclose his plans for the working of the
+mine, occasionally halting to look at the work already done in the
+ditches, and to examine the field of his future operations.
+Fairfax, not displeased at being thus relieved of a lighter
+attendance on Mr. Carr's daughters, nevertheless from time to time
+cast a paternal glance backwards upon their escorts, who had each
+seized a handle of the two trunks, and were carrying them in
+couples at the young ladies' side.  The occupation did not offer
+much freedom for easy gallantry, but no sign of discomfiture or
+uneasiness was visible in the grateful faces of the young men.  The
+necessity of changing hands at times with their burdens brought a
+corresponding change of cavalier at the lady's side, although it
+was observed that the younger Kearney, for the sake of continuing a
+conversation with Miss Jessie, kept his grasp of the handle nearest
+the young lady until his hand was nearly cut through, and his arm
+worn out by exhaustion.
+
+"The only thing on wheels in the camp is a mule wagon, and the
+mules are packin' gravel from the river this afternoon," explained
+Dick Mattingly apologetically to Christie, "or we'd have toted--I
+mean carried--you and your baggage up to the shant--the--your
+house.  Give us two weeks more, Miss Carr--only two weeks to wash
+up our work and realize--and we'll give you a pair of 2.40 steppers
+and a skeleton buggy to meet you at the top of the hill and drive
+you over to the cabin.  Perhaps you'd prefer a regular carriage;
+some ladies do.  And a nigger driver.  But what's the use of
+planning anything?  Afore that time comes we'll have run you up a
+house on the hill, and you shall pick out the spot.  It wouldn't
+take long--unless you preferred brick.  I suppose we could get
+brick over from La Grange, if you cared for it, but it would take
+longer.  If you could put up for a time with something of stained
+glass and a mahogany veranda--"
+
+In spite of her cold indignation, and the fact that she could
+understand only a part of Mattingly's speech, Christie comprehended
+enough to make her lift her clear eyes to the speaker, as she
+replied freezingly that she feared she would not trouble them long
+with her company.
+
+"Oh, you'll get over that," responded Mattingly, with an
+exasperating confidence that drove her nearly frantic, from the
+manifest kindliness of intent that made it impossible for her to
+resent it.  "I felt that way myself at first.  Things will look
+strange and unsociable for a while, until you get the hang of them.
+You'll naturally stamp round and cuss a little--"  He stopped in
+conscious consternation.
+
+With ready tact, and before Christie could reply, Maryland Joe had
+put down the trunk and changed hands with his brother.
+
+"You mustn't mind Dick, or he'll go off and kill himself with
+shame," he whispered laughingly in her ear.  "He means all right,
+but he's picked up so much slang here that he's about forgotten how
+to talk English, and it's nigh on to four years since he's met a
+young lady."
+
+Christie did not reply.  Yet the laughter of her sister in advance
+with the Kearney brothers seemed to make the reserve with which she
+tried to crush further familiarity only ridiculous.
+
+"Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?"
+
+She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so near to her
+own, and hesitated.  After all, why should she add to her other
+real disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?
+
+"In what way?" she returned, with a half smile.
+
+"To play.  On the piano, of course.  There isn't one nearer here
+than Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday.
+You couldn't do anything on a banjo?" he added doubtfully;
+"Kearney's got one."
+
+"I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those
+mountains," said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of
+the banjo.
+
+"We got a billiard-table over from Stockton," half bashfully
+interrupted Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to
+recover his composure, "and it had to be brought over in sections
+on the back of a mule, so I don't see why--"  He stopped short
+again in confusion, at a sign from his brother, and then added, "I
+mean, of course, that a piano is a heap more delicate, and
+valuable, and all that sort of thing, but it's worth trying for."
+
+"Fairfax was always saying he'd get one for himself, so I reckon
+it's possible," said Joe.
+
+"Does he play?" asked Christie.
+
+"You bet," said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm.
+"He can snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed."
+
+In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of
+pine wood nearest the flat was reached.  Here there was a rude
+"clearing," and beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently
+joined tenements.  There was no attempt to conceal the point of
+junction between Kearney's cabin and the newly-transported saloon
+from the flat--no architectural illusion of the palpable collusion
+of the two buildings, which seemed to be telescoped into each
+other.  The front room or living room occupied the whole of
+Kearney's cabin.  It contained, in addition to the necessary
+articles for housekeeping, a "bunk" or berth for Mr. Carr, so as to
+leave the second building entirely to the occupation of his
+daughters as bedroom and boudoir.
+
+There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude
+utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as
+the two girls entered the open door of the second room.  Neither
+Christie nor Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy
+which kept these young men from accompanying them into the room
+they had but a few moments before decorated and arranged with their
+own hands, and it was not until they turned to thank their strange
+entertainers that they found that they were gone.
+
+The arrangement of the second room was rude and bizarre, but not
+without a singular originality and even tastefulness of conception.
+What had been the counter or "bar" of the saloon, gorgeous in white
+and gold, now sawn in two and divided, was set up on opposite sides
+of the room as separate dressing-tables, decorated with huge
+bunches of azaleas, that hid the rough earthenware bowls, and gave
+each table the appearance of a vestal altar.
+
+The huge gilt plate-glass mirror which had hung behind the bar
+still occupied one side of the room, but its length was artfully
+divided by an enormous rosette of red, white, and blue muslin--one
+of the surviving Fourth of July decorations of Thompson's saloon.
+On either side of the door two pathetic-looking, convent-like cots,
+covered with spotless sheeting, and heaped up in the middle, like a
+snow-covered grave, had attracted their attention.  They were still
+staring at them when Mr. Carr anticipated their curiosity.
+
+"I ought to tell you that the young men confided to me the fact
+that there was neither bed nor mattress to be had on the Ford.
+They have filled some flour sacks with clean dry moss from the
+woods, and put half a dozen blankets on the top, and they hope you
+can get along until the messenger who starts to-night for La Grange
+can bring some bedding over."
+
+Jessie flew with mischievous delight to satisfy herself of the
+truth of this marvel.  "It's so, Christie," she said laughingly--
+"three flour-sacks apiece; but I'm jealous: yours are all marked
+'superfine,' and mine 'middlings.'"
+
+Mr. Carr had remained uneasily watching Christie's shadowed face.
+
+"What matters?" she said drily.  "The accommodation is all in
+keeping."
+
+"It will be better in a day or two," he continued, casting a
+longing look towards the door--the first refuge of masculine
+weakness in an impending domestic emergency.  "I'll go and see what
+can be done," he said feebly, with a sidelong impulse towards the
+opening and freedom.  "I've got to see Fairfax again to-night any
+way."
+
+"One moment, father," said Christie, wearily.  "Did you know
+anything of this place and these--these people--before you came?"
+
+"Certainly--of course I did," he returned, with the sudden
+testiness of disturbed abstraction.  "What are you thinking of?  I
+knew the geological strata and the--the report of Fairfax and his
+partners before I consented to take charge of the works.  And I can
+tell you that there is a fortune here.  I intend to make my own
+terms, and share in it."
+
+"And not take a salary or some sum of money down?" said Christie,
+slowly removing her bonnet in the same resigned way.
+
+"I am not a hired man, or a workman, Christie," said her father
+sharply.  "You ought not to oblige me to remind you of that."
+
+"But the hired men--the superintendent and his workmen--were the
+only ones who ever got anything out of your last experience with
+Colonel Waters at La Grange, and--and we at least lived among
+civilized people there."
+
+"These young men are not common people, Christie; even if they have
+forgotten the restraints of speech and manners, they're gentlemen."
+
+"Who are willing to live like--like negroes."
+
+"You can make them what you please."
+
+Christie raised her eyes.  There was a certain cynical ring in her
+father's voice that was unlike his usual hesitating abstraction.
+It both puzzled and pained her.
+
+"I mean," he said hastily, "that you have the same opportunity to
+direct the lives of these young men into more regular, disciplined
+channels that I have to regulate and correct their foolish waste of
+industry and material here.  It would at least beguile the time for
+you."
+
+Fortunately for Mr. Carr's escape and Christie's uneasiness,
+Jessie, who had been examining the details of the living-room,
+broke in upon this conversation.
+
+"I'm sure it will be as good as a perpetual picnic.  George Kearney
+says we can have a cooking-stove under the tree outside at the
+back, and as there will be no rain for three months we can do the
+cooking there, and that will give us more room for--for the piano
+when it comes; and there's an old squaw to do the cleaning and
+washing-up any day--and--and--it will be real fun."
+
+She stopped breathlessly, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes--a
+charming picture of youth and trustfulness.  Mr. Carr had seized
+the opportunity to escape.
+
+"Really, now, Christie," said Jessie confidentially, when they were
+alone, and Christie had begun to unpack her trunk, and to
+mechanically put her things away, "they're not so bad."
+
+"Who?" asked Christie.
+
+"Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and the lot,
+provided you don't look at their clothes.  And think of it! they
+told me--for they tell one EVERYTHING in the most alarming way--
+that those clothes were bought to please US.  A scramble of things
+bought at La Grange, without reference to size or style.  And to
+hear these creatures talk, why, you'd think they were Astors or
+Rothschilds.  Think of that little one with the curls--I don't
+believe he is over seventeen, for all his baby moustache--says he's
+going to build an assembly hall for us to give a dance in next
+month; and apologizes the next breath to tell us that there isn't
+any milk to be had nearer than La Grange, and we must do without
+it, and use syrup in our tea to-morrow."
+
+"And where is all this wealth?" said Christie, forcing herself to
+smile at her sister's animation.
+
+"Under our very feet, my child, and all along the river.  Why, what
+we thought was pure and simple mud is what they call 'gold-bearing
+cement.'"
+
+"I suppose that is why they don't brush their boots and trousers,
+it's so precious," returned Christie drily.  "And have they ever
+translated this precious dirt into actual coin?"
+
+"Bless you, yes.  Why, that dirty little gutter, you know, that ran
+along the side of the road and followed us down the hill all the
+way here, that cost them--let me see--yes, nearly sixty thousand
+dollars.  And fancy! papa's just condemned it--says it won't do;
+and they've got to build another."
+
+An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie's attention to her
+troubled eyebrows.
+
+"Don't worry about our disappointment, dear.  It isn't so very
+great.  I dare say we'll be able to get along here in some way,
+until papa is rich again.  You know they intend to make him share
+with them."
+
+"It strikes me that he is sharing with them already," said
+Christie, glancing bitterly round the cabin; "sharing everything--
+ourselves, our lives, our tastes."
+
+"Ye-e-s!" said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent.  "Yes, even
+these:" she showed two dice in the palm of her little hand.  "I
+found 'em in the drawer of our dressing-table."
+
+"Throw them away," said Christie impatiently.
+
+But Jessie's small fingers closed over the dice.  "I'll give them
+to the little Kearney.  I dare say they were the poor boy's
+playthings."
+
+The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, however, had
+lifted Christie out of her sublime resignation.  "For Heaven's
+sake, Jessie," she said, "look around and see if there is anything
+more!"
+
+To make sure, they each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited
+Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching
+obscure corners.  In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or
+four books were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of
+Dickens, a memorandum-book or diary.  "This seems to be Latin,"
+said Jessie, fishing out a smaller book.  "I can't read it."
+
+"It's just as well you shouldn't," said Christie shortly, whose
+ideas of a general classical impropriety had been gathered from
+pages of Lempriere's dictionary.  "Put it back directly."
+
+Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to the corner,
+and uttered an exclamation.  "Oh, Christie! here are some letters
+tied up with a ribbon."
+
+They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling a faint
+odor of refinement and of the pressed flowers that peeped from
+between the loose leaves.  "I see, 'My darling Fairfax.'  It's from
+some woman."
+
+"I don't think much of her, whosoever she is," said Christie,
+tossing the intact packet back into the corner.
+
+"Nor I," echoed Jessie.
+
+Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently the
+circumstance did make them think more of HIM, for a minute later,
+when they had reentered their own room, Christie remarked, "The
+idea of petting a man by his family name!  Think of mamma ever
+having called papa 'darling Carr'!"
+
+"Oh, but his family name isn't Fairfax," said Jessie hastily;
+"that's his FIRST name, his Christian name.  I forget what's his
+other name, but nobody ever calls him by it."
+
+"Do you mean," said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful
+deliberation--"do you mean to say that we're expected to fall in
+with this insufferable familiarity?  I suppose they'll be calling
+US by our Christian names next."
+
+"Oh, but they do!" said Jessie, mischievously.
+
+"What!"
+
+"They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if
+Christie played."
+
+"And what did you say?"
+
+"I said that you did," answered Jessie, with an affectation of
+cherubic simplicity.  "You do, dear; don't you? . . .  There, don't
+get angry, darling; I couldn't flare up all of a sudden in the face
+of that poor little creature; he looked so absurd--and so--so
+honest."
+
+Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned manner, and
+assuming her household duties in a quiet, temporizing way that was,
+however, without hope or expectation.
+
+Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the excuse of not
+adding to the awkwardness of the first day's housekeeping returned
+late at night with a mass of papers and drawings, into which he
+afterwards withdrew, but not until he had delivered himself of a
+mysterious package entrusted to him by the young men for his
+daughters.  It contained a contribution to their board in the shape
+of a silver spoon and battered silver mug, which Jessie chose to
+facetiously consider as an affecting reminiscence of the youthful
+Kearney's christening days--which it probably was.
+
+The young girls retired early to their white snow-drifts: Jessie
+not without some hilarious struggles with hers, in which she was,
+however, quickly surprised by the deep and refreshing sleep of
+youth; Christie to lie awake and listen to the night wind, that had
+changed from the first cool whispers of sunset to the sturdy breath
+of the mountain.  At times the frail house shook and trembled.
+Wandering gusts laden with the deep resinous odors of the wood
+found their way through the imperfect jointure of the two cabins,
+swept her cheek and even stirred her long, wide-open lashes.  A
+broken spray of pine needles rustled along the roof, or a pine cone
+dropped with a quick reverberating tap-tap that for an instant
+startled her.  Lying thus, wide awake, she fell into a dreamy
+reminiscence of the past, hearing snatches of old melody in the
+moving pines, fragments of sentences, old words, and familiar
+epithets in the murmuring wind at her ear, and even the faint
+breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek.  She remembered her
+mother--a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her
+father's vague speculations in a vaguer speculation of her own,
+beyond his ken--whose place she had promised to take at her
+father's side.  The words, "Watch over him, Christie; he needs a
+woman's care," again echoed in her ears, as if borne on the night
+wind from the lonely grave in the lonelier cemetery by the distant
+sea.  She had devoted herself to him with some little sacrifices of
+self, only remembered now for their uselessness in saving her
+father the disappointment that sprang from his sanguine and one-
+idea'd temperament.  She thought of him lying asleep in the other
+room, ready on the morrow to devote those fateful qualities to the
+new enterprise that with equally fateful disposition she believed
+would end in failure.  It did not occur to her that the doubts of
+her own practical nature were almost as dangerous and illogical as
+his enthusiasm, and that for that reason she was fast losing what
+little influence she possessed over him.  With the example of her
+mother's weakness before her eyes, she had become an unsparing and
+distrustful critic, with the sole effect of awakening his distrust
+and withdrawing his confidence from her.
+
+He was beginning to deceive her as he had never deceived her
+mother.  Even Jessie knew more of this last enterprise than she did
+herself.
+
+All that did not tend to decrease her utter restlessness.  It was
+already past midnight when she noticed that the wind had again
+abated.  The mountain breeze had by this time possessed the
+stifling valleys and heated bars of the river in its strong, cold
+embraces; the equilibrium of Nature was restored, and a shadowy
+mist rose from the hollow.  A stillness, more oppressive and
+intolerable than the previous commotion, began to pervade the house
+and the surrounding woods.  She could hear the regular breathing of
+the sleepers; she even fancied she could detect the faint impulses
+of the more distant life in the settlement.  The far-off barking of
+a dog, a lost shout, the indistinct murmur of some nearer
+watercourse--mere phantoms of sound--made the silence more
+irritating.  With a sudden resolution she arose, dressed herself
+quietly and completely, threw a heavy cloak over her head and
+shoulders, and opened the door between the living-room and her own.
+Her father was sleeping soundly in his bunk in the corner.  She
+passed noiselessly through the room, opened the lightly fastened
+door, and stepped out into the night.
+
+In the irritation and disgust of her walk hither, she had never
+noticed the situation of the cabin, as it nestled on the slope at
+the fringe of the woods; in the preoccupation of her disappointment
+and the mechanical putting away of her things, she had never looked
+once from the window of her room, or glanced backward out of the
+door that she had entered.  The view before her was a revelation--a
+reproach, a surprise that took away her breath.  Over her shoulders
+the newly risen moon poured a flood of silvery light, stretching
+from her feet across the shining bars of the river to the opposite
+bank, and on up to the very crest of the Devil's Spur--no longer a
+huge bulk of crushing shadow, but the steady exaltation of plateau,
+spur, and terrace clothed with replete and unutterable beauty.  In
+this magical light that beauty seemed to be sustained and carried
+along by the river winding at its base, lifted again to the broad
+shoulder of the mountain, and lost only in the distant vista of
+death-like, overcrowning snow.  Behind and above where she stood
+the towering woods seemed to be waiting with opened ranks to absorb
+her with the little cabin she had quitted, dwarfed into
+insignificance in the vast prospect; but nowhere was there another
+sign or indication of human life and habitation.  She looked in
+vain for the settlement, for the rugged ditches, the scattered
+cabins, and the unsightly heaps of gravel.  In the glamour of the
+moonlight they had vanished; a veil of silver-gray vapor touched
+here and there with ebony shadows masked its site.  A black strip
+beyond was the river bank.  All else was changed.  With a sudden
+sense of awe and loneliness she turned to the cabin and its
+sleeping inmates--all that seemed left to her in the vast and
+stupendous domination of rock and wood and sky.
+
+But in another moment the loneliness passed.  A new and delicious
+sense of an infinite hospitality and friendliness in their silent
+presence began to possess her.  This same slighted, forgotten,
+uncomprehended, but still foolish and forgiving Nature seemed to be
+bending over her frightened and listening ear with vague but
+thrilling murmurings of freedom and independence.  She felt her
+heart expand with its wholesome breath, her soul fill with its
+sustaining truth.
+
+She felt--
+
+What was that?
+
+An unmistakable outburst of a drunken song at the foot of the
+slope:--
+
+
+     "Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike,
+      I'm h-ll on a spree or a strike" . . .
+
+
+She stopped as crimson with shame and indignation as if the
+viewless singer had risen before her.
+
+
+     "I knew when to bet, and get up and get--"
+
+
+"Hush! D--n it all.  Don't you hear?"
+
+There was the sound of hurried whispers, a "No" and "Yes," and then
+a dead silence.
+
+Christie crept nearer to the edge of the slope in the shadow of a
+buckeye.  In the clearer view she could distinguish a staggering
+figure in the trail below who had evidently been stopped by two
+other expostulating shadows that were approaching from the shelter
+of a tree.
+
+"Sho!--didn't know!"
+
+The staggering figure endeavored to straighten itself, and then
+slouched away in the direction of the settlement.  The two
+mysterious shadows retreated again to the tree, and were lost in
+its deeper shadow.  Christie darted back to the cabin, and softly
+reentered her room.
+
+"I thought I heard a noise that woke me, and I missed you," said
+Jessie, rubbing her eyes.  "Did you see anything?"
+
+"No," said Christie, beginning to undress.
+
+"You weren't frightened, dear?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Christie, with a strange little laugh.
+"Go to sleep."
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The five impulsive millionaires of Devil's Ford fulfilled not a few
+of their most extravagant promises.  In less than six weeks Mr.
+Carr and his daughters were installed in a new house, built near
+the site of the double cabin, which was again transferred to the
+settlement, in order to give greater seclusion to the fair guests.
+It was a long, roomy, one-storied villa, with a not unpicturesque
+combination of deep veranda and trellis work, which relieved the
+flat monotony of the interior and the barrenness of the freshly-
+cleared ground.  An upright piano, brought from Sacramento,
+occupied the corner of the parlor.  A suite of gorgeous furniture,
+whose pronounced and extravagant glories the young girls
+instinctively hid under home-made linen covers, had also been
+spoils from afar.  Elsewhere the house was filled with ornaments
+and decorations that in their incongruity forcibly recalled the
+gilded plate-glass mirrors of the bedroom in the old cabin.  In the
+hasty furnishing of this Aladdin's palace, the slaves of the ring
+had evidently seized upon anything that would add to its glory,
+without reference always to fitness.
+
+"I wish it didn't look so cussedly like a robber's cave," said
+George Kearney, when they were taking a quiet preliminary survey of
+the unclassified treasures, before the Carrs took possession.
+
+"Or a gambling hell," said his brother reflectively.
+
+"It's about the same thing, I reckon," said Dick Mattingly, who was
+supposed, in his fiery youth, to have encountered the similarity.
+
+Nevertheless, the two girls managed to bestow the heterogeneous
+collection with tasteful adaptation to their needs.  A crystal
+chandelier, which had once lent a fascinating illusion to the game
+of Monte, hung unlighted in the broad hall, where a few other
+bizarre and public articles were relegated.  A long red sofa or
+bench, which had done duty beside a billiard-table found a place
+here also.  Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic
+and bashful youths of Devil's Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon
+them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in
+this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could
+see through the open door.  To others, it represented a recognized
+state of probation before their re-entree into civilization again.
+"I reckon, if you don't mind, miss," said the spokesman of one
+party, "ez this is our first call, we'll sorter hang out in the
+hall yer, until you'r used to us."  On another occasion, one
+Whiskey Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new
+house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted by him
+afterwards at the bar of the Tecumseh Saloon.
+
+"You see, boys, I dropped in there the other night, when some of
+you fellers was doin' the high-toned 'thankee, marm' business in
+the parlor.  I just came to anchor in the corner of the sofy in the
+hall, without lettin' on to say that I was there, and took up a
+Webster's dictionary that was on the table and laid it open--
+keerless like, on my knees, ez if I was sorter consultin' it--and
+kinder dozed off there, listenin' to you fellows gassin' with the
+young ladies, and that yer Miss Christie just snakin' music outer
+that pianner, and I reckon I fell asleep.  Anyhow, I was there nigh
+on to two hours.  It's mighty soothin', them fashionable calls;
+sorter knocks the old camp dust outer a fellow, and sets him up
+again."
+
+It would have been well if the new life of the Devil's Ford had
+shown no other irregularity than the harmless eccentricities of its
+original locaters.  But the news of its sudden fortune, magnified
+by report, began presently to flood the settlement with another
+class of adventurers.  A tide of waifs, strays, and malcontents of
+old camps along the river began to set towards Devil's Ford, in
+very much the same fashion as the debris, drift, and alluvium had
+been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks.  A few
+immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of travel by the fame
+of the new diggings, halted upon the slopes of Devil's Spur and on
+the arid flats of the Ford, and disgorged their sallow freight of
+alkali-poisoned, prematurely-aged women and children and maimed and
+fever-stricken men.  Against this rude form of domesticity were
+opposed the chromo-tinted dresses and extravagant complexions of a
+few single unattended women--happily seen more often at night
+behind gilded bars than in the garish light of day--and an equal
+number of pale-faced, dark-moustached, well-dressed, and
+suspiciously idle men.  A dozen rivals of Thompson's Saloon had
+sprung up along the narrow main street.  There were two new hotels--
+one a "Temperance House," whose ascetic quality was confined only
+to the abnegation of whiskey--a rival stage office, and a small
+one-storied building, from which the "Sierran Banner" fluttered
+weekly, for "ten dollars a year, in advance."  Insufferable in the
+glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in the gloom of a
+Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of the week,
+the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the
+barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous!  The civic
+improvements so enthusiastically contemplated by the five
+millionaires in the earlier pages of this veracious chronicle--the
+fountain, reservoir, town-hall, and free library--had not yet been
+erected.  Their sites had been anticipated by more urgent buildings
+and mining works, unfortunately not considered in the sanguine
+dreams of the enthusiasts, and, more significant still, their cost
+and expense had been also anticipated by the enormous outlay of
+their earnings in the work upon Devil's Ditch.
+
+Nevertheless, the liberal fulfilment of their promise in the new
+house in the suburbs blinded the young girls' eyes to their
+shortcomings in the town.  Their own remoteness and elevation above
+its feverish life kept them from the knowledge of much that was
+strange, and perhaps disturbing to their equanimity.  As they did
+not mix with the immigrant women--Miss Jessie's good-natured
+intrusion into one of their half-nomadic camps one day having been
+met with rudeness and suspicion--they gradually fell into the way
+of trusting the responsibility of new acquaintances to the hands of
+their original hosts, and of consulting them in the matter of local
+recreation.  It thus occurred that one day the two girls, on their
+way to the main street for an hour's shopping at the Villa de Paris
+and Variety Store, were stopped by Dick Mattingly a few yards from
+their house, with the remark that, as the county election was then
+in progress, it would be advisable for them to defer their
+intention for a few hours.  As he did not deem it necessary to add
+that two citizens, in the exercise of a freeman's franchise, had
+been supplementing their ballots with bullets, in front of an
+admiring crowd, they knew nothing of that accident that removed
+from Devil's Ford an entertaining stranger, who had only the night
+before partaken of their hospitality.
+
+A week or two later, returning one morning from a stroll in the
+forest, Christie and Jessie were waylaid by George Kearney and
+Fairfax, and, under pretext of being shown a new and romantic
+trail, were diverted from the regular path.  This enabled Mattingly
+and Maryland Joe to cut down the body of a man hanged by the
+Vigilance Committee a few hours before on the regular trail, and to
+remonstrate with the committee on the incompatibility of such
+exhibitions with a maidenly worship of nature.
+
+"With the whole county to hang a man in," expostulated Joe, "you
+might keep clear of Carr's woods."
+
+It is needless to add that the young girls never knew of this act
+of violence, or the delicacy that kept them in ignorance of it.
+Mr. Carr was too absorbed in business to give heed to what he
+looked upon as a convulsion of society as natural as a geological
+upheaval, and too prudent to provoke the criticism of his daughters
+by comment in their presence.
+
+An equally unexpected confidence, however, took its place.  Mr.
+Carr having finished his coffee one morning, lingered a moment over
+his perfunctory paternal embraces, with the awkwardness of a
+preoccupied man endeavoring by the assumption of a lighter interest
+to veil another abstraction.
+
+"And what are we doing to-day, Christie?" he asked, as Jessie left
+the dining-room.
+
+"Oh, pretty much the usual thing--nothing in particular.  If George
+Kearney gets the horses from the summit, we're going to ride over
+to Indian Spring to picnic.  Fairfax--Mr. Munroe--I always forget
+that man's real name in this dreadfully familiar country--well,
+he's coming to escort us, and take me, I suppose--that is, if
+Kearney takes Jessie."
+
+"A very nice arrangement," returned her father, with a slight
+nervous contraction of the corners of his mouth and eyelids to
+indicate mischievousness.  "I've no doubt they'll both be here.
+You know they usually are--ha! ha!  And what about the two
+Mattinglys and Philip Kearney, eh?" he continued; "won't they be
+jealous?"
+
+"It isn't their turn," said Christie carelessly; "besides, they'll
+probably be there."
+
+"And I suppose they're beginning to be resigned," said Carr,
+smiling.
+
+"What on earth are you talking of, father?"
+
+She turned her clear brown eyes upon him, and was regarding him
+with such manifest unconsciousness of the drift of his speech, and,
+withal, a little vague impatience of his archness, that Mr. Carr
+was feebly alarmed.  It had the effect of banishing his assumed
+playfulness, which made his serious explanation the more
+irritating.
+
+"Well, I rather thought that--that young Kearney was paying
+considerable attention to--to--to Jessie," replied her father, with
+hesitating gravity.
+
+"What! that boy?"
+
+"Young Kearney is one of the original locators, and an equal
+partner in the mine.  A very enterprising young fellow.  In fact,
+much more advanced and bolder in his conceptions than the others.
+I find no difficulty with him."
+
+At another time Christie would have questioned the convincing
+quality of this proof, but she was too much shocked at her father's
+first suggestion, to think of anything else.
+
+"You don't mean to say, father, that you are talking seriously of
+these men--your friends--whom we see every day--and our only
+company?"
+
+"No, no!" said Mr. Carr hastily; "you misunderstand.  I don't
+suppose that Jessie or you--"
+
+"Or ME!  Am I included?"
+
+"You don't let me speak, Christie.  I mean, I am not talking
+seriously," continued Mr. Carr, with his most serious aspect, "of
+you and Jessie in this matter; but it may be a serious thing to
+these young men to be thrown continually in the company of two
+attractive girls."
+
+"I understand--you mean that we should not see so much of them,"
+said Christie, with a frank expression of relief so genuine as to
+utterly discompose her father.  "Perhaps you are right, though I
+fail to discover anything serious in the attentions of young
+Kearney to Jessie--or--whoever it may be--to me.  But it will be
+very easy to remedy it, and see less of them.  Indeed, we might
+begin to-day with some excuse."
+
+"Yes--certainly.  Of course!" said Mr. Carr, fully convinced of his
+utter failure, but, like most weak creatures, consoling himself
+with the reflection that he had not shown his hand or committed
+himself.  "Yes; but it would perhaps be just as well for the
+present to let things go on as they were.  We'll talk of it again--
+I'm in a hurry now," and, edging himself through the door, he
+slipped away.
+
+"What do you think is father's last idea?" said Christie, with, I
+fear, a slight lack of reverence in her tone, as her sister
+reentered the room.  "He thinks George Kearney is paying you too
+much attention."
+
+"No!" said Jessie, replying to her sister's half-interrogative,
+half-amused glance with a frank, unconscious smile.
+
+"Yes, and he says that Fairfax--I think it's Fairfax--is equally
+fascinated with ME."
+
+Jessie's brow slightly contracted as she looked curiously at her
+sister.
+
+"Of all things," she said, "I wonder if any one has put that idea
+into his dear old head.  He couldn't have thought it himself."
+
+"I don't know," said Christie musingly; "but perhaps it's just as
+well if we kept a little more to ourselves for a while."
+
+"Did father say so?" said Jessie quickly.
+
+"No, but that is evidently what he meant."
+
+"Ye-es," said Jessie slowly, "unless--"
+
+"Unless what?" said Christie sharply.  "Jessie, you don't for a
+moment mean to say that you could possibly conceive of anything
+else?"
+
+"I mean to say," said Jessie, stealing her arm around her sister's
+waist demurely, "that you are perfectly right.  We'll keep away
+from these fascinating Devil's Forders, and particularly the
+youngest Kearney.  I believe there has been some ill-natured
+gossip.  I remember that the other day, when we passed the shanty
+of that Pike County family on the slope, there were three women at
+the door, and one of them said something that made poor little
+Kearney turn white and pink alternately, and dance with suppressed
+rage.  I suppose the old lady--M'Corkle, that's her name--would
+like to have a share of our cavaliers for her Euphemy and Mamie.  I
+dare say it's only right; I would lend them the cherub
+occasionally, and you might let them have Mr. Munroe twice a week."
+
+She laughed, but her eyes sought her sister's with a certain
+watchfulness of expression.
+
+Christie shrugged her shoulders, with a suggestion of disgust.
+
+"Don't joke.  We ought to have thought of all this before."
+
+"But when we first knew them, in the dear old cabin, there wasn't
+any other woman and nobody to gossip, and that's what made it so
+nice.  I don't think so very much of civilization, do you?" said
+the young lady pertly.
+
+Christie did not reply.  Perhaps she was thinking the same thing.
+It certainly had been very pleasant to enjoy the spontaneous and
+chivalrous homage of these men, with no further suggestion of
+recompense or responsibility than the permission to be worshipped;
+but beyond that she racked her brain in vain to recall any look or
+act that proclaimed the lover.  These men, whom she had found so
+relapsed into barbarism that they had forgotten the most ordinary
+forms of civilization; these men, even in whose extravagant
+admiration there was a certain loss of self-respect, that as a
+woman she would never forgive; these men, who seemed to belong to
+another race--impossible!  Yet it was so.
+
+"What construction must they have put upon her father's acceptance
+of their presents--of their company--of her freedom in their
+presence?  No! they must have understood from the beginning that
+she and her sister had never looked upon them except as transient
+hosts and chance acquaintances.  Any other idea was preposterous.
+And yet--"
+
+It was the recurrence of this "yet" that alarmed her.  For she
+remembered now that but for their slavish devotion they might claim
+to be her equal.  According to her father's account, they had come
+from homes as good as their own; they were certainly more than her
+equal in fortune; and her father had come to them as an employee,
+until they had taken him into partnership.  If there had only been
+sentiment of any kind connected with any of them!  But they were
+all alike, brave, unselfish, humorous--and often ridiculous.  If
+anything, Dick Mattingly was funniest by nature, and made her laugh
+more.  Maryland Joe, his brother, told better stories (sometimes of
+Dick), though not so good a mimic as the other Kearney, who had a
+fairly sympathetic voice in singing.  They were all good-looking
+enough; perhaps they set store on that--men are so vain.
+
+And as for her own rejected suitor, Fairfax Munroe, except for a
+kind of grave and proper motherliness about his protecting manner,
+he absolutely was the most indistinctive of them all.  He had once
+brought her some rare tea from the Chinese camp, and had taught her
+how to make it; he had cautioned her against sitting under the
+trees at nightfall; he had once taken off his coat to wrap around
+her.  Really, if this were the only evidence of devotion that could
+be shown, she was safe!
+
+"Well," said Jessie, "it amuses you, I see."
+
+Christie checked the smile that had been dimpling the cheek nearest
+Jessie, and turned upon her the face of an elder sister.
+
+"Tell me, have YOU noticed this extraordinary attention of Mr.
+Munroe to me?"
+
+"Candidly?" asked Jessie, seating herself comfortably on the table
+sideways, and endeavoring, to pull her skirt over her little feet.
+"Honest Injun?"
+
+"Don't be idiotic, and, above all, don't be slangy!  Of course,
+candidly."
+
+"Well, no.  I can't say that I have."
+
+"Then," said Christie, "why in the name of all that's preposterous,
+do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man of
+the lot?"
+
+Jessie leaped from the table.
+
+"Come now," she said, with a little nervous laugh, "he's not so bad
+as all that.  You don't know him.  But what does it matter now, as
+long as we're not going to see them any more?"
+
+"They're coming here for the ride to-day," said Christie
+resignedly.  "Father thought it better not to break it off at
+once."
+
+"Father thought so!" echoed Jessie, stopping with her hand on the
+door.
+
+"Yes; why do you ask?"
+
+But Jessie had already left the room, and was singing in the hall.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The afternoon did not, however, bring their expected visitors.  It
+brought, instead, a brief note by the hands of Whiskey Dick from
+Fairfax, apologizing for some business that kept him and George
+Kearney from accompanying the ladies.  It added that the horses
+were at the disposal of themselves and any escort they might
+select, if they would kindly give the message to Whiskey Dick.
+
+The two girls looked at each other awkwardly; Jessie did not
+attempt to conceal a slight pout.
+
+"It looks as if they were anticipating us," she said, with a half-
+forced smile.  "I wonder, now, if there really has been any gossip?
+But no!  They wouldn't have stopped for that, unless--"  She looked
+curiously at her sister.
+
+"Unless what?" repeated Christie; "you are horribly mysterious this
+morning."
+
+"Am I?  It's nothing.  But they're wanting an answer.  Of course
+you'll decline."
+
+"And intimate we only care for their company!  No!  We'll say we're
+sorry they can't come, and--accept their horses.  We can do without
+an escort, we two."
+
+"Capital!" said Jessie, clapping her hands.  "We'll show them--"
+
+"We'll show them nothing," interrupted Christie decidedly.  "In our
+place there's only the one thing to do.  Where is this--Whiskey
+Dick?"
+
+"In the parlor."
+
+"The parlor!" echoed Christie.  "Whiskey Dick?  What--is he--"
+
+"Yes; he's all right," said Jessie confidently.  "He's been here
+before, but he stayed in the hall; he was so shy.  I don't think
+you saw him."
+
+"I should think not--Whiskey Dick!"
+
+"Oh, you can call him Mr. Hall, if you like," said Jessie,
+laughing.  "His real name is Dick Hall.  If you want to be funny,
+you can say Alky Hall, as the others do."
+
+Christie's only reply to this levity was a look of superior
+resignation as she crossed the hall and entered the parlor.
+
+Then ensued one of those surprising, mystifying, and utterly
+inexplicable changes that leave the masculine being so helpless in
+the hands of his feminine master.  Before Christie opened the door
+her face underwent a rapid transformation: the gentle glow of a
+refined woman's welcome suddenly beamed in her interested eyes; the
+impulsive courtesy of an expectant hostess eagerly seizing a long-
+looked-for opportunity broke in a smile upon her lips as she swept
+across the room, and stopped with her two white outstretched hands
+before Whiskey Dick.
+
+It needed only the extravagant contrast presented by that gentleman
+to complete the tableau.  Attired in a suit of shining black
+alpaca, the visitor had evidently prepared himself with some care
+for a possible interview.  He was seated by the French window
+opening upon the veranda, as if to secure a retreat in case of an
+emergency.  Scrupulously washed and shaven, some of the soap
+appeared to have lingered in his eyes and inflamed the lids, even
+while it lent a sleek and shining lustre, not unlike his coat, to
+his smooth black hair.  Nevertheless, leaning back in his chair, he
+had allowed a large white handkerchief to depend gracefully from
+his fingers--a pose at once suggesting easy and elegant langour.
+
+"How kind of you to give me an opportunity to make up for my
+misfortune when you last called!  I was so sorry to have missed
+you.  But it was entirely my fault!  You were hurried, I think--you
+conversed with others in the hall--you--"
+
+She stopped to assist him to pick up the handkerchief that had
+fallen, and the Panama hat that had rolled from his lap towards the
+window when he had started suddenly to his feet at the apparition
+of grace and beauty.  As he still nervously retained the two hands
+he had grasped, this would have been a difficult feat, even had he
+not endeavored at the same moment, by a backward furtive kick, to
+propel the hat out of the window, at which she laughingly broke
+from his grasp and flew to the rescue.
+
+"Don't mind it, miss," he said hurriedly.  "It is not worth your
+demeaning yourself to touch it.  Leave it outside thar, miss.  I
+wouldn't have toted it in, anyhow, if some of those high-falutin'
+fellows hadn't allowed, the other night, ez it were the reg'lar
+thing to do; as if, miss, any gentleman kalkilated to ever put on
+his hat in the house afore a lady!"
+
+But Christie had already possessed herself of the unlucky object,
+and had placed it upon the table.  This compelled Whiskey Dick to
+rise again, and as an act of careless good breeding to drop his
+handkerchief in it.  He then leaned one elbow upon the piano, and,
+crossing one foot over the other, remained standing in an attitude
+he remembered to have seen in the pages of an illustrated paper as
+portraying the hero in some drawing-room scene.  It was easy and
+effective, but seemed to be more favorable to revery than
+conversation.  Indeed, he remembered that he had forgotten to
+consult the letterpress as to which it represented.
+
+"I see you agree with me, that politeness is quite a matter of
+intention," said Christie, "and not of mere fashion and rules.
+Now, for instance," she continued, with a dazzling smile, "I
+suppose, according to the rules, I ought to give you a note to Mr.
+Munroe, accepting his offer.  That is all that is required; but it
+seems so much nicer, don't you think, to tell it to YOU for HIM,
+and have the pleasure of your company and a little chat at the same
+time."
+
+"That's it, that's just it, Miss Carr; you've hit it in the centre
+this time," said Whiskey Dick, now quite convinced that his
+attitude was not intended for eloquence, and shifting back to his
+own seat, hat and all; "that's tantamount to what I said to the
+boys just now.  'You want an excuse,' sez I, 'for not goin' out
+with the young ladies.  So, accorden' to rules, you writes a letter
+allowin' buzziness and that sorter thing detains you.  But wot's
+the facts?  You're a gentleman, and as gentlemen you and George
+comes to the opinion that you're rather playin' it for all it's
+worth in this yer house, you know--comin' here night and day, off
+and on, reg'lar sociable and fam'ly like, and makin' people talk
+about things they ain't any call to talk about, and, what's a
+darned sight more, YOU FELLOWS ain't got any right YET to allow 'em
+to talk about, d'ye see?" he paused, out of breath.
+
+It was Miss Christie's turn to move about.  In changing her seat to
+the piano-stool, so as to be nearer her visitor, she brushed down
+some loose music, which Whiskey Dick hastened to pick up.
+
+"Pray don't mind it," she said, "pray don't, really--let it be--"
+But Whiskey Dick, feeling himself on safe ground in this attention,
+persisted to the bitter end of a disintegrated and well-worn
+"Travatore."  "So that is what Mr. Munroe said," she remarked
+quietly.
+
+"Not just then, in course, but it's what's bin on his mind and in
+his talk for days off and on," returned Dick, with a knowing smile
+and a nod of mysterious confidence.  "Bless your soul, Miss Carr,
+folks like you and me don't need to have them things explained.
+That's what I said to him, sez I.  'Don't send no note, but just go
+up there and hev it out fair and square, and say what you do mean.'
+But they would hev the note, and I kalkilated to bring it.  But
+when I set my eyes on you, and heard you express yourself as you
+did just now, I sez to myself, sez I, 'Dick, yer's a young lady,
+and a fash'nable lady at that, ez don't go foolin' round on rules
+and etiketts'--excuse my freedom, Miss Carr--'and you and her, sez
+I, 'kin just discuss this yer matter in a sociable, off-hand,
+fash'nable way.'  They're a good lot o' boys, Miss Carr, a square
+lot--white men all of 'em; but they're a little soft and green, may
+be, from livin' in these yer pine woods along o' the other sap.
+They just worship the ground you and your sister tread on--certain!
+of course! of course!" he added hurriedly, recognizing Christie's
+half-conscious, deprecating gesture with more exaggerated
+deprecation.  "I understand.  But what I wanter say is that they'd
+be willin' to be that ground, and lie down and let you walk over
+them--so to speak, Miss Carr, so to speak--if it would keep the hem
+of your gown from gettin' soiled in the mud o' the camp.  But it
+wouldn't do for them to make a reg'lar curderoy road o' themselves
+for the houl camp to trapse over, on the mere chance of your some
+time passin' that way, would it now?"
+
+"Won't you let me offer you some refreshment, Mr. Hall?" said
+Christie, rising, with a slight color.  "I'm really ashamed of my
+forgetfulness again, but I'm afraid it's partly YOUR fault for
+entertaining me to the exclusion of yourself.  No, thank you, let
+me fetch it for you."
+
+She turned to a handsome sideboard near the door, and presently
+faced him again with a decanter of whiskey and a glass in her hand,
+and a return of the bewitching smile she had worn on entering.
+
+"But perhaps you don't take whiskey?" suggested the arch deceiver,
+with a sudden affected but pretty perplexity of eye, brow, and
+lips.
+
+For the first time in his life Whiskey Dick hesitated between two
+forms of intoxication.  But he was still nervous and uneasy; habit
+triumphed, and he took the whiskey.  He, however, wiped his lips
+with a slight wave of his handkerchief, to support a certain easy
+elegance which he firmly believed relieved the act of any vulgar
+quality.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," he continued, after an exhilarated pause.  "Ez I said
+afore, this yer's a matter you and me can discuss after the fashion
+o' society.  My idea is that these yer boys should kinder let up on
+you and Miss Jessie for a while, and do a little more permiskus
+attention round the Ford.  There's one or two families yer with
+grown-up gals ez oughter be squared; that is--the boys mighter put
+in a few fancy touches among them--kinder take 'em buggy riding--or
+to church--once in a while--just to take the pizen outer their
+tongues, and make a kind o' bluff to the parents, d'ye see?  That
+would sorter divert their own minds; and even if it didn't, it
+would kinder get 'em accustomed agin to the old style and their own
+kind.  I want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in a
+giniral way.  I don't say you hev the idea, but it's kind o'
+nat'ral you might be thinkin' of it some time, and I thought I'd
+warn you agin it."
+
+"I think we understand each other too well to differ much, Mr.
+Hall," said Christie, still smiling; "but what is the idea?"
+
+The delicate compliment to their confidential relations and the
+slight stimulus of liquor had tremulously exalted Whiskey Dick.
+Affecting to look cautiously out of the window and around the room,
+he ventured to draw nearer the young woman with a half-paternal,
+half-timid familiarity.
+
+"It might have occurred to you," he said, laying his handkerchief
+as if to veil mere vulgar contact, on Christie's shoulder, "that it
+would be a good thing on YOUR side to invite down some of your
+high-toned gentlemen friends from 'Frisco to visit you and escort
+you round.  It seems quite nat'ral like, and I don't say it ain't,
+but--the boys wouldn't stand for it."
+
+In spite of her self-possession, Christie's eyes suddenly darkened,
+and she involuntarily drew herself up.  But Whiskey Dick, guiltily
+attributing the movement to his own indiscreet gesture, said,
+"Excuse me, miss," recovered himself by lightly dusting her
+shoulder with his handkerchief, as if to remove the impression, and
+her smile returned.
+
+"They wouldn't stand for it," said Dick, "and there'd be some
+shooting!  Not afore you, miss--not afore you, in course!  But
+they'd adjourn to the woods some morning with them city folks, and
+hev it out with rifles at a hundred yards.  Or, seein' ez they're
+city folks, the boys would do the square thing with pistols at
+twelve paces.  They're good boys, as I said afore; but they're
+quick and tetchy--George, being the youngest, nat'rally is the
+tetchiest.  You know how it is, Miss Carr; his pretty, gal-like
+face and little moustaches haz cost him half a dozen scrimmages
+already.  He'z had a fight for every hair that's growed in his
+moustache since he kem here."
+
+"Say no more, Mr. Hall!" said Christie, rising and pressing her
+hands lightly on Dick's tremulous fingers.  "If I ever had any such
+idea, I should abandon it now; you are quite right in this as in
+your other opinions.  I shall never cease to be thankful to Mr.
+Munroe and Mr. Kearney that they intrusted this delicate matter to
+your hands."
+
+"Well," said the gratified and reddening visitor, "it ain't perhaps
+the square thing to them or myself to say that they reckoned to
+have me discuss their delicate affairs for them, but--"
+
+"I understand," interrupted Christie.  "They simply gave you the
+letter as a friend.  It was my good fortune to find you a
+sympathizing and liberal man of the world."  The delighted Dick,
+with conscious vanity beaming from every feature of his shining
+face, lightly waved the compliment aside with his handkerchief, as
+she continued, "But I am forgetting the message.  We accept the
+horses.  Of course we COULD do without an escort; but forgive my
+speaking so frankly, are YOU engaged this afternoon?"
+
+"Excuse me, miss, I don't take--" stammered Dick, scarcely
+believing his ears.
+
+"Could you give us your company as an escort?" repeated Christie
+with a smile.
+
+Was he awake or dreaming, or was this some trick of liquor in his
+often distorted fancy?  He, Whiskey Dick! the butt of his friends,
+the chartered oracle of the barrooms, even in whose wretched vanity
+there was always the haunting suspicion that he was despised and
+scorned; he, who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so
+little in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into
+the wildest indiscretion here; he--now offered a reward for that
+indiscretion!  He, Whiskey Dick, the solicited escort of these two
+beautiful and peerless girls!  What would they say at the Ford?
+What would his friends think?  It would be all over the Ford the
+next day.  His past would be vindicated, his future secured.  He
+grew erect at the thought.  It was almost in other voice, and with
+no trace of his previous exaggeration, that he said, "With
+pleasure."
+
+"Then, if you will bring the horses at once, we shall be ready when
+you return."
+
+In another instant he had vanished, as if afraid to trust the
+reality of his good fortune to the dangers of delay.  At the end of
+half an hour he reappeared, leading the two horses, himself mounted
+on a half-broken mustang.  A pair of large, jingling silver spurs
+and a stiff sombrero, borrowed with the mustang from some
+mysterious source, were donned to do honor to the occasion.
+
+The young girls were not yet ready, but he was shown by the Chinese
+servant into the parlor to wait for them.  The decanter of whiskey
+and glasses were still invitingly there.  He was hot, trembling,
+and flushed with triumph.  He walked to the table and laid his hand
+on the decanter, when an odd thought flashed upon him.  He would
+not drink this time.  No, it should not be said that he, the
+selected escort of the elite of Devil's Ford, had to fill himself
+up with whiskey before they started.  The boys might turn to each
+other in their astonishment, as he proudly passed with his fair
+companions, and say, "It's Whiskey Dick," but he'd be d----d if they
+should add, "and full as ever."  No, sir!  Nor when he was riding
+beside these real ladies, and leaning over them at some
+confidential moment, should they even know it from his breath!
+No. . . .  Yet a thimbleful, taken straight, only a thimbleful,
+wouldn't be much, and might help to pull him together.  He again
+reached his trembling hand for the decanter, hesitated, and then,
+turning his back upon it, resolutely walked to the open window.
+Almost at the same instant he found himself face to face with
+Christie on the veranda.
+
+She looked into his bloodshot eyes, and cast a swift glance at the
+decanter.
+
+"Won't you take something before you go?" she said sweetly.
+
+"I--reckon--not, jest now," stammered Whiskey Dick, with a heroic
+effort.
+
+"You're right," said Christie.  "I see you are like me.  It's too
+hot for anything fiery.  Come with me."
+
+She led him into the dining-room, and pouring out a glass of iced
+tea handed it to him.  Poor Dick was not prepared for this terrible
+culmination.  Whiskey Dick and iced tea!  But under pretence of
+seeing if it was properly flavored, Christie raised it to her own
+lips.
+
+"Try it, to please me."
+
+He drained the goblet.
+
+"Now, then," said Christie gayly, "let's find Jessie, and be off!"
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Whatever might have been his other deficiencies as an escort,
+Whiskey Dick was a good horseman, and, in spite of his fractious
+brute, exhibited such skill and confidence as to at once satisfy
+the young girls of his value to them in the management of their own
+horses, to whom side-saddles were still an alarming novelty.
+Jessie, who had probably already learned from her sister the
+purport of Dick's confidences, had received him with equal
+cordiality and perhaps a more unqualified amusement; and now, when
+fairly lifted into the saddle by his tremulous but respectful
+hands, made a very charming picture of youthful and rosy
+satisfaction.  And when Christie, more fascinating than ever in her
+riding-habit, took her place on the other side of Dick, as they
+sallied from the gate, that gentleman felt his cup of happiness
+complete.  His triumphal entree into the world of civilization and
+fashion was secure.  He did not regret the untasted liquor; here
+was an experience in after years to lean his back against
+comfortably in bar-rooms, to entrance or defy mankind.  He had even
+got so far as to formulate in fancy the sentence: "I remember,
+gentlemen, that one afternoon, being on a pasear with two
+fash'nable young ladies," etc., etc.
+
+At present, however, he was obliged to confine himself to the
+functions of an elegant guide and cicerone--when not engaged in
+"having it out" with his horse.  Their way lay along the slope,
+crossing the high-road at right angles, to reach the deeper woods
+beyond.  Dick would have lingered on the highway--ostensibly to
+point out to his companions the new flume that had taken the place
+of the condemned ditch, but really in the hope of exposing himself
+in his glory to the curious eyes of the wayfaring world.
+
+Unhappily the road was deserted in the still powerful sunlight, and
+he was obliged to seek the cover of the woods, with a passing
+compliment to the parent of his charges.  Waving his hands towards
+the flume, he said, "Look at that work of your father's; there
+ain't no other man in Californy but Philip Carr ez would hev the
+grit to hold up such a bluff agin natur and agin luck ez that yer
+flume stands for.  I don't say it 'cause you're his daughters,
+ladies!  That ain't the style, ez YOU know, in sassiety, Miss
+Carr," he added, turning to Christie as the more socially
+experienced.  "No! but there ain't another man to be found ez could
+do it.  It cost already two hundred thousand; it'll cost five
+hundred thousand afore it's done; and every cent of it is got out
+of the yearth beneath it, or HEZ got to be out of it.  'Tain't
+ev'ry man, Miss Carr, ez hev got the pluck to pledge not only what
+he's got, but what he reckons to git."
+
+"But suppose he don't get it?" said Christie, slightly contracting
+her brows.
+
+"Then there's the flume to show for it," said Dick.
+
+"But of what use is the flume, if there isn't any more gold?"
+continued Christie, almost angrily.
+
+"That's good from YOU, miss," said Dick, giving way to a fit of
+hilarity.  "That's good for a fash'nable young lady--own daughter
+of Philip Carr.  She sez, says she," continued Dick, appealing to
+the sedate pines for appreciation of Christie's rare humor, "'Wot's
+the use of a flume, when gold ain't there?'  I must tell that to
+the boys."
+
+"And what's the use of the gold in the ground when the flume isn't
+there to work it out?" said Jessie to her sister, with a cautioning
+glance towards Dick.
+
+But Dick did not notice the look that passed between the sisters.
+The richer humor of Jessie's retort had thrown him into convulsions
+of laughter.
+
+"And now SHE says, wot's the use o' the gold without the flume?
+'Xcuse me, ladies, but that's just puttin' the hull question that's
+agitatin' this yer camp inter two speeches as clear as crystal.
+There's the hull crowd outside--and some on 'em inside, like
+Fairfax, hez their doubts--ez says with Miss Christie; and there's
+all of us inside, ez holds Miss Jessie's views."
+
+"I never heard Mr. Munroe say that the flume was wrong," said
+Jessie quickly.
+
+"Not to you, nat'rally," said Dick, with a confidential look at
+Christie; "but I reckon he'd like some of the money it cost laid
+out for suthin' else.  But what's the odds?  The gold is there, and
+WE'RE bound to get it."
+
+Dick was the foreman of a gang of paid workmen, who had replaced
+the millionaires in mere manual labor, and the WE was a polite
+figure of speech.
+
+The conversation seemed to have taken an unfortunate turn, and both
+the girls experienced a feeling of relief when they entered the
+long gulch or defile that led to Indian Spring.  The track now
+becoming narrow, they were obliged to pass in single file along the
+precipitous hillside, led by this escort.  This effectually
+precluded any further speech, and Christie at once surrendered
+herself to the calm, obliterating influences of the forest.  The
+settlement and its gossip were far behind and forgotten.  In the
+absorption of nature, her companions passed out of her mind, even
+as they sometimes passed out of her sight in the windings of the
+shadowy trail.  As she rode alone, the fronds of breast-high ferns
+seemed to caress her with outstretched and gently-detaining hands;
+strange wildflowers sprang up through the parting underbrush; even
+the granite rocks that at times pressed closely upon the trail
+appeared as if cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or
+lightly flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines.  She
+recalled the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old
+double cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours
+under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and, half
+regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer and more
+ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled against it.  The
+social complication that threatened her now seemed to her rather
+the outcome of her half-civilized parlor than of the sylvan glade.
+How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin, and then to
+have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed them
+to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement!  The
+suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes
+seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that
+they were shared by others who were practical men.  She was fain to
+have recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and
+this opened her eyes to the fact that her companions had been
+missing from the trail ahead of her for some time.  She quickened
+her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that gave her
+a more extended prospect.  But they had evidently disappeared.
+
+She was neither alarmed nor annoyed.  She could easily overtake
+them soon, for they would miss her, and return or wait for her at
+the spring.  At the worst she would have no difficulty in retracing
+her steps home.  In her present mood, she could readily spare their
+company; indeed she was not sorry that no other being should
+interrupt that sympathy with the free woods which was beginning to
+possess her.
+
+She was destined, however, to be disappointed.  She had not
+proceeded a hundred yards before she noticed the moving figure of a
+man beyond her in the hillside chaparral above the trail.  He
+seemed to be going in the same direction as herself, and, as she
+fancied, endeavoring to avoid her.  This excited her curiosity to
+the point of urging her horse forward until the trail broadened
+into the level forest again, which she now remembered was a part of
+the environs of Indian Spring.  The stranger hesitated, pausing
+once or twice with his back towards her, as if engaged in carefully
+examining the dwarf willows to select a switch.  Christie slightly
+checked her speed as she drew nearer; when, as if obedient to a
+sudden resolution, he turned and advanced towards her.  She was
+relieved and yet surprised to recognize the boyish face and figure
+of George Kearney.  He was quite pale and agitated, although
+attempting, by a jaunty swinging of the switch he had just cut, to
+assume the appearance of ease and confidence.
+
+Here was an opportunity.  Christie resolved to profit by it.  She
+did not doubt that the young fellow had already passed her sister
+on the trail, but, from bashfulness, had not dared to approach her.
+By inviting his confidence, she would doubtless draw something from
+him that would deny or corroborate her father's opinion of his
+sentiments.  If he was really in love with Jessie, she would learn
+what reasons he had for expecting a serious culmination of his
+suit, and perhaps she might be able delicately to open his eyes to
+the truth.  If, as she believed, it was only a boyish fancy, she
+would laugh him out of it with that camaraderie which had always
+existed between them.  A half motherly sympathy, albeit born quite
+as much from a contemplation of his beautiful yearning eyes as from
+his interesting position, lightened the smile with which she
+greeted him.
+
+"So you contrived to throw over your stupid business and join us,
+after all," she said; "or was it that you changed your mind at the
+last moment?" she added mischievously.  "I thought only we women
+were permitted that!"  Indeed, she could not help noticing that
+there was really a strong feminine suggestion in the shifting color
+and slightly conscious eyelids of the young fellow.
+
+"Do young girls always change their minds?" asked George, with an
+embarrassed smile.
+
+"Not, always; but sometimes they don't know their own mind--
+particularly if they are very young; and when they do at last, you
+clever creatures of men, who have interpreted their ignorance to
+please yourselves, abuse them for being fickle."  She stopped to
+observe the effect of what she believed a rather clear and
+significant exposition of Jessie's and George's possible situation.
+But she was not prepared for the look of blank resignation that
+seemed to drive the color from his face and moisten the fire of his
+dark eyes.
+
+"I reckon you're right," he said, looking down.
+
+"Oh! we're not accusing you of fickleness," said Christie gayly;
+"although you didn't come, and we were obliged to ask Mr. Hall to
+join us.  I suppose you found him and Jessie just now?"
+
+But George made no reply.  The color was slowly coming back to his
+face, which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown
+so much older that his returning blood might have brought two or
+three years with it.
+
+"Really, Mr. Kearney," she said dryly, "one would think that some
+silly, conceited girl"--she was quite earnest in her epithets, for
+a sudden, angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in
+Jessie had come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young
+fellow at her side--"some country jilt, had been trying her rustic
+hand upon you."
+
+"She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified," said George, slowly
+raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully.
+"It is I who am all that.  No, she is right, and you know it."
+
+Much as Christie admired and valued her sister's charms, she
+thought this was really going too far.  What had Jessie ever done--
+what was Jessie--to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind
+devotion as this?  And really, looking at him now, he was not so
+VERY YOUNG for Jessie; whether his unfortunate passion had brought
+out all his latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his
+serious nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy.  And
+certainly his was not a passion that he could be laughed out of.
+It was getting very tiresome.  She wished she had not met him--at
+least until she had had some clearer understanding with her sister.
+He was still walking beside her, with his hand on her bridle rein,
+partly to lead her horse over some boulders in the trail, and
+partly to conceal his first embarrassment.  When they had fairly
+reached the woods, he stopped.
+
+"I am going to say good-by, Miss Carr."
+
+"Are you not coming further?  We must be near Indian Spring, now;
+Mr. Hall and--and Jessie--cannot be far away.  You will keep me
+company until we meet them?"
+
+"No," he replied quietly.  "I only stopped you to say good-by.  I
+am going away."
+
+"Not from Devil's Ford?" she asked, in half-incredulous astonishment.
+"At least, not for long?"
+
+"I am not coming back," he replied.
+
+"But this is very abrupt," she said hurriedly, feeling that in some
+ridiculous way she had precipitated an equally ridiculous
+catastrophe.  "Surely you are not going away in this fashion,
+without saying good-by to Jessie and--and father?"
+
+"I shall see your father, of course--and you will give my regards
+to Miss Jessie."
+
+He evidently was in earnest.  Was there ever anything so perfectly
+preposterous?  She became indignant.
+
+"Of course," she said coldly, "I won't detain you; your business
+must be urgent, and I forgot--at least I had forgotten until to-
+day--that you have other duties more important than that of squire
+of dames.  I am afraid this forgetfulness made me think you would
+not part from us in quite such a business fashion.  I presume, if
+you had not met me just now, we should none of us have seen you
+again?"
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Will you say good-by, Miss Carr?"
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"One moment, Mr. Kearney.  If I have said anything which you think
+justifies this very abrupt leave-taking, I beg you will forgive and
+forget it--or, at least, let it have no more weight with you than
+the idle words of any woman.  I only spoke generally.  You know--I--
+I might be mistaken."
+
+His eyes, which had dilated when she began to speak, darkened; his
+color, which had quickly come, as quickly sank when she had ended.
+
+"Don't say that, Miss Carr.  It is not like you, and--it is
+useless.  You know what I meant a moment ago.  I read it in your
+reply.  You meant that I, like others, had deceived myself.  Did
+you not?"
+
+She could not meet those honest eyes with less than equal honesty.
+She knew that Jessie did not love him--would not marry him--
+whatever coquetry she might have shown.
+
+"I did not mean to offend you," she said hesitatingly; "I only half
+suspected it when I spoke."
+
+"And you wish to spare me the avowal?" he said bitterly.
+
+"To me, perhaps, yes, by anticipating it.  I could not tell what
+ideas you might have gathered from some indiscreet frankness of
+Jessie--or my father," she added, with almost equal bitterness.
+
+"I have never spoken to either," he replied quickly.  He stopped,
+and added, after a moment's mortifying reflection, "I've been
+brought up in the woods, Miss Carr, and I suppose I have followed
+my feelings, instead of the etiquette of society."
+
+Christie was too relieved at the rehabilitation of Jessie's
+truthfulness to notice the full significance of his speech.
+
+"Good-by," he said again, holding out his hand.
+
+"Good-by!"
+
+She extended her own, ungloved, with a frank smile.  He held it for
+a moment, with his eyes fixed upon hers.  Then suddenly, as if
+obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he crushed it like a flower
+again and again against his burning lips, and darted away.
+
+Christie sank back in her saddle with a little cry, half of pain
+and half of frightened surprise.  Had the poor boy suddenly gone
+mad, or was this vicarious farewell a part of the courtship of
+Devil's Ford?  She looked at her little hand, which had reddened
+under the pressure, and suddenly felt the flush extending to her
+cheeks and the roots of her hair.  This was intolerable.
+
+"Christie!"
+
+It was her sister emerging from the wood to seek her.  In another
+moment she was at her side.
+
+"We thought you were following," said Jessie.  "Good heavens! how
+you look!  What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing.  I met Mr. Kearney a moment ago on the trail.  He is
+going away, and--and--"  She stopped, furious and flushing.
+
+"And," said Jessie, with a burst of merriment, "he told you at last
+he loved you.  Oh, Christie!"
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The abrupt departure of George Kearney from Devil's Ford excited
+but little interest in the community, and was soon forgotten.  It
+was generally attributed to differences between himself and his
+partners on the question of further outlay of their earnings on
+mining improvements--he and Philip Carr alone representing a
+sanguine minority whose faith in the future of the mine accepted
+any risks.  It was alleged by some that he had sold out to his
+brother; it was believed by others that he had simply gone to
+Sacramento to borrow money on his share, in order to continue the
+improvements on his own responsibility.  The partners themselves
+were uncommunicative; even Whiskey Dick, who since his remarkable
+social elevation had become less oracular, much to his own
+astonishment, contributed nothing to the gossip except a suggestion
+that as the fiery temper of George Kearney brooked no opposition,
+even from his brother, it was better they should separate before
+the estrangement became serious.
+
+Mr. Carr did not disguise his annoyance at the loss of his young
+disciple and firm ally.  But an unlucky allusion to his previous
+remarks on Kearney's attentions to Jessie, and a querulous regret
+that he had permitted a disruption of their social intimacy,
+brought such an ominous and frigid opposition, not only from
+Christie, but even the frivolous Jessie herself, that Carr sank
+back in a crushed and terrified silence.  "I only meant to say," he
+stammered after a pause, in which he, however, resumed his
+aggrieved manner, "that FAIRFAX seems to come here still, and HE is
+not such a particular friend of mine."
+
+"But she is--and has your interest entirely at heart," said Jessie,
+stoutly, "and he only comes here to tell us how things are going on
+at the works."
+
+"And criticise your father, I suppose," said Mr. Carr, with an
+attempt at jocularity that did not, however, disguise an irritated
+suspiciousness.  "He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has
+poor Kearney in your estimation."
+
+"Now, father," said Jessie, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders
+in affected indignation, but really to conceal a certain
+embarrassment that sprang quite as much from her sister's quietly
+observant eye as her father's speech, "you promised to let this
+ridiculous discussion drop.  You will make me and Christie so
+nervous that we will not dare to open the door to a visitor, until
+he declares his innocence of any matrimonial intentions.  You don't
+want to give color to the gossip that agreement with your views
+about the improvements is necessary to getting on with us."
+
+"Who dares talk such rubbish?" said Carr, reddening; "is that the
+kind of gossip that Fairfax brings here?"
+
+"Hardly, when it's known that he don't quite agree with you, and
+DOES come here.  That's the best denial of the gossip."
+
+Christie, who had of late loftily ignored these discussions, waited
+until her father had taken his departure.
+
+"Then that is the reason why you still see Mr. Munroe, after what
+you said," she remarked quietly to Jessie.
+
+Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father, was obliged
+to pause on the threshold of the door, with a pretty assumption of
+blank forgetfulness in her blue eyes and lifted eyebrows.
+
+"Said what? when?" she asked vacantly.
+
+"When--when Mr. Kearney that day--in the woods--went away," said
+Christie, faintly coloring.
+
+"Oh! THAT day," said Jessie briskly; "the day he just gloved your
+hand with kisses, and then fled wildly into the forest to conceal
+his emotion."
+
+"The day he behaved very foolishly," said Christie, with
+reproachful calmness, that did not, however, prevent a suspicion of
+indignant moisture in her eyes--"when you explained"--
+
+"That it wasn't meant for ME," interrupted Jessie.
+
+"That it was to you that MR. MUNROE'S attentions were directed.
+And then we agreed that it was better to prevent any further
+advances of this kind by avoiding any familiar relations with
+either of them."
+
+"Yes," said Jessie, "I remember; but you're not confounding my
+seeing Fairfax occasionally now with that sort of thing.  HE
+doesn't kiss my hand like anything," she added, as if in abstract
+reflection.
+
+"Nor run away, either," suggested the trodden worm, turning.
+
+There was an ominous silence.
+
+"Do you know we are nearly out of coffee?" said Jessie choking, but
+moving towards the door with Spartan-like calmness.
+
+"Yes.  And something must be done this very day about the washing,"
+said Christie, with suppressed emotion, going towards the opposite
+entrance.
+
+Tears stood in each other's eyes with this terrible exchange of
+domestic confidences.  Nevertheless, after a moment's pause, they
+deliberately turned again, and, facing each other with frightful
+calmness, left the room by purposeless and deliberate exits other
+than those they had contemplated--a crushing abnegation of self,
+that, to some extent, relieved their surcharged feelings.
+
+Meantime the material prosperity of Devil's Ford increased, if a
+prosperity based upon no visible foundation but the confidences and
+hopes of its inhabitants could be called material.  Few, if any,
+stopped to consider that the improvements, buildings, and business
+were simply the outlay of capital brought from elsewhere, and as
+yet the settlement or town, as it was now called, had neither
+produced nor exported capital of itself equal to half the amount
+expended.  It was true that some land was cultivated on the further
+slope, some mills erected and lumber furnished from the
+inexhaustible forest; but the consumers were the inhabitants
+themselves, who paid for their produce in borrowed capital or
+unlimited credit.  It was never discovered that while all roads led
+to Devil's Ford, Devil's Ford led to nowhere.  The difficulties
+overcome in getting things into the settlement were never
+surmounted for getting things out of it.  The lumber was
+practically valueless for export to other settlements across the
+mountain roads, which were equally rich in timber.  The theory so
+enthusiastically held by the original locators, that Devil's Ford
+was a vast sink that had, through ages, exhausted and absorbed the
+trickling wealth of the adjacent hills and valleys, was suffering
+an ironical corroboration.
+
+One morning it was known that work was stopped at the Devil's Ford
+Ditch--temporarily only, it was alleged, and many of the old
+workmen simply had their labor for the present transferred to
+excavating the river banks, and the collection of vast heaps of
+"pay gravel."  Specimens from these mounds, taken from different
+localities, and at different levels, were sent to San Francisco for
+more rigid assay and analysis.  It was believed that this would
+establish the fact of the permanent richness of the drifts, and not
+only justify past expenditure, but a renewed outlay of credit and
+capital.  The suspension of engineering work gave Mr. Carr an
+opportunity to visit San Francisco on general business of the mine,
+which could not, however, prevent him from arranging further
+combinations with capital.  His two daughters accompanied him.  It
+offered an admirable opportunity for a shopping expedition, a
+change of scene, and a peaceful solution of their perplexing and
+anomalous social relations with Devil's Ford.  In the first flush
+of gratitude to their father for this opportune holiday, something
+of harmony had been restored to the family circle that had of late
+been shaken by discord.
+
+But their sanguine hopes of enjoyment were not entirely fulfilled.
+Both Jessie and Christie were obliged to confess to a certain
+disappointment in the aspect of the civilization they were now
+reentering.  They at first attributed it to the change in their own
+habits during the last three months, and their having become
+barbarous and countrified in their seclusion.  Certainly in the
+matter of dress they were behind the fashions as revealed in
+Montgomery Street.  But when the brief solace afforded them by the
+modiste and dressmaker was past, there seemed little else to be
+gained.  They missed at first, I fear, the chivalrous and loyal
+devotion that had only amused them at Devil's Ford, and were the
+more inclined, I think, to distrust the conscious and more
+civilized gallantry of the better dressed and more carefully
+presented men they met.  For it must be admitted that, for obvious
+reasons, their criticisms were at first confined to the sex they
+had been most in contact with.  They could not help noticing that
+the men were more eager, annoyingly feverish, and self-asserting in
+their superior elegance and external show than their old associates
+were in their frank, unrestrained habits.  It seemed to them that
+the five millionaires of Devil's Ford, in their radical simplicity
+and thoroughness, were perhaps nearer the type of true
+gentlemanhood than these citizens who imitated a civilization they
+were unable yet to reach.
+
+The women simply frightened them, as being, even more than the men,
+demonstrative and excessive in their fine looks, their fine
+dresses, their extravagant demand for excitement.  In less than a
+week they found themselves regretting--not the new villa on the
+slope of Devil's Ford, which even in its own bizarre fashion was
+exceeded by the barbarous ostentation of the villas and private
+houses around them--but the double cabin under the trees, which now
+seemed to them almost aristocratic in its grave simplicity and
+abstention.  In the mysterious forests of masts that thronged the
+city's quays they recalled the straight shafts of the pines on
+Devil's slopes, only to miss the sedate repose and infinite calm
+that used to environ them.  In the feverish, pulsating life of the
+young metropolis they often stopped oppressed, giddy, and choking;
+the roar of the streets and thoroughfares was meaningless to them,
+except to revive strange memories of the deep, unvarying monotone
+of the evening wind over their humbler roof on the Sierran
+hillside.  Civic bred and nurtured as they were, the recurrence of
+these sensations perplexed and alarmed them.
+
+"It seems so perfectly ridiculous," said Jessie, "for us to feel as
+out of place here as that Pike County servant girl in Sacramento
+who had never seen a steamboat before; do you know, I quite had a
+turn the other day at seeing a man on the Stockton wharf in a red
+shirt, with a rifle on his shoulder."
+
+"And you wanted to go and speak to him?" said Christie, with a sad
+smile.
+
+"No, that's just it; I felt awfully hurt and injured that he did
+not come up and speak to ME!  I wonder if we got any fever or that
+sort of thing up there; it makes one quite superstitious."
+
+Christie did not reply; more than once before she had felt that
+inexplicable misgiving.  It had sometimes seemed to her that she
+had never been quite herself since that memorable night when she
+had slipped out of their sleeping-cabin, and stood alone in the
+gracious and commanding presence of the woods and hills.  In the
+solitude of night, with the hum of the great city rising below her--
+at times even in theatres or crowded assemblies of men and women--
+she forgot herself, and again stood in the weird brilliancy of that
+moonlight night in mute worship at the foot of that slowly-rising
+mystic altar of piled terraces, hanging forests, and lifted
+plateaus that climbed forever to the lonely skies.  Again she felt
+before her the expanding and opening arms of the protecting woods.
+Had they really closed upon her in some pantheistic embrace that
+made her a part of them?  Had she been baptized in that moonlight
+as a child of the great forest?  It was easy to believe in the
+myths of the poets of an idyllic life under those trees, where,
+free from conventional restrictions, one loved and was loved.  If
+she, with her own worldly experience, could think of this now, why
+might not George Kearney have thought? . . .  She stopped, and
+found herself blushing even in the darkness.  As the thought and
+blush were the usual sequel of her reflections, it is to be feared
+that they may have been at times the impelling cause.
+
+Mr. Carr, however, made up for his daughters' want of sympathy with
+metropolitan life.  To their astonishment, he not only plunged into
+the fashionable gayeties and amusements of the town, but in dress
+and manner assumed the role of a leader of society.  The invariable
+answer to their half-humorous comment was the necessities of the
+mine, and the policy of frequenting the company of capitalists, to
+enlist their support and confidence.  There was something in this
+so unlike their father, that what at any other time they would have
+hailed as a relief to his habitual abstraction now half alarmed
+them.  Yet he was not dissipated--he did not drink nor gamble.
+There certainly did not seem any harm in his frequenting the
+society of ladies, with a gallantry that appeared to be forced and
+a pleasure that to their critical eyes was certainly apocryphal.
+He did not drag his daughters into the mixed society of that
+period; he did not press upon them the company of those he most
+frequented, and whose accepted position in that little world of
+fashion was considered equal to their own.  When Jessie strongly
+objected to the pronounced manners of a certain widow, whose actual
+present wealth and pecuniary influence condoned for a more
+uncertain prehistoric past, Mr. Carr did not urge a further
+acquaintance.  "As long as you're not thinking of marrying again,
+papa," Jessie had said finally, "I don't see the necessity of our
+knowing her."  "But suppose I were," had replied Mr. Carr with
+affected humor.  "Then you certainly wouldn't care for any one like
+her," his daughter had responded triumphantly.  Mr. Carr smiled,
+and dropped the subject, but it is probable that his daughters'
+want of sympathy with his acquaintances did not in the least
+interfere with his social prestige.  A gentleman in all his
+relations and under all circumstances, even his cold scientific
+abstraction was provocative; rich men envied his lofty ignorance of
+the smaller details of money-making, even while they mistrusted his
+judgment.  A man still well preserved, and free from weakening
+vices, he was a dangerous rival to younger and faster San
+Francisco, in the eyes of the sex, who knew how to value a repose
+they did not themselves possess.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Carr announced his intention of proceeding to
+Sacramento, on further business of the mine, leaving his two
+daughters in the family of a wealthy friend until he should return
+for them.  He opposed their ready suggestion to return to Devil's
+Ford with a new and unnecessary inflexibility: he even met their
+compromise to accompany him to Sacramento with equal decision.
+
+"You will be only in my way," he said curtly.  "Enjoy yourselves
+here while you can."
+
+Thus left to themselves, they tried to accept his advice.  Possibly
+some slight reaction to their previous disappointment may have
+already set in; perhaps they felt any distraction to be a relief to
+their anxiety about their father.  They went out more; they
+frequented concerts and parties; they accepted, with their host and
+his family, an invitation to one of those opulent and barbaric
+entertainments with which a noted San Francisco millionaire
+distracted his rare moments of reflection in his gorgeous palace on
+the hills.  Here they could at least be once more in the country
+they loved, albeit of a milder and less heroic type, and a little
+degraded by the overlapping tinsel and scattered spangles of the
+palace.
+
+It was a three days' fete; the style and choice of amusements left
+to the guests, and an equal and active participation by no means
+necessary or indispensable.  Consequently, when Christie and Jessie
+Carr proposed a ride through the adjacent canyon on the second
+morning, they had no difficulty in finding horses in the well-
+furnished stables of their opulent entertainers, nor cavaliers
+among the other guests, who were too happy to find favor in the
+eyes of the two pretty girls who were supposed to be abnormally
+fastidious and refined.  Christie's escort was a good-natured young
+banker, shrewd enough to avoid demonstrative attentions, and lucky
+enough to interest her during the ride with his clear and half-
+humorous reflections on some of the business speculations of the
+day.  If his ideas were occasionally too clever, and not always
+consistent with a high sense of honor, she was none the less
+interested to know the ethics of that world of speculation into
+which her father had plunged, and the more convinced, with mingled
+sense of pride and anxiety, that his still dominant gentlemanhood
+would prevent his coping with it on equal terms.  Nor could she
+help contrasting the conversation of the sharp-witted man at her
+side with what she still remembered of the vague, touching, boyish
+enthusiasm of the millionaires of Devil's Ford.  Had her escort
+guessed the result of this contrast, he would hardly have been as
+gratified as he was with the grave attention of her beautiful eyes.
+
+The fascination of a gracious day and the leafy solitude of the
+canyon led them to prolong their ride beyond the proposed limit,
+and it became necessary towards sunset for them to seek some
+shorter cut home.
+
+"There's a vaquero in yonder field," said Christie's escort, who
+was riding with her a little in advance of the others, "and those
+fellows know every trail that a horse can follow.  I'll ride on,
+intercept him, and try my Spanish on him.  If I miss him, as he's
+galloping on, you might try your hand on him yourself.  He'll
+understand your eyes, Miss Carr, in any language."
+
+As he dashed away, to cover his first audacity of compliment,
+Christie lifted the eyes thus apostrophized to the opposite field.
+The vaquero, who was chasing some cattle, was evidently too
+preoccupied to heed the shouts of her companion, and wheeling round
+suddenly to intercept one of the deviating fugitives, permitted
+Christie's escort to dash past him before that gentleman could rein
+in his excited steed.  This brought the vaquero directly in her
+path.  Perceiving her, he threw his horse back on its haunches, to
+prevent a collision.  Christie rode up to him, suddenly uttered a
+cry, and halted.  For before her, sunburnt in cheek and throat,
+darker in the free growth of moustache and curling hair, clad in
+the coarse, picturesque finery of his class, undisguised only in
+his boyish beauty, sat George Kearney.
+
+The blood, that had forsaken her astonished face, rushed as quickly
+back.  His eyes, which had suddenly sparkled with an electrical
+glow, sank before hers.  His hand dropped, and his cheek flushed
+with a dark embarrassment.
+
+"You here, Mr. Kearney?  How strange!--but how glad I am to meet
+you again!"
+
+She tried to smile; her voice trembled, and her little hand shook
+as she extended it to him.
+
+He raised his dark eyes quickly, and impulsively urged his horse to
+her side.  But, as if suddenly awakening to the reality of the
+situation, he glanced at her hurriedly, down at his barbaric
+finery, and threw a searching look towards her escort.
+
+In an instant Christie saw the infelicity of her position, and its
+dangers.  The words of Whiskey Dick, "He wouldn't stand that,"
+flashed across her mind.  There was no time to lose.  The banker
+had already gained control over his horse, and was approaching
+them, all unconscious of the fixed stare with which George was
+regarding him.  Christie hastily seized the hand which he had
+allowed to fall at his side, and said quickly:--
+
+"Will you ride with me a little way, Mr. Kearney?"
+
+He turned the same searching look upon her.  She met it clearly and
+steadily; he even thought reproachfully.
+
+"Do!" she said hurriedly.  "I ask it as a favor.  I want to speak
+to you.  Jessie and I are here alone.  Father is away.  YOU are one
+of our oldest friends."
+
+He hesitated.  She turned to the astonished young banker, who rode up.
+
+"I have just met an old friend.  Will you please ride back as
+quickly as you can, and tell Jessie that Mr. Kearney is here, and
+ask her to join us?"
+
+She watched her dazed escort, still speechless from the spectacle
+of the fastidious Miss Carr tete-a-tete with a common Mexican
+vaquero, gallop off in the direction of the canyon, and then turned
+to George.
+
+"Now take me home, the shortest way, as quick as you can."
+
+"Home?" echoed George.
+
+"I mean to Mr. Prince's house.  Quick! before they can come up to
+us."
+
+He mechanically put spurs to his horse; she followed.  They
+presently struck into a trail that soon diverged again into a
+disused logging track through the woods.
+
+"This is the short cut to Prince's, by two miles," he said, as they
+entered the woods.
+
+As they were still galloping, without exchanging a word, Christie
+began to slacken her speed; George did the same.  They were safe
+from intrusion at the present, even if the others had found the
+short cut.  Christie, bold and self-reliant a moment ago, suddenly
+found herself growing weak and embarrassed.  What had she done?
+
+She checked her horse suddenly.
+
+"Perhaps we had better wait for them," she said timidly.
+
+George had not raised his eyes to hers.
+
+"You said you wanted to hurry home," he replied gently, passing his
+hand along his mustang's velvety neck, "and--and you had something
+to say to me."
+
+"Certainly," she answered, with a faint laugh.  "I'm so astonished
+at meeting you here.  I'm quite bewildered.  You are living here;
+you have forsaken us to buy a ranche?" she continued, looking at
+him attentively.
+
+His brow colored slightly.
+
+"No, I'm living here, but I have bought no ranche.  I'm only a
+hired man on somebody else's ranche, to look after the cattle."
+
+He saw her beautiful eyes fill with astonishment and--something
+else.  His brow cleared; he went on, with his old boyish laugh:
+
+"No, Miss Carr.  The fact is, I'm dead broke.  I've lost everything
+since I saw you last.  But as I know how to ride, and I'm not
+afraid of work, I manage to keep along."
+
+"You have lost money in--in the mines?" said Christie suddenly.
+
+"No"--he replied quickly, evading her eyes.  "My brother has my
+interest, you know.  I've been foolish on my own account solely.
+You know I'm rather inclined to that sort of thing.  But as long as
+my folly don't affect others, I can stand it."
+
+"But it may affect others--and THEY may not think of it as folly--"
+She stopped short, confused by his brightening color and eyes.  "I
+mean--  Oh, Mr. Kearney, I want you to be frank with me.  I know
+nothing of business, but I know there has been trouble about the
+mine at Devil's Ford.  Tell me honestly, has my father anything to
+do with it?  If I thought that through any imprudence of his, you
+had suffered--if I believed that you could trace any misfortune of
+yours to him--to US--I should never forgive myself"--she stopped
+and flashed a single look at him--"I should never forgive YOU for
+abandoning us."
+
+The look of pain which had at first shown itself in his face, which
+never concealed anything, passed, and a quick smile followed her
+feminine anticlimax.
+
+"Miss Carr," he said, with boyish eagerness, "if any man suggested
+to me that your father wasn't the brightest and best of his kind--
+too wise and clever for the fools about him to understand--I'd--I'd
+shoot him."
+
+Confused by his ready and gracious disclaimer of what she had NOT
+intended to say, there was nothing left for her but to rush upon
+what she really intended to say, with what she felt was shameful
+precipitation.
+
+"One word more, Mr. Kearney," she began, looking down, but feeling
+the color come to her face as she spoke.  "When you spoke to me the
+day you left, you must have thought me hard and cruel.  When I tell
+you that I thought you were alluding to Jessie and some feeling you
+had for her--"
+
+"For Jessie!" echoed George.
+
+"You will understand that--that--"
+
+"That what?" said George, drawing nearer to her.
+
+"That I was only speaking as she might have spoken had you talked
+to her of me," added Christie hurriedly, slightly backing her horse
+away from him.
+
+But this was not so easy, as George was the better rider, and by an
+imperceptible movement of his wrist and foot had glued his horse to
+her side.  "He will go now," she had thought, but he didn't.
+
+"We must ride on," she suggested faintly.
+
+"No," he said with a sudden dropping of his boyish manner and a
+slight lifting of his head.  "We must ride together no further,
+Miss Carr.  I must go back to the work I am hired to do, and you
+must go on with your party, whom I hear coming.  But when we part
+here you must bid me good-by--not as Jessie's sister--but as
+Christie--the one--the only woman that I love, or that I ever have
+loved."
+
+He held out his hand.  With the recollection of their previous
+parting, she tremblingly advanced her own.  He took it, but did not
+raise it to his lips.  And it was she who found herself half
+confusedly retaining his hand in hers, until she dropped it with a
+blush.
+
+"Then is this the reason you give for deserting us as you have
+deserted Devil's Ford?" she said coldly.
+
+He lifted his eyes to her with a strange smile, and said, "Yes,"
+wheeled his horse, and disappeared in the forest.
+
+He had left her thus abruptly once before, kissed, blushing, and
+indignant.  He was leaving her now, unkissed, but white and
+indignant.  Yet she was so self-possessed when the party joined
+her, that the singular rencontre and her explanation of the
+stranger's sudden departure excited no further comment.  Only
+Jessie managed to whisper in her ear,--
+
+"I hope you are satisfied now that it wasn't me he meant?"
+
+"Not at all," said Christie coldly.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A few days after the girls had returned to San Francisco, they
+received a letter from their father.  His business, he wrote, would
+detain him in Sacramento some days longer.  There was no reason why
+they should return to Devil's Ford in the heat of the summer; their
+host had written to beg him to allow them a more extended visit,
+and, if they were enjoying themselves, he thought it would be well
+not to disoblige an old friend.  He had heard they had a pleasant
+visit to Mr. Prince's place, and that a certain young banker had
+been very attentive to Christie.
+
+"Do you know what all this means, dear?" asked Jessie, who had been
+watching her sister with an unusually grave face.
+
+Christie whose thoughts had wandered from the letter, replied
+carelessly,--
+
+"I suppose it means that we are to wait here until father sends for
+us."
+
+"It means a good deal more.  It means that papa has had another
+reverse; it means that the assay has turned out badly for the mine--
+that the further they go from the flat the worse it gets--that all
+the gold they will probably ever see at Devil's Ford is what they
+have already found or will find on the flat; it means that all
+Devil's Ford is only a 'pocket,' and not a 'lead.'"  She stopped,
+with unexpected tears in her eyes.
+
+"Who told you this?" asked Christie breathlessly.
+
+"Fairfax--Mr. Munroe," stammered her sister, "writes to me as if we
+already knew it--tells me not to be alarmed, that it isn't so bad--
+and all that."
+
+"How long has this happened, Jessie?" said Christie, taking her
+hand, with a white but calm face.
+
+"Nearly ever since we've been here, I suppose.  It must be so, for
+he says poor papa is still hopeful of doing something yet."
+
+"And Mr. Munroe writes to you?" said Christie abstractedly.
+
+"Of course," said Jessie quickly.  "He feels interested in--us."
+
+"Nobody tells ME anything," said Christie.
+
+"Didn't--"
+
+"No," said Christie bitterly.
+
+"What on earth DID you talk about?  But people don't confide in you
+because they're afraid of you.  You're so--"
+
+"So what?"
+
+"So gently patronizing, and so 'I-don't-suppose-you-can-help-it,-
+poor-thing,' in your general style," said Jessie, kissing her.
+"There!  I only wish I was like you.  What do you say if we write
+to father that we'll go back to Devil's Ford?  Mr. Munroe thinks we
+will be of service there just now.  If the men are dissatisfied,
+and think we're spending money--"
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Munroe is hardly a disinterested adviser.  At
+least, I don't think it would look quite decent for you to fly back
+without your father, at his suggestion," said Christie coldly.  "He
+is not the only partner.  We are spending no money.  Besides, we
+have engaged to go to Mr. Prince's again next week."
+
+"As you like, dear," said Jessie, turning away to hide a faint
+smile.
+
+Nevertheless, when they returned from their visit to Mr. Prince's,
+and one or two uneventful rides, Christie looked grave.  It was
+only a few days later that Jessie burst upon her one morning.
+
+"You were saying that nobody ever tells you anything.  Well, here's
+your chance.  Whiskey Dick is below."
+
+"Whiskey Dick?" repeated Christie.  "What does he want?"
+
+"YOU, love.  Who else?  You know he always scorns me as not being
+high-toned and elegant enough for his social confidences.  He asked
+for you only."
+
+With an uneasy sense of some impending revelation, Christie
+descended to the drawing-room.  As she opened the door, a strong
+flavor of that toilet soap and eau de Cologne with which Whiskey
+Dick was in the habit of gracefully effacing the traces of
+dissipation made known his presence.  In spite of a new suit of
+clothes, whose pristine folds refused to adapt themselves entirely
+to the contour of his figure, he was somewhat subdued by the
+unexpected elegance of the drawing-room of Christie's host.  But a
+glance at Christie's sad but gracious face quickly reassured him.
+Taking from his hat a three-cornered parcel, he unfolded a handsome
+saffrona rose, which he gravely presented to her.  Having thus
+reestablished his position, he sank elegantly into a tete-a-tete
+ottoman.  Finding the position inconvenient to face Christie, who
+had seated herself on a chair, he transferred himself to the other
+side of the ottoman, and addressed her over its back as from a
+pulpit.
+
+"Is this really a fortunate accident, Mr. Hall, or did you try to
+find us?" said Christie pleasantly.
+
+"Partly promiskuss, and partly coincident, Miss Christie, one up
+and t'other down," said Dick lightly.  "Work being slack at present
+at Devil's Ford, I reck'ned I'd take a pasear down to 'Frisco, and
+dip into the vortex o' fash'nable society and out again."  He
+lightly waved a new handkerchief to illustrate his swallow-like
+intrusion.  "This yer minglin' with the bo-tong is apt to be
+wearisome, ez you and me knows, unless combined with experience and
+judgment.  So when them boys up there allows that there's a little
+too much fash'nable society and San Francisco capital and high-
+falutin' about the future goin' on fer square surface mining, I
+sez, 'Look yere, gentlemen,' sez I, 'you don't see the pint.  The
+pint is to get the pop'lar eye fixed, so to speak, on Devil's Ford.
+When a fash'nable star rises above the 'Frisco horizon--like Miss
+Carr--and, so to speak, dazzles the gineral eye, people want to
+know who she is.  And when people say that's the accomplished
+daughter o' the accomplished superintendent of the Devil's Ford
+claim--otherwise known as the Star-eyed Goddess o' Devil's Ford--
+every eye is fixed on the mine, and Capital, so to speak, tumbles
+to her.'  And when they sez that the old man--excuse my freedom,
+but that's the way the boys talk of your father, meaning no harm--
+the old man, instead o' trying to corral rich widders--grass or
+otherwise--to spend their money on the big works for the gold that
+ain't there yet--should stay in Devil's Ford and put all his sabe
+and genius into grindin' out the little gold that is there, I sez
+to them that it ain't your father's style.  'His style,' sez I, 'ez
+to go in and build them works.'  When they're done he turns round
+to Capital, and sez he--'Look yer,' sez he, 'thar's all the works
+you want, first quality--cost a million; thar's all the water you
+want, onlimited--cost another million; thar's all the pay gravel
+you want in and outer the ground--call it two millions more.  Now
+my time's too vally'ble; my professhun's too high-toned to WORK
+mines.  I MAKE 'em.  Hand me over a check for ten millions and call
+it square, and work it for yourself.'  So Capital hands over the
+money and waltzes down to run the mine, and you original locators
+walks round with yer hands in yer pockets a-top of your six million
+profit, and you let's Capital take the work and the responsibility."
+
+Preposterous as this seemed from the lips of Whiskey Dick, Christie
+had a haunting suspicion that it was not greatly unlike the
+theories expounded by the clever young banker who had been her
+escort.  She did not interrupt his flow of reminiscent criticism;
+when he paused for breath, she said, quietly:
+
+"I met Mr. George Kearney the other day in the country."
+
+Whiskey Dick stopped awkwardly, glanced hurriedly at Christie, and
+coughed behind his handkerchief.
+
+"Mr. Kearney--eh--er--certengly--yes--er--met him, you say.  Was
+he--er--er--well?"
+
+"In health, yes; but otherwise he has lost everything," said
+Christie, fixing her eyes on the embarrassed Dick.
+
+"Yes--er--in course--in course--" continued Dick, nervously
+glancing round the apartment as if endeavoring to find an opening
+to some less abrupt statement of the fact.
+
+"And actually reduced to take some menial employment," added
+Christie, still regarding Dick with her clear glance.
+
+"That's it--that's just it," said Dick, beaming as he suddenly
+found his delicate and confidential opportunity.  "That's it, Miss
+Christie; that's just what I was sayin' to the boys.  'Ez it the
+square thing,' sez I, 'jest because George hez happened to
+hypothecate every dollar he has, or expects to hev, to put into
+them works, only to please Mr. Carr, and just because he don't want
+to distress that intelligent gentleman by letting him see he's dead
+broke--for him to go and demean himself and Devil's Ford by rushing
+away and hiring out as a Mexican vaquero on Mexican wages?  Look,'
+sez I, 'at the disgrace he brings upon a high-toned, fash'nable
+girl, at whose side he's walked and danced, and passed rings, and
+sentiments, and bokays in the changes o' the cotillion and the
+mizzourka.  And wot,' sez I, 'if some day, prancing along in a
+fash'nable cavalcade, she all of a suddents comes across him
+drivin' a Mexican steer?'  That's what I said to the boys.  And so
+you met him, Miss Christie, as usual," continued Dick, endeavoring
+under the appearance of a large social experience to conceal an
+eager anxiety to know the details--"so you met him; and, in course,
+you didn't let on yer knew him, so to speak, nat'rally, or p'raps
+you kinder like asked him to fix your saddle-girth, and give him a
+five-dollar piece--eh?"
+
+Christie, who had risen and gone to the window, suddenly turned a
+very pale face and shining eyes on Dick.
+
+"Mr. Hall," she said, with a faint attempt at a smile, "we are old
+friends, and I feel I can ask you a favor.  You once before acted
+as our escort--it was for a short but a happy time--will you accept
+a larger trust?  My father is busy in Sacramento for the mine: will
+you, without saying anything to anybody, take Jessie and me back at
+once to Devil's Ford?"
+
+"Will I?  Miss Christie," said Dick, choking between an intense
+gratification and a desire to keep back its vulgar exhibition, "I
+shall be proud!"
+
+"When I say keep it a secret"--she hesitated--"I don't mean that I
+object to your letting Mr. Kearney, if you happen to know where he
+is, understand that we are going back to Devil's Ford."
+
+"Cert'nly--nat'rally," said Dick, waving his hand gracefully;
+"sorter drop him a line, saying that bizness of a social and
+delicate nature--being the escort of Miss Christie and Jessie Carr
+to Devil's Ford--prevents my having the pleasure of calling."
+
+"That will do very well, Mr. Hall," said Christie, faintly smiling
+through her moist eyelashes.  "Then will you go at once and secure
+tickets for to-night's boat, and bring them here?  Jessie and I
+will arrange everything else."
+
+"Cert'nly," said Dick impulsively, and preparing to take a graceful
+leave.
+
+"We'll be impatient until you return with the tickets," said
+Christie graciously.
+
+Dick shook hands gravely, got as far as the door, and paused.
+
+"You think it better to take the tickets now?" he said dubiously.
+
+"By all means," said Christie impetuously.  "I've set my heart on
+going to-night--and unless you secure berths early--"
+
+"In course--in course," interrupted Dick nervously.  "But--"
+
+"But what?" said Christie impatiently.
+
+Dick hesitated, shut the door carefully, and, looking round the
+room, lightly shook out his handkerchief, apparently flicked away
+an embarrassing suggestion, and said, with a little laugh:
+
+"It's ridiklous, perfectly ridiklous, Miss Christie; but not bein'
+in the habit of carryin' ready money, and havin' omitted to cash a
+draft on Wells, Fargo & Co.--"
+
+"Of course," said Christie rapidly.  "How forgetful I am!  Pray
+forgive me, Mr. Hall.  I didn't think.  I'll run up and get it from
+our host; he will be glad to be our banker."
+
+"One moment, Miss Christie," said Dick lightly, as his thumb and
+finger relaxed in his waistcoat pocket over the only piece of money
+in the world that had remained to him after his extravagant
+purchase of Christie's saffrona rose, "one moment: in this yer
+monetary transaction, if you like, you are at liberty to use MY
+name."
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+As Christie and Jessie Carr looked from the windows of the coach,
+whose dust-clogged wheels were slowly dragging them, as if
+reluctant, nearer the last stage of their journey to Devil's Ford,
+they were conscious of a change in the landscape, which they could
+not entirely charge upon their changed feelings.  The few bared
+open spaces on the upland, the long stretch of rocky ridge near the
+summit, so vivid and so velvety during their first journey, were
+now burnt and yellow; even the brief openings in the forest were
+seared as if by a hot iron in the scorching rays of a half year's
+sun.  The pastoral slopes of the valley below were cloaked in
+lustre-leather: the rare watercourses along the road had faded from
+the waiting eye and ear; it seemed as if the long and dry summer
+had even invaded the close-set ranks of pines, and had blown a
+simoom breath through the densest woods, leaving its charred red
+ashes on every leaf and spray along the tunnelled shade.  As they
+leaned out of the window and inhaled the half-dead spices of the
+evergreens, they seemed to have entered the atmosphere of some
+exhausted passion--of some fierce excitement that was even now
+slowly burning itself out.
+
+It was a relief at last to see the straggling houses of Devil's
+Ford far below come once more into view, as they rounded the
+shoulder of Devil's Spur and began the long descent.  But as they
+entered the town a change more ominous and startling than the
+desiccation of the landscape forced itself upon them.  The town was
+still there, but where were the inhabitants?  Four months ago they
+had left the straggling street thronged with busy citizens--groups
+at every corner, and a chaos of merchandise and traders in the open
+plaza or square beside the Presbyterian church.  Now all was
+changed.  Only a few wayfarers lifted their heads lazily as the
+coach rattled by, crossing the deserted square littered with empty
+boxes, and gliding past empty cabins or vacant shop windows, from
+which not only familiar faces, but even the window sashes
+themselves, were gone.  The great unfinished serpent-like flume,
+crossing the river on gigantic trestles, had advanced as far as the
+town, stooping over it like some enormous reptile that had sucked
+its life blood and was gorged with its prey.
+
+Whiskey Dick, who had left the stage on the summit to avail himself
+of a shorter foot trail to the house, that would give him half an
+hour's grace to make preparations, met them at the stage office
+with a buggy.  A glance at the young girls, perhaps, convinced him
+that the graces of elegant worldly conversation were out of place
+with the revelation he read on their faces.  Perhaps, he, too, was
+a trifle indisposed.  The short journey to the house was made in
+profound silence.
+
+The villa had been repainted and decorated, and it looked fresher,
+and even, to their preoccupied minds, appeared more attractive than
+ever.  Thoughtful hands had taken care of the vines and rose-bushes
+on the trellises; water--that precious element in Devil's Ford--had
+not been spared in keeping green through the long drought the
+plants which the girls had so tenderly nurtured.  It was the one
+oasis in which the summer still lingered; and yet a singular sense
+of loss came over the girls as they once more crossed its
+threshold.  It seemed no longer their own.
+
+"Ef I was you, Miss Christie, I'd keep close to the house for a day
+or two, until--until--things is settled," said Dick; "there's a
+heap o' tramps and sich cattle trapsin' round.  P'raps you wouldn't
+feel so lonesome if you was nearer town--for instance, 'bout wher'
+you useter live."
+
+"In the dear old cabin," said Christie quickly; "I remember it; I
+wish we were there now."
+
+"Do you really?  Do you?" said Whiskey Dick, with suddenly
+twinkling eyes.  "That's like you to say it.  That's what I allus
+said," continued Dick, addressing space generally; "if there's any
+one ez knows how to come square down to the bottom rock without
+flinchin', it's your high-toned, fash'nable gals.  But I must
+meander back to town, and let the boys know you're in possession,
+safe and sound.  It's right mean that Fairfax and Mattingly had to
+go down to Lagrange on some low business yesterday, but they'll be
+back to-morrow.  So long."
+
+Left alone, the girls began to realize their strange position.
+They had conceived no settled plan.  The night they left San
+Francisco they had written an earnest letter to their father,
+telling him that on learning the truth about the reverses of
+Devil's Ford, they thought it their duty to return and share them
+with others, without obliging him to prefer the request, and with
+as little worry to him as possible.  He would find them ready to
+share his trials, and in what must be the scene of their work
+hereafter.
+
+"It will bring father back," said Christie; "he won't leave us here
+alone; and then together we must come to some understanding with
+him--with THEM--for somehow I feel as if this house belonged to us
+no longer."
+
+Her surmise was not far wrong.  When Mr. Carr arrived hurriedly
+from Sacramento the next evening, he found the house deserted.  His
+daughters were gone; there were indications that they had arrived,
+and, for some reason, suddenly departed.  The vague fear that had
+haunted his guilty soul after receiving their letter, and during
+his breathless journey, now seemed to be realized.  He was turning
+from the empty house, whose reproachful solitude frightened him,
+when he was confronted on the threshold by the figure of Fairfax
+Munroe.
+
+"I came to the stage office to meet you," he said; "you must have
+left the stage at the summit."
+
+"I did," said Carr angrily.  "I was anxious to meet my daughters
+quickly, to know the reason of their foolish alarm, and to know
+also who had been frightening them.  Where are they?"
+
+"They are safe in the old cabin beyond, that has been put up ready
+to receive them again," said Fairfax quietly.
+
+"But what is the meaning of this?  Why are they not here?" demanded
+Carr, hiding his agitation in a burst of querulous rage.
+
+"Do YOU ask, Mr. Carr?" said Fairfax sadly.  "Did you expect them
+to remain here until the sheriff took possession?  No one knows
+better than yourself that the money advanced you on the deeds of
+this homestead has never been repaid."
+
+Carr staggered, but recovered himself with feeble violence.
+
+"Since you know so much of my affairs, how do you know that this
+claim will ever be pressed for payment?  How do you know it is not
+the advance of a--a--friend?"
+
+"Because I have seen the woman who advanced it," said Fairfax
+hopelessly.  "She was here to look at the property before your
+daughters came."
+
+"Well?" said Carr nervously.
+
+"Well!  You force me to tell you something I should like to forget.
+You force me to anticipate a disclosure I expected to make to you
+only when I came to ask permission to woo your daughter Jessie; and
+when I tell you what it is, you will understand that I have no
+right to criticise your conduct.  I am only explaining my own."
+
+"Go on," said Carr impatiently.
+
+"When I first came to this country, there was a woman I loved
+passionately.  She treated me as women of her kind only treat men
+like me; she ruined me, and left me.  That was four years ago.  I
+love your daughter, Mr. Carr, but she has never heard it from my
+lips.  I would not woo her until I had told you all.  I have tried
+to do it ere this, and failed.  Perhaps I should not now, but--"
+
+"But what?" said Carr furiously; "speak out!"
+
+"But this.  Look!" said Fairfax, producing from his pocket the
+packet of letters Jessie had found; "perhaps you know the
+handwriting?"
+
+"What do you mean?" gasped Carr.
+
+"That woman--my mistress--is the woman who advanced you money, and
+who claims this house."
+
+
+The interview, and whatever came of it, remained a secret with the
+two men.  When Mr. Carr accepted the hospitality of the old cabin
+again, it was understood that he had sacrificed the new house and
+its furniture to some of the more pressing debts of the mine, and
+the act went far to restore his waning popularity.  But a more
+genuine feeling of relief was experienced by Devil's Ford when it
+was rumored that Fairfax Munroe had asked for the hand of Jessie
+Carr, and that some promise contingent upon the equitable
+adjustment of the affairs of the mine had been given by Mr. Carr.
+To the superstitious mind of Devil's Ford and its few remaining
+locators, this new partnership seemed to promise that unity of
+interest and stability of fortune that Devil's Ford had lacked.
+But nothing could be done until the rainy season had fairly set in;
+until the long-looked-for element that was to magically separate
+the gold from the dross in those dull mounds of dust and gravel had
+come of its own free will, and in its own appointed channels,
+independent of the feeble auxiliaries that had hopelessly riven the
+rocks on the hillside, or hung incomplete and unfinished in lofty
+scaffoldings above the settlement.
+
+The rainy season came early.  At first in gathered mists on the
+higher peaks that were lifted in the morning sun only to show a
+fresher field of dazzling white below; in white clouds that at
+first seemed to be mere drifts blown across from those fresh
+snowfields, and obscuring the clear blue above; in far-off murmurs
+in the hollow hills and gulches; in nearer tinkling melody and baby
+prattling in the leaves.  It came with bright flashes of sunlight
+by day, with deep, monotonous shadow at night; with the onset of
+heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods, the tumultuous tossing of
+leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent dissolution of the
+whole landscape in days of steady and uninterrupted downfall.  It
+came extravagantly, for every canyon had grown into a torrent,
+every gulch a waterspout, every watercourse a river, and all
+pouring into the North Fork, that, rushing past the settlement,
+seemed to threaten it with lifted crest and flying mane.  It came
+dangerously, for one night the river, leaping the feeble barrier of
+Devil's Ford, swept away houses and banks, scattered with
+unconscious irony the laboriously collected heaps of gravel left
+for hydraulic machinery, and spread out a vast and silent lake
+across the submerged flat.
+
+In the hurry and confusion of that night the girls had thrown open
+their cabin to the escaping miners, who hurried along the slope
+that was now the bank of the river.  Suddenly Christie felt her arm
+grasped, and she was half-led, half-dragged, into the inner room.
+Her father stood before her.
+
+"Where is George Kearney?" he asked tremulously.
+
+"George Kearney!" echoed Christie, for a moment believing the
+excitement had turned her father's brain.  "You know he is not
+here; he is in San Francisco."
+
+"He is here--I tell you," said Carr impatiently; "he has been here
+ever since the high water, trying to save the flume and reservoir."
+
+"George--here!" Christie could only gasp.
+
+"Yes!  He passed here a few moments ago, to see if you were all
+safe, and he has gone on towards the flume.  But what he is trying
+to do is madness.  If you see him, implore him to do no more.  Let
+him abandon the accursed flume to its fate.  It has worked already
+too much woe upon us all; why should it carry his brave and
+youthful soul down with it?"
+
+The words were still ringing in her ears, when he suddenly passed
+away, with the hurrying crowd.  Scarcely knowing what she did, she
+ran out, vaguely intent only on one thought, seeking only the one
+face, lately so dear in recollection that she felt she would die if
+she never saw it again.  Perplexed by confused voices in the woods,
+she lost track of the crowd, until the voices suddenly were raised
+in one loud outcry, followed by the crashing of timber, the
+splashing of water, a silence, and then a dull, continuous roar.
+She ran vaguely on in the direction of the reservoir, with her
+father's injunction still in her mind, until a terrible idea
+displaced it, and she turned at right angles suddenly, and ran
+towards the slope leading down to the submerged flat.  She had
+barely left the shelter of the trees behind her before the roar of
+water seemed to rise at her very feet.  She stopped, dazed,
+bewildered, and horror-stricken, on the edge of the slope.  It was
+the slope no longer, but the bank of the river itself!
+
+Even in the gray light of early morning, and with inexperienced
+eyes, she saw all too clearly now.  The trestle-work had given way;
+the curving mile of flume, fallen into the stream, and, crushed and
+dammed against the opposite shore, had absolutely turned the whole
+river through the half-finished ditch and partly excavated mine in
+its way, a few rods further on to join the old familiar channel.
+The bank of the river was changed; the flat had become an island,
+between which and the slope where she stood the North Fork was
+rolling its resistless yellow torrent.  As she gazed spellbound, a
+portion of the slope beneath her suddenly seemed to sink and
+crumble, and was swallowed up in the rushing stream.  She heard a
+cry of warning behind her, but, rooted to the spot by a fearful
+fascination, she heeded it not.
+
+Again there was a sudden disruption, and another part of the slope
+sank to rise no more; but this time she felt herself seized by the
+waist and dragged back.  It was her father standing by her side.
+
+He was flushed and excited, gazing at the water with a strange
+exultation.
+
+"Do you see it?  Do you know what has happened?" he asked quickly.
+
+"The flume has fallen and turned the river," said Christie
+hurriedly.  "But--have you seen him--is he safe?"
+
+"He--who?" he answered vacantly.
+
+"George Kearney!"
+
+"He is safe," he said impatiently.  "But, do you see, Christie?  Do
+you know what this means?"
+
+He pointed with his tremulous hand to the stream before them.
+
+"It means we are ruined," said Christie coldly.
+
+"Nothing of the kind!  It means that the river is doing the work of
+the flume.  It is sluicing off the gravel, deepening the ditch, and
+altering the slope which was the old bend of the river.  It will do
+in ten minutes the work that would take us a year.  If we can stop
+it in time, or control it, we are safe; but if we can not, it will
+carry away the bed and deposit with the rest, and we are ruined
+again."
+
+With a gesture of impotent fury, he dashed away in the direction of
+an equally excited crowd, that on a point of the slope nearer the
+island were gesticulating and shouting to a second group of men,
+who on the opposite shore were clambering on over the choked debris
+of the flume that had dammed and diverted the current.  It was
+evident that the same idea had occurred to them, and they were
+risking their lives in the attempt to set free the impediments.
+Shocked and indignant as Christie had been at the degrading
+absorption of material interests at such a moment, the element of
+danger lifted the labors of these men into heroism, and she began
+to feel a strange exultation as she watched them.  Under the
+skilful blows of their axes, in a few moments the vast body of
+drift began to disintegrate, and then to swing round and move
+towards the old channel.  A cheer went up, but as suddenly died
+away again.  An overlapping fringe of wreckage had caught on the
+point of the island and arrested the whole mass.
+
+The men, who had gained the shore with difficulty, looked back with
+a cry of despair.  But the next moment from among them leaped a
+figure, alert, buoyant, invincible, and, axe in hand, once more
+essayed the passage.  Springing from timber to timber, he at last
+reached the point of obstruction.  A few strokes of the axe were
+sufficient to clear it; but at the first stroke it was apparent
+that the striker was also losing his hold upon the shore, and that
+he must inevitably be carried away with the tossing debris.  But
+this consideration did not seem to affect him; the last blow was
+struck, and as the freed timbers rolled on, over and over, he
+boldly plunged into the flood.  Christie gave a little cry--her
+heart had bounded with him; it seemed as if his plunge had splashed
+the water in her eyes.  He did not come to the surface until he had
+passed the point below where her father stood, and then struggling
+feebly, as if stunned or disabled by a blow.  It seemed to her that
+he was trying to approach the side of the river where she was.
+Would he do it?  Could she help him?  She was alone; he was hidden
+from the view of the men on the point, and no succor could come
+from them.  There was a fringe of alder nearly opposite their cabin
+that almost overhung the stream.  She ran to it, clutched it with a
+frantic hand, and, leaning over the boiling water, uttered for the
+first time his name:
+
+"George!"
+
+As if called to the surface by the magic of her voice, he rose a
+few yards from her in mid-current, and turned his fading eyes
+towards the bank.  In another moment he would have been swept
+beyond her reach, but with a supreme effort he turned on one side;
+the current, striking him sideways, threw him towards the bank, and
+she caught him by his sleeve.  For an instant it seemed as if she
+would be dragged down with him.  For one dangerous moment she did
+not care, and almost yielded to the spell; but as the rush of water
+pressed him against the bank, she recovered herself, and managed to
+lift him beyond its reach.  And then she sat down, half-fainting,
+with his white face and damp curls upon her breast.
+
+"George, darling, speak to me!  Only one word!  Tell me, have I
+saved you?"
+
+His eyes opened.  A faint twinkle of the old days came to them--a
+boyish smile played upon his lips.
+
+"For yourself--or Jessie?"
+
+She looked around her with a little frightened air.  They were
+alone.  There was but one way of sealing those mischievous lips,
+and she found it!
+
+
+"That's what I allus said, gentlemen," lazily remarked Whiskey
+Dick, a few weeks later, leaning back against the bar, with his
+glass in his hand.  "'George,' sez I, 'it ain't what you SAY to a
+fash'nable, high-toned young lady; it's what you DOES ez makes or
+breaks you.'  And that's what I sez gin'rally o' things in the
+Ford.  It ain't what Carr and you boys allows to do; it's the
+gin'ral average o' things ez IS done that gives tone to the hull,
+and hez brought this yer new luck to you all!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Devil's Ford, by Bret Harte
+
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