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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Frontier, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: On the Frontier
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2006 [EBook #2574]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE FRONTIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+ON THE FRONTIER
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL
+
+A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE
+
+LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN
+
+
+
+
+AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+It was noon of the 10th of August, 1838. The monotonous coast line
+between Monterey and San Diego had set its hard outlines against the
+steady glare of the Californian sky and the metallic glitter of
+the Pacific Ocean. The weary succession of rounded, dome-like hills
+obliterated all sense of distance; the rare whaling vessel or still
+rarer trader, drifting past, saw no change in these rusty undulations,
+barren of distinguishing peak or headland, and bald of wooded crest or
+timbered ravine. The withered ranks of wild oats gave a dull procession
+of uniform color to the hills, unbroken by any relief of shadow in their
+smooth, round curves. As far as the eye could reach, sea and shore met
+in one bleak monotony, flecked by no passing cloud, stirred by no sign
+of life or motion. Even sound was absent; the Angelus, rung from the
+invisible Mission tower far inland, was driven back again by the steady
+northwest trades, that for half the year had swept the coast line and
+left it abraded of all umbrage and color.
+
+But even this monotony soon gave way to a change and another monotony as
+uniform and depressing. The western horizon, slowly contracting before
+a wall of vapor, by four o'clock had become a mere cold, steely strip of
+sea, into which gradually the northern trend of the coast faded and was
+lost. As the fog stole with soft step southward, all distance, space,
+character, and locality again vanished; the hills upon which the sun
+still shone bore the same monotonous outlines as those just wiped into
+space. Last of all, before the red sun sank like the descending host,
+it gleamed upon the sails of a trading vessel close in shore. It was the
+last object visible. A damp breath breathed upon it, a soft hand passed
+over the slate, the sharp pencilling of the picture faded and became a
+confused gray cloud.
+
+The wind and waves, too, went down in the fog; the now invisible and
+hushed breakers occasionally sent the surf over the sand in a quick
+whisper, with grave intervals of silence, but with no continuous murmur
+as before. In a curving bight of the shore the creaking of oars in their
+rowlocks began to be distinctly heard, but the boat itself, although
+apparently only its length from the sands, was invisible.
+
+“Steady, now; way enough.” The voice came from the sea, and was low, as
+if unconsciously affected by the fog. “Silence!”
+
+The sound of a keel grating the sand was followed by the order, “Stern
+all!” from the invisible speaker.
+
+“Shall we beach her?” asked another vague voice.
+
+“Not yet. Hail again, and all together.”
+
+“Ah hoy--oi--oi--oy!”
+
+There were four voices, but the hail appeared weak and ineffectual, like
+a cry in a dream, and seemed hardly to reach beyond the surf before
+it was suffocated in the creeping cloud. A silence followed, but no
+response.
+
+“It's no use to beach her and go ashore until we find the boat,” said
+the first voice, gravely; “and we'll do that if the current has brought
+her here. Are you sure you've got the right bearings?”
+
+“As near as a man could off a shore with not a blasted pint to take his
+bearings by.”
+
+There was a long silence again, broken only by the occasional dip of
+oars, keeping the invisible boat-head to the sea.
+
+“Take my word for it, lads, it's the last we'll see of that boat again,
+or of Jack Cranch, or the captain's baby.”
+
+“It DOES look mighty queer that the painter should slip. Jack Cranch
+ain't the man to tie a granny knot.”
+
+“Silence!” said the invisible leader. “Listen.”
+
+A hail, so faint and uncertain that it might have been the
+long-deferred, far-off echo of their own, came from the sea, abreast of
+them.
+
+“It's the captain. He hasn't found anything, or he couldn't be so far
+north. Hark!”
+
+The hail was repeated again faintly, dreamily. To the seamen's trained
+ears it seemed to have an intelligent significance, for the first voice
+gravely responded, “Aye, aye!” and then said softly, “Oars.”
+
+The word was followed by a splash. The oars clicked sharply and
+simultaneously in the rowlocks, then more faintly, then still fainter,
+and then passed out into the darkness.
+
+The silence and shadow both fell together; for hours sea and shore were
+impenetrable. Yet at times the air was softly moved and troubled, the
+surrounding gloom faintly lightened as with a misty dawn, and then was
+dark again; or drowsy, far-off cries and confused noises seemed to grow
+out of the silence, and, when they had attracted the weary ear, sank
+away as in a mocking dream, and showed themselves unreal. Nebulous
+gatherings in the fog seemed to indicate stationary objects that, even
+as one gazed, moved away; the recurring lap and ripple on the shingle
+sometimes took upon itself the semblance of faint articulate laughter
+or spoken words. But towards morning a certain monotonous grating on the
+sand, that had for many minutes alternately cheated and piqued the ear,
+asserted itself more strongly, and a moving, vacillating shadow in the
+gloom became an opaque object on the shore.
+
+With the first rays of the morning light the fog lifted. As the undraped
+hills one by one bared their cold bosoms to the sun, the long line of
+coast struggled back to life again. Everything was unchanged, except
+that a stranded boat lay upon the sands, and in its stern sheets a
+sleeping child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The 10th of August, 1852, brought little change to the dull monotony
+of wind, fog, and treeless coast line. Only the sea was occasionally
+flecked with racing sails that outstripped the old, slow-creeping
+trader, or was at times streaked and blurred with the trailing smoke of
+a steamer. There were a few strange footprints on those virgin sands,
+and a fresh track, that led from the beach over the rounded hills,
+dropped into the bosky recesses of a hidden valley beyond the coast
+range.
+
+It was here that the refectory windows of the Mission of San Carmel had
+for years looked upon the reverse of that monotonous picture presented
+to the sea. It was here that the trade winds, shorn of their fury and
+strength in the heated, oven-like air that rose from the valley, lost
+their weary way in the tangled recesses of the wooded slopes, and
+breathed their last at the foot of the stone cross before the Mission.
+It was on the crest of those slopes that the fog halted and walled
+in the sun-illumined plain below; it was in this plain that limitless
+fields of grain clothed the fat adobe soil; here the Mission garden
+smiled over its hedges of fruitful vines, and through the leaves of fig
+and gnarled pear trees: and it was here that Father Pedro had lived for
+fifty years, found the prospect good, and had smiled also.
+
+Father Pedro's smile was rare. He was not a Las Casas, nor a Junipero
+Serra, but he had the deep seriousness of all disciples laden with the
+responsible wording of a gospel not their own. And his smile had an
+ecclesiastical as well as a human significance, the pleasantest object
+in his prospect being the fair and curly head of his boy acolyte and
+chorister, Francisco, which appeared among the vines, and his sweetest
+pastoral music, the high soprano humming of a chant with which the boy
+accompanied his gardening.
+
+Suddenly the acolyte's chant changed to a cry of terror. Running rapidly
+to Father Pedro's side, he grasped his sotana, and even tried to hide
+his curls among its folds.
+
+“'St! 'st!” said the Padre, disengaging himself with some impatience.
+“What new alarm is this? Is it Luzbel hiding among our Catalan vines, or
+one of those heathen Americanos from Monterey? Speak!”
+
+“Neither, holy father,” said the boy, the color struggling back into his
+pale cheeks, and an apologetic, bashful smile lighting his clear eyes.
+“Neither; but oh! such a gross, lethargic toad! And it almost leaped
+upon me.”
+
+“A toad leaped upon thee!” repeated the good father with evident
+vexation. “What next? I tell thee, child, those foolish fears are most
+unmeet for thee, and must be overcome, if necessary, with prayer and
+penance. Frightened by a toad! Blood of the Martyrs! 'Tis like any
+foolish girl!”
+
+Father Pedro stopped and coughed.
+
+“I am saying that no Christian child should shrink from any of God's
+harmless creatures. And only last week thou wast disdainful of poor
+Murieta's pig, forgetting that San Antonio himself did elect one his
+faithful companion, even in glory.”
+
+“Yes, but it was so fat, and so uncleanly, holy father,” replied the
+young acolyte, “and it smelt so.”
+
+“Smelt so?” echoed the father doubtfully. “Have a care, child, that this
+is not luxuriousness of the senses. I have noticed of late you gather
+overmuch of roses and syringa, excellent in their way and in moderation,
+but still not to be compared with the flower of Holy Church, the lily.”
+
+“But lilies don't look well on the refectory table, and against the
+adobe wall,” returned the acolyte, with a pout of a spoilt child; “and
+surely the flowers cannot help being sweet, any more than myrrh or
+incense. And I am not frightened of the heathen Americanos either NOW.
+There was a small one in the garden yesterday, a boy like me, and he
+spoke kindly and with a pleasant face.”
+
+“What said he to thee, child?” asked Father Pedro, anxiously.
+
+“Nay, the matter of his speech I could not understand,” laughed the boy,
+“but the manner was as gentle as thine, holy father.”
+
+“'St, child,” said the Padre impatiently. “Thy likings are as
+unreasonable as thy fears. Besides, have I not told thee it ill becomes
+a child of Christ to chatter with those sons of Belial? But canst thou
+not repeat the words--the WORDS he said?” he continued suspiciously.
+
+“'Tis a harsh tongue the Americanos speak in their throat,” replied the
+boy. “But he said 'Devilishnisse' and 'pretty-as-a-girl,' and looked at
+me.”
+
+The good father made the boy repeat the words gravely, and as gravely
+repeated them after him with infinite simplicity. “They are but
+heretical words,” he replied in answer to the boy's inquiring look;
+“it is well you understand not English. Enough. Run away, child, and be
+ready for the Angelus. I will commune with myself awhile under the pear
+trees.”
+
+Glad to escape so easily, the young acolyte disappeared down the alley
+of fig trees, not without a furtive look at the patches of chickweed
+around their roots, the possible ambuscade of creeping or saltant
+vermin. The good priest heaved a sigh and glanced round the darkening
+prospect. The sun had already disappeared over the mountain wall that
+lay between him and the sea, rimmed with a faint white line of outlying
+fog. A cool zephyr fanned his cheek; it was the dying breath of the
+vientos generales beyond the wall. As Father Pedro's eyes were raised to
+this barrier, which seemed to shut out the boisterous world beyond, he
+fancied he noticed for the first time a slight breach in the parapet,
+over which an advanced banner of the fog was fluttering. Was it an omen?
+His speculations were cut short by a voice at his very side.
+
+He turned quickly and beheld one of those “heathens” against whom he
+had just warned his young acolyte; one of that straggling band of
+adventurers whom the recent gold discoveries had scattered along the
+coast. Luckily the fertile alluvium of these valleys, lying parallel
+with the sea, offered no “indications” to attract the gold seekers.
+Nevertheless to Father Pedro even the infrequent contact with the
+Americanos was objectionable; they were at once inquisitive and
+careless; they asked questions with the sharp perspicacity of
+controversy; they received his grave replies with the frank indifference
+of utter worldliness. Powerful enough to have been tyrannical
+oppressors, they were singularly tolerant and gentle, contenting
+themselves with a playful, good-natured irreverence, which tormented
+the good father more than opposition. They were felt to be dangerous and
+subversive.
+
+The Americano, however, who stood before him did not offensively suggest
+these national qualities. A man of middle height, strongly built,
+bronzed and slightly gray from the vicissitudes of years and exposure,
+he had an air of practical seriousness that commended itself to Father
+Pedro. To his religious mind it suggested self-consciousness; expressed
+in the dialect of the stranger it only meant “business.”
+
+“I'm rather glad I found you out here alone,” began the latter; “it
+saves time. I haven't got to take my turn with the rest, in there”--he
+indicated the church with his thumb--“and you haven't got to make an
+appointment. You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus
+rings,” he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, “and I reckon
+I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten
+minutes for remarks. I want to confess.”
+
+Father Pedro drew back with a gesture of dignity. The stranger, however,
+laid his hand upon the Padre's sleeve with the air of a man anticipating
+objection, but never refusal, and went on.
+
+“Of course, I know. You want me to come at some other time, and in
+THERE. You want it in the reg'lar style. That's your way and your time.
+My answer is: it ain't MY way and MY time. The main idea of confession,
+I take it, is gettin' at the facts. I'm ready to give 'em if you'll
+take 'em out here, now. If you're willing to drop the Church and
+confessional, and all that sort o' thing, I, on my side, am willing
+to give up the absolution, and all that sort o' thing. You might,” he
+added, with an unconscious touch of pathos in the suggestion, “heave in
+a word or two of advice after I get through; for instance, what YOU'D do
+in the circumstances, you see! That's all. But that's as you please. It
+ain't part of the business.”
+
+Irreverent as this speech appeared, there was really no trace of such
+intention in his manner, and his evident profound conviction that
+his suggestion was practical, and not at all inconsistent with
+ecclesiastical dignity, would alone have been enough to touch the Padre,
+had not the stranger's dominant personality already overridden him. He
+hesitated. The stranger seized the opportunity to take his arm, and lead
+him with the half familiarity of powerful protection to a bench beneath
+the refectory window. Taking out his watch again, he put it in the
+passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, “Time me,” cleared his
+throat, and began:--
+
+“Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin' in the Pacific, jest off
+this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell afloat as anything rigged kin
+be. If a chap managed to dodge the cap'en's belayin-pin for a time,
+he was bound to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate's boots.
+There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a broken leg in the
+Gulf, and another jumped overboard off Cape Corrientes, crazy as a loon,
+along a clip of the head from the cap'en's trumpet. Them's facts. The
+ship was a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast. The cap'en
+had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he'd picked up at
+Mazatlan. I reckon she didn't get on with him any better than the men,
+for she ups and dies one day, leavin' her baby, a year-old gal. One of
+the crew was fond o' that baby. He used to get the black nurse to put it
+in the dingy, and he'd tow it astern, rocking it with the painter like
+a cradle. He did it--hatin' the cap'en all the same. One day the black
+nurse got out of the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep,
+leavin' him alone with it. An idea took hold on him, jest from
+cussedness, you'd say, but it was partly from revenge on the cap'en and
+partly to get away from the ship. The ship was well inshore, and the
+current settin' towards it. He slipped the painter--that man--and set
+himself adrift with the baby. It was a crazy act, you'd reckon, for
+there wasn't any oars in the boat; but he had a crazy man's luck, and
+he contrived, by sculling the boat with one of the seats he tore out, to
+keep her out of the breakers, till he could find a bight in the shore
+to run her in. The alarm was given from the ship, but the fog shut down
+upon him; he could hear the other boats in pursuit. They seemed to close
+in on him, and by the sound he judged the cap'en was just abreast of
+him in the gig, bearing down upon him in the fog. He slipped out of the
+dingy into the water without a splash, and struck out for the breakers.
+He got ashore after havin' been knocked down and dragged in four times
+by the undertow. He had only one idea then, thankfulness that he had not
+taken the baby with him in the surf. You kin put that down for him: it's
+a fact. He got off into the hills, and made his way up to Monterey.”
+
+“And the child?” asked the Padre, with a sudden and strange asperity
+that boded no good to the penitent; “the child thus ruthlessly
+abandoned--what became of it?”
+
+“That's just it, the child,” assented the stranger, gravely. “Well, if
+that man was on his death-bed instead of being here talking to you,
+he'd swear that he thought the cap'en was sure to come up to it the
+next minit. That's a fact. But it wasn't until one day that he--that's
+me--ran across one of that crew in Frisco. 'Hallo, Cranch,' sez he to
+me, 'so you got away, didn't you? And how's the cap'en's baby? Grown a
+young gal by this time, ain't she?' 'What are you talkin about,' ez I;
+'how should I know?' He draws away from me, and sez, 'D--- it,' sez he,
+'you don't mean that you' . . . I grabs him by the throat and makes him
+tell me all. And then it appears that the boat and the baby were never
+found again, and every man of that crew, cap'en and all, believed I had
+stolen it.”
+
+He paused. Father Pedro was staring at the prospect with an
+uncompromising rigidity of head and shoulder.
+
+“It's a bad lookout for me, ain't it?” the stranger continued, in
+serious reflection.
+
+“How do I know,” said the priest harshly, without turning his head,
+“that you did not make away with this child?”
+
+“Beg pardon.”
+
+“That you did not complete your revenge by--by--killing it, as your
+comrade suspected you? Ah! Holy Trinity,” continued Father Pedro,
+throwing out his hands with an impatient gesture, as if to take the
+place of unutterable thought.
+
+“How do YOU know?” echoed the stranger coldly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The stranger linked his fingers together and threw them over his knee,
+drew it up to his chest caressingly, and said quietly, “Because you DO
+know.”
+
+The Padre rose to his feet.
+
+“What mean you?” he said, sternly fixing his eyes upon the speaker.
+Their eyes met. The stranger's were gray and persistent, with hanging
+corner lids that might have concealed even more purpose than they
+showed. The Padre's were hollow, open, and the whites slightly brown, as
+if with tobacco stains. Yet they were the first to turn away.
+
+“I mean,” returned the stranger, with the same practical gravity, “that
+you know it wouldn't pay me to come here, if I'd killed the baby, unless
+I wanted you to fix things right with me up there,” pointing skywards,
+“and get absolution; and I've told you THAT wasn't in my line.”
+
+“Why do you seek me, then?” demanded the Padre, suspiciously.
+
+“Because I reckon I thought a man might be allowed to confess something
+short of a murder. If you're going to draw the line below that--”
+
+“This is but sacrilegious levity,” interrupted Father Pedro, turning as
+if to go. But the stranger did not make any movement to detain him.
+
+“Have you implored forgiveness of the father--the man you
+wronged--before you came here?” asked the priest, lingering.
+
+“Not much. It wouldn't pay if he was living, and he died four years
+ago.”
+
+“You are sure of that?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“There are other relations, perhaps?”
+
+“None.”
+
+Father Pedro was silent. When he spoke again, it was with a changed
+voice. “What is your purpose, then?” he asked, with the first indication
+of priestly sympathy in his manner. “You cannot ask forgiveness of the
+earthly father you have injured, you refuse the intercession of holy
+Church with the Heavenly Father you have disobeyed. Speak, wretched man!
+What is it you want?”
+
+“I want to find the child.”
+
+“But if it were possible, if she were still living, are you fit to seek
+her, to even make yourself known to her, to appear before her?”
+
+“Well, if I made it profitable to her, perhaps.”
+
+“Perhaps,” echoed the priest, scornfully. “So be it. But why come here?”
+
+“To ask your advice. To know how to begin my search. You know this
+country. You were here when that boat drifted ashore beyond that
+mountain.”
+
+“Ah, indeed. I have much to do with it. It is an affair of the
+alcalde--the authorities--of your--your police.”
+
+“Is it?”
+
+The Padre again met the stranger's eyes. He stopped, with the snuff box
+he had somewhat ostentatiously drawn from his pocket still open in his
+hand.
+
+“Why is it not, Senor?” he demanded.
+
+“If she lives, she is a young lady by this time, and might not want the
+details of her life known to any one.”
+
+“And how will you recognize your baby in this young lady?” asked Father
+Pedro, with a rapid gesture, indicating the comparative heights of a
+baby and an adult.
+
+“I reckon I'll know her, and her clothes too; and whoever found her
+wouldn't be fool enough to destroy them.”
+
+“After fourteen years! Good! you have faith, Senor--”
+
+“Cranch,” supplied the stranger, consulting his watch. “But time's up.
+Business is business. Good-by; don't let me keep you.”
+
+He extended his hand.
+
+The Padre met it with a dry, unsympathetic palm, as sere and yellow
+as the hills. When their hands separated, the father still hesitated,
+looking at Cranch. If he expected further speech or entreaty from him he
+was mistaken, for the American, without turning his head, walked in
+the same serious, practical fashion down the avenue of fig trees, and
+disappeared beyond the hedge of vines. The outlines of the mountain
+beyond were already lost in the fog. Father Pedro turned into the
+refectory.
+
+“Antonio.”
+
+A strong flavor of leather, onions, and stable preceded the entrance of
+a short, stout vaquero from the little patio.
+
+“Saddle Pinto and thine own mule to accompany Francisco, who will
+take letters from me to the Father Superior at San Jose to-morrow at
+daybreak.”
+
+“At daybreak, reverend father?”
+
+“At daybreak. Hark ye, go by the mountain trails and avoid the highway.
+Stop at no posada nor fonda, but if the child is weary, rest then awhile
+at Don Juan Briones' or at the rancho of the Blessed Fisherman. Have no
+converse with stragglers, least of all those gentile Americanos.
+So . . .”
+
+The first strokes of the Angelus came from the nearer tower. With a
+gesture Father Pedro waved Antonio aside, and opened the door of the
+sacristy.
+
+“Ad Majorem Dei Gloria.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The hacienda of Don Juan Briones, nestling in a wooded cleft of the
+foot-hills, was hidden, as Father Pedro had wisely reflected, from
+the straying feet of travelers along the dusty highway to San Jose. As
+Francisco, emerging from the canada, put spurs to his mule at the sight
+of the whitewashed walls, Antonio grunted.
+
+“Oh aye, little priest! thou wast tired enough a moment ago, and though
+we are not three leagues from the Blessed Fisherman, thou couldst
+scarce sit thy saddle longer. Mother of God! and all to see that little
+mongrel, Juanita.”
+
+“But, good Antonio, Juanita was my play-fellow, and I may not soon again
+chance this way. And Juanita is not a mongrel, no more than I am.”
+
+“She is a mestiza, and thou art a child of the Church, though this
+following of gypsy wenches does not show it.”
+
+“But Father Pedro does not object,” urged the boy.
+
+“The reverend father has forgotten he was ever young,” replied Antonio,
+sententiously, “or he wouldn't set fire and tow together.”
+
+“What sayest thou, good Antonio?” asked Francisco quickly, opening his
+blue eyes in frank curiosity; “who is fire, and who is tow?”
+
+The worthy muleteer, utterly abashed and confounded by this display
+of the acolyte's direct simplicity, contented himself by shrugging his
+shoulders, and a vague “Quien sabe?”
+
+“Come,” said the boy, gayly, “confess it is only the aguardiente of the
+Blessed Fisherman thou missest. Never fear, Juanita will find thee some.
+And see! here she comes.”
+
+There was a flash of white flounces along the dark brown corridor, the
+twinkle of satin slippers, the flying out of long black braids, and with
+a cry of joy a young girl threw herself upon Francisco as he entered the
+patio, and nearly dragged him from his mule.
+
+“Have a care, little sister,” laughed the acolyte, looking at Antonio,
+“or there will be a conflagration. Am I the fire?” he continued,
+submitting to the two sounding kisses the young girl placed upon either
+cheek, but still keeping his mischievous glance upon the muleteer.
+
+“Quien sabe?” repeated Antonio, gruffly, as the young girl blushed under
+his significant eyes. “It is no affair of mine,” he added to himself, as
+he led Pinto away. “Perhaps Father Pedro is right, and this young twig
+of the Church is as dry and sapless as himself. Let the mestiza burn if
+she likes.”
+
+“Quick, Pancho,” said the young girl, eagerly leading him along the
+corridor. “This way. I must talk with thee before thou seest Don Juan;
+that is why I ran to intercept thee, and not as that fool Antonio would
+signify, to shame thee. Wast thou ashamed, my Pancho?”
+
+The boy threw his arm familiarly round the supple, stayless little
+waist, accented only by the belt of the light flounced saya, and said,
+“But why this haste and feverishness, 'Nita? And now I look at thee,
+thou hast been crying.”
+
+They had emerged from a door in the corridor into the bright sunlight of
+a walled garden. The girl dropped her eyes, cast a quick glance around
+her, and said,--
+
+“Not here, to the arroyo,” and half leading, half dragging him, made her
+way through a copse of manzanita and alder until they heard the faint
+tinkling of water. “Dost thou remember,” said the girl, “it was here,”
+ pointing to an embayed pool in the dark current, “that I baptized thee,
+when Father Pedro first brought thee here, when we both played at being
+monks? They were dear old days, for Father Pedro would trust no one with
+thee but me, and always kept us near him.”
+
+“Aye and he said I would be profaned by the touch of any other, and so
+himself always washed and dressed me, and made my bed near his.”
+
+“And took thee away again, and I saw thee not till thou camest with
+Antonio, over a year ago, to the cattle branding. And now, my Pancho, I
+may never see thee again.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed
+aloud.
+
+The little acolyte tried to comfort her, but with such abstraction of
+manner and inadequacy of warmth that she hastily removed his caressing
+hand.
+
+“But why? What has happened?” he asked eagerly.
+
+The girl's manner had changed. Her eyes flashed, and she put her brown
+fist on her waist and began to rock from side to side.
+
+“But I'll not go,” she said viciously.
+
+“Go where?” asked the boy.
+
+“Oh, where?” she echoed, impatiently. “Hear me, Francisco; thou knowest
+I am, like thee, an orphan; but I have not, like thee, a parent in the
+Holy Church. For, alas,” she added, bitterly, “I am not a boy, and
+have not a lovely voice borrowed from the angels. I was, like thee, a
+foundling, kept by the charity of the reverend fathers, until Don Juan,
+a childless widower, adopted me. I was happy, not knowing and caring who
+were the parents who had abandoned me, happy only in the love of him who
+became my adopted father. And now--” She paused.
+
+“And now?” echoed Francisco, eagerly.
+
+“And now they say it is discovered who are my parents.”
+
+“And they live?”
+
+“Mother of God! no,” said the girl, with scarcely filial piety. “There
+is some one, a thing, a mere Don Fulano, who knows it all, it seems, who
+is to be my guardian.”
+
+“But how? tell me all, dear Juanita,” said the boy with a feverish
+interest, that contrasted so strongly with his previous abstraction that
+Juanita bit her lips with vexation.
+
+“Ah! How? Santa Barbara! an extravaganza for children. A necklace of
+lies. I am lost from a ship of which my father--Heaven rest him--is
+General, and I am picked up among the weeds on the sea-shore, like Moses
+in the bulrushes. A pretty story, indeed.”
+
+“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed Francisco, enthusiastically. “Ah,
+Juanita, would it had been me.”
+
+“THEE!” said the girl bitterly,--“thee! No!--it was a girl wanted.
+Enough, it was me.”
+
+“And when does the guardian come?” persisted the boy, with sparkling
+eyes.
+
+“He is here even now, with that pompous fool the American alcalde from
+Monterey, a wretch who knows nothing of the country or the people, but
+who helped the other American to claim me. I tell thee, Francisco, like
+as not it is all a folly, some senseless blunder of those Americanos
+that imposes upon Don Juan's simplicity and love for them.”
+
+“How looks he, this Americano who seeks thee?” asked Francisco.
+
+“What care I how he looks,” said Juanita, “or what he is? He may have
+the four S's, for all I care. Yet,” she added with a slight touch of
+coquetry, “he is not bad to look upon, now I recall him.”
+
+“Had he a long moustache and a sad, sweet smile, and a voice so gentle
+and yet so strong that you felt he ordered you to do things with out
+saying it? And did his eye read your thoughts?--that very thought that
+you must obey him?”
+
+“Saints preserve thee, Pancho! Of whom dost thou speak?”
+
+“Listen, Juanita. It was a year ago, the eve of Natividad, he was in the
+church when I sang. Look where I would, I always met his eye. When the
+canticle was sung and I was slipping into the sacristy, he was beside
+me. He spoke kindly, but I understood him not. He put into my hand gold
+for an aguinaldo. I pretended I understood not that also, and put it
+into the box for the poor. He smiled and went away. Often have I seen
+him since, and last night, when I left the Mission, he was there again
+with Father Pedro.”
+
+“And Father Pedro, what said he of him?” asked Juanita.
+
+“Nothing.” The boy hesitated. “Perhaps--because I said nothing of the
+stranger.”
+
+Juanita laughed. “So thou canst keep a secret from the good father when
+thou carest. But why dost thou think this stranger is my new guardian?”
+
+“Dost thou not see, little sister? he was even then seeking thee,” said
+the boy with joyous excitement. “Doubtless he knew we were friends and
+playmates--may be the good father has told him thy secret. For it is no
+idle tale of the alcalde, believe me. I see it all! It is true!”
+
+“Then thou wilt let him take me away,” exclaimed the girl bitterly,
+withdrawing the little hand he had clasped in his excitement.
+
+“Alas, Juanita, what avails it now? I am sent to San Jose, charged with
+a letter to the Father Superior, who will give me further orders. What
+they are, or how long I must stay, I know not. But I know this: the good
+Father Pedro's eyes were troubled when he gave me his blessing, and
+he held me long in his embrace. Pray Heaven I have committed no fault.
+Still it may be that the reputation of my gift hath reached the Father
+Superior, and he would advance me.” And Francisco's eyes lit up with
+youthful pride at the thought.
+
+Not so Juanita. Her black eyes snapped suddenly with suspicion, she
+drew in her breath, and closed her little mouth firmly. Then she began a
+crescendo.
+
+Mother of God! was that all? Was he a child, to be sent away for such
+time or for such purpose as best pleased the fathers? Was he to know
+no more than that? With such gifts as God had given him, was he not at
+least to have some word in disposing of them? Ah! SHE would not stand
+it.
+
+The boy gazed admiringly at the piquant energy of the little figure
+before him, and envied her courage. “It is the mestizo blood,” he
+murmured to himself. Then aloud, “Thou shouldst have been a man, 'Nita.”
+
+“And thou a woman.”
+
+“Or a priest. Eh, what is that?”
+
+They had both risen, Juanita defiantly, her black braids flying as she
+wheeled and suddenly faced the thicket, Francisco clinging to her with
+trembling hands and whitened lips. A stone, loosened from the hillside,
+had rolled to their feet; there was a crackling in the alders on the
+slope above them.
+
+“Is it a bear, or a brigand?” whispered Francisco, hurriedly, sounding
+the uttermost depths of his terror in the two words.
+
+“It is an eavesdropper,” said Juanita, impetuously; “and who and why, I
+intend to know,” and she started towards the thicket.
+
+“Do not leave me, good Juanita,” said the young acolyte, grasping the
+girl's skirt.
+
+“Nay; run to the hacienda quickly, and leave me to search the thicket.
+Run!”
+
+The boy did not wait for a second injunction, but scuttled away, his
+long coat catching in the brambles, while Juanita darted like a
+kitten into the bushes. Her search was fruitless, however, and she was
+returning impatiently when her quick eye fell upon a letter lying amidst
+the dried grass where she and Francisco had been seated the moment
+before. It had evidently fallen from his breast when he had risen
+suddenly, and been overlooked in his alarm. It was Father Pedro's letter
+to the Father Superior of San Jose.
+
+In an instant she had pounced upon it as viciously as if it had been the
+interloper she was seeking. She knew that she held in her fingers the
+secret of Francisco's sudden banishment. She felt instinctively that
+this yellowish envelope, with its red string and its blotch of red seal,
+was his sentence and her own. The little mestiza had not been brought up
+to respect the integrity of either locks or seals, both being unknown
+in the patriarchal life of the hacienda. Yet with a certain feminine
+instinct she looked furtively around her, and even managed to dislodge
+the clumsy wax without marring the pretty effigy of the crossed keys
+impressed upon it. Then she opened the letter and read.
+
+Suddenly she stopped and put back her hair from her brown temples. Then
+a succession of burning blushes followed each other in waves from her
+neck up, and died in drops of moisture in her eyes. This continued until
+she was fairly crying, dropping the letter from her hands and rocking
+to and fro. In the midst of this she quickly stopped again; the clouds
+broke, a sunshine of laughter started from her eyes, she laughed shyly,
+she laughed loudly, she laughed hysterically. Then she stopped again as
+suddenly, knitted her brows, swooped down once more upon the letter, and
+turned to fly. But at the same moment the letter was quietly but firmly
+taken from her hand, and Mr. Jack Cranch stood beside her.
+
+Juanita was crimson, but unconquered. She mechanically held out her hand
+for the letter; the American took her little fingers, kissed them, and
+said:--
+
+“How are you again?”
+
+“The letter,” replied Juanita, with a strong disposition to stamp her
+foot.
+
+“But,” said Cranch, with business directness, “you've read enough to
+know it isn't for you.”
+
+“Nor for you either,” responded Juanita.
+
+“True. It is for the Reverend Father Superior of San Jose Mission. I'll
+give it to him.”
+
+Juanita was becoming alarmed, first at this prospect, second at
+the power the stranger seemed to be gaining over her. She recalled
+Francisco's description of him with something like superstitious awe.
+
+“But it concerns Francisco. It contains a secret he should know.”
+
+“Then you can tell him it. Perhaps it would come easier from you.”
+
+Juanita blushed again. “Why?” she asked, half dreading his reply.
+
+“Because,” said the American, quietly, “you are old playmates; you are
+attached to each other.”
+
+Juanita bit her lips. “Why don't you read it yourself?” she asked
+bluntly.
+
+“Because I don't read other people's letters, and if it concerns me
+you'll tell me.”
+
+“What if I don't?”
+
+“Then the Father Superior will.”
+
+“I believe you know Francisco's secret already,” said the girl, boldly.
+
+“Perhaps.”
+
+“Then, Mother of God! Senor Crancho, what do you want?”
+
+“I do not want to separate two such good friends as you and Francisco.”
+
+“Perhaps you'd like to claim us both,” said the girl, with a sneer that
+was not devoid of coquetry.
+
+“I should be delighted.”
+
+“Then here is your occasion, Senor, for here comes my adopted father,
+Don Juan, and your friend, Senor Br--r--own, the American alcalde.”
+
+Two men appeared in the garden path below them. The stiff, glazed,
+broad-brimmed black hat, surmounting a dark face of Quixotic gravity
+and romantic rectitude, indicated Don Juan Briones. His companion, lazy,
+specious, and red-faced, was Senor Brown, the American alcalde.
+
+“Well, I reckon we kin about call the thing fixed,” said Senor Brown,
+with a large wave of the hand, suggesting a sweeping away of all trivial
+details. “Ez I was saying to the Don yer, when two high-toned gents like
+you and him come together in a delicate matter of this kind, it ain't no
+hoss trade nor sharp practice. The Don is that lofty in principle that
+he's willin' to sacrifice his affections for the good of the gal; and
+you, on your hand, kalkilate to see all he's done for her, and go your
+whole pile better. You'll make the legal formalities good. I reckon that
+old Injin woman who can swear to the finding of the baby on the shore
+will set things all right yet. For the matter o' that, if you want
+anything in the way of a certificate, I'm on hand always.”
+
+“Juanita and myself are at your disposition, caballeros,” said Don Juan,
+with a grave exaltation. “Never let it be said that the Mexican nation
+was outdone by the great Americanos in deeds of courtesy and affection.
+Let it rather stand that Juanita was a sacred trust put into my hands
+years ago by the goddess of American liberty, and nurtured in the
+Mexican eagle's nest. Is it not so, my soul?” he added, more humanly, to
+the girl, when he had quite recovered from the intoxication of his own
+speech. “We love thee, little one, but we keep our honor.”
+
+“There's nothing mean about the old man,” said Brown, admiringly, with a
+slight dropping of his left eyelid; “his head is level, and he goes with
+his party.”
+
+“Thou takest my daughter, Senor Cranch,” continued the old man, carried
+away by his emotion; “but the American nation gives me a son.”
+
+“You know not what you say, father,” said the young girl, angrily,
+exasperated by a slight twinkle in the American's eye.
+
+“Not so,” said Cranch. “Perhaps one of the American nation may take him
+at his word.”
+
+“Then, caballeros, you will, for the moment at least, possess yourselves
+of the house and its poor hospitality,” said Don Juan, with time-honored
+courtesy, producing the rustic key of the gate of the patio. “It is
+at your disposition, caballeros,” he repeated, leading the way as his
+guests passed into the corridor.
+
+Two hours passed. The hills were darkening on their eastern slopes; the
+shadows of the few poplars that sparsedly dotted the dusty highway were
+falling in long black lines that looked like ditches on the dead level
+of the tawny fields; the shadows of slowly moving cattle were mingling
+with their own silhouettes, and becoming more and more grotesque. A keen
+wind rising in the hills was already creeping from the canada as from
+the mouth of a funnel, and sweeping the plains. Antonio had forgathered
+with the servants, had pinched the ears of the maids, had partaken of
+aguardiente, had saddled the mules,--Antonio was becoming impatient.
+
+And then a singular commotion disturbed the peaceful monotony of the
+patriarchal household of Don Juan Briones. The stagnant courtyard was
+suddenly alive with peons and servants, running hither and thither. The
+alleys and gardens were filled with retainers. A confusion of questions,
+orders, and outcrys rent the air, the plains shook with the galloping of
+a dozen horsemen. For the acolyte Francisco, of the Mission San Carmel,
+had disappeared and vanished, and from that day the hacienda of Don Juan
+Briones knew him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When Father Pedro saw the yellow mules vanish under the low branches
+of the oaks beside the little graveyard, caught the last glitter of the
+morning sun on Pinto's shining headstall, and heard the last tinkle of
+Antonio's spurs, something very like a mundane sigh escaped him. To
+the simple wonder of the majority of early worshipers--the half-breed
+converts who rigorously attended the spiritual ministrations of the
+Mission, and ate the temporal provisions of the reverend fathers--he
+deputed the functions of the first mass to a coadjutor, and, breviary in
+hand, sought the orchard of venerable pear trees. Whether there was
+any occult sympathy in his reflections with the contemplation of their
+gnarled, twisted, gouty, and knotty limbs, still bearing gracious and
+goodly fruit, I know not, but it was his private retreat, and under one
+of the most rheumatic and misshapen trunks there was a rude seat. Here
+Father Pedro sank, his face towards the mountain wall between him and
+the invisible sea. The relentless, dry, practical Californian sunlight
+falling on his face grimly pointed out a night of vigil and suffering.
+The snuffy yellow of his eyes was injected yet burning, his temples were
+ridged and veined like a tobacco leaf; the odor of desiccation which
+his garments always exhaled was hot and feverish, as if the fire had
+suddenly awakened among the ashes.
+
+Of what was Father Pedro thinking?
+
+He was thinking of his youth, a youth spent under the shade of those
+pear trees, even then venerable as now. He was thinking of his youthful
+dreams of heathen conquest, emulating the sacrifices and labors of
+Junipero Serra; a dream cut short by the orders of the archbishop, that
+sent his companion, Brother Diego, north on a mission to strange lands,
+and condemned him to the isolation of San Carmel. He was thinking of
+that fierce struggle with envy of a fellow creature's better fortune
+that, conquered by prayer and penance, left him patient, submissive, and
+devoted to his humble work; how he raised up converts to the faith, even
+taking them from the breast of heretic mothers.
+
+He recalled how once, with the zeal of propagandism quickening in the
+instincts of a childless man, he had dreamed of perpetuating his work
+through some sinless creation of his own; of dedicating some virgin
+soul, one over whom he could have complete control, restricted by no
+human paternal weakness, to the task he had begun. But how? Of all the
+boys eagerly offered to the Church by their parents there seemed none
+sufficiently pure and free from parental taint. He remembered how one
+night, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin herself, as he
+firmly then believed, this dream was fulfilled. An Indian woman brought
+him a Waugee child--a baby-girl that she had picked up on the sea-shore.
+There were no parents to divide the responsibility, the child had no
+past to confront, except the memory of the ignorant Indian woman, who
+deemed her duty done, and whose interest ceased in giving it to the
+Padre. The austere conditions of his monkish life compelled him to the
+first step in his adoption of it--the concealment of its sex. This was
+easy enough, as he constituted himself from that moment its sole nurse
+and attendant, and boldly baptized it among the other children by the
+name of Francisco. No others knew its origin, nor cared to know. Father
+Pedro had taken a muchacho foundling for adoption; his jealous seclusion
+of it and his personal care was doubtless some sacerdotal formula at
+once high and necessary.
+
+He remembered with darkening eyes and impeded breath how his close
+companionship and daily care of this helpless child had revealed to him
+the fascinations of that paternity denied to him; how he had deemed it
+his duty to struggle against the thrill of baby fingers laid upon his
+yellow cheeks, the pleading of inarticulate words, the eloquence of
+wonder-seeing and mutely questioning eyes; how he had succumbed
+again and again, and then struggled no more, seeing only in them the
+suggestion of childhood made incarnate in the Holy Babe. And yet, even
+as he thought, he drew from his gown a little shoe, and laid it beside
+his breviary. It was Francisco's baby slipper, a duplicate to those worn
+by the miniature waxen figure of the Holy Virgin herself in her niche in
+the transept.
+
+Had he felt during these years any qualms of conscience at this
+concealment of the child's sex? None. For to him the babe was sexless,
+as most befitted one who was to live and die at the foot of the altar.
+There was no attempt to deceive God; what mattered else? Nor was he
+withholding the child from the ministrations of the sacred sisters;
+there was no convent near the Mission, and as each year passed, the
+difficulty of restoring her to the position and duties of her sex became
+greater and more dangerous. And then the acolyte's destiny was sealed
+by what again appeared to Father Pedro as a direct interposition of
+Providence. The child developed a voice of such exquisite sweetness and
+purity that an angel seemed to have strayed into the little choir, and
+kneeling worshipers below, transported, gazed upwards, half expectant of
+a heavenly light breaking through the gloom of the raftered ceiling.
+The fame of the little singer filled the valley of San Carmel; it was a
+miracle vouchsafed the Mission; Don Jose Peralta remembered, ah yes, to
+have heard in old Spain of boy choristers with such voices!
+
+And was this sacred trust to be withdrawn from him? Was this life which
+he had brought out of an unknown world of sin, unstained and pure,
+consecrated and dedicated to God, just in the dawn of power and promise
+for the glory of the Mother Church, to be taken from his side? And at
+the word of a self-convicted man of sin--a man whose tardy repentance
+was not yet absolved by the Holy Church. Never! never! Father Pedro
+dwelt upon the stranger's rejection of the ministrations of the Church
+with a pitiable satisfaction; had he accepted it, he would have had a
+sacred claim upon Father Pedro's sympathy and confidence. Yet he rose
+again, uneasily and with irregular steps returned to the corridor,
+passing the door of the familiar little cell beside his own. The window,
+the table, and even the scant toilette utensils were filled with the
+flowers of yesterday, some of them withered and dry; the white gown of
+the little chorister was hanging emptily against the wall. Father Pedro
+started and trembled; it seemed as if the spiritual life of the child
+had slipped away with its garments.
+
+In that slight chill, which even in the hottest days in California
+always invests any shadow cast in that white sunlight, Father Pedro
+shivered in the corridor. Passing again into the garden, he followed
+in fancy the wayfaring figure of Francisco, saw the child arrive at
+the rancho of Don Juan, and with the fateful blindness of all dreamers
+projected a picture most unlike the reality. He followed the pilgrims
+even to San Jose, and saw the child deliver the missive which gave
+the secret of her sex and condition to the Father Superior. That the
+authority at San Jose might dissent with the Padre of San Carmel,
+or decline to carry out his designs, did not occur to the one-idea'd
+priest. Like all solitary people, isolated from passing events, he made
+no allowances for occurrences outside of his routine. Yet at this moment
+a sudden thought whitened his yellow cheek. What if the Father Superior
+deemed it necessary to impart the secret to Francisco? Would the child
+recoil at the deception, and, perhaps, cease to love him? It was the
+first time, in his supreme selfishness, he had taken the acolyte's
+feelings into account. He had thought of him only as one owing implicit
+obedience to him as a temporal and spiritual guide.
+
+“Reverend Father!”
+
+He turned impatiently. It was his muleteer, Jose. Father Pedro's sunken
+eye brightened.
+
+“Ah, Jose! Quickly, then; hast thou found Sanchicha?”
+
+“Truly, your reverence! And I have brought her with me, just as she is;
+though if your reverence make more of her than to fill the six-foot hole
+and say a prayer over her, I'll give the mule that brought her here for
+food for the bull's horns. She neither hears nor speaks, but whether
+from weakness or sheer wantonness, I know not.”
+
+“Peace, then! and let thy tongue take example from hers. Bring her with
+thee into the sacristy and attend without. Go!”
+
+Father Pedro watched the disappearing figure of the muleteer and
+hurriedly swept his thin, dry hand, veined and ribbed like a brown
+November leaf, over his stony forehead, with a sound that seemed almost
+a rustle. Then he suddenly stiffened his fingers over his breviary,
+dropped his arms perpendicularly before him, and with a rigid step
+returned to the corridor and passed into the sacristy.
+
+For a moment in the half-darkness the room seemed to be empty. Tossed
+carelessly in the corner appeared some blankets topped by a few
+straggling black horse tails, like an unstranded riata. A trembling
+agitated the mass as Father Pedro approached. He bent over the heap
+and distinguished in its midst the glowing black eyes of Sanchicha,
+the Indian centenarian of the Mission San Carmel. Only her eyes lived.
+Helpless, boneless, and jelly-like, old age had overtaken her with a
+mild form of deliquescence.
+
+“Listen, Sanchicha,” said the father, gravely. “It is important that
+thou shouldst refresh thy memory for a moment. Look back fourteen years,
+mother; it is but yesterday to thee. Thou dost remember the baby--a
+little muchacha thou broughtest me then--fourteen years ago?”
+
+The old woman's eyes became intelligent, and turned with a quick look
+towards the open door of the church, and thence towards the choir.
+
+The Padre made a motion of irritation. “No, no! Thou dost not
+understand; thou dost not attend me. Knowest thou of any mark of
+clothing, trinket, or amulet found upon the babe?”
+
+The light of the old woman's eyes went out. She might have been dead.
+Father Pedro waited a moment, and then laid his hand impatiently on her
+shoulder.
+
+“Dost thou mean there are none?”
+
+A ray of light struggled back into her eyes.
+
+“None.”
+
+“And thou hast kept back or put away no sign nor mark of her parentage?
+Tell me, on this crucifix.”
+
+The eyes caught the crucifix, and became as empty as the orbits of the
+carven Christ upon it.
+
+Father Pedro waited patiently. A moment passed; only the sound of the
+muleteer's spurs was heard in the courtyard.
+
+“It is well,” he said at last, with a sigh of relief. “Pepita shall
+give thee some refreshment, and Jose will bring thee back again. I will
+summon him.”
+
+He passed out of the sacristy door, leaving it open. A ray of sunlight
+darted eagerly in, and fell upon the grotesque heap in the corner.
+Sanchicha's eyes lived again; more than that, a singular movement came
+over her face. The hideous caverns of her toothless mouth opened--she
+laughed. The step of Jose was heard in the corridor, and she became
+again inert.
+
+The third day, which should have brought the return of Antonio, was
+nearly spent. Father Pedro was impatient but not alarmed. The good
+fathers at San Jose might naturally detain Antonio for the answer, which
+might require deliberation. If any mischance had occurred to Francisco,
+Antonio would have returned or sent a special messenger. At sunset he
+was in his accustomed seat in the orchard, his hands clasped over the
+breviary in his listless lap, his eyes fixed upon the mountain between
+him and that mysterious sea that had brought so much into his life. He
+was filled with a strange desire to see it, a vague curiosity hitherto
+unknown to his preoccupied life; he wished to gaze upon that strand,
+perhaps the very spot where she had been found; he doubted not his
+questioning eyes would discover some forgotten trace of her; under his
+persistent will and aided by the Holy Virgin, the sea would give up its
+secret. He looked at the fog creeping along the summit, and recalled the
+latest gossip of San Carmel; how that since the advent of the Americanos
+it was gradually encroaching on the Mission. The hated name vividly
+recalled to him the features of the stranger as he had stood before him
+three nights ago, in this very garden; so vividly that he sprang to
+his feet with an exclamation. It was no fancy, but Senor Cranch himself
+advancing from under the shadow of a pear tree.
+
+“I reckoned I'd catch you here,” said Mr. Cranch, with the same dry,
+practical business fashion, as if he was only resuming an interrupted
+conversation, “and I reckon I ain't going to keep you a minit longer
+than I did t'other day.” He mutely referred to his watch, which he
+already held in his hand, and then put it back in his pocket. “Well! we
+found her!”
+
+“Francisco,” interrupted the priest with a single stride, laying his
+hand upon Cranch's arm, and staring into his eyes.
+
+Mr. Cranch quietly removed Father Pedro's hand. “I reckon that wasn't
+the name as I caught it,” he returned dryly. “Hadn't you better sit
+down?”
+
+“Pardon me--pardon me, Senor,” said the priest, hastily sinking back
+upon his bench, “I was thinking of other things. You--you--came upon me
+suddenly. I thought it was the acolyte. Go on, Senor! I am interested.”
+
+“I thought you'd be,” said Cranch, quietly. “That's why I came. And then
+you might be of service too.”
+
+“True, true,” said the priest, with rapid accents; “and this girl,
+Senor, this girl is--”
+
+“Juanita, the mestiza, adopted daughter of Don Juan Briones, over on
+the Santa Clare Valley,” replied Cranch, jerking his thumb over his
+shoulder, and then sitting down upon the bench beside Father Pedro.
+
+The priest turned his feverish eyes piercingly upon his companion for a
+few seconds, and then doggedly fixed them upon the ground. Cranch drew
+a plug of tobacco from his pocket, cut off a portion, placed it in his
+cheek, and then quietly began to strap the blade of his jack-knife upon
+his boot. Father Pedro saw it from under his eyelids, and even in his
+preoccupation despised him.
+
+“Then you are certain she is the babe you seek?” said the father,
+without looking up.
+
+“I reckon as near as you can be certain of anything. Her age tallies;
+she was the only foundling girl baby baptized by you, you know,”--he
+partly turned round appealingly to the Padre,--“that year. Injin woman
+says she picked up a baby. Looks like a pretty clear case, don't it?”
+
+“And the clothes, friend Cranch?” said the priest, with his eyes still
+on the ground, and a slight assumption of easy indifference.
+
+“They will be forthcoming, like enough, when the time comes,” said
+Cranch; “the main thing at first was to find the girl; that was MY job;
+the lawyers, I reckon, can fit the proofs and say what's wanted, later
+on.”
+
+“But why lawyers,” continued Padre Pedro, with a slight sneer he could
+not repress, “if the child is found and Senor Cranch is satisfied?”
+
+“On account of the property. Business is business!”
+
+“The property?”
+
+Mr. Cranch pressed the back of his knife-blade on his boot, shut it up
+with a click, and putting it in his pocket said calmly,--
+
+“Well, I reckon the million of dollars that her father left when he
+died, which naturally belongs to her, will require some proof that she
+is his daughter.”
+
+He had placed both his hands in his pockets, and turned his eyes full
+upon Father Pedro. The priest arose hurriedly.
+
+“But you said nothing of this before, Senor Cranch,” said he, with a
+gesture of indignation, turning his back quite upon Cranch, and taking a
+step towards the refectory.
+
+“Why should I? I was looking after the girl, not the property,” returned
+Cranch, following the Padre with watchful eyes, but still keeping his
+careless, easy attitude.
+
+“Ah, well! Will it be said so, think you? Eh! Bueno. What will the world
+think of your sacred quest, eh?” continued the Padre Pedro, forgetting
+himself in his excitement, but still averting his face from his
+companion.
+
+“The world will look after the proofs, and I reckon not bother if the
+proofs are all right,” replied Cranch, carelessly; “and the girl won't
+think the worse of me for helping her to a fortune. Hallo! you've
+dropped something.” He leaped to his feet, picked up the breviary which
+had fallen from the Padre's fingers, and returned it to him with a
+slight touch of gentleness that was unsuspected in the man.
+
+The priest's dry, tremulous hand grasped the volume without
+acknowledgment.
+
+“But these proofs?” he said hastily; “these proofs, Senor?”
+
+“Oh, well, you'll testify to the baptism, you know.”
+
+“But if I refuse; if I will have nothing to do with this thing! If I
+will not give my word that there is not some mistake,” said the priest,
+working himself into a feverish indignation. “That there are not slips
+of memory, eh? Of so many children baptized, is it possible for me to
+know which, eh? And if this Juanita is not your girl, eh?”
+
+“Then you'll help me to find who is,” said Cranch, coolly.
+
+Father Pedro turned furiously on his tormentor. Overcome by his vigil
+and anxiety. He was oblivious of everything but the presence of the man
+who seemed to usurp the functions of his own conscience. “Who are
+you, who speak thus?” he said hoarsely, advancing upon Cranch with
+outstretched and anathematizing fingers. “Who are you, Senor Heathen,
+who dare to dictate to me, a Father of Holy Church? I tell you, I
+will have none of this. Never! I will not. From this moment, you
+understand--nothing. I will never . . .”
+
+He stopped. The first stroke of the Angelus rang from the little tower.
+The first stroke of that bell before whose magic exorcism all human
+passions fled, the peaceful bell that had for fifty years lulled the
+little fold of San Carmel to prayer and rest, came to his throbbing
+ear. His trembling hands groped for the crucifix, carried it to his
+left breast; his lips moved in prayer. His eyes were turned to the cold,
+passionless sky, where a few faint, far-spaced stars had silently
+stolen to their places. The Angelus still rang, his trembling ceased, he
+remained motionless and rigid.
+
+The American, who had uncovered in deference to the worshiper rather
+than the rite, waited patiently. The eyes of Father Pedro returned
+to the earth, moist as if with dew caught from above. He looked half
+absently at Cranch.
+
+“Forgive me, my son,” he said, in a changed voice. “I am only a worn
+old man. I must talk with thee more of this--but not to-night--not
+to-night;--to-morrow--to-morrow--to-morrow.”
+
+He turned slowly and appeared to glide rather than move under the trees,
+until the dark shadow of the Mission tower met and encompassed him.
+Cranch followed him with anxious eyes. Then he removed the quid of
+tobacco from his cheek.
+
+“Just as I reckoned,” remarked he, quite audibly. “He's clean gold on
+the bed rock after all!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+That night Father Pedro dreamed a strange dream. How much of it was
+reality, how long it lasted, or when he awoke from it, he could not
+tell. The morbid excitement of the previous day culminated in a febrile
+exaltation in which he lived and moved as in a separate existence.
+
+This is what he remembered. He thought he had risen at night in a sudden
+horror of remorse, and making his way to the darkened church had fallen
+upon his knees before the high altar, when all at once the acolyte's
+voice broke from the choir, but in accents so dissonant and unnatural
+that it seemed a sacrilege, and he trembled. He thought he had confessed
+the secret of the child's sex to Cranch, but whether the next morning
+or a week later he did not know. He fancied, too, that Cranch had also
+confessed some trifling deception to him, but what, or why, he could not
+remember; so much greater seemed the enormity of his own transgression.
+He thought Cranch had put in his hands the letter he had written to the
+Father Superior, saying that his secret was still safe, and that he
+had been spared the avowal and the scandal that might have ensued. But
+through all, and above all, he was conscious of one fixed idea: to
+seek the seashore with Sanchicha, and upon the spot where she had found
+Francisco, meet the young girl who had taken his place, and so part from
+her forever. He had a dim recollection that this was necessary to some
+legal identification of her, as arranged by Cranch, but how or why he
+did not understand; enough that it was a part of his penance.
+
+It was early morning when the faithful Antonio, accompanied by Sanchicha
+and Jose, rode forth with him from the Mission of San Carmel. Except
+on the expressionless features of the old woman, there was anxiety
+and gloom upon the faces of the little cavalcade. He did not know how
+heavily his strange abstraction and hallucinations weighed upon their
+honest hearts. As they wound up the ascent of the mountain he noticed
+that Antonio and Jose conversed with bated breath and many pious
+crossings of themselves, but with eyes always wistfully fixed upon him.
+He wondered if, as part of his penance, he ought not to proclaim his sin
+and abase himself before them; but he knew that his devoted followers
+would insist upon sharing his punishment; and he remembered his promise
+to Cranch, that for HER sake he would say nothing. Before they reached
+the summit he turned once or twice to look back upon the Mission. How
+small it looked, lying there in the peaceful valley, contrasted with the
+broad sweep of the landscape beyond, stopped at the further east only
+by the dim, ghost-like outlines of the Sierras. But the strong breath of
+the sea was beginning to be felt; in a few moments more they were facing
+it with lowered sombreros and flying serapes, and the vast, glittering,
+illimitable Pacific opened out beneath them.
+
+Dazed and blinded, as it seemed to him, by the shining, restless
+expanse, Father Pedro rode forward as if still in a dream. Suddenly he
+halted, and called Antonio to his side.
+
+“Tell me, child, didst thou not say that this coast was wild and
+desolate of man, beast, and habitation?”
+
+“Truly I did, reverend father.”
+
+“Then what is that?” pointing to the shore.
+
+Almost at their feet nestled a cluster of houses, at the head of an
+arroyo reaching up from the beach. They looked down upon the smoke of a
+manufactory chimney, upon strange heaps of material and curious engines
+scattered along the sands, with here and there moving specks of human
+figures. In a little bay a schooner swung at her cables.
+
+The vaquero crossed himself in stupefied alarm. “I know not, your
+reverence; it is only two years ago, before the rodeo, that I was here
+for strayed colts, and I swear by the blessed bones of San Antonio that
+it was as I said.”
+
+“Ah! it is like these Americanos,” responded the muleteer. “I have it
+from my brother Diego that he went from San Jose to Pescadero two months
+ago, across the plains, with never a hut nor fonda to halt at all the
+way. He returned in seven days, and in the midst of the plain there were
+three houses and a mill, and many people. And why was it? Ah! Mother of
+God! one had picked up in the creek where he drank that much of gold;”
+ and the muleteer tapped one of the silver coins that fringed his jacket
+sleeves in place of buttons.
+
+“And they are washing the sands for gold there now,” said Antonio,
+eagerly pointing to some men gathered round a machine like an enormous
+cradle. “Let us hasten on.”
+
+Father Pedro's momentary interest had passed. The words of his
+companions fell dull and meaningless upon his dreaming ears. He was
+conscious only that the child was more a stranger to him as an outcome
+of this hard, bustling life, than when he believed her borne to him over
+the mysterious sea. It perplexed his dazed, disturbed mind to think that
+if such an antagonistic element could exist within a dozen miles of
+the Mission, and he not know it, could not such an atmosphere have been
+around him, even in his monastic isolation, and he remain blind to it?
+Had he really lived in the world without knowing it? Had it been in his
+blood? Had it impelled him to--He shuddered and rode on.
+
+They were at the last slope of the zigzag descent to the shore, when he
+saw the figures of a man and woman moving slowly through a field of wild
+oats, not far from the trail. It seemed to his distorted fancy that the
+man was Cranch. The woman! His heart stopped beating. Ah! could it be?
+He had never seen her in her proper garb: would she look like that?
+Would she be as tall? He thought he bade Jose and Antonio go on slowly
+before with Sanchicha, and dismounted, walking slowly between the high
+stalks of grain, lest he should disturb them. They evidently did not
+hear his approach, but were talking earnestly. It seemed to Father Pedro
+that they had taken each other's hands, and as he looked Cranch slipped
+his arm round her waist. With only a blind instinct of some dreadful
+sacrilege in this act, Father Pedro would have rushed forward, when
+the girl's voice struck his ear. He stopped, breathless. It was not
+Francisco, but Juanita, the little mestiza.
+
+“But are you sure you are not pretending to love me now, as you
+pretended to think I was the muchacha you had run away with and lost?
+Are you sure it is not pity for the deceit you practiced upon me--upon
+Don Juan--upon poor Father Pedro?”
+
+It seemed as if Cranch had tried to answer with a kiss, for the girl
+drew suddenly away from him with a coquettish fling of the black braids,
+and whipped her little brown hands behind her.
+
+“Well, look here,” said Cranch, with the same easy, good-natured,
+practical directness which the priest remembered, and which would have
+passed for philosophy in a more thoughtful man, “put it squarely, then.
+In the first place, it was Don Juan and the alcalde who first suggested
+you might be the child.”
+
+“But you have said you knew it was Francisco all the time,” interrupted
+Juanita.
+
+“I did; but when I found the priest would not assist me at first, and
+admit that the acolyte was a girl, I preferred to let him think I
+was deceived in giving a fortune to another, and leave it to his own
+conscience to permit it or frustrate it. I was right. I reckon it was
+pretty hard on the old man, at his time of life, and wrapped up as he
+was in the girl; but at the moment he came up to the scratch like a
+man.”
+
+“And to save him you have deceived me? Thank you, Senor,” said the girl
+with a mock curtsey.
+
+“I reckon I preferred to have you for a wife than a daughter,” said
+Cranch, “if that's what you mean. When you know me better, Juanita,” he
+continued, gravely, “you'll know that I would never have let you believe
+I sought in you the one if I had not hoped to find in you the other.”
+
+“Bueno! And when did you have that pretty hope?”
+
+“When I first saw you.”
+
+“And that was--two weeks ago.”
+
+“A year ago, Juanita. When Francisco visited you at the rancho. I
+followed and saw you.”
+
+Juanita looked at him a moment, and then suddenly darted at him, caught
+him by the lapels of his coat and shook him like a terrier.
+
+“Are you sure that you did not love that Francisco? Speak!” (She shook
+him again.) “Swear that you did not follow her!”
+
+“But--I did,” said Cranch, laughing and shaking between the clenching of
+the little hands.
+
+“Judas Iscariot! Swear you do not love her all this while.”
+
+“But, Juanita!”
+
+“Swear!”
+
+Cranch swore. Then to Father Pedro's intense astonishment she drew the
+American's face towards her own by the ears and kissed him.
+
+“But you might have loved her, and married a fortune,” said Juanita,
+after a pause.
+
+“Where would have been my reparation--my duty?” returned Cranch, with a
+laugh.
+
+“Reparation enough for her to have had you,” said Juanita, with that
+rapid disloyalty of one loving woman to another in an emergency. This
+provoked another kiss from Cranch, and then Juanita said demurely,--
+
+“But we are far from the trail. Let us return, or we shall miss Father
+Pedro. Are you sure he will come?”
+
+“A week ago he promised to be here to see the proofs to-day.”
+
+The voices were growing fainter and fainter; they were returning to the
+trail.
+
+Father Pedro remained motionless. A week ago! Was it a week ago
+since--since what? And what had he been doing here? Listening! He!
+Father Pedro, listening like an idle peon to the confidences of two
+lovers. But they had talked of him, of his crime, and the man had pitied
+him. Why did he not speak? Why did he not call after them? He tried
+to raise his voice. It sank in his throat with a horrible choking
+sensation. The nearest heads of oats began to nod to him, he felt
+himself swaying backwards and forwards. He fell--heavily, down, down,
+down, from the summit of the mountain to the floor of the Mission
+chapel, and there he lay in the dark.
+
+*****
+
+“He moves.”
+
+“Blessed Saint Anthony preserve him!”
+
+It was Antonio's voice, it was Jose's arm, it was the field of wild
+oats, the sky above his head,--all unchanged.
+
+“What has happened?” said the priest feebly.
+
+“A giddiness seized your reverence just now, as we were coming to seek
+you.”
+
+“And you met no one?”
+
+“No one, your reverence.”
+
+Father Pedro passed his hand across his forehead.
+
+“But who are these?” he said, pointing to two figures who now appeared
+upon the trail.
+
+Antonio turned.
+
+“It is the Americano, Senor Cranch, and his adopted daughter, the
+mestiza Juanita, seeking your reverence, methinks.”
+
+“Ah!” said Father Pedro.
+
+Cranch came forward and greeted the priest cordially. “It was kind of
+you, Father Pedro,” he said, meaningly, with a significant glance at
+Jose and Antonio, “to come so far to bid me and my adopted daughter
+farewell. We depart when the tide serves, but not before you partake of
+our hospitality in yonder cottage.”
+
+Father Pedro gazed at Cranch and then at Juanita.
+
+“I see,” he stammered. “But she goes not alone. She will be strange at
+first. She takes some friend, perhaps--some companion?” he continued,
+tremulously.
+
+“A very old and dear one, Father Pedro, who is waiting for us now.”
+
+He led the way to a little white cottage, so little and white and
+recent, that it seemed a mere fleck of sea foam cast on the sands.
+Disposing of Jose and Antonio in the neighboring workshop and
+outbuildings, he assisted the venerable Sanchicha to dismount, and,
+together with Father Pedro and Juanita, entered a white palisaded
+enclosure beside the cottage, and halted before what appeared to be a
+large, folding trap-door, covering a slight, sandy mound. It was locked
+with a padlock; beside it stood the American alcalde and Don Juan
+Briones. Father Pedro looked hastily around for another figure, but it
+was not there.
+
+“Gentlemen,” began Cranch, in his practical business way, “I reckon
+you all know we've come here to identify a young lady, who”--he
+hesitated--“was lately under the care of Father Pedro, with a foundling
+picked up on this shore fifteen years ago by an Indian woman. How this
+foundling came here, and how I was concerned in it, you all know. I've
+told everybody here how I scrambled ashore, leaving that baby in the
+dingy, supposing it would be picked up by the boat pursuing me. I've
+told some of you,” he looked at Father Pedro, “how I first discovered,
+from one of the men, three years ago, that the child was not found by
+its father. But I have never told any one, before now, I KNEW it was
+picked up here.
+
+“I never could tell the exact locality where I came ashore, for the fog
+was coming on as it is now. But two years ago I came up with a party of
+gold hunters to work these sands. One day, digging near this creek, I
+struck something embedded deep below the surface. Well, gentlemen, it
+wasn't gold, but something worth more to me than gold or silver. Here it
+is.”
+
+At a sign the alcalde unlocked the doors and threw them open. They
+disclosed an irregular trench, in which, filled with sand, lay the
+half-excavated stern of a boat.
+
+“It was the dingy of the Trinidad, gentlemen; you can still read her
+name. I found hidden away, tucked under the stern sheets, mouldy and
+water-worn, some clothes that I recognized to be the baby's. I knew
+then that the child had been taken away alive for some purpose, and
+the clothes were left so that she should carry no trace with her.
+I recognized the hand of an Indian. I set to work quietly. I found
+Sanchicha here, she confessed to finding a baby, but what she had done
+with it she would not at first say. But since then she has declared
+before the alcalde that she gave it to Father Pedro, of San Carmel, and
+that here it stands--Francisco that was! Francisca that it is!”
+
+He stepped aside to make way for a tall girl, who had approached from
+the cottage.
+
+Father Pedro had neither noticed the concluding words nor the movement
+of Cranch. His eyes were fixed upon the imbecile Sanchicha,--Sanchicha,
+on whom, to render his rebuke more complete, the Deity seemed to have
+worked a miracle, and restored intelligence to eye and lip. He passed
+his hand tremblingly across his forehead, and turned away, when his eye
+fell upon the last comer.
+
+It was she. The moment he had longed for and dreaded had come. She stood
+there, animated, handsome, filled with a hurtful consciousness in
+her new charms, her fresh finery, and the pitiable trinkets that had
+supplanted her scapulary, and which played under her foolish fingers.
+The past had no place in her preoccupied mind; her bright eyes were
+full of eager anticipation of a substantial future. The incarnation of a
+frivolous world, even as she extended one hand to him in half-coquettish
+embarrassment she arranged the folds of her dress with the other. At
+the touch of her fingers, he felt himself growing old and cold. Even
+the penance of parting, which he had looked forward to, was denied him;
+there was no longer sympathy enough for sorrow. He thought of the empty
+chorister's robe in the little cell, but not now with regret. He only
+trembled to think of the flesh that he had once caused to inhabit it.
+
+“That's all, gentlemen,” broke in the practical voice of Cranch.
+“Whether there are proofs enough to make Francisca the heiress of her
+father's wealth, the lawyers must say. I reckon it's enough for me that
+they give me the chance of repairing a wrong by taking her father's
+place. After all, it was a mere chance.”
+
+“It was the will of God,” said Father Pedro, solemnly.
+
+They were the last words he addressed them. For when the fog had begun
+to creep inshore, hastening their departure, he only answered their
+farewells by a silent pressure of the hand, mute lips, and far-off eyes.
+
+When the sound of their laboring oars grew fainter, he told Antonio to
+lead him and Sanchicha again to the buried boat. There he bade her kneel
+beside him. “We will do penance here, thou and I, daughter,” he said
+gravely. When the fog had drawn its curtain gently around the strange
+pair, and sea and shore were blotted out, he whispered, “Tell me, it was
+even so, was it not, daughter, on the night she came?” When the distant
+clatter of blocks and rattle of cordage came from the unseen vessel, now
+standing out to sea, he whispered again, “So, this is what thou didst
+hear, even then.” And so during the night he marked, more or less
+audibly to the half-conscious woman at his side, the low whisper of the
+waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the lightening and thickening
+of the fog, the phantoms of moving shapes, and the slow coming of the
+dawn. And when the morning sun had rent the veil over land and sea,
+Antonio and Jose found him, haggard, but erect, beside the trembling
+old woman, with a blessing on his lips, pointing to the horizon where a
+single sail still glimmered:--
+
+“Va Usted con Dios.”
+
+
+
+
+
+A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+She was barely twenty-three years old. It is probable that up to that
+age, and the beginning of this episode, her life had been uneventful.
+Born to the easy mediocrity of such compensating extremes as a small
+farmhouse and large lands, a good position and no society, in that vast
+grazing district of Kentucky known as the “Blue Grass” region, all the
+possibilities of a Western American girl's existence lay before her.
+A piano in the bare-walled house, the latest patented mower in the
+limitless meadows, and a silk dress sweeping the rough floor of
+the unpainted “meeting-house” were already the promise of those
+possibilities. Beautiful she was, but the power of that beauty was
+limited by being equally shared with her few neighbors. There were
+small, narrow, arched feet besides her own that trod the uncarpeted
+floors of outlying log-cabins with equal grace and dignity; bright,
+clearly opened eyes that were equally capable of looking unabashed
+upon princes and potentates, as a few later did, and the heiress of the
+county judge read her own beauty without envy in the frank glances and
+unlowered crest of the blacksmith's daughter. Eventually she had married
+the male of her species, a young stranger, who, as schoolmaster in
+the nearest town, had utilized to some local extent a scant capital
+of education. In obedience to the unwritten law of the West, after
+the marriage was celebrated the doors of the ancestral home cheerfully
+opened, and bride and bridegroom issued forth, without regret and
+without sentiment, to seek the further possibilities of a life beyond
+these already too familiar voices. With their departure for California
+as Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Tucker, the parental nest in the Blue Grass
+meadows knew them no more.
+
+They submitted with equal cheerfulness to the privations and excesses of
+their new conditions. Within three years the schoolmaster developed into
+a lawyer and capitalist, the Blue Grass bride supplying a grace and ease
+to these transitions that were all her own. She softened the abruptness
+of sudden wealth, mitigated the austerities of newly acquired power, and
+made the most glaring incongruity picturesque. Only one thing seemed
+to limit their progress in the region of these possibilities. They
+were childless. It was as if they had exhausted the future in their own
+youth, leaving little or nothing for another generation to do.
+
+
+A southwesterly storm was beating against the dressing-room windows
+of their new house in one of the hilly suburbs of San Francisco, and
+threatening the unseasonable frivolity of the stucco ornamentation of
+cornice and balcony. Mrs. Tucker had been called from the contemplation
+of the dreary prospect without by the arrival of a visitor. On
+entering the drawing-room she found him engaged in a half-admiring,
+half-resentful examination of its new furniture and hangings. Mrs.
+Tucker at once recognized Mr. Calhoun Weaver, a former Blue Grass
+neighbor; with swift feminine intuition she also felt that his slight
+antagonism was likely to be transferred from her furniture to herself.
+Waiving it with the lazy amiability of Southern indifference, she
+welcomed him by the familiarity of a Christian name.
+
+“I reckoned that mebbee you opined old Blue Grass friends wouldn't
+naturally hitch on to them fancy doins,” he said, glancing around the
+apartment to avoid her clear eyes, as if resolutely setting himself
+against the old charm of her manner as he had against the more recent
+glory of her surroundings, “but I thought I'd just drop in for the sake
+of old times.”
+
+“Why shouldn't you, Cal?” said Mrs. Tucker with a frank smile.
+
+“Especially as I'm going up to Sacramento to-night with some influential
+friends,” he continued, with an ostentation calculated to resist the
+assumption of her charms and her furniture. “Senator Dyce of Kentucky,
+and his cousin Judge Briggs; perhaps you know 'em, or may be Spencer--I
+mean Mr. Tucker--does.”
+
+“I reckon,” said Mrs. Tucker smiling; “but tell me something about the
+boys and girls at Vineville, and about yourself. YOU'RE looking well,
+and right smart too.” She paused to give due emphasis to this latter
+recognition of a huge gold chain with which her visitor was somewhat
+ostentatiously trifling.
+
+“I didn't know as you cared to hear anything about Blue Grass,” he
+returned, a little abashed. “I've been away from there some time
+myself,” he added, his uneasy vanity taking fresh alarm at the faint
+suspicion of patronage on the part of his hostess. “They're doin' well,
+though; perhaps as well as some others.”
+
+“And you're not married yet,” continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the
+innuendo. “Ah, Cal,” she added archly, “I am afraid you are as fickle as
+ever. What poor girl in Vineville have you left pining?”
+
+The simple face of the man before her flushed with foolish gratification
+at this old-fashioned, ambiguous flattery. “Now look yer, Belle,” he
+said, chuckling, “if you're talking of old times and you think I bear
+malice agin Spencer, why--”
+
+But Mrs. Tucker interrupted what might have been an inopportune
+sentimental retrospect with a finger of arch but languid warning. “That
+will do! I'm dying to know all about it, and you must stay to dinner and
+tell me. It's right mean you can't see Spencer too; but he isn't back
+from Sacramento yet.”
+
+Grateful as a tete-a-tete with his old neighbor in her more prosperous
+surroundings would have been, if only for the sake of later gossiping
+about it, he felt it would be inconsistent with his pride and his
+assumption of present business. More than that, he was uneasily
+conscious that in Mrs. Tucker's simple and unaffected manner there was
+a greater superiority than he had ever noticed during their previous
+acquaintance. He would have felt kinder to her had she shown any
+“airs and graces,” which he could have commented upon and forgiven. He
+stammered some vague excuse of preoccupation, yet lingered in the hope
+of saying something which, if not aggressively unpleasant, might at
+least transfer to her indolent serenity some of his own irritation.
+“I reckon,” he said, as he moved hesitatingly towards the door, “that
+Spencer has made himself easy and secure in them business risks he's
+taking. That 'ere Alameda ditch affair they're talking so much about
+is a mighty big thing, rather TOO big if it ever got to falling back on
+him. But I suppose he's accustomed to take risks?”
+
+“Of course he is,” said Mrs. Tucker gayly. “He married ME.”
+
+The visitor smiled feebly, but was not equal to the opportunity offered
+for gallant repudiation. “But suppose you ain't accustomed to risks?”
+
+“Why not? I married HIM,” said Mrs. Tucker.
+
+Mr. Calhoun Weaver was human, and succumbed to this last charming
+audacity. He broke into a noisy but genuine laugh, shook Mrs. Tucker's
+hand with effusion, said, “Now that's regular Blue Grass and no
+mistake!” and retreated under cover of his hilarity. In the hall he
+made a rallying stand to repeat confidentially to the servant who had
+overheard them: “Blue Grass, all over, you bet your life,” and, opening
+the door, was apparently swallowed up in the tempest.
+
+Mrs. Tucker's smile kept her lips until she had returned to her room,
+and even then languidly shone in her eyes for some minutes after, as
+she gazed abstractedly from her window on the storm-tossed bay in the
+distance. Perhaps some girlish vision of the peaceful Blue Glass plain
+momentarily usurped the prospect; but it is to be doubted if there was
+much romance in that retrospect, or that it was more interesting to her
+than the positive and sharply cut outlines of the practical life she now
+held. Howbeit she soon forgot this fancy in lazily watching a boat that,
+in the teeth of the gale, was beating round Alcatraz Island. Although
+at times a mere blank speck on the gray waste of foam, a closer scrutiny
+showed it to be one of those lateen-rigged Italian fishing boats that so
+often flecked the distant bay. Lost in the sudden darkening of rain,
+or reappearing beneath the lifted curtain of the squall, she watched
+it weather the island, and then turn its laboring but persistent course
+towards the open channel. A rent in the Indian-inky sky, that showed the
+narrowing portals of the Golden Gate beyond, revealed, as unexpectedly,
+the destination of the little craft, a tall ship that hitherto lay
+hidden in the mist of the Saucelito shore. As the distance lessened
+between boat and ship, they were again lost in the downward swoop of
+another squall. When it lifted, the ship was creeping under the headland
+towards the open sea, but the boat was gone. Mrs. Tucker in vain rubbed
+the pane with her handkerchief; it had vanished. Meanwhile the ship,
+as she neared the Gate, drew out from the protecting headland, stood
+outlined for a moment with spars and canvas hearsed in black against
+the lurid rent in the horizon, and then seemed to sink slowly into the
+heaving obscurity beyond. A sudden onset of rain against the windows
+obliterated the remaining prospect; the entrance of a servant completed
+the diversion.
+
+“Captain Poindexter, ma'am!”
+
+Mrs. Tucker lifted her pretty eyebrows interrogatively. Captain
+Poindexter was a legal friend of her husband, and had dined there
+frequently; nevertheless she asked: “Did you tell him Mr. Tucker was not
+at home?”
+
+“Yes, 'm.”
+
+“Did he ask for ME?”
+
+“Yes, 'm.”
+
+“Tell him I'll be down directly.”
+
+Mrs. Tucker's quiet face did not betray the fact that this second
+visitor was even less interesting than the first. In her heart she did
+not like Captain Poindexter. With a clever woman's instinct she had
+early detected the fact that he had a superior, stronger nature than
+her husband; as a loyal wife, she secretly resented the occasional
+unconscious exhibition of this fact on the part of his intimate friend
+in their familiar intercourse. Added to this slight jealousy, there was
+a certain moral antagonism between herself and the captain which none
+but themselves knew. They were both philosophers, but Mrs. Tucker's
+serene and languid optimism would not tolerate the compassionate and
+kind-hearted pessimisms of the lawyer. “Knowing what Jack Poindexter
+does of human nature,” her husband had once said, “it's mighty fine in
+him to be so kind and forgiving. You ought to like him better, Belle.”
+ “And qualify myself to be forgiven,” said the lady pertly. “I don't see
+what you're driving at, Belle; I give it up,” had responded the puzzled
+husband. Mrs. Tucker kissed his high but foolish forehead tenderly, and
+said: “I'm glad you don't, dear.”
+
+Meanwhile her second visitor had, like the first, employed the interval
+in a critical survey of the glories of the new furniture, but with
+apparently more compassion than resentment in his manner. Once only had
+his expression changed. Over the fireplace hung a large photograph of
+Mr. Spencer Tucker. It was retouched, refined, and idealized in the
+highest style of that polite and diplomatic art. As Captain Poindexter
+looked upon the fringed hazel eyes, the drooping raven moustache, the
+clustering ringlets, and the Byronic full throat and turned-down collar
+of his friend, a smile of exhausted humorous tolerance and affectionate
+impatience curved his lips. “Well, you ARE a fool, aren't you?” he
+apostrophized it half-audibly.
+
+He was standing before the picture as she entered. Even in the
+trying contiguity of that peerless work he would have been called a
+fine-looking man. As he advanced to greet her, it was evident that
+his military title was not one of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the
+locality. In his erect figure and the disciplined composure of limb and
+attitude there were still traces of the refined academic rigors of West
+Point. The pliant adaptability of Western civilization which enabled
+him, three years before, to leave the army and transfer his executive
+ability to the more profitable profession of the law, had loosed sash
+and shoulder-strap, but had not entirely removed the restraint of the
+one, or the bearing of the other.
+
+“Spencer is in Sacramento,” began Mrs. Tucker in languid explanation,
+after the first greetings were over.
+
+“I knew he was not here,” replied Captain Poindexter gently, as he drew
+the proffered chair towards her, “but this is business that concerns
+you both.” He stopped and glanced upwards at the picture. “I suppose
+you know nothing of his business? Of course not,” he added reassuringly,
+“nothing, absolutely nothing, certainly.” He said this so kindly, and
+yet so positively, as if to promptly dispose of that question before
+going further, that she assented mechanically. “Well, then, he's taken
+some big risks in the way of business, and--well, things have gone bad
+with him, you know. Very bad! Really, they couldn't be worse! Of course
+it was dreadfully rash and all that,” he went on, as if commenting
+upon the amusing waywardness of a child; “but the result is the usual
+smash-up of everything, money, credit, and all!” He laughed and
+added: “Yes, he's got cut off--mules and baggage regularly routed and
+dispersed! I'm in earnest.” He raised his eyebrows and frowned slightly,
+as if to deprecate any corresponding hilarity on the part of Mrs.
+Tucker, or any attempt to make TOO light of the subject, and then
+rising, placed his hands behind his back, beamed half-humorously upon
+her from beneath her husband's picture, and repeated: “That's so.”
+
+Mrs. Tucker instinctively knew that he spoke the truth, and that it was
+impossible for him to convey it in any other than his natural manner;
+but between the shock and the singular influence of that manner she
+could at first only say, “You don't mean it!” fully conscious of
+the utter inanity of the remark, and that it seemed scarcely less
+cold-blooded than his own.
+
+Poindexter, still smiling, nodded.
+
+She arose with an effort. She had recovered from the first shock, and
+pride lent her a determined calmness that more than equaled Poindexter's
+easy philosophy.
+
+“Where is he?” she asked.
+
+“At sea, and I hope by this time where he can not be found or followed.”
+
+Was her momentary glimpse of the outgoing ship a coincidence, or only
+a vision? She was confused and giddy, but, mastering her weakness, she
+managed to continue in a lower voice:
+
+“You have no message for me from him? He told you nothing to tell me?”
+
+“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” replied Poindexter. “It was as much as he
+could do, I reckon, to get fairly away before the crash came.”
+
+“Then you did not see him go?”
+
+“Well, no,” said Poindexter. “I'd hardly have managed things in this
+way.” He checked himself and added, with a forgiving smile, “But he was
+the best judge of what he needed, of course.”
+
+“I suppose I will hear from him,” she said quietly, “as soon as he is
+safe. He must have had enough else to think about, poor fellow.”
+
+She said this so naturally and quietly that Poindexter was deceived.
+He had no idea that the collected woman before him was thinking only of
+solitude and darkness, of her own room, and madly longing to be there.
+He said, “Yes, I dare say,” in quite another voice, and glanced at the
+picture. But as she remained standing, he continued more earnestly,
+“I didn't come here to tell you what you might read in the newspapers
+to-morrow morning, and what everybody might tell you. Before that time
+I want you to do something to save a fragment of your property from
+the ruin; do you understand? I want you to make a rally, and bring off
+something in good order.”
+
+“For him?” said Mrs. Tucker, with brightening eyes.
+
+“Well, yes, of course--if you like--but as if for yourself. Do you know
+the Rancho de los Cuervos?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“It's almost the only bit of real property your husband hasn't sold,
+mortgaged, or pledged. Why it was exempt, or whether only forgotten, I
+can't say.”
+
+“I'll tell you why,” said Mrs. Tucker, with a slight return of color.
+“It was the first land we ever bought, and Spencer always said it should
+be mine and he would build a new house on it.”
+
+Captain Poindexter smiled and nodded at the picture. “Oh, he did say
+that, did he? Well, THAT'S evidence. But you see he never gave you the
+deed, and by sunrise to-morrow his creditors will attach it--unless--”
+
+“Unless--” repeated Mrs. Tucker, with kindling eyes.
+
+“Unless,” continued Captain Poindexter, “they happen to find YOU in
+possession.”
+
+“I'll go,” said Mrs. Tucker.
+
+“Of course you will,” returned Poindexter, pleasantly; “only, as it's
+a big contract to take, suppose we see how you can fill it. It's forty
+miles to Los Cuervos, and you can't trust yourself to steamboat or
+stage-coach. The steamboat left an hour ago.”
+
+“If I had only known this then!” ejaculated Mrs. Tucker.
+
+“I knew it, but you had company then,” said Poindexter, with ironical
+gallantry, “and I wouldn't disturb you.” Without saying how he knew it,
+he continued, “In the stage-coach you might be recognized. You must go
+in a private conveyance and alone; even I can not go with you, for I
+must go on before and meet you there. Can you drive forty miles?”
+
+Mrs. Tucker lifted up her abstracted pretty lids. “I once drove
+fifty--at home,” she returned simply.
+
+“Good! and I dare say you did it then for fun. Do it now for something
+real and personal, as we lawyers say. You will have relays and a plan of
+the road. It's rough weather for a pasear, but all the better for that.
+You'll have less company on the road.”
+
+“How soon can I go?” she asked.
+
+“The sooner the better. I've arranged everything for you already,” he
+continued with a laugh. “Come now, that's a compliment to you, isn't
+it?” He smiled a moment in her steadfast, earnest face, and then said,
+more gravely, “You'll do. Now listen.”
+
+He then carefully detailed his plan. There was so little of excitement
+or mystery in their manner that the servant, who returned to light the
+gas, never knew that the ruin and bankruptcy of the house was being told
+before her, or that its mistress was planning her secret flight.
+
+“Good afternoon; I will see you to-morrow then,” said Poindexter,
+raising his eyes to hers as the servant opened the door for him.
+
+“Good afternoon,” repeated Mrs. Tucker quietly answering his look. “You
+need not light the gas in my room, Mary,” she continued in the same
+tone of voice as the door closed upon him; “I shall lie down for a few
+moments, and then I may run over to the Robinsons for the evening.”
+
+She regained her room composedly. The longing desire to bury her head
+in her pillow and “think out” her position had gone. She did not
+apostrophize her fate, she did not weep; few real women do in the access
+of calamity, or when there is anything else to be done. She felt that
+she knew it all; she believed she had sounded the profoundest depths
+of the disaster, and seemed already so old in her experience that she
+almost fancied she had been prepared for it. Perhaps she did not fully
+appreciate it; to a life like hers it was only an incident, the mere
+turning of a page of the illimitable book of youth; the breaking up of
+what she now felt had become a monotony. In fact, she was not quite sure
+she had ever been satisfied with their present success. Had it brought
+her all she expected? She wanted to say this to her husband, not only
+to comfort him, poor fellow, but that they might come to a better
+understanding of life in the future. She was not perhaps different
+from other loving women who, believing in this unattainable goal
+of matrimony, have sought it in the various episodes of fortune or
+reverses, in the bearing of children, or the loss of friends. In her
+childless experience there was no other life that had taken root in her
+circumstances and might suffer transplantation; only she and her husband
+could lose or profit by the change. The “perfect” understanding would
+come under other conditions than these.
+
+She would have gone superstitiously to the window to gaze in the
+direction of the vanished ship, but another instinct restrained her.
+She would put aside all yearning for him until she had done something to
+help him, and earned the confidence he seemed to have withheld. Perhaps
+it was pride--perhaps she never really believed his exodus was distant
+or complete.
+
+With a full knowledge that to-morrow the various ornaments and pretty
+trifles around her would be in the hands of the law, she gathered only a
+few necessaries for her flight and some familiar personal trinkets. I
+am constrained to say that this self-abnegation was more fastidious than
+moral. She had no more idea of the ethics of bankruptcy than any other
+charming woman; she simply did not like to take with her any contagious
+memory of the chapter of the life just closing. She glanced around the
+home she was leaving without a lingering regret; there was no sentiment
+of tradition or custom that might be destroyed; her roots lay too near
+the surface to suffer from dislocation; the happiness of her childless
+union had depended upon no domestic centre, nor was its flame sacred to
+any local hearthstone. It was without a sigh that, when night had fully
+fallen, she slipped unnoticed down the staircase. At the door of the
+drawing-room she paused and then entered with the first guilty feeling
+of shame she had known that evening. Looking stealthily around she
+mounted a chair before her husband's picture, kissed the irreproachable
+moustache hurriedly, said, “You foolish darling, you!” and slipped
+out again. With this touching indorsement of the views of a rival
+philosopher, she closed the door softly and left her home forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The wind and rain had cleared the unfrequented suburb of any observant
+lounger, and the darkness, lit only by far-spaced, gusty lamps, hid
+her hastening figure. She had barely crossed the second street when she
+heard the quick clatter of hoofs behind her; a buggy drove up to the
+curbstone, and Poindexter leaped out. She entered quickly, but for a
+moment he still held the reins of the impatient horse. “He's rather
+fresh,” he said, eying her keenly; “are you sure you can manage him?”
+
+“Give me the reins,” she said simply.
+
+He placed them in the two firm, well-shaped hands that reached from the
+depths of the vehicle, and was satisfied. Yet he lingered.
+
+“It's rough work for a lone woman,” he said, almost curtly. “I can't
+go with you, but, speak frankly, is there any man you know whom you can
+trust well enough to take? It's not too late yet; think a moment!”
+
+He paused over the buttoning of the leather apron of the vehicle.
+
+“No, there is none,” answered the voice from the interior; “and it's
+better so. Is all ready?”
+
+“One moment more.” He had recovered his half-bantering manner. “You HAVE
+a friend and countryman already with you, do you know? Your horse is
+Blue Grass. Good night.”
+
+With these words ringing in her ears she began her journey. The horse,
+as if eager to maintain the reputation which his native district had
+given his race, as well as the race of the pretty woman behind him,
+leaped impatiently forward. But pulled together by the fine and firm
+fingers that seemed to guide rather than check his exuberance, he
+presently struck into the long, swinging pace of his kind, and kept it
+throughout without “break” or acceleration. Over the paved streets the
+light buggy rattled, and the slender shafts danced around his smooth
+barrel, but when they touched the level high-road, horse and vehicle
+slipped forward through the night, a swift and noiseless phantom. Mrs.
+Tucker could see his graceful back dimly rising and falling before her
+with tireless rhythm, and could feel the intelligent pressure of his
+mouth until it seemed the responsive grasp of a powerful but kindly
+hand. The faint glow of conquest came to her cold cheek; the slight
+stirrings of pride moved her preoccupied heart. A soft light filled her
+hazel eyes. A desolate woman, bereft of husband and home, and flying
+through storm and night, she knew not where, she still leaned forward
+towards her horse. “Was he Blue Grass, then, dear old boy?” she gently
+cooed at him in the darkness. He evidently WAS, and responded by blowing
+her an ostentatious equine kiss. “And he would be good to his own
+forsaken Belle,” she murmured caressingly, “and wouldn't let any one
+harm her?” But here, overcome by the lazy witchery of her voice, he
+shook his head so violently that Mrs. Tucker, after the fashion of her
+sex, had the double satisfaction of demurely restraining the passion she
+had evoked.
+
+To avoid the more traveled thoroughfare, while the evening was still
+early, it had been arranged that she should at first take a less direct
+but less frequented road. This was a famous pleasure-drive from San
+Francisco, a graveled and sanded stretch of eight miles to the sea and
+an ultimate “cocktail,” in a “stately pleasure-dome decreed” among the
+surf and rocks of the Pacific shore. It was deserted now, and left to
+the unobstructed sweep of the wind and rain. Mrs. Tucker would not have
+chosen this road. With the instinctive jealousy of a bucolic inland race
+born by great rivers, she did not like the sea; and again the dim and
+dreary waste tended to recall the vision connected with her husband's
+flight, upon which she had resolutely shut her eyes. But when she had
+reached it the road suddenly turned, following the trend of the beach,
+and she was exposed to the full power of its dread fascinations. The
+combined roar of sea and shore was in her ears; as the direct force of
+the gale had compelled her to furl the protecting hood of the buggy
+to keep the light vehicle from oversetting or drifting to leeward, she
+could no longer shut out the heaving chaos on the right from which the
+pallid ghosts of dead and dying breakers dimly rose and sank as if in
+awful salutation. At times through the darkness a white sheet appeared
+spread before the path and beneath the wheels of the buggy, which, when
+withdrawn with a reluctant hiss, seemed striving to drag the exhausted
+beach seaward with it. But the blind terror of her horse, who swerved at
+every sweep of the surge, shamed her own half-superstitious fears,
+and with the effort to control his alarm she regained her own
+self-possession, albeit with eyelashes wet not altogether with the salt
+spray from the sea. This was followed by a reaction, perhaps stimulated
+by her victory over the beaten animal, when for a time, she knew not how
+long, she felt only a mad sense of freedom and power; oblivious of
+even her sorrows, her lost home and husband, and with intense feminine
+consciousness she longed to be a man. She was scarcely aware that the
+track turned again inland until the beat of the horse's hoofs on the
+firm ground and an acceleration of speed showed her she had left the
+beach and the mysterious sea behind her, and she remembered that she was
+near the end of the first stage of her journey. Half an hour later the
+twinkling lights of the roadside inn where she was to change horses rose
+out of the darkness.
+
+Happily for her, the ostler considered the horse, who had a local
+reputation, of more importance than the unknown muffled figure in the
+shadow of the unfurled hood, and confined his attention to the animal.
+After a careful examination of his feet and a few comments addressed
+solely to the superior creation, he led him away. Mrs. Tucker would have
+liked to part more affectionately from her four-footed compatriot, and
+felt a sudden sense of loneliness at the loss of her new friend, but a
+recollection of certain cautions of Captain Poindexter's kept her mute.
+Nevertheless, the ostler's ostentatious adjuration of “Now then, aren't
+you going to bring out that mustang for the Senora?” puzzled her. It was
+not until the fresh horse was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold
+into the attendant's hand, that the “Gracias” of his unmistakable Saxon
+speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer's caution. Poindexter
+had evidently represented her to these people as a native Californian
+who did not speak English. In her inconsistency her blood took fire at
+this first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face. Why should he
+try to pass her off as anybody else? Why should she not use her own, her
+husband's name? She stopped and bit her lip.
+
+It was but the beginning of an uneasy train of thought. She suddenly
+found herself thinking of her visitor, Calhoun Weaver, and not
+pleasantly. He would hear of their ruin tomorrow, perhaps of her own
+flight. He would remember his visit, and what would he think of her
+deceitful frivolity? Would he believe that she was then ignorant of the
+failure? It was her first sense of any accountability to others than
+herself, but even then it was rather owing to an uneasy consciousness of
+what her husband must feel if he were subjected to the criticisms of
+men like Calhoun. She wondered if others knew that he had kept her
+in ignorance of his flight. Did Poindexter know it, or had he only
+entrapped her into the admission? Why had she not been clever enough
+to make him think that she knew it already? For the moment she hated
+Poindexter for sharing that secret. Yet this was again followed by a
+new impatience of her husband's want of insight into her ability to help
+him. Of course the poor fellow could not bear to worry her, could
+not bear to face such men as Calhoun, or even Poindexter (she added
+exultingly to herself), but he might have sent her a line as he fled,
+only to prepare her to meet and combat the shame alone. It did not occur
+to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she was accepting as an
+error of feeling what the world would call cowardly selfishness.
+
+At midnight the storm lulled and a few stars trembled through the rent
+clouds. Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and her country
+instincts, a little overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few
+years, came again to the surface. She felt the fresh, cool radiation
+from outlying, upturned fields, the faint, sad odors from dim stretches
+of pricking grain and quickening leaf, and wondered if at Los Cuervos
+it might be possible to reproduce the peculiar verdure of her native
+district. She beguiled her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving
+their fortunes by farming; her comfortable tastes had lately rebelled
+against the homeless mechanical cultivation of these desolate but
+teeming Californian acres, and for a moment indulged in a vision of
+a vine-clad cottage home that in any other woman would have been
+sentimental. Her cramped limbs aching, she took advantage of the
+security of the darkness and the familiar contiguity of the fields to
+get down from the vehicle, gather her skirts together, and run at the
+head of the mustang, until her chill blood was thawed, night drawing a
+modest veil over this charming revelation of the nymph and woman. But
+the sudden shadow of a coyote checked the scouring feet of this swift
+Camilla, and sent her back precipitately to the buggy. Nevertheless,
+she was refreshed and able to pursue her journey, until the cold gray of
+early morning found her at the end of her second stage.
+
+Her route was changed again from the main highway, rendered dangerous by
+the approach of day and the contiguity of the neighboring rancheros. The
+road was rough and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping with the
+rudeness of the route--by far the most difficult of her whole journey.
+The rare wagon tracks that indicated her road were often scarcely
+discernible; at times they led her through openings in the half-cleared
+woods, skirted suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth,
+dome-like hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dangerous angle.
+Twice she had to alight and cling to the sliding wheels on one of those
+treacherous inclines, or drag them from impending ruts or immovable
+mire. In the growing light she could distinguish the distant, low-lying
+marshes eaten by encroaching sloughs and insidious channels, and beyond
+them the faint gray waste of the Lower Bay. A darker peninsula in the
+marsh she knew to be the extreme boundary of her future home: the Rancho
+de los Cuervos. In another hour she began to descend to the plain, and
+once more to approach the main road, which now ran nearly parallel
+with her track. She scanned it cautiously for any early traveler; it
+stretched north and south in apparent unending solitude. She struck
+into it boldly, and urged her horse to the top of his speed, until she
+reached the cross road that led to the rancho. But here she paused and
+allowed the reins to drop idly on the mustang's back. A singular and
+unaccountable irresolution seized her. The difficulties of her journey
+were over; the rancho lay scarcely two miles away; she had achieved
+the most important part of her task in the appointed time, but she
+hesitated. What had she come for? She tried to recall Poindexter's
+words, even her own enthusiasm, but in vain. She was going to take
+possession of her husband's property, she knew, that was all. But the
+means she had taken seemed now so exaggerated and mysterious for that
+simple end that she began to dread an impending something, or some vague
+danger she had not considered, that she was rushing blindly to meet.
+Full of this strange feeling she almost mechanically stopped her horse
+as she entered the cross road.
+
+From this momentary hesitation a singular sound aroused her. It seemed
+at first like the swift hurrying by of some viewless courier of the
+air, the vague alarm of some invisible flying herald, or like the
+inarticulate cry that precedes a storm. It seemed to rise and fall
+around her as if with some changing urgency of purpose. Raising her eyes
+she suddenly recognized the two far-stretching lines of telegraph wire
+above her head, and knew the aeolian cry of the morning wind along its
+vibrating chords. But it brought another and more practical fear to her
+active brain. Perhaps even now the telegraph might be anticipating her!
+Had Poindexter thought of that? She hesitated no longer, but laying the
+whip on the back of her jaded mustang again hurried forward.
+
+As the level horizon grew more distinct, her attention was attracted by
+the white sail of a small boat lazily threading the sinuous channel of
+the slough. It might be Poindexter arriving by the more direct route
+from the steamboat that occasionally lay off the ancient embarcadero of
+the Los Cuervos Rancho. But even while watching it her quick ear caught
+the sound of galloping hoofs behind her. She turned quickly and saw she
+was followed by a horseman. But her momentary alarm was succeeded by
+a feeling of relief as she recognized the erect figure and square
+shoulders of Poindexter. Yet she could not help thinking that he looked
+more like a militant scout, and less like a cautious legal adviser, than
+ever.
+
+With unaffected womanliness she rearranged her slightly disordered hair
+as he drew up beside her. “I thought you were in yonder boat,” she said.
+
+“Not I,” he laughed; “I distanced you by the high road two hours, and
+have been reconnoitring, until I saw you hesitate at the cross roads.”
+
+“But who is in the boat?” asked Mrs. Tucker, partly to hide her
+embarrassment.
+
+“Only some early Chinese market gardener, I dare say. But you are safe
+now. You are on your own land. You passed the boundary monument of the
+rancho five minutes ago. Look! All you see before you is yours from the
+embarcadero to yonder Coast Range.”
+
+The tone of half-raillery did not, however, cheer Mrs. Tucker. She
+shuddered slightly and cast her eyes over the monotonous sea of tule and
+meadow.
+
+“It doesn't look pretty, perhaps,” continued Poindexter, “but it's the
+richest land in the State, and the embarcadero will some day be a town.
+I suppose you'll call it Blue Grassville. But you seem tired!” he said,
+suddenly dropping his voice to a tone of half-humorous sympathy.
+
+Mrs. Tucker managed to get rid of an impending tear under the pretense
+of clearing her eyes. “Are we nearly there?” she asked.
+
+“Nearly. You know,” he added with the same half-mischievous,
+half-sympathizing gayety, “it's not exactly a palace you're coming
+to. Hardly. It's the old casa that has been deserted for years, but I
+thought it better you should go into possession there than take up your
+abode at the shanty where your husband's farm-hands are. No one will
+know when you take possession of the casa, while the very hour of
+your arrival at the shanty would be known; and if they should make any
+trouble--”
+
+“If they should make any trouble?” repeated Mrs. Tucker, lifting her
+frank, inquiring eyes to Poindexter.
+
+His horse suddenly rearing from an apparently accidental prick of the
+spur, it was a minute or two before he was able to explain. “I mean if
+this ever comes up as a matter of evidence, you know. But here we are!”
+
+What had seemed to be an overgrown mound rising like an island out of
+the dead level of the grassy sea now resolved itself into a collection
+of adobe walls, eaten and incrusted with shrubs and vines, that
+bore some resemblance to the usual uninhabited-looking exterior of a
+Spanish-American dwelling. Apertures that might have been lance-shaped
+windows or only cracks and fissures in the walls were choked up with
+weeds and grass, and gave no passing glimpse of the interior. Entering
+a ruinous corral they came to a second entrance, which proved to be the
+patio or courtyard. The deserted wooden corridor, with beams, rafters,
+and floors whitened by the eternal sun and wind, contained a few
+withered leaves, dryly rotting skins, and thongs of leather, as if
+undisturbed by human care. But among these scattered debris of former
+life and habitation there was no noisome or unclean suggestion of decay.
+A faint, spiced odor of desiccation filled the bare walls. There was
+no slime on stone or sun-dried brick. In place of fungus or discolored
+moisture the dust of efflorescence whitened in the obscured corners. The
+elements had picked clean the bones of the crumbling tenement ere they
+should finally absorb it.
+
+A withered old peon woman, who in dress, complexion, and fibrous hair
+might have been an animated fragment of the debris, rustled out of a low
+vaulted passage and welcomed them with a feeble crepitation. Following
+her into the dim interior Mrs. Tucker was surprised to find some slight
+attempt at comfort and even adornment in the two or three habitable
+apartments. They were scrupulously clean and dry, two qualities which in
+her feminine eyes atoned for poverty of material.
+
+“I could not send anything from San Bruno, the nearest village, without
+attracting attention,” explained Poindexter; “but if you can manage to
+picnic here for a day longer, I'll get one of our Chinese friends here,”
+ he pointed to the slough, “to bring over, for his return cargo from
+across the bay, any necessaries you may want. There is no danger of his
+betraying you,” he added, with an ironical smile; “Chinamen and Indians
+are, by an ingenious provision of the statute of California, incapable
+of giving evidence against a white person. You can trust your handmaiden
+perfectly--even if she can't trust YOU. That is your sacred privilege
+under the constitution. And now, as I expect to catch the up boat ten
+miles from hence, I must say 'good-by' until to-morrow night. I hope
+to bring you then some more definite plans for the future. The worst is
+over.” He held her hand for a moment, and with a graver voice continued,
+“You have done it very well--do you know--very well!”
+
+In the slight embarrassment produced by his sudden change of manner she
+felt that her thanks seemed awkward and restrained. “Don't thank me,” he
+laughed, with a prompt return of his former levity, “that's my trade. I
+only advised. You have saved yourself like a plucky woman--shall I say
+like Blue Grass? Good-by!” He mounted his horse, but, as if struck by an
+after-thought, wheeled and drew up by her side again. “If I were you I
+wouldn't see many strangers for a day or two, and listen to as
+little news as a woman possibly can.” He laughed again, waved her a
+half-gallant, half-military salute, and was gone. The question she had
+been trying to frame, regarding the probability of communication with
+her husband, remained unasked. At least she had saved her pride before
+him.
+
+Addressing herself to the care of her narrow household, she mechanically
+put away the few things she had brought with her, and began to readjust
+the scant furniture. She was a little discomposed at first at the
+absence of bolts, locks, and even window-fastenings until assured, by
+Concha's evident inability to comprehend her concern, that they were
+quite unknown at Los Cuervos. Her slight knowledge of Spanish was barely
+sufficient to make her wants known, so that the relief of conversation
+with her only companion was debarred her, and she was obliged to content
+herself with the sapless, crackling smiles and withered genuflexions
+that the old woman dropped like dead leaves in her path. It was staring
+noon when, the house singing like an empty shell in the monotonous
+wind, she felt she could stand the solitude no longer, and, crossing the
+glaring patio and whistling corridor, made her way to the open gateway.
+
+But the view without seemed to intensify her desolation. The broad
+expanse of the shadowless plain reached apparently to the Coast Range,
+trackless and unbroken save by one or two clusters of dwarfed oaks,
+which at that distance were but mossy excrescences on the surface,
+barely raised above the dead level. On the other side the marsh took
+up the monotony and carried it, scarcely interrupted by undefined
+water-courses, to the faintly marked out horizon line of the remote bay.
+Scattered and apparently motionless black spots on the meadows that gave
+a dreary significance to the title of “the Crows” which the rancho bore,
+and sudden gray clouds of sand-pipers on the marshes, that rose and
+vanished down the wind, were the only signs of life. Even the white sail
+of the early morning was gone.
+
+She stood there until the aching of her straining eyes and the
+stiffening of her limbs in the cold wind compelled her to seek the
+sheltered warmth of the courtyard. Here she endeavored to make friends
+with a bright-eyed lizard, who was sunning himself in the corridor; a
+graceful little creature in blue and gold, from whom she felt at other
+times she might have fled, but whose beauty and harmlessness solitude
+had made known to her. With misplaced kindness she tempted it with
+bread-crumbs, with no other effect than to stiffen it into stony
+astonishment. She wondered if she should become like the prisoners
+she had read of in books, who poured out their solitary affections on
+noisome creatures, and she regretted even the mustang, which with the
+buggy had disappeared under the charge of some unknown retainer on her
+arrival. Was she not a prisoner? The shutterless windows, yawning doors,
+and open gate refuted her suggestion, but the encompassing solitude and
+trackless waste still held her captive. Poindexter had told her it was
+four miles to the shanty; she might walk there. Why had she given her
+word that she would remain at the rancho until he returned?
+
+The long day crept monotonously away, and she welcomed the night
+which shut out the dreary prospect. But it brought no cessation of
+the harassing wind without, nor surcease of the nervous irritation its
+perpetual and even activity wrought upon her. It haunted her pillow even
+in her exhausted sleep, and seemed to impatiently beckon her to rise and
+follow it. It brought her feverish dreams of her husband, footsore and
+weary, staggering forward under its pitiless lash and clamorous outcry;
+she would have gone to his assistance, but when she reached his side and
+held out her arms to him it hurried her past with merciless power, and,
+bearing her away, left him hopelessly behind. It was broad day when she
+awoke. The usual night showers of the waning rainy season had left no
+trace in sky or meadow; the fervid morning sun had already dried the
+patio; only the restless, harrying wind remained.
+
+Mrs. Tucker arose with a resolve. She had learned from Concha on the
+previous evening that a part of the shanty was used as a tienda or shop
+for the laborers and rancheros. Under the necessity of purchasing some
+articles, she would go there and for a moment mingle with those people,
+who would not recognize her. Even if they did, her instinct told her it
+would be less to be feared than the hopeless uncertainty of another day.
+As she left the house the wind seemed to seize her as in her dream, and
+hurry her along with it, until in a few moments the walls of the low
+casa sank into the earth again and she was alone, but for the breeze on
+the solitary plain. The level distance glittered in the sharp light, a
+few crows with slant wings dipped and ran down the wind before her,
+and a passing gleam on the marsh was explained by the far-off cry of a
+curlew.
+
+She had walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of light and morning
+air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which was her destination, opened
+enough to show two rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden
+platform containing a few barrels and bones. As she approached nearer,
+she could see that one or two horses were tethered under the trees, that
+their riders were lounging by a horse-trough, and that over an open door
+the word Tienda was rudely painted on a board, and as rudely illustrated
+by the wares displayed at door and window. Accustomed as she was to the
+poverty of frontier architecture, even the crumbling walls of the old
+hacienda she had just left seemed picturesque to the rigid angles of the
+thin, blank, unpainted shell before her. One of the loungers, who was
+reading a newspaper aloud as she advanced, put it aside and stared at
+her; there was an evident commotion in the shop as she stepped upon the
+platform, and when she entered, with breathless lips and beating heart,
+she found herself the object of a dozen curious eyes. Her quick pride
+resented the scrutiny and recalled her courage, and it was with a slight
+coldness in her usual lazy indifference that she leaned over the counter
+and asked for the articles she wanted.
+
+The request was followed by a dead silence. Mrs. Tucker repeated it with
+some hauteur.
+
+“I reckon you don't seem to know this store is in the hands of the
+sheriff,” said one of the loungers.
+
+Mrs. Tucker was not aware of it.
+
+“Well, I don't know any one who's a better right to know than Spence
+Tucker's wife,” said another with a coarse laugh. The laugh was echoed
+by the others. Mrs. Tucker saw the pit into which she had deliberately
+walked, but did not flinch.
+
+“Is there any one to serve here?” she asked, turning her clear eyes full
+upon the bystanders.
+
+“You'd better ask the sheriff. He was the last one to SARVE here.
+He sarved an attachment,” replied the inevitable humorist of all
+Californian assemblages.
+
+“Is he here?” asked Mrs. Tucker, disregarding the renewed laughter which
+followed this subtle witticism.
+
+The loungers at the door made way for one of their party, who was half
+dragged, half pushed into the shop. “Here he is,” said half a dozen
+eager voices, in the fond belief that his presence might impart
+additional humor to the situation. He cast a deprecating glance at Mrs.
+Tucker and said, “It's so, madam! This yer place is attached; but if
+there's anything you're wanting, why I reckon, boys,”--he turned half
+appealingly to the crowd,--“we could oblige a lady.” There was a vague
+sound of angry opposition and remonstrance from the back door of
+the shop, but the majority, partly overcome by Mrs. Tucker's beauty,
+assented. “Only,” continued the officer explanatorily, “ez these yer
+goods are in the hands of the creditors, they ought to be represented by
+an equivalent in money. If you're expecting they should be charged--”
+
+“But I wish to PAY for them,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker, with a slight
+flush of indignation; “I have the money.”
+
+“Oh, I bet you have!” screamed a voice, as, overturning all opposition,
+the malcontent at the back door, in the shape of an infuriated woman,
+forced her way into the shop. “I'll bet you have the money! Look at her,
+boys! Look at the wife of the thief, with the stolen money in diamonds
+in her ears and rings on her fingers. SHE'S got money if WE'VE none.
+SHE can pay for what she fancies, if we haven't a cent to redeem the bed
+that's stolen from under us. Oh yes, buy it all, Mrs. Spencer Tucker!
+buy the whole shop, Mrs. Spencer Tucker, do you hear? And if you ain't
+satisfied then, buy my clothes, my wedding ring, the only things your
+husband hasn't stolen.”
+
+“I don't understand you,” said Mrs. Tucker coldly, turning towards the
+door. But with a flying leap across the counter her relentless adversary
+stood between her and retreat.
+
+“You don't understand! Perhaps you don't understand that your husband
+not only stole the hard labor of these men, but even the little money
+they brought here and trusted to his thieving hands. Perhaps you don't
+know that he stole my husband's hard earnings, mortgaged these very
+goods you want to buy, and that he is to-day a convicted thief, a
+forger, and a runaway coward. Perhaps, if you can't understand ME,
+you can read the newspaper. Look!” She exultingly opened the paper the
+sheriff had been reading aloud, and pointed to the displayed headlines.
+“Look! there are the very words, 'Forgery, Swindling, Embezzlement!' Do
+you see? And perhaps you can't understand this. Look! 'Shameful Flight.
+Abandons his Wife. Runs off with a Notorious--'”
+
+“Easy, old gal, easy now. D--n it! Will you dry up? I say. STOP!”
+
+It was too late!
+
+The sheriff had dashed the paper from the woman's hand, but not until
+Mrs. Tucker had read a single line, a line such as she had sometimes
+turned from with weary scorn in her careless perusal of the daily
+shameful chronicle of domestic infelicity. Then she had coldly wondered
+if there could be any such men and women; and now! The crowd fell back
+before her; even the virago was silenced as she looked at her face.
+The humorist's face was as white, but not as immobile, as he gasped,
+“Christ! if I don't believe she knew nothin' of it!”
+
+For a moment the full force of such a supposition, with all its
+poignancy, its dramatic intensity, and its pathos, possessed the crowd.
+In the momentary clairvoyance of enthusiasm they caught a glimpse of the
+truth, and by one of the strange reactions of human passion they only
+waited for a word of appeal or explanation from her lips to throw
+themselves at her feet. Had she simply told her story they would have
+believed her; had she cried, fainted, or gone into hysterics, they would
+have pitied her. She did neither. Perhaps she thought of neither, or
+indeed of anything that was then before her eyes. She walked erect to
+the door and turned upon the threshold. “I mean what I say,” she said
+calmly. “I don't understand you. But whatever just claims you have upon
+my husband will be paid by me, or by his lawyer, Captain Poindexter.”
+
+She had lost the sympathy but not the respect of her hearers. They made
+way for her with sullen deference as she passed out on the platform. But
+her adversary, profiting by the last opportunity, burst into an ironical
+laugh.
+
+“Captain Poindexter, is it? Well, perhaps he's safe to pay YOUR bill,
+but as for your husband's--”
+
+“That's another matter,” interrupted a familiar voice with the greatest
+cheerfulness; “that's what you were going to say, wasn't it? Ha! ha!
+Well, Mrs. Patterson,” continued Poindexter, stepping from his buggy,
+“you never spoke a truer word in your life. One moment, Mrs. Tucker. Let
+me send you back in the buggy. Don't mind ME. I can get a fresh horse of
+the sheriff. I'm quite at home here. I say, Patterson, step a few paces
+this way, will you? A little further from your wife, please. That'll
+do. You've got a claim of five thousand dollars against the property,
+haven't you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, that woman just driving away is your one solitary chance of
+getting a cent of it. If your wife insults her again, that chance is
+gone. And if YOU do--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“As sure as there is a God in Israel and a Supreme Court of the State of
+California, I'll kill you in your tracks! . . . Stay!”
+
+Patterson turned. The irrepressible look of humorous tolerance of all
+human frailty had suffused Poindexter's black eyes with mischievous
+moisture. “If you think it quite safe to confide to your wife this
+prospect of her improvement by widowhood, you may!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Mr. Patterson did not inform his wife of the lawyer's personal threat
+to himself. But he managed, after Poindexter had left, to make her
+conscious that Mrs. Tucker might be a power to be placated and feared.
+“You've shot off your mouth at her,” he said argumentatively, “and
+whether you've hit the mark or not you've had your say. Ef you think
+it's worth a possible five thousand dollars and interest to keep on,
+heave ahead. Ef you rather have the chance of getting the rest in cash,
+you'll let up on her.” “You don't suppose,” returned Mrs. Patterson
+contemptuously, “that she's got anything but what that man of
+hers--Poindexter--lets her have?” “The sheriff says,” retorted Patterson
+surlily, “that she's notified him that she claims the rancho as a gift
+from her husband three years ago, and she's in POSSESSION now, and was
+so when the execution was out. It don't make no matter,” he added, with
+gloomy philosophy, “who's got a full hand as long as WE ain't got the
+cards to chip in. I wouldn't 'a' minded it,” he continued meditatively,
+“ef Spence Tucker had dropped a hint to me afore he put out.” “And I
+suppose,” said Mrs. Patterson angrily, “you'd have put out too?” “I
+reckon,” said Patterson simply.
+
+Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more or less directly,
+to this lack of confidence shown by his late debtor and employer, and
+seemed to feel it more keenly than the loss of property. He confided his
+sentiments quite openly to the sheriff in possession, over the whiskey
+and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided the difficulties of their
+delicate relations. He brooded over it as he handed the keys of the shop
+to the sheriff when they parted for the night, and was still thinking of
+it when the house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and he was fetching
+a fresh jug of water from the well. The moon was at times obscured by
+flying clouds, the avant-couriers of the regular evening shower. He
+was stooping over the well, when he sprang suddenly to his feet again.
+“Who's there?” he demanded sharply.
+
+“Hush!” said a voice so low and faint it might have been a whisper of
+the wind in the palisades of the corral. But, indistinct as it was, it
+was the voice of the man he was thinking of as far away, and it sent a
+thrill of alternate awe and pleasure through his pulses.
+
+He glanced quickly around. The moon was hidden by a passing cloud, and
+only the faint outlines of the house he had just quitted were visible.
+“Is that you, Spence?” he said tremulously.
+
+“Yes,” replied the voice, and a figure dimly emerged from the corner of
+the corral.
+
+“Lay low, lay low, for God's sake,” said Patterson, hurriedly throwing
+himself upon the apparition. “The sheriff and his posse are in there.”
+
+“But I must speak to you a moment,” said the figure.
+
+“Wait,” said Patterson, glancing towards the building. Its blank,
+shutterless windows revealed no inner light; a profound silence
+encompassed it. “Come quick,” he whispered. Letting his grasp slip down
+to the unresisting hand of the stranger, he half-dragged, half-led him,
+brushing against the wall, into the open door of the deserted bar-room
+he had just quitted, locked the inner door, poured a glass of whiskey
+from a decanter, gave it to him, and then watched him drain it at a
+single draught. The moon came out, and, falling through the bare windows
+full upon the stranger's face, revealed the artistic but slightly
+disheveled curls and moustache of the fugitive, Spencer Tucker.
+
+Whatever may have been the real influence of this unfortunate man upon
+his fellows, it seemed to find expression in a singular unanimity of
+criticism. Patterson looked at him with a half-dismal, half-welcoming
+smile. “Well, you are a h-ll of a fellow, ain't you?”
+
+Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and lifted it from his
+forehead, with a gesture at once emotional and theatrical. “I am a man
+with a price on me!” he said bitterly. “Give me up to the sheriff,
+and you'll get five thousand dollars. Help me, and you'll get nothing.
+That's my d----d luck, and yours too, I suppose.”
+
+“I reckon you're right there,” said Patterson gloomily. “But I thought
+you got clean away. Went off in a ship--”
+
+“Went off in a boat to a ship,” interrupted Tucker savagely; “went off
+to a ship that had all my things on board--everything. The cursed boat
+capsized in a squall just off the Heads. The ship, d--n her, sailed
+away, the men thinking I was drowned, likely, and that they'd make a
+good thing off my goods, I reckon.”
+
+“But the girl, Inez, who was with you, didn't she make a row?”
+
+“Quien sabe?” returned Tucker, with a reckless laugh. “Well, I hung
+on like grim death to that boat's keel until one of those Chinese
+fishermen, in a 'dug-out,' hauled me in opposite Saucelito. I chartered
+him and his dug-out to bring me down here.”
+
+“Why here?” asked Patterson, with a certain ostentatious caution that
+ill-concealed his pensive satisfaction.
+
+“You may well ask,” returned Tucker, with an equal ostentation of
+bitterness, as he slightly waved his companion away. “But I reckoned I
+could trust a white man that I'd been kind to, and who wouldn't go back
+on me. No, no, let me go! Hand me over to the sheriff!”
+
+Patterson had suddenly grasped both the hands of the picturesque scamp
+before him, with an affection that for an instant almost shamed the man
+who had ruined him. But Tucker's egotism whispered that this affection
+was only a recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered. He
+was beginning to believe that he was really the injured party.
+
+“What I HAVE and what I have HAD is yours, Spence,” returned Patterson,
+with a sad and simple directness that made any further discussion a
+gratuitous insult. “I only wanted to know what you reckoned to do here.”
+
+“I want to get over across the Coast Range to Monterey,” said Tucker.
+“Once there, one of those coasting schooners will bring me down to
+Acapulco, where the ship will put in.”
+
+Patterson remained silent for a moment. “There's a mustang in the corral
+you can take--leastways, I shan't know that it's gone--until to-morrow
+afternoon. In an hour from now,” he added, looking from the window,
+“these clouds will settle down to business. It will rain; there will
+be light enough for you to find your way by the regular trail over the
+mountain, but not enough for any one to know you. If you can't push
+through to-night, you can lie over at the posada on the summit. Them
+greasers that keep it won't know you, and if they did they won't go back
+on you. And if they did go back on you, nobody would believe them. It's
+mighty curious,” he added, with gloomy philosophy, “but I reckon it's
+the reason why Providence allows this kind of cattle to live among white
+men and others made in his image. Take a piece of pie, won't you?” He
+continued, abandoning this abstract reflection and producing half a flat
+pumpkin pie from the bar. Spencer Tucker grasped the pie with one hand
+and his friend's fingers with the other, and for a few moments was
+silent from the hurried deglutition of viand and sentiment. “YOU'RE a
+white man, Patterson, anyway,” he resumed. “I'll take your horse, and
+put it down in our account, at your own figure. As soon as this cursed
+thing is blown over, I'll be back here and see you through, you bet. I
+don't desert my friends, however rough things go with me.”
+
+“I see you don't,” returned Patterson, with an unconscious and serious
+simplicity that had the effect of the most exquisite irony. “I was only
+just saying to the sheriff that if there was anything I could have done
+for you, you wouldn't have cut away without letting me know.” Tucker
+glanced uneasily at Patterson, who continued, “Ye ain't wanting anything
+else?” Then observing that his former friend and patron was roughly but
+newly clothed, and betrayed no trace of his last escapade, he added, “I
+see you've got a fresh harness.”
+
+“That d----d Chinaman bought me these at the landing; they're not
+much in style or fit,” he continued, trying to get a moonlight view of
+himself in the mirror behind the bar, “but that don't matter here.” He
+filled another glass of spirits, jauntily settled himself back in his
+chair, and added, “I don't suppose there are any girls around, anyway.”
+
+“'Cept your wife; she was down here this afternoon,” said Patterson
+meditatively.
+
+Mr. Tucker paused with the pie in his hand. “Ah, yes!” He essayed a
+reckless laugh, but that evident simulation failed before Patterson's
+melancholy. With an assumption of falling in with his friend's manner,
+rather than from any personal anxiety, he continued, “Well?”
+
+“That man Poindexter was down here with her. Put her in the hacienda to
+hold possession afore the news came out.”
+
+“Impossible!” said Tucker, rising hastily. “It don't belong--that is--”
+ he hesitated.
+
+“Yer thinking the creditors 'll get it, mebbe,” returned Patterson,
+gazing at the floor. “Not as long as she's in it; no sir! Whether
+it's really hers, or she's only keeping house for Poindexter, she's a
+fixture, you bet. They're a team when they pull together, they are!”
+
+The smile slowly faded from Tucker's face, that now looked quite rigid
+in the moonlight. He put down his glass and walked to the window as
+Patterson gloomily continued, “But that's nothing to you. You've got
+ahead of 'em both, and had your revenge by going off with the
+gal. That's what I said all along. When folks--especially women
+folks--wondered how you could leave a woman like your wife, and go off
+with a scallawag like that gal, I allers said they'd find out there was
+a reason. And when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter
+before she'd quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to see the whole
+little game. No sir! I knew it wasn't on account of the gal! Why, when
+you came here to-night and told me quite nat'ral-like and easy how
+she went off in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your
+whiskey after it, I knew you didn't care for her. There's my hand,
+Spence; you're a trump, even if you are a little looney, eh? Why, what's
+up?”
+
+Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson's words seemed like a
+revelation that shocked him as profoundly as it might have shocked a
+nobler nature. The simple vanity and selfishness that made him unable to
+conceive any higher reason for his wife's loyalty than his own personal
+popularity and success, now that he no longer possessed that eclat,
+made him equally capable of the lowest suspicions. He was a dishonored
+fugitive, broken in fortune and reputation--why should she not desert
+him! He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice, from the
+effect of those fascinating qualities; it seemed to him natural that she
+should be disloyal from more deliberate motives, and he hugged himself
+with that belief. Yet there was enough doubt, enough of haunting
+suspicion that he had lost or alienated a powerful affection, to make
+him thoroughly miserable. He returned his friend's grasp convulsively
+and buried his face upon his shoulder. But he was not above feeling
+a certain exultation in the effect of his misery upon the dog-like,
+unreasoning affection of Patterson, nor could he entirely refrain from
+slightly posing his affliction before that sympathetic but melancholy
+man. Suddenly he raised his head, drew back, and thrust his hand into
+his bosom with a theatrical gesture.
+
+“What's to keep me from killing Poindexter in his tracks?” he said
+wildly.
+
+“Nothin' but HIS shooting first,” returned Patterson, with dismal
+practicality. “He's mighty quick, like all them army men. It's about
+even, I reckon, that he don't get ME first,” he added in an ominous
+voice.
+
+“No!” returned Tucker, grasping his hand again. “This is not your
+affair, Patterson; leave him to me when I come back.”
+
+“If he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won't wait,” continued
+Patterson lugubriously. “He seems to object to my passin' criticism on
+your wife, as if she was a queen or an angel.”
+
+The blood came to Spencer's cheek, and he turned uneasily to the window.
+“It's dark enough now for a start,” he said hurriedly, “and if I could
+get across the mountain without lying over at the summit, it would be a
+day gained.”
+
+Patterson arose without a word, filled a flask of spirit, handed it to
+his friend, and silently led the way through the slowly falling rain and
+the now settled darkness. The mustang was quickly secured and saddled, a
+heavy poncho afforded Tucker a disguise as well as a protection from the
+rain. With a few hurried, disconnected words, and an abstracted air, he
+once more shook his friend's hand and issued cautiously from the corral.
+When out of earshot from the house he put spurs to the mustang, and
+dashed into a gallop.
+
+To intersect the mountain road he was obliged to traverse part of the
+highway his wife had walked that afternoon, and to pass within a mile of
+the casa where she was. Long before he reached that point his eyes were
+straining the darkness in that direction for some indication of the
+house which was to him familiar. Becoming now accustomed to the even
+obscurity, less trying to the vision than the alternate light and
+shadow of cloud or the full glare of the moonlight, he fancied he
+could distinguish its low walls over the monotonous level. One of
+those impulses which had so often taken the place of resolution in his
+character suddenly possessed him to diverge from his course and approach
+the house. Why, he could not have explained. It was not from any feeling
+of jealous suspicion or contemplated revenge--that had passed with the
+presence of Patterson; it was not from any vague lingering sentiment for
+the woman he had wronged--he would have shrunk from meeting her at that
+moment. But it was full of these and more possibilities by which he
+might or might not be guided, and was at least a movement towards
+some vague end, and a distraction from certain thoughts he dared not
+entertain and could not entirely dismiss. Inconceivable and inexplicable
+to human reason, it might have been acceptable to the Divine omniscience
+for its predestined result.
+
+He left the road at a point where the marsh encroached upon the meadow,
+familiar to him already as near the spot where he had embarked from
+the Chinaman's boat the day before. He remembered that the walls of the
+hacienda were distinctly visible from the tules where he had hidden all
+day, and he now knew that the figures he had observed near the building,
+which had deterred his first attempts at landing, must have been his
+wife and his friend. He knew that a long tongue of the slough filled
+by the rising tide followed the marsh, and lay between him and the
+hacienda. The sinking of his horse's hoofs in the spongy soil determined
+its proximity, and he made a detour to the right to avoid it. In doing
+so, a light suddenly rose above the distant horizon ahead of him,
+trembled faintly, and then burned with a steady lustre. It was a light
+at the hacienda. Guiding his horse half abstractedly in this direction,
+his progress was presently checked by the splashing of the animal's
+hoofs in the water. But the turf below was firm, and a salt drop that
+had spattered to his lips told him that it was only the encroaching of
+the tide in the meadow. With his eyes on the light, he again urged his
+horse forward. The rain lulled, the clouds began to break, the landscape
+alternately lightened and grew dark; the outlines of the crumbling
+hacienda walls that enshrined the light grew more visible. A strange
+and dreamy resemblance to the long blue-grass plain before his wife's
+paternal house, as seen by him during his evening rides to courtship,
+pressed itself upon him. He remembered, too, that she used to put a
+light in the window to indicate her presence. Following this retrospect,
+the moon came boldly out, sparkled upon the overflow of silver at his
+feet, seemed to show the dark, opaque meadow beyond for a moment, and
+then disappeared. It was dark now, but the lesser earthly star still
+shone before him as a guide, and pushing towards it, he passed in the
+all-embracing shadow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+As Mrs. Tucker, erect, white, and rigid, drove away from the tienda,
+it seemed to her to sink again into the monotonous plain, with all its
+horrible realities. Except that there was now a new and heart-breaking
+significance to the solitude and loneliness of the landscape, all that
+had passed might have been a dream. But as the blood came back to her
+cheek, and little by little her tingling consciousness returned, it
+seemed as if her life had been the dream, and this last scene the
+awakening reality. With eyes smarting with the moisture of shame, the
+scarlet blood at times dyeing her very neck and temples, she muffled
+her lowered crest in her shawl and bent over the reins. Bit by bit she
+recalled, in Poindexter's mysterious caution and strange allusions, the
+corroboration of her husband's shame and her own disgrace. This was why
+she was brought hither--the deserted wife, and abandoned confederate!
+The mocking glitter of the concave vault above her, scoured by the
+incessant wind, the cold stare of the shining pools beyond, the hard
+outlines of the Coast Range, and the jarring accompaniment of her
+horse's hoofs and rattling buggy wheels alternately goaded and
+distracted her. She found herself repeating “No! no! no!” with the
+dogged reiteration of fever. She scarcely knew when or how she reached
+the hacienda. She was only conscious that as she entered the patio the
+dusty solitude that had before filled her with unrest now came to her
+like balm. A benumbing peace seemed to fall from the crumbling walls;
+the peace of utter seclusion, isolation, oblivion, death! Nevertheless,
+an hour later, when the jingle of spurs and bridle were again heard in
+the road, she started to her feet with bent brows and a kindling eye,
+and confronted Captain Poindexter in the corridor.
+
+“I would not have intruded upon you so soon again,” he said gravely,
+“but I thought I might perhaps spare you a repetition of the scene
+of this morning. Hear me out, please,” he added, with a gentle,
+half-deprecating gesture, as she lifted the beautiful scorn of her eyes
+to his. “I have just heard that your neighbor, Don Jose Santierra, of
+Los Gatos, is on his way to this house. He once claimed this land, and
+hated your husband, who bought of the rival claimant, whose grant was
+confirmed. I tell you this,” he added, slightly flushing as Mrs. Tucker
+turned impatiently away, “only to show you that legally he has no
+rights, and you need not see him unless you choose. I could not stop his
+coming without perhaps doing you more harm than good; but when he does
+come, my presence under this roof as your legal counsel will enable you
+to refer him to me.” He stopped. She was pacing the corridor with short,
+impatient steps, her arms dropped, and her hands clasped rigidly before
+her. “Have I your permission to stay?”
+
+She suddenly stopped in her walk, approached him rapidly, and fixing her
+eyes on his, said,--
+
+“Do I know ALL, now--everything?”
+
+He could only reply that she had not yet told him what she had heard.
+
+“Well,” she said scornfully, “that my husband has been cruelly imposed
+upon--imposed upon by some wretched woman, who has made him sacrifice
+his property, his friends, his honor--everything but me?”
+
+“Everything but whom?” gasped Poindexter.
+
+“But ME!”
+
+Poindexter gazed at the sky, the air, the deserted corridor, the stones
+of the patio itself, and then at the inexplicable woman before him. Then
+he said gravely, “I think you know everything.”
+
+“Then if my husband has left me all he could--this property,” she went
+on rapidly, twisting her handkerchief between her fingers, “I can do
+with it what I like, can't I?”
+
+“You certainly can.”
+
+“Then sell it,” she said, with passionate vehemence. “Sell it--all!
+everything! And sell these.” She darted into her bedroom, and returned
+with the diamond rings she had torn from her fingers and ears when she
+entered the house. “Sell them for anything they'll bring, only sell them
+at once.”
+
+“But for what?” asked Poindexter, with demure lips but twinkling eyes.
+
+“To pay the debts that this--this--woman has led him into; to return the
+money she has stolen!” she went on rapidly, “to keep him from sharing
+her infamy! Can't you understand?”
+
+“But, my dear madam,” began Poindexter, “even if this could be done--”
+
+“Don't tell me 'if it could'--it MUST be done. Do you think I could
+sleep under this roof, propped up by the timbers of that ruined tienda?
+Do you think I could wear those diamonds again, while that termagant
+shop-woman can say that her money bought them? No. If you are my
+husband's friend you will do this--for--for his sake.” She stopped,
+locked and interlocked her cold fingers before her, and said, hesitating
+and mechanically, “You meant well, Captain Poindexter, in bringing me
+here, I know! You must not think that I blame you for it, or for the
+miserable result of it that you have just witnessed. But if I have
+gained anything by it, for God's sake let me reap it quickly, that I may
+give it to these people and go! I have a friend who can aid me to get to
+my husband or to my home in Kentucky, where Spencer will yet find me,
+I know. I want nothing more.” She stopped again. With another woman
+the pause would have been one of tears. But she kept her head above the
+flood that filled her heart, and the clear eyes fixed upon Poindexter,
+albeit pained, were undimmed.
+
+“But this would require time,” said Poindexter, with a smile of
+compassionate explanation; “you could not sell now, nobody would buy.
+You are safe to hold this property while you are in actual possession,
+but you are not strong enough to guarantee it to another. There may
+still be litigation; your husband has other creditors than these people
+you have talked with. But while nobody could oust you--the wife who
+would have the sympathies of judge and jury--it might be a different
+case with any one who derived title from you. Any purchaser would know
+that you could not sell, or if you did, it would be at a ridiculous
+sacrifice.”
+
+She listened to him abstractedly, walked to the end of the corridor,
+returned, and without looking up, said,--
+
+“I suppose you know her?”
+
+“I beg your pardon?”
+
+“This woman. You have seen her?”
+
+“Never, to my knowledge.”
+
+“And you are his friend! That's strange.” She raised her eyes to his.
+“Well,” she continued impatiently, “who is she? and what is she? You
+know that surely?”
+
+“I know no more of her than what I have said,” said Poindexter. “She is
+a notorious woman.”
+
+The swift color came to Mrs. Tucker's face as if the epithet had been
+applied to herself. “I suppose,” she said in a dry voice, as if she
+were asking a business question, but with an eye that showed her rising
+anger,--“I suppose there is some law by which creatures of this kind can
+be followed and brought to justice--some law that would keep innocent
+people from suffering for their crimes?”
+
+“I am afraid,” said Poindexter, “that arresting her would hardly help
+these people over in the tienda.”
+
+“I am not speaking of them,” responded Mrs. Tucker, with a sudden
+sublime contempt for the people whose cause she had espoused: “I am
+talking of my husband.”
+
+Poindexter bit his lip. “You'd hardly think of bringing back the
+strongest witness against him,” he said bluntly.
+
+Mrs. Tucker dropped her eyes and was silent. A sudden shame suffused
+Poindexter's cheek; he felt as if he had struck that woman a blow. “I
+beg your pardon,” he said hastily, “I am talking like a lawyer to a
+lawyer.” He would have taken any other woman by the hand in the honest
+fullness of his apology, but something restrained him here. He only
+looked down gently on her lowered lashes, and repeated his question if
+he should remain during the coming interview with Don Jose: “I must beg
+you to determine quickly,” he added, “for I already hear him entering
+the gate.”
+
+“Stay,” said Mrs. Tucker, as the ringing of spurs and clatter of hoofs
+came from the corral. “One moment.” She looked up suddenly, and said,
+“How long had he known her?” But before he could reply there was a step
+in the doorway, and the figure of Don Jose Santierra emerged from the
+archway.
+
+He was a man slightly past middle age, fair and well shaven, wearing a
+black broadcloth serape, the deeply embroidered opening of which formed
+a collar of silver rays around his neck, while a row of silver buttons
+down the side seams of his riding trousers, and silver spurs, completed
+his singular equipment. Mrs. Tucker's swift feminine glance took in
+these details, as well as the deep salutation, more formal than the
+exuberant frontier politeness she was accustomed to, with which he
+greeted her. It was enough to arrest her first impulse to retreat. She
+hesitated and stopped as Poindexter stepped forward, partly interposing
+between them, acknowledging Don Jose's distant recognition of himself
+with an ironical accession of his usual humorous tolerance. The Spaniard
+did not seem to notice it, but remained gravely silent before Mrs.
+Tucker, gazing at her with an expression of intent and unconscious
+absorption.
+
+“You are quite right, Don Jose,” said Poindexter, with ironical concern,
+“it is Mrs. Tucker. Your eyes do NOT deceive you. She will be glad to do
+the honors of her house,” he continued, with a simulation of appealing
+to her, “unless you visit her on business, when I need not say I shall
+be only too happy, to attend you, as before.”
+
+Don Jose, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, allowed himself to
+become conscious of the lawyer's meaning. “It is not of business that
+I come to kiss the Senora's hand to-day,” he replied, with a melancholy
+softness; “it is as her neighbor, to put myself at her disposition. Ah!
+the what have we here for a lady?” he continued, raising his eyes in
+deprecation of the surroundings; “a house of nothing, a place of winds
+and dry bones, without refreshments, or satisfaction, or delicacy. The
+Senora will not refuse to make us proud this day to send her of that
+which we have in our poor home at Los Gatos, to make her more complete.
+Of what shall it be? Let her make choice. Or if she would commemorate
+this day by accepting of our hospitality at Los Gatos, until she shall
+arrange herself the more to receive us here, we shall have too much
+honor.”
+
+“The Senora would only find it the more difficult to return to this
+humble roof again, after once leaving it for Don Jose's hospitality,”
+ said Poindexter, with a demure glance at Mrs. Tucker. But the innuendo
+seemed to lapse equally unheeded by his fair client and the stranger.
+Raising her eyes with a certain timid dignity which Don Jose's presence
+seemed to have called out, she addressed herself to him.
+
+“You are very kind and considerate, Mister Santierra, and I thank you. I
+know that my husband”--she let the clear beauty of her translucent eyes
+rest full on both men--“would thank you too. But I shall not be here
+long enough to accept your kindness in this house or in your own. I have
+but one desire and object now. It is to dispose of this property, and
+indeed all I possess, to pay the debt of my husband. It is in your
+power, perhaps, to help me. I am told that you wish to possess Los
+Cuervos,” she went on, equally oblivious of the consciousness that
+appeared in Don Jose's face, and a humorous perplexity on the brow of
+Poindexter. “If you can arrange it with Mr. Poindexter, you will find
+me a liberal vendor. That much you can do, and I know you will believe
+I shall be grateful. You can do no more, unless it be to say to your
+friends that Mrs. Belle Tucker remains here only for that purpose,
+and to carry out what she knows to be the wishes of her husband.” She
+paused, bent her pretty crest, dropped a quaint curtsey to the superior
+age, the silver braid, and the gentlemanly bearing of Don Jose, and with
+the passing sunshine of a smile disappeared from the corridor.
+
+The two men remained silent for a moment, Don Jose gazing abstractedly
+on the door through which she had vanished, until Poindexter, with a
+return of his tolerant smile, said, “You have heard the views of Mrs.
+Tucker. You know the situation as well as she does.”
+
+“Ah, yes; possibly better.”
+
+Poindexter darted a quick glance at the grave, sallow face of Don Jose,
+but detecting no unusual significance in his manner, continued, “As you
+see, she leaves this matter in my hands. Let us talk like business men.
+Have you any idea of purchasing this property?”
+
+“Of purchasing, ah, no.”
+
+Poindexter bent his brows, but quickly relaxed them with a smile of
+humorous forgiveness. “If you have any other idea, Don Jose, I ought to
+warn you, as Mrs. Tucker's lawyer, that she is in legal possession here,
+and that nothing but her own act can change that position.”
+
+“Ah, so.”
+
+Irritated at the shrug which accompanied this, Poindexter continued
+haughtily, “If I am to understand, you have nothing to say--”
+
+“To say, ah, yes, possibly. But”--he glanced toward the door of Mrs.
+Tucker's room--“not here.” He stopped, appeared to recall himself,
+and with an apologetic smile and a studied but graceful gesture of
+invitation, he motioned to the gateway, and said, “Will you ride?”
+
+“What can the fellow be up to?” muttered Poindexter, as with an
+assenting nod he proceeded to remount his horse. “If he wasn't an old
+hidalgo, I'd mistrust him. No matter! here goes!”
+
+The Don also remounted his half-broken mustang; they proceeded in solemn
+silence through the corral, and side by side emerged on the open plain.
+Poindexter glanced around; no other being was in sight. It was not until
+the lonely hacienda had also sunk behind them that Don Jose broke the
+silence.
+
+“You say just now we shall speak as business men. I say no, Don Marco; I
+will not. I shall speak, we shall speak, as gentlemen.”
+
+“Go on,” said Poindexter, who was beginning to be amused.
+
+“I say just now I will not purchase the rancho from the Senora. And why?
+Look you, Don Marco;” he reined in his horse, thrust his hand under his
+serape, and drew out a folded document: “this is why.”
+
+With a smile, Poindexter took the paper from his hand and opened it. But
+the smile faded from his lips as he read. With blazing eyes he spurred
+his horse beside the Spaniard, almost unseating him, and said sternly,
+“What does this mean?”
+
+“What does it mean?” repeated Don Jose, with equally flashing eyes,
+“I'll tell you. It means that your client, this man Spencer Tucker, is
+a Judas, a traitor! It means that he gave Los Cuervos to his mistress
+a year ago, and that she sold it to me--to me, you hear!--ME, Jose
+Santierra, the day before she left! It means that the coyote of a
+Spencer, the thief, who bought these lands of a thief, and gave them
+to a thief, has tricked you all. Look,” he said, rising in his saddle,
+holding the paper like a baton, and defining with a sweep of his arm the
+whole level plain, “all these lands were once mine, they are mine again
+to-day. Do I want to purchase Los Cuervos? you ask, for you will speak
+of the BUSINESS. Well, listen. I HAVE purchased Los Cuervos, and here is
+the deed.”
+
+“But it has never been recorded,” said Poindexter, with a carelessness
+he was far from feeling.
+
+“Of a verity, no. Do you wish that I should record it?” asked Don Jose,
+with a return of his simple gravity.
+
+Poindexter bit his lip. “You said we were to talk like gentlemen,” he
+returned. “Do you think you have come into possession of this alleged
+deed like a gentleman?”
+
+Don Jose shrugged his shoulders. “I found it tossed in the lap of a
+harlot. I bought it for a song. Eh, what would you?”
+
+“Would you sell it again for a song?” asked Poindexter.
+
+“Ah! what is this?” said Don Jose, lifting his iron-gray brows; “but a
+moment ago we would sell everything, for any money. Now we would buy. Is
+it so?”
+
+“One moment, Don Jose,” said Poindexter, with a baleful light in his
+dark eyes. “Do I understand that you are the ally of Spencer Tucker and
+his mistress, that you intend to turn this doubly betrayed wife from the
+only roof she has to cover her?”
+
+“Ah, I comprehend not. You heard her say she wished to go. Perhaps it
+may please ME to distribute largess to these cattle yonder, I do not say
+no. More she does not ask. But YOU, Don Marco, of whom are you advocate?
+You abandon your client's mistress for the wife, is it so?”
+
+“What I may do you will learn hereafter,” said Poindexter, who had
+regained his composure, suddenly reining up his horse. “As our paths
+seem likely to diverge, they had better begin now. Good morning.”
+
+“Patience, my friend, patience! Ah, blessed St. Anthony, what these
+Americans are! Listen. For what YOU shall do, I do not inquire. The
+question is to me what I”--he emphasized the pronoun by tapping himself
+on the breast--“I, Jose Santierra, will do. Well, I shall tell you.
+To-day, nothing. To-morrow, nothing. For a week, for a month, nothing!
+After, we shall see.”
+
+Poindexter paused thoughtfully. “Will you give your word, Don Jose, that
+you will not press the claim for a month?”
+
+“Truly, on one condition. Observe! I do not ask you for an equal
+promise, that you will not take this time to defend yourself.” He
+shrugged his shoulders. “No! It is only this. You shall promise that
+during that time the Senora Tucker shall remain ignorant of this
+document.”
+
+Poindexter hesitated a moment. “I promise,” he said at last.
+
+“Good. Adios, Don Marco.”
+
+“Adios, Don Jose.”
+
+The Spaniard put spurs to his mustang and galloped off in the direction
+of Los Gatos. The lawyer remained for a moment gazing on his retreating
+but victorious figure. For the first time the old look of humorous
+toleration with which Mr. Poindexter was in the habit of regarding all
+human infirmity gave way to something like bitterness. “I might have
+guessed it,” he said, with a slight rise of color. “He's an old
+fool; and she--well, perhaps it's all the better for her!” He glanced
+backwards almost tenderly in the direction of Los Cuervos, and then
+turned his head towards the embarcadero.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, a creaking, antiquated ox-cart arrived at
+Los Cuervos, bearing several articles of furniture, and some tasteful
+ornaments from Los Gatos, at the same time that a young Mexican girl
+mysteriously appeared in the kitchen, as a temporary assistant to the
+decrepit Concha. These were both clearly attributable to Don Jose, whose
+visit was not so remote but that these delicate attentions might have
+been already projected before Mrs. Tucker had declined them, and she
+could not, without marked discourtesy, return them now. She did not wish
+to seem discourteous; she would like to have been more civil to this
+old gentleman, who still retained the evidences of a picturesque
+and decorous past, and a repose so different from the life that was
+perplexing her. Reflecting that if he bought the estate these things
+would be ready to his hand, and with a woman's instinct recognizing
+their value in setting off the house to other purchasers' eyes, she
+took a pleasure in tastefully arranging them, and even found herself
+speculating how she might have enjoyed them herself had she been able
+to keep possession of the property. After all, it would not have been
+so lonely if refined and gentle neighbors, like this old man, would have
+sympathized with her; she had an instinctive feeling that, in their own
+hopeless decay and hereditary unfitness for this new civilization, they
+would have been more tolerant of her husband's failure than his own
+kind. She could not believe that Don Jose really hated her husband for
+buying of the successful claimant, as there was no other legal title.
+Allowing herself to become interested in the guileless gossip of the new
+handmaiden, proud of her broken English, she was drawn into a sympathy
+with the grave simplicity of Don Jose's character, a relic of that true
+nobility which placed this descendant of the Castilians and the daughter
+of a free people on the same level.
+
+In this way the second day of her occupancy of Los Cuervos closed, with
+dumb clouds along the gray horizon, and the paroxysms of hysterical
+wind growing fainter and fainter outside the walls; with the moon rising
+after nightfall, and losing itself in silent and mysterious confidences
+with drifting scud. She went to bed early, but woke past midnight,
+hearing, as she thought, her own name called. The impression was so
+strong upon her that she rose, and, hastily enwrapping herself, went
+to the dark embrasures of the oven-shaped windows, and looked out. The
+dwarfed oak beside the window was still dropping from a past shower, but
+the level waste of marsh and meadow beyond seemed to advance and recede
+with the coming and going of the moon. Again she heard her name called,
+and this time in accents so strangely familiar that with a slight cry
+she ran into the corridor, crossed the patio, and reached the open gate.
+The darkness that had, even in this brief interval, again fallen upon
+the prospect she tried in vain to pierce with eye and voice. A blank
+silence followed. Then the veil was suddenly withdrawn; the vast plain,
+stretching from the mountain to the sea, shone as clearly as in the
+light of day; the moving current of the channel glittered like black
+pearls, the stagnant pools like molten lead; but not a sign of life nor
+motion broke the monotony of the broad expanse. She must have surely
+dreamed it. A chill wind drove her back to the house again; she entered
+her bedroom, and in half an hour she was in a peaceful sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The two men kept their secret. Mr. Poindexter convinced Mrs. Tucker that
+the sale of Los Cuervos could not be effected until the notoriety of her
+husband's flight had been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept
+her fate. The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her to have realized
+a singularly extravagant sum, enabled her to quietly reinstate the
+Pattersons in the tienda and to discharge in full her husband's
+liabilities to the rancheros and his humbler retainers.
+
+Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased. It seemed to her as if the clouds
+had suddenly one night struck their white tents and stolen away, leaving
+the unvanquished sun to mount the vacant sky the next morning alone,
+and possess it thenceforward unchallenged. One afternoon she thought
+the long sad waste before her window had caught some tint of gayer
+color from the sunset; a week later she found it a blazing landscape of
+poppies, broken here and there by blue lagoons of lupine, by pools of
+daisies, by banks of dog-roses, by broad outlying shores of dandelions
+that scattered their lavish gold to the foot of the hills, where the
+green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crest
+of pines. For two months she was dazzled and bewildered with color. She
+had never before been face to face with this spendthrift Californian
+Flora, in her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like
+prodigality. The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath
+her feet; the few circuits of a plough around the outlying corral were
+enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain that almost hid the
+low walls of the hacienda. In this glorious fecundity of the earth,
+in this joyous renewal of life and color, in this opulent youth and
+freshness of soil and sky, it alone remained, the dead and sterile Past,
+left in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrection, like an
+empty churchyard skull upturned on the springing turf. Its bronzed adobe
+walls mocked the green vine that embraced them, the crumbling dust of
+its courtyard remained ungerminating and unfruitful; to the thousand
+stirring voices without, its dry lips alone remained mute, unresponsive
+and unchanged.
+
+During this time Don Jose had become a frequent visitor at Los Cuervos,
+bringing with him at first his niece and sister in a stately precision
+of politeness that was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger.
+She returned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal
+acquaintance of Don Jose's grandmother, a lady who still regarded the
+decrepit Concha as a giddy muchacha, and who herself glittered as with
+the phosphorescence of refined decay. Through this circumstance she
+learned that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of
+manner and sedateness was more the result of fastidious isolation and
+temperament than years. She could not tell why the information gave
+her a feeling of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of
+Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately
+avoided her presence. The thought that he might be doing so from a
+recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs. Patterson caused a little tremor
+of indignation in her pulses. “As if--” but she did not finish the
+sentence even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.
+
+Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly wronged her less
+feverishly, less impatiently than before. For she thought she loved him
+now the more deeply, because, although she was not reconciled to his
+absence, it seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been before
+his one wild act separated them. She had never seen the reflection of
+another woman's eyes in his; the past contained no haunting recollection
+of waning or alienated affection; she could meet him again, and,
+clasping her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled dream without
+reproach or explanation. Her strong belief in this made her patient;
+she no longer sought to know the particulars of his flight, and never
+dreamed that her passive submission to his absence was partly due to
+a fear that something in his actual presence at that moment would have
+destroyed that belief forever.
+
+For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at Los Gatos, and
+their seclusion from the world which knew of her husband's fault, had
+made her encourage the visits of Don Jose, until from the instinct
+already alluded to she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on
+the day that Don Jose usually called. But to her surprise the two men
+met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact as hostess was tried
+to the utmost to keep their evident antagonism from being too apparent.
+The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some other feeling
+she did not quite understand, produced a nervous excitement which called
+the blood to her cheek and gave a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, two
+circumstances not unnoticed nor unappreciated by her two guests. But
+instead of reuniting them, the prettier Mrs. Tucker became, the more
+distant and reserved grew the men, until Don Jose rose before the usual
+hour, and with more than usual ceremoniousness departed.
+
+“Then my business does not seem to be with HIM?” said Poindexter,
+with quiet coolness, as Mrs. Tucker turned her somewhat mystified face
+towards him. “Or have you anything to say to me about him in private?”
+
+“I am sure I don't know what you both mean,” she returned with a slight
+tremor of voice. “I had no idea you were not on good terms. I thought
+you were! It's very awkward.” Without coquetry and unconsciously she
+raised her blue eyes under her lids until the clear pupils coyly and
+softly hid themselves in the corners of the brown lashes, and added,
+“You have both been so kind to me.”
+
+“Perhaps that is the reason,” said Poindexter, gravely. But Mrs. Tucker
+refused to accept the suggestion with equal gravity, and began to laugh.
+The laugh, which was at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like,
+was becoming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it was
+suddenly checked by Poindexter.
+
+“I have had no difficulties with Don Jose Santierra,” he said, somewhat
+coldly ignoring her hilarity, “but perhaps he is not inclined to be as
+polite to the friend of the husband as he is to the wife.”
+
+“Mr. Poindexter!” said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face becoming pale
+again.
+
+“I beg your pardon!” said Poindexter, flushing; “but--”
+
+“You want to say,” she interrupted coolly, “that you are not friends, I
+see. Is that the reason why you have avoided this house?” she continued
+gently.
+
+“I thought I could be of more service to you elsewhere,” he replied
+evasively. “I have been lately following up a certain clue rather
+closely. I think I am on the track of a confidante of--of--that woman.”
+
+A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker's face. “Indeed!” she said
+coldly. “Then I am to believe that you prefer to spend your leisure
+moments in looking after that creature to calling here?”
+
+Poindexter was stupefied. Was this the woman who only four months ago
+was almost vindictively eager to pursue her husband's paramour! There
+could be but one answer to it--Don Jose! Four months ago he would have
+smiled compassionately at it from his cynical pre-eminence. Now he
+managed with difficulty to stifle the bitterness of his reply.
+
+“If you do not wish the inquiry carried on,” he began, “of course--”
+
+“I? What does it matter to me?” she said coolly. “Do as you please.”
+
+Nevertheless, half an hour later, as he was leaving, she said, with a
+certain hesitating timidity, “Do not leave me so much alone here, and
+let that woman go.”
+
+This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her innocent desire to
+propitiate her best friends. Don Jose did not call again upon his usual
+day, but in his place came Dona Clara, his younger sister. When Mrs.
+Tucker had politely asked after the absent Don Jose, Dona Clara wound
+her swarthy arms around the fair American's waist and replied, “But why
+did you send for the abogado Poindexter when my brother called?”
+
+“But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends,” said the amazed
+Mrs. Tucker. “He is a gentleman, and has been a soldier and an officer,”
+ she added with some warmth.
+
+“Ah, yes, a soldier of the law, what you call an oficial de policia,
+a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but not a gentleman--a camarero to
+protect a lady.”
+
+Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but the perfect and
+good-natured simplicity of Dona Clara withheld her. Nevertheless, she
+treated Don Jose with a certain reserve at their next meeting, until
+it brought the simple-minded Castilian so dangerously near the point of
+demanding an explanation which implied too much that she was obliged to
+restore him temporarily to his old footing. Meantime she had a brilliant
+idea. She would write to Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided since that
+memorable day. She would say she wished to consult him. He would come to
+Los Cuervos; he might suggest something to lighten this weary waiting;
+at least she would show them all that she had still old friends. Yet she
+did not dream of returning to her Blue Grass home; her parents had died
+since she left; she shrank from the thought of dragging her ruined life
+before the hopeful youth of her girlhood's companions.
+
+Mr. Calhoun Weaver arrived promptly, ostentatiously, oracularly, and
+cordially, but a little coarsely. He had--did she remember?--expected
+this from the first. Spencer had lost his head through vanity, and
+had attempted too much. It required foresight and firmness, as he
+himself--who had lately made successful “combinations” which she might
+perhaps have heard of--well knew. But Spencer had got the “big head.”
+ “As to that woman--a devilish handsome woman too!--well, everybody knew
+that Spencer always had a weakness that way, and he would say--but if
+she didn't care to hear any more about her--well, perhaps she was right.
+That was the best way to take it.” Sitting before her, prosperous,
+weak, egotistical, incompetent, unavailable, and yet filled with a vague
+kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker loathed him. A sickening perception of
+her own weakness in sending for him, a new and aching sense of her utter
+isolation and helplessness, seemed to paralyze her.
+
+“Nat'rally you feel bad,” he continued, with the large air of a profound
+student of human nature. “Nat'rally, nat'rally you're kept in an
+uncomfortable state, not knowing jist how you stand. There ain't but one
+thing to do. Jist rise up, quiet like, and get a divorce agin Spencer.
+Hold on! There ain't a judge or jury in California that wouldn't give it
+to you right off the nail, without asking questions. Why, you 'ld get it
+by default if you wanted to; you 'ld just have to walk over the course!
+And then, Belle,” he drew his chair still nearer her, “when you've
+settled down again--well!--I don't mind renewing that offer I once made
+ye, before Spencer ever came round ye--I don't mind, Belle, I swear I
+don't! Honest Injin! I'm in earnest, there's my hand!”
+
+Mrs. Tucker's reply has not been recorded. Enough that half an hour
+later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his
+foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and
+moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained
+sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words “Blue Grass”
+ mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect
+figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a silent
+but half-compassionate farewell.
+
+At about this time a slight change in her manner was noticed by the few
+who saw her more frequently. Her apparently invincible girlishness of
+spirit had given way to a certain matronly seriousness. She applied
+herself to her household cares and the improvement of the hacienda with
+a new sense of duty and a settled earnestness, until by degrees she
+wrought into it not only her instinctive delicacy and taste, but part
+of her own individuality. Even the rude rancheros and tradesmen who were
+permitted to enter the walls in the exercise of their calling began to
+speak mysteriously of the beauty of this garden of the almarjal. She
+went out but seldom, and then accompanied by the one or the other of her
+female servants, in long drives on unfrequented roads. On Sundays she
+sometimes drove to the half-ruined mission church of Santa Inez, and
+hid herself, during mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the choir.
+Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these journeys began to
+show an almost devotional reverence for her, stopping in the roads with
+uncovered heads for her to pass, or making way for her in the tienda
+or plaza of the wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began to feel a
+strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times brought tears to
+her eyes, was, not without a certain tender solace. In the sympathy and
+simpleness of this impulse she went as far as to revive the mourning she
+had worn for her parents, but with such a fatal accenting of her beauty,
+and dangerous misinterpreting of her condition to eligible bachelors
+strange to the country, that she was obliged to put it off again. Her
+reserve and dignified manner caused others to mistake her nationality
+for that of the Santierras, and in “Dona Bella” the simple Mrs.
+Tucker was for a while forgotten. At times she even forgot it herself.
+Accustomed now almost entirely to the accents of another language and
+the features of another race, she would sit for hours in the corridor,
+whose massive bronzed inclosure even her tasteful care could only make
+an embowered mausoleum of the Past, or gaze abstractedly from the dark
+embrasures of her windows across the stretching almarjal to the shining
+lagoon beyond that terminated the estuary. She had a strange fondness
+for this tranquil mirror, which under sun or stars always retained the
+passive reflex of the sky above, and seemed to rest her weary eyes. She
+had objected to one of the plans projected by Poindexter to redeem the
+land and deepen the water at the embarcadero, as it would have drained
+the lagoon, and the lawyer had postponed the improvement to gratify
+her fancy. So she kept it through the long summer unchanged save by the
+shadows of passing wings or the lazy files of sleeping sea-fowl.
+
+On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving carriage leave
+the high road and cross the almarjal skirting the edge of the lagoon. If
+it contained visitors for Los Cuervos they had evidently taken a shorter
+cut without waiting to go on to the regular road which intersected the
+highway at right angles a mile farther on. It was with some sense of
+annoyance and irritation that she watched the trespass, and finally saw
+the vehicle approach the house. A few moments later the servant informed
+her that Mr. Patterson would like to see her alone. When she entered the
+corridor, which in the dry season served as a reception hall, she
+was surprised to see that Patterson was not alone. Near him stood
+a well-dressed handsome woman, gazing about her with good-humored
+admiration of Mrs. Tucker's taste and ingenuity.
+
+“It don't look much like it did two years ago,” said the stranger
+cheerfully. “You've improved it wonderfully.”
+
+Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to Mr. Patterson.
+But that gentleman's usual profound melancholy appeared to be
+intensified by the hilarity of his companion. He only sighed deeply and
+rubbed his leg with the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction.
+
+“Well! go on, then,” said the woman, laughing and nudging him. “Go
+on--introduce me--can't you? Don't stand there like a tombstone. You
+won't? Well, I'll introduce myself.” She laughed again, and then, with
+an excellent imitation of Patterson's lugubrious accents, said, “Mr.
+Spencer Tucker's wife that IS, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Spencer
+Tucker's sweetheart that WAS! Hold on! I said THAT WAS. For true as
+I stand here, ma'am--and I reckon I wouldn't stand here if it wasn't
+true--I haven't set eyes on him since the day he left you.”
+
+“It's the Gospel truth, every word,” said Patterson, stirred into a
+sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker's white and rigid face. “It's the frozen
+truth, and I kin prove it. For I kin swear that when that there young
+woman was sailin' outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my bar
+room; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give him a hoss and set
+him in his road to Monterey that very night.”
+
+“Then, where is he now?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly facing them.
+
+They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs. Tucker.
+Then both together replied slowly and in perfect unison,
+“That's--what--we--want--to--know.” They seemed so satisfied
+with this effect that they as deliberately repeated,
+“Yes--that's--what--we--want--to--know.”
+
+Between the shock of meeting the partner of her husband's guilt and
+the unexpected revelation to her inexperience, that in suggestion and
+appearance there was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that
+was really shocking in the woman--between the extravagant extremes
+of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so
+grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty
+suppressed a hysterical laugh.
+
+“That's the way to take it,” said the woman, putting her own
+good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker's expression. “Now, look
+here! I'll tell you all about it.” She carefully selected the most
+comfortable chair, and sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her
+lap. “Well, I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo,
+calculating that your husband would join the ship just inside the Heads.
+That was our arrangement, but if anything happened to prevent him, he
+was to join me in Acapulco. Well! He didn't come aboard, and we sailed
+without him. But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but his
+boat was capsized. There, now, don't be alarmed! he wasn't drowned, as
+Patterson can swear to--no, catch HIM! not a hair of him was hurt; but
+I--I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico, alone, without a
+cent to bless me. For true as you live, that hound of a captain, when he
+found, as he thought, that Spencer was nabbed, he just confiscated all
+his trunks and valuables and left me in the lurch. If I hadn't met a man
+down there that offered to marry me and brought me here, I might have
+died there, I reckon. But I did, and here I am. I went down there as
+your husband's sweetheart, I've come back as the wife of an honest man,
+and I reckon it's about square!”
+
+There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied,
+so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral
+unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her
+resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face
+of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchres of his memory
+and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.
+
+“You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Capting Baxter--ez used
+to be French Inez of New Orleans--hez told ye. Ye kin take everything
+she's unloaded. And it's only doin' the square thing to her to say, she
+hain't done it out o' no cussedness, but just to satisfy herself, now
+she's a married woman and past such foolishness. But that ain't neither
+here nor there. The gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was
+at the tienda the day after she sailed and after his boat capsized.” He
+then gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unnecessary but
+truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the particulars already known
+that the following week he visited the Summit House and was surprised
+to find that Spencer had never been there, nor had he ever sailed from
+Monterey.
+
+“But why was this not told to me before?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly.
+“Why not at the time? Why,” she demanded almost fiercely, turning from
+the one to the other, “has this been kept from me?”
+
+“I'll tell ye why,” said Patterson, sinking with crushed submission into
+a chair. “When I found he wasn't where he ought to be, I got to lookin'
+elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I
+examined; and found he had turned off the high road somewhere beyond the
+lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly.
+
+“Well,” said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an accustomed martyr,
+“mebbe I'm a God-forsaken idiot, but I reckon he DID come yer. And mebbe
+I'm that much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated
+you'ld know it without tellin'.”
+
+With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the quick blood rush
+to her cheeks, although she knew not why. But they were apparently
+satisfied with her ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more
+gloomily:--
+
+“Then if he wasn't hidin' here beknownst to you, he must have changed
+his mind agin and got away by the embarcadero. The only thing wantin' to
+prove that idea is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the
+hoss. And thar's one more idea, and ez that can't be proved,” continued
+Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, “mebbe it's accordin' to God's
+laws.”
+
+Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been and still was, Mrs.
+Tucker felt a vague chill creep over her that seemed to be the result of
+his manner more than his words. “And that idea is . . . ?” she suggested
+with pale lips.
+
+“It's this! Fust, I don't say it means much to anybody but me. I've
+heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them
+for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o'
+God. The idea is then--that--Spencer Tucker--WAS DROWNDED in that boat;
+the idea is”--his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper--“that it
+was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out
+of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine--no ears
+heard him but mine. I reckon it weren't intended it should.” He paused,
+and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes. “The pie, you'll say, is
+agin it,” he continued in the same tone of voice,--“the whiskey is agin
+it--a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental like, may have
+been agin it. All the same they mout have been only the little signs and
+tokens that it was him.”
+
+But Mrs. Baxter's ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled the infection
+of Patterson's gloom. “I reckon the only spirit was that which you and
+Spencer consumed,” she said, cheerfully. “I don't wonder you're a little
+mixed. Like as not you've misunderstood his plans.” Patterson shook
+his head. “He'll turn up yet, alive and kicking! Like as not, then,
+Poindexter knows where he is all the time.”
+
+“Impossible! He would have told me,” said Mrs. Tucker, quickly.
+
+Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. Patterson replied by a
+long lugubrious whistle.
+
+“I don't understand you,” said Mrs. Tucker, drawing back with cold
+dignity.
+
+“You don't?” returned Mrs. Baxter. “Bless your innocent heart! Why was
+he so keen to hunt me up at first, shadowing my friends and all that,
+and why has he dropped it now he knows I'm here, if he didn't know where
+Spencer was?”
+
+“I can explain that,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker, hastily, with a blush of
+confusion. “That is--I--”
+
+“Then mebbe you kin explain too,” broke in Patterson with gloomy
+significance, “why he has bought up most of Spencer's debts himself, and
+perhaps you're satisfied it ISN'T to hold the whip hand of him and keep
+him from coming back openly. Pr'aps you know why he's movin' heaven and
+earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the ranch, and why the Don don't
+see it all.”
+
+“Don Jose sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?” said Mrs. Tucker. “I
+offered to sell it to him.”
+
+Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around him, passed
+his hand sadly across his forehead, and said: “It's come! I knew it
+would. It's the warning! It's suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering
+idjiocy. Here I'd hev been willin' to swear that Mrs. Baxter here told
+me SHE had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don Jose, and now
+you--”
+
+“Stop!” said Mrs. Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.
+
+She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to stone. “I command
+you to tell me what this means!” she said, turning only her blazing eyes
+upon the woman.
+
+Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter's lips as she replied
+hesitatingly and submissively: “I thought you knew already that Spencer
+had given this ranch to me. I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for
+us to go away with. It was Spencer's idea--”
+
+“You lie!” said Mrs. Tucker.
+
+There was a dead silence. The wrathful blood that had quickly mounted
+to Mrs. Baxter's cheek, to Patterson's additional bewilderment, faded as
+quickly. She did not lift her eyes again to Mrs. Tucker's, but, slowly
+raising herself from her seat, said, “I wish to God I did lie; but it's
+true. And it's true that I never touched a cent of the money, but gave
+it all to him!” She laid her hand on Patterson's arm, and said, “Come!
+let us go,” and led him a few steps towards the gateway. But here
+Patterson paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy brow.
+The necessity of coherently and logically closing the conversation
+impressed itself upon his darkening mind. “Then you don't happen to have
+heard anything of Spencer?” he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs. Baxter
+through the gate.
+
+Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands above her head with
+a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and slowly brought her
+palms down upon her upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush
+out all light and sense of life before her. She stood thus for a moment
+motionless and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and
+flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from the arbor.
+Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing
+hard, she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her figure to
+the waist, and with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping
+herself of some loathsome garment. Then she walked quickly to the
+gateway, looked out, returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking
+off her wedding-ring from her finger as she walked. Here she paused,
+then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the
+gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quietly re-entered her chamber.
+
+
+Two days afterwards the sweating steed of Captain Poindexter was
+turned loose in the corral, and a moment later the captain entered the
+corridor. Handing a letter to the decrepit Concha, who seemed to be
+utterly disorganized by its contents, and the few curt words with which
+it was delivered, he gazed silently upon the vacant bower, still fresh
+and redolent with the delicacy and perfume of its graceful occupant,
+until his dark eyes filled with unaccustomed moisture. But his reverie
+was interrupted by the sound of jingling spurs without, and the old
+humor struggled back in his eyes as Don Jose impetuously entered. The
+Spaniard started back, but instantly recovered himself.
+
+“So I find you here. Ah! it is well!” he said passionately, producing a
+letter from his bosom. “Look! Do you call this honor? Look how you keep
+your compact!”
+
+Poindexter coolly took the letter. It contained a few words of gentle
+dignity from Mrs. Tucker, informing Don Jose that she had only that
+instant learned of his just claims upon Los Cuervos, tendering him her
+gratitude for his delicate intentions, but pointing out with respectful
+firmness that he must know that a moment's further acceptance of his
+courtesy was impossible.
+
+“She has gained this knowledge from no word of mine,” said Poindexter,
+calmly. “Right or wrong, I have kept my promise to you. I have as much
+reason to accuse you of betraying my secret in this,” he added coldly,
+as he took another letter from his pocket and handed it to Don Jose.
+
+It seemed briefer and colder, but was neither. It reminded Poindexter
+that as he had again deceived her she must take the government of her
+affairs in her own hands henceforth. She abandoned all the furniture and
+improvements she had put in Los Cuervos to him, to whom she now knew
+she was indebted for them. She could not thank him for what his habitual
+generosity impelled him to do for any woman, but she could forgive him
+for misunderstanding her like any other woman, perhaps she should say,
+like a child. When he received this she would be already on her way to
+her old home in Kentucky, where she still hoped to be able by her own
+efforts to amass enough to discharge her obligations to him.
+
+“She does not speak of her husband, this woman,” said Don Jose, scanning
+Poindexter's face. “It is possible she rejoins him, eh?”
+
+“Perhaps in one way she has never left him, Don Jose,” said Poindexter,
+with grave significance.
+
+Don Jose's face flushed, but he returned carelessly, “And the rancho,
+naturally you will not buy it now?”
+
+“On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer,” said Poindexter, quietly.
+
+Don Jose eyed him narrowly, and then said, “Ah, we shall consider of
+it.”
+
+He did consider it, and accepted the offer. With the full control of the
+land, Captain Poindexter's improvements, so indefinitely postponed, were
+actively pushed forward. The thick walls of the hacienda were the first
+to melt away before them; the low lines of corral were effaced, and the
+early breath of the summer trade winds swept uninterruptedly across the
+now leveled plain to the embarcadero, where a newer structure arose. A
+more vivid green alone marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls
+of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel
+was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror
+that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope
+lay dull, dead, lustreless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption
+and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot
+the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous
+congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds, or laboring in thick
+and writhing masses, as if they were continuing the work of improvement
+begun by human agency. So well had they done the work that by the end
+of a week only a few scattered white objects remained glittering on
+the surface of the quickly drying soil. But they were the bones of the
+missing outcast, Spencer Tucker!
+
+*****
+
+The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul, decaying quagmire of
+the whole land, before which such passing deeds as these were blown as
+vapor. It called men of all rank and condition to battle for a nation's
+life, and among the first to respond were those into whose boyish
+hands had been placed the nation's honor. It returned the epaulets to
+Poindexter's shoulder with the addition of a double star, carried him
+triumphantly to the front, and left him, at the end of a summer's
+day and a hard-won fight, sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue Grass
+farmhouse. And the woman who sought him out and ministered to his wants
+said timidly, as she left her hand in his, “I told you I should live to
+repay you.”
+
+
+
+
+
+LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was “played out.” Not
+dug out, worked out, washed out, but PLAYED out. For two years its
+five sanguine proprietors had gone through the various stages of mining
+enthusiasm; had prospected and planned, dug and doubted. They had
+borrowed money with hearty but unredeeming frankness, established a
+credit with unselfish abnegation of all responsibility, and had borne
+the disappointment of their creditors with a cheerful resignation which
+only the consciousness of some deep Compensating Future could give.
+Giving little else, however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with
+the traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make further
+advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors
+themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the
+most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual
+achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of
+half-finished ditches, purposeless shafts, untenable pits, abandoned
+engines, and meaningless disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star
+claim, and empty flour sacks and pork barrels in the Lone Star cabin.
+
+They had borne their poverty, if that term could be applied to a
+light renunciation of all superfluities in food, dress, or ornament,
+ameliorated by the gentle depredations already alluded to, with
+unassuming levity. More than that: having segregated themselves from
+their fellow-miners of Red Gulch, and entered upon the possession of the
+little manzanita-thicketed valley five miles away, the failure of their
+enterprise had assumed in their eyes only the vague significance of the
+decline and fall of a general community, and to that extent relieved
+them of individual responsibility. It was easier for them to admit
+that the Lone Star claim was “played out” than confess to a personal
+bankruptcy. Moreover, they still retained the sacred right of criticism
+of government, and rose superior in their private opinions to their own
+collective wisdom. Each one experienced a grateful sense of the entire
+responsibility of the other four in the fate of their enterprise.
+
+On December 24, 1863, a gentle rain was still falling over the length
+and breadth of the Lone Star claim. It had been falling for several
+days, had already called a faint spring color to the wan landscape,
+repairing with tender touches the ravages wrought by the proprietors, or
+charitably covering their faults. The ragged seams in gulch and canyon
+lost their harsh outlines, a thin green mantle faintly clothed the torn
+and abraded hillside. A few weeks more, and a veil of forgetfulness
+would be drawn over the feeble failures of the Lone Star claim. The
+charming derelicts themselves, listening to the raindrops on the roof
+of their little cabin, gazed philosophically from the open door, and
+accepted the prospect as a moral discharge from their obligations. Four
+of the five partners were present. The Right and Left Bowers, Union
+Mills, and the Judge.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these titles was the
+genuine name of its possessor. The Right and Left Bowers were two
+brothers; their sobriquets, a cheerful adaptation from the favorite game
+of euchre, expressing their relative value in the camp. The mere fact
+that Union Mills had at one time patched his trousers with an old flour
+sack legibly bearing that brand of its fabrication, was a tempting
+baptismal suggestion that the other partners could not forego. The
+Judge, a singularly inequitable Missourian, with no knowledge whatever
+of the law, was an inspiration of gratuitous irony.
+
+Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting placidly on the
+threshold with one leg exposed to the rain, from a sheer indolent
+inability to change his position, finally withdrew that weather-beaten
+member, and stood up. The movement more or less deranged the attitudes
+of the other partners, and was received with cynical disfavor. It was
+somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the appearance of
+healthy youth and perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated
+the decrepitude of age and invalidism, and after limping about for a few
+moments, settled back again upon their bunks and stools in their former
+positions. The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn
+around his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity, and the Judge
+scrutinized with tender solicitude the faded cicatrix of a scratch upon
+his arm. A passive hypochondria, born of their isolation, was the last
+ludicrously pathetic touch to their situation.
+
+The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity of an
+explanation.
+
+“It would have been just as easy for you to have stayed outside with
+your business leg, instead of dragging it into private life in that
+obtrusive way,” retorted the Right Bower; “but that exhaustive
+effort isn't going to fill the pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton
+says--what's that he said?” he appealed lazily to the Judge.
+
+“Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played out, and he didn't want
+any more in his--thank you!” repeated the Judge with a mechanical effort
+of memory utterly devoid of personal or present interest.
+
+“I always suspected that man, after Grimshaw begun to deal with him,”
+ said the Left Bower. “They're just mean enough to join hands against
+us.” It was a fixed belief of the Lone Star partners that they were
+pursued by personal enmities.
+
+“More than likely those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying
+cash and filled him up with conceit,” said Union Mills, trying to dry
+his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall.
+“Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag everybody down
+with you.”
+
+This vague conclusion was received with dead silence. Everybody had
+become interested in the speaker's peculiar method of drying his leg,
+to the exclusion of the previous topic. A few offered criticism, no one
+assistance.
+
+“Who did the grocery man say that to?” asked the Right Bower, finally
+returning to the question.
+
+“The Old man,” answered the Judge.
+
+“Of course,” ejaculated the Right Bower sarcastically.
+
+“Of course,” echoed the other partners together. “That's like him. The
+Old Man all over!”
+
+It did not appear exactly what was like the Old Man, or why it was like
+him, but generally that he alone was responsible for the grocery man's
+defection. It was put more concisely by Union Mills.
+
+“That comes of letting him go there! It's just a fair provocation to
+any man to have the Old Man sent to him. They can't, sorter, restrain
+themselves at him. He's enough to spoil the credit of the Rothschilds.”
+
+“That's so,” chimed in the Judge. “And look at his prospecting. Why, he
+was out two nights last week, all night, prospecting in the moonlight
+for blind leads, just out of sheer foolishness.”
+
+“It was quite enough for me,” broke in the Left Bower, “when the other
+day, you remember when, he proposed to us white men to settle down to
+plain ground sluicing, making 'grub' wages just like any Chinaman. It
+just showed his idea of the Lone Star claim.”
+
+“Well, I never said it afore,” added Union Mills, “but when that one
+of the Mattison boys came over here to examine the claim with an eye to
+purchasin', it was the Old Man that took the conceit out of him. He just
+as good as admitted that a lot of work had got to be done afore any pay
+ore could be realized. Never even asked him over to the shanty here to
+jine us in a friendly game; just kept him, so to speak, to himself. And
+naturally the Mattisons didn't see it.”
+
+A silence followed, broken only by the rain monotonously falling on
+the roof, and occasionally through the broad adobe chimney, where it
+provoked a retaliating hiss and splutter from the dying embers of the
+hearth. The Right Bower, with a sudden access of energy, drew the empty
+barrel before him, and taking a pack of well-worn cards from his pocket,
+began to make a “solitaire” upon the lid. The others gazed at him with
+languid interest.
+
+“Makin' it for anythin'?” asked Mills.
+
+The Right Bower nodded.
+
+The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in their respective
+bunks, sat up to get a better view of the game. Union Mills slowly
+disengaged himself from the wall and leaned over the “solitaire” player.
+The Right Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling
+suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful emphasis.
+
+“It went!” said the Judge in a voice of hushed respect. “What did you
+make it for?” he almost whispered.
+
+“To know if we'd make the break we talked about and vamose the ranch.
+It's the FIFTH time today,” continued the Right Bower in a voice of
+gloomy significance. “And it went agin bad cards too.”
+
+“I ain't superstitious,” said the Judge, with awe and fatuity beaming
+from every line of his credulous face, “but it's flyin' in the face of
+Providence to go agin such signs as that.”
+
+“Make it again, to see if the Old Man must go,” suggested the Left
+Bower.
+
+The suggestion was received with favor, the three men gathering
+breathlessly around the player. Again the fateful cards were shuffled
+deliberately, placed in their mysterious combination, with the same
+ominous result. Yet everybody seemed to breathe more freely, as if
+relieved from some responsibility, the Judge accepting this manifest
+expression of Providence with resigned self-righteousness.
+
+“Yes, gentlemen,” resumed the Left Bower, serenely, as if a calm legal
+decision had just been recorded, “we must not let any foolishness or
+sentiment get mixed up with this thing, but look at it like business
+men. The only sensible move is to get up and get out of the camp.”
+
+“And the Old Man?” queried the Judge.
+
+“The Old Man--hush! he's coming.”
+
+The doorway was darkened by a slight lissome shadow. It was the absent
+partner, otherwise known as “the Old Man.” Need it be added that he was
+a BOY of nineteen, with a slight down just clothing his upper lip!
+
+“The creek is up over the ford, and I had to 'shin' up a willow on the
+bank and swing myself across,” he said, with a quick, frank laugh; “but
+all the same, boys, it's going to clear up in about an hour, you bet.
+It's breaking away over Bald Mountain, and there's a sun flash on a bit
+of snow on Lone Peak. Look! you can see it from here. It's for all the
+world like Noah's dove just landed on Mount Ararat. It's a good omen.”
+
+From sheer force of habit the men had momentarily brightened up at
+the Old Man's entrance. But the unblushing exhibition of degrading
+superstition shown in the last sentence recalled their just severity.
+They exchanged meaning glances. Union Mills uttered hopelessly to
+himself: “Hell's full of such omens.”
+
+Too occupied with his subject to notice this ominous reception, the Old
+Man continued: “I reckon I struck a fresh lead in the new grocery man
+at the Crossing. He says he'll let the Judge have a pair of boots on
+credit, but he can't send them over here; and considering that the Judge
+has got to try them anyway, it don't seem to be asking too much for the
+Judge to go over there. He says he'll give us a barrel of pork and a bag
+of flour if we'll give him the right of using our tail-race and clean
+out the lower end of it.”
+
+“It's the work of a Chinaman, and a four days' job,” broke in the Left
+Bower.
+
+“It took one white man only two hours to clean out a third of it,”
+ retorted the Old Man triumphantly, “for I pitched in at once with a pick
+he let me have on credit, and did that amount of work this morning, and
+told him the rest of you boys would finish it this afternoon.”
+
+A slight gesture from the Right Bower checked an angry exclamation from
+the Left. The Old Man did not notice either, but, knitting his smooth
+young brow in a paternally reflective fashion, went on: “You'll have
+to get a new pair of trousers, Mills, but as he doesn't keep clothing,
+we'll have to get some canvas and cut you out a pair. I traded off the
+beans he let me have for some tobacco for the Right Bower at the other
+shop, and got them to throw in a new pack of cards. These are about
+played out. We'll be wanting some brushwood for the fire; there's a heap
+in the hollow. Who's going to bring it in? It's the Judge's turn, isn't
+it? Why, what's the matter with you all?”
+
+The restraint and evident uneasiness of his companions had at last
+touched him. He turned his frank young eyes upon them; they glanced
+helplessly at each other. Yet his first concern was for them, his first
+instinct paternal and protecting. He ran his eyes quickly over them;
+they were all there and apparently in their usual condition. “Anything
+wrong with the claim?” he suggested.
+
+Without looking at him the Right Bower rose, leaned against the open
+door with his hands behind him and his face towards the landscape, and
+said, apparently to the distant prospect: “The claim's played out, the
+partnership's played out, and the sooner we skedaddle out of this the
+better. If,” he added, turning to the Old Man, “if YOU want to stay, if
+you want to do Chinaman's work at Chinaman's wages, if you want to hang
+on to the charity of the traders at the Crossing, you can do it, and
+enjoy the prospects and the Noah's doves alone. But we're calculatin' to
+step out of it.”
+
+“But I haven't said I wanted to do it ALONE,” protested the Old Man with
+a gesture of bewilderment.
+
+“If these are your general ideas of the partnership,” continued the
+Right Bower, clinging to the established hypothesis of the other
+partners for support, “it ain't ours, and the only way we can prove it
+is to stop the foolishness right here. We calculated to dissolve the
+partnership and strike out for ourselves elsewhere. You're no longer
+responsible for us, nor we for you. And we reckon it's the square thing
+to leave you the claim and the cabin, and all it contains. To prevent
+any trouble with the traders, we've drawn up a paper here--”
+
+“With a bonus of fifty thousand dollars each down, and the rest to be
+settled on my children,” interrupted the Old Man, with a half-uneasy
+laugh. “Of course. But--” he stopped suddenly, the blood dropped from
+his fresh cheek, and he again glanced quickly round the group. “I don't
+think--I--I quite sabe, boys,” he added, with a slight tremor of voice
+and lip. “If it's a conundrum, ask me an easier one.”
+
+Any lingering doubt he might have had of their meaning was dispelled by
+the Judge. “It's about the softest thing you kin drop into, Old Man,”
+ he said confidentially; “if I hadn't promised the other boys to go with
+them, and if I didn't need the best medical advice in Sacramento for my
+lungs, I'd just enjoy staying with you.”
+
+“It gives a sorter freedom to a young fellow like you, Old Man, like
+goin' into the world on your own capital, that every Californian boy
+hasn't got,” said Union Mills, patronizingly.
+
+“Of course it's rather hard papers on us, you know, givin' up
+everything, so to speak; but it's for your good, and we ain't goin' back
+on you,” said the Left Bower, “are we, boys?”
+
+The color had returned to the Old Man's face a little more quickly and
+freely than usual. He picked up the hat he had cast down, put it on
+carefully over his brown curls, drew the flap down on the side towards
+his companions, and put his hands in his pockets. “All right,” he said,
+in a slightly altered voice. “When do you go?”
+
+“To-day,” answered the Left Bower. “We calculate to take a moonlight
+pasear over to the Cross Roads and meet the down stage at about twelve
+to-night. There's plenty of time yet,” he added, with a slight laugh;
+“it's only three o'clock now.”
+
+There was a dead silence. Even the rain withheld its continuous patter,
+a dumb, gray film covered the ashes of the hushed hearth. For the first
+time the Right Bower exhibited some slight embarrassment.
+
+“I reckon it's held up for a spell,” he said, ostentatiously examining
+the weather, “and we might as well take a run round the claim to see
+if we've forgotten nothing. Of course, we'll be back again,” he added
+hastily, without looking at the Old Man, “before we go, you know.”
+
+The others began to look for their hats, but so awkwardly and with such
+evident preoccupation of mind that it was not at first discovered that
+the Judge had his already on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy
+stumble of Union Mills against the pork barrel, although that gentleman
+took refuge from his confusion and secured a decent retreat by a gross
+exaggeration of his lameness, as he limped after the Right Bower. The
+Judge whistled feebly. The Left Bower, in a more ambitious effort to
+impart a certain gayety to his exit, stopped on the threshold and said,
+as if in arch confidence to his companions, “Darned if the Old Man
+don't look two inches higher since he became a proprietor,” laughed
+patronizingly, and vanished.
+
+If the newly-made proprietor had increased in stature, he had not
+otherwise changed his demeanor. He remained in the same attitude until
+the last figure disappeared behind the fringe of buckeye that hid the
+distant highway. Then he walked slowly to the fire-place, and, leaning
+against the chimney, kicked the dying embers together with his foot.
+Something dropped and spattered in the film of hot ashes. Surely the
+rain had not yet ceased!
+
+His high color had already fled except for a spot on either cheek-bone
+that lent a brightness to his eyes. He glanced around the cabin. It
+looked familiar and yet strange. Rather, it looked strange BECAUSE
+still familiar, and therefore incongruous with the new atmosphere that
+surrounded it--discordant with the echo of their last meeting, and
+painfully accenting the change. There were the four “bunks,” or sleeping
+berths, of his companions, each still bearing some traces of the
+individuality of its late occupant with a dumb loyalty that seemed to
+make their light-hearted defection monstrous. In the dead ashes of the
+Judge's pipe, scattered on his shelf, still lived his old fire; in
+the whittled and carved edges of the Left Bower's bunk still were the
+memories of bygone days of delicious indolence; in the bullet-holes
+clustered round a knot of one of the beams there was still the record of
+the Right Bower's old-time skill and practice; in the few engravings
+of female loveliness stuck upon each headboard there were the proofs of
+their old extravagant devotion--all a mute protest to the change.
+
+He remembered how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into
+their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like
+his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the
+place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with
+the unsubstantial pageantry of a child's play at grown-up existence,
+he knew only too well. But how, from being a pet and protege, he had
+gradually and unconsciously asserted his own individuality and taken
+upon his younger shoulders not only a poet's keen appreciation of that
+life, but its actual responsibilities and half-childish burdens, he
+never suspected. He had fondly believed that he was a neophyte in their
+ways, a novice in their charming faith and indolent creed, and they had
+encouraged it; now their renunciation of that faith could only be an
+excuse for a renunciation of HIM. The poetry that had for two years
+invested the material and sometimes even mean details of their existence
+was too much a part of himself to be lightly dispelled. The lesson of
+those ingenuous moralists failed, as such lessons are apt to fail; their
+discipline provoked but did not subdue; a rising indignation, stirred by
+a sense of injury, mounted to his cheek and eyes. It was slow to come,
+but was none the less violent that it had been preceded by the benumbing
+shock of shame and pride.
+
+I hope I shall not prejudice the reader's sympathies if my duty as a
+simple chronicler compels me to state, therefore, that the sober second
+thought of this gentle poet was to burn down the cabin on the spot with
+all its contents. This yielded to a milder counsel--waiting for the
+return of the party, challenging the Right Bower, a duel to the death,
+perhaps himself the victim, with a crushing explanation in extremis,
+“It seems we are ONE too many. No matter; it is settled now. Farewell!”
+ Dimly remembering, however, that there was something of this in the last
+well-worn novel they had read together, and that his antagonist might
+recognize it, or even worse, anticipate it himself, the idea was quickly
+rejected. Besides, the opportunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice
+was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of
+claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a
+leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed
+to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled
+down to a frigid third personality. “Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his
+late partners that their tender of house, of furniture,” however, seemed
+too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more
+eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and idiotic from a
+caricature of Union Mills, label and all, that appeared suddenly on the
+other side of the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and
+impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of “Oh,
+ain't you glad you're out of the wilderness!”--the forgotten first line
+of a popular song, which no scratching would erase--seemed too like an
+ironical postscript to be thought of for a moment. He threw aside his
+pen and cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the dead
+ashes of the hearth.
+
+How quiet it was. With the cessation of the rain the wind too had gone
+down, and scarcely a breath of air came through the open door. He walked
+to the threshold and gazed on the hushed prospect. In this listless
+attitude he was faintly conscious of a distant reverberation, a mere
+phantom of sound--perhaps the explosion of a distant blast in the
+hills--that left the silence more marked and oppressive. As he turned
+again into the cabin a change seemed to have come over it. It already
+looked old and decayed. The loneliness of years of desertion seemed to
+have taken possession of it; the atmosphere of dry rot was in the
+beams and rafters. To his excited fancy the few disordered blankets
+and articles of clothing seemed dropping to pieces; in one of the bunks
+there was a hideous resemblance in the longitudinal heap of clothing to
+a withered and mummied corpse. So it might look in after years when some
+passing stranger--but he stopped. A dread of the place was beginning
+to creep over him; a dread of the days to come, when the monotonous
+sunshine should lay bare the loneliness of these walls; the long, long
+days of endless blue and cloudless, overhanging solitude; summer days
+when the wearying, incessant trade winds should sing around that empty
+shell and voice its desolation. He gathered together hastily a few
+articles that were especially his own--rather that the free communion
+of the camp, from indifference or accident, had left wholly to him. He
+hesitated for a moment over his rifle, but, scrupulous in his wounded
+pride, turned away and left the familiar weapon that in the dark days
+had so often provided the dinner or breakfast of the little household.
+Candor compels me to state that his equipment was not large nor
+eminently practical. His scant pack was a light weight for even his
+young shoulders, but I fear he thought more of getting away from the
+Past than providing for the Future.
+
+With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, and almost
+mechanically turned his steps towards the creek he had crossed
+that morning. He knew that by this route he would avoid meeting his
+companions; its difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his
+feverish limbs and give him time for reflection. He had determined to
+leave the claim, but whence he had not yet considered. He reached the
+bank of the creek where he had stood two hours before; it seemed to him
+two years. He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad
+pools of overflow, and fancied he looked older. He watched the rush and
+outset of the turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and
+to eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his
+preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his
+companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful boundaries. In
+the drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the
+bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the
+Lone Star claim.
+
+The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before--a calm so
+inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem portentous--became
+more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the turbulent
+water-course. A few clouds lazily huddled in the west apparently had
+gone to rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies. There was a
+gleam as of golden water everywhere along the horizon, washing out the
+cold snowpeaks, and drowning even the rising moon. The creek caught it
+here and there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken
+sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian stream they had
+been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some peculiar trick
+of the atmosphere, the perfect plenitude of that golden sunset glory
+was lavished on the rugged sides and tangled crest of the Lone Star
+mountain. That isolated peak, the landmark of their claim, the gaunt
+monument of their folly, transfigured in the evening splendor, kept its
+radiance unquenched long after the glow had fallen from the encompassing
+skies, and when at last the rising moon, step by step, put out the fires
+along the winding valley and plains, and crept up the bosky sides of
+the canyon, the vanishing sunset was lost only to reappear as a golden
+crown.
+
+The eyes of the young man were fixed upon it with more than a momentary
+picturesque interest. It had been the favorite ground of his prospecting
+exploits, its lowest flank had been scarred in the old enthusiastic days
+with hydraulic engines, or pierced with shafts, but its central position
+in the claim and its superior height had always given it a commanding
+view of the extent of their valley and its approaches, and it was this
+practical pre-eminence that alone attracted him at that moment. He knew
+that from its crest he would be able to distinguish the figures of his
+companions, as they crossed the valley near the cabin, in the growing
+moonlight. Thus he could avoid encountering them on his way to the high
+road, and yet see them, perhaps, for the last time. Even in his sense of
+injury there was a strange satisfaction in the thought.
+
+The ascent was toilsome, but familiar. All along the dim trail he was
+accompanied by gentler memories of the past, that seemed, like the faint
+odor of spiced leaves and fragrant grasses wet with the rain and crushed
+beneath his ascending tread, to exhale the sweeter perfume in his effort
+to subdue or rise above them. There was the thicket of manzanita, where
+they had broken noonday bread together; here was the rock beside their
+maiden shaft, where they had poured a wild libation in boyish enthusiasm
+of success; and here the ledge where their first flag, a red shirt
+heroically sacrificed, was displayed from a long-handled shovel to
+the gaze of admirers below. When he at last reached the summit, the
+mysterious hush was still in the air, as if in breathless sympathy with
+his expedition. In the west, the plain was faintly illuminated, but
+disclosed no moving figures. He turned towards the rising moon, and
+moved slowly to the eastern edge. Suddenly he stopped. Another step
+would have been his last! He stood upon the crumbling edge of a
+precipice. A landslip had taken place on the eastern flank, leaving
+the gaunt ribs and fleshless bones of Lone Star mountain bare in the
+moonlight. He understood now the strange rumble and reverberation he had
+heard; he understood now the strange hush of bird and beast in brake and
+thicket!
+
+Although a single rapid glance convinced him that the slide had taken
+place in an unfrequented part of the mountain, above an inaccessible
+canyon, and reflection assured him his companions could not have reached
+that distance when it took place, a feverish impulse led him to descend
+a few rods in the track of the avalanche. The frequent recurrence of
+outcrop and angle made this comparatively easy. Here he called aloud;
+the feeble echo of his own voice seemed only a dull impertinence to the
+significant silence. He turned to reascend; the furrowed flank of the
+mountain before him lay full in the moonlight. To his excited fancy, a
+dozen luminous star-like points in the rocky crevices started into
+life as he faced them. Throwing his arm over the ledge above him, he
+supported himself for a moment by what appeared to be a projection of
+the solid rock. It trembled slightly. As he raised himself to its level,
+his heart stopped beating. It was simply a fragment detached from the
+outcrop, lying loosely on the ledge but upholding him by ITS OWN WEIGHT
+ONLY. He examined it with trembling fingers; the encumbering soil fell
+from its sides and left its smoothed and worn protuberances glistening
+in the moonlight. It was virgin gold!
+
+Looking back upon that moment afterwards, he remembered that he was not
+dazed, dazzled, or startled. It did not come to him as a discovery or an
+accident, a stroke of chance or a caprice of fortune. He saw it all in
+that supreme moment; Nature had worked out their poor deduction. What
+their feeble engines had essayed spasmodically and helplessly against
+the curtain of soil that hid the treasure, the elements had achieved
+with mightier but more patient forces. The slow sapping of the winter
+rains had loosened the soil from the auriferous rock, even while the
+swollen stream was carrying their impotent and shattered engines to the
+sea.
+
+What mattered that his single arm could not lift the treasure he had
+found! What mattered that to unfix those glittering stars would still
+tax both skill and patience! The work was done, the goal was reached!
+even his boyish impatience was content with that. He rose slowly to his
+feet, unstrapped his long-handled shovel from his back, secured it in
+the crevice, and quietly regained the summit.
+
+It was all his own! His own by right of discovery under the law of the
+land, and without accepting a favor from THEM. He recalled even the fact
+that it was HIS prospecting on the mountain that first suggested the
+existence of gold in the outcrop and the use of the hydraulic. HE had
+never abandoned that belief, whatever the others had done. He dwelt
+somewhat indignantly to himself on this circumstance, and half
+unconsciously faced defiantly towards the plain below. But it was
+sleeping peacefully in the full sight of the moon, without life or
+motion. He looked at the stars; it was still far from midnight. His
+companions had no doubt long since returned to the cabin to prepare for
+their midnight journey. They were discussing him, perhaps laughing at
+him, or worse, pitying him and his bargain. Yet here was his bargain! A
+slight laugh he gave vent to here startled him a little, it sounded
+so hard and so unmirthful, and so unlike, as he oddly fancied, what he
+really THOUGHT. But WHAT did he think?
+
+Nothing mean or revengeful; no, they never would say THAT. When he had
+taken out all the surface gold and put the mine in working order, he
+would send them each a draft for a thousand dollars. Of course, if they
+were ever ill or poor he would do more. One of the first, the very first
+things he should do would be to send them each a handsome gun and tell
+them that he only asked in return the old-fashioned rifle that once was
+his. Looking back at the moment in after years, he wondered that, with
+this exception, he made no plans for his own future, or the way he
+should dispose of his newly acquired wealth. This was the more singular
+as it had been the custom of the five partners to lie awake at night,
+audibly comparing with each other what they would do in case they made
+a strike. He remembered how, Alnaschar-like, they nearly separated once
+over a difference in the disposal of a hundred thousand dollars that
+they never had, nor expected to have. He remembered how Union Mills
+always began his career as a millionnaire by a “square meal” at
+Delmonico's; how the Right Bower's initial step was always a trip home
+“to see his mother”; how the Left Bower would immediately placate the
+parents of his beloved with priceless gifts (it may be parenthetically
+remarked that the parents and the beloved one were as hypothetical
+as the fortune); and how the Judge would make his first start as a
+capitalist by breaking a certain faro bank in Sacramento. He himself had
+been equally eloquent in extravagant fancy in those penniless days,
+he who now was quite cold and impassive beside the more extravagant
+reality.
+
+How different it might have been! If they had only waited a day longer!
+if they had only broken their resolves to him kindly and parted in good
+will! How he would long ere this have rushed to greet them with the
+joyful news! How they would have danced around it, sung themselves
+hoarse, laughed down their enemies, and run up the flag triumphantly on
+the summit of the Lone Star Mountain! How they would have crowned him
+“the Old Man,” “the hero of the camp!” How he would have told them the
+whole story; how some strange instinct had impelled him to ascend the
+summit, and how another step on that summit would have precipitated him
+into the canyon! And how--but what if somebody else, Union Mills or the
+Judge, had been the first discoverer? Might they not have meanly kept
+the secret from him; have selfishly helped themselves and done--
+
+“What YOU are doing now.”
+
+The hot blood rushed to his cheek, as if a strange voice were at his
+ear. For a moment he could not believe that it came from his own pale
+lips until he found himself speaking. He rose to his feet, tingling with
+shame, and began hurriedly to descend the mountain.
+
+He would go to them, tell them of his discovery, let them give him his
+share, and leave them forever. It was the only thing to be done, strange
+that he had not thought of it at once. Yet it was hard, very hard and
+cruel to be forced to meet them again. What had he done to suffer this
+mortification? For a moment he actually hated this vulgar treasure that
+had forever buried under its gross ponderability the light and careless
+past, and utterly crushed out the poetry of their old, indolent, happy
+existence.
+
+He was sure to find them waiting at the Cross Roads where the coach
+came past. It was three miles away, yet he could get there in time if he
+hastened. It was a wise and practical conclusion of his evening's work,
+a lame and impotent conclusion to his evening's indignation. No matter.
+They would perhaps at first think he had come to weakly follow them,
+perhaps they would at first doubt his story. No matter. He bit his lips
+to keep down the foolish rising tears, but still went blindly forward.
+
+He saw not the beautiful night, cradled in the dark hills, swathed in
+luminous mists, and hushed in the awe of its own loveliness! Here and
+there the moon had laid her calm face on lake and overflow, and gone
+to sleep embracing them, until the whole plain seemed to be lifted
+into infinite quiet. Walking on as in a dream, the black, impenetrable
+barriers of skirting thickets opened and gave way to vague distances
+that it appeared impossible to reach, dim vistas that seemed
+unapproachable. Gradually he seemed himself to become a part of the
+mysterious night. He was becoming as pulseless, as calm, as passionless.
+
+What was that? A shot in the direction of the cabin! yet so faint, so
+echoless, so ineffective in the vast silence, that he would have thought
+it his fancy but for the strange instinctive jar upon his sensitive
+nerves. Was it an accident, or was it an intentional signal to him? He
+stopped; it was not repeated, the silence reasserted itself, but this
+time with an ominous death-like suggestion. A sudden and terrible
+thought crossed his mind. He cast aside his pack and all encumbering
+weight, took a deep breath, lowered his head and darted like a deer in
+the direction of the challenge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The exodus of the seceding partners of the Lone Star claim had been
+scarcely an imposing one. For the first five minutes after quitting the
+cabin, the procession was straggling and vagabond. Unwonted exertion had
+exaggerated the lameness of some, and feebleness of moral purpose had
+predisposed the others to obtrusive musical exhibition. Union Mills
+limped and whistled with affected abstraction; the Judge whistled and
+limped with affected earnestness. The Right Bower led the way with some
+show of definite design; the Left Bower followed with his hands in
+his pockets. The two feebler natures, drawn together in unconscious
+sympathy, looked vaguely at each other for support.
+
+“You see,” said the Judge, suddenly, as if triumphantly concluding
+an argument, “there ain't anything better for a young fellow than
+independence. Nature, so to speak, points the way. Look at the animals.”
+
+“There's a skunk hereabouts,” said Union Mills, who was supposed to be
+gifted with aristocratically sensitive nostrils, “within ten miles
+of this place; like as not crossing the Ridge. It's always my luck
+to happen out just at such times. I don't see the necessity anyhow of
+trapesing round the claim now, if we calculate to leave it to-night.”
+
+Both men waited to observe if the suggestion was taken up by the Right
+and Left Bower moodily plodding ahead. No response following, the Judge
+shamelessly abandoned his companion.
+
+“You wouldn't stand snoopin' round instead of lettin' the Old Man get
+used to the idea alone? No; I could see all along that he was takin' it
+in, takin' it in, kindly but slowly, and I reckoned the best thing for
+us to do was to git up and git until he'd got round it.” The Judge's
+voice was slightly raised for the benefit of the two before him.
+
+“Didn't he say,” remarked the Right Bower, stopping suddenly and facing
+the others, “didn't he say that that new trader was goin' to let him
+have some provisions anyway?”
+
+Union Mills turned appealingly to the Judge; that gentleman was forced
+to reply, “Yes; I remember distinctly he said it. It was one of the
+things I was particular about on his account,” responded the Judge,
+with the air of having arranged it all himself with the new trader. “I
+remember I was easier in my mind about it.”
+
+“But didn't he say,” queried the Left Bower, also stopping short,
+“suthin' about it's being contingent on our doing some work on the
+race?”
+
+The Judge turned for support to Union Mills, who, however, under the
+hollow pretense of preparing for a long conference, had luxuriously
+seated himself on a stump. The Judge sat down also, and replied,
+hesitatingly, “Well, yes! Us or him.”
+
+“Us or him,” repeated the Right Bower, with gloomy irony. “And you ain't
+quite clear in your mind, are you, if YOU haven't done the work already?
+You're just killing yourself with this spontaneous, promiscuous, and
+premature overwork; that's what's the matter with you.”
+
+“I reckon I heard somebody say suthin' about it's being a Chinaman's
+three-day job,” interpolated the Left Bower, with equal irony, “but I
+ain't quite clear in my mind about that.”
+
+“It'll be a sorter distraction for the Old Man,” said Union Mills,
+feebly--“kinder take his mind off his loneliness.”
+
+Nobody taking the least notice of the remark, union Mills stretched out
+his legs more comfortably and took out his pipe. He had scarcely done so
+when the Right Bower, wheeling suddenly, set off in the direction of the
+creek. The Left Bower, after a slight pause, followed without a word.
+The Judge, wisely conceiving it better to join the stronger party,
+ran feebly after him, and left Union Mills to bring up a weak and
+vacillating rear.
+
+Their course, diverging from Lone Star Mountain, led them now directly
+to the bend of the creek, the base of their old ineffectual operations.
+Here was the beginning of the famous tail-race that skirted the new
+trader's claim, and then lost its way in a swampy hollow. It was choked
+with debris; a thin, yellow stream that once ran through it seemed to
+have stopped work when they did, and gone into greenish liquidation.
+
+They had scarcely spoken during this brief journey, and had received no
+other explanation from the Right Bower, who led them, than that afforded
+by his mute example when he reached the race. Leaping into it without a
+word, he at once began to clear away the broken timbers and driftwood.
+Fired by the spectacle of what appeared to be a new and utterly
+frivolous game, the men gayly leaped after him, and were soon engaged
+in a fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge forgot his
+lameness in springing over a broken sluice-box; Union Mills forgot his
+whistle in a happy imitation of a Chinese coolie's song. Nevertheless,
+after ten minutes of this mild dissipation, the pastime flagged; Union
+Mills was beginning to rub his leg when a distant rumble shook the
+earth. The men looked at each other; the diversion was complete; a
+languid discussion of the probabilities of its being an earthquake or a
+blast followed, in the midst of which the Right Bower, who was working
+a little in advance of the others, uttered a warning cry and leaped from
+the race. His companions had barely time to follow before a sudden and
+inexplicable rise in the waters of the creek sent a swift irruption of
+the flood through the race. In an instant its choked and impeded channel
+was cleared, the race was free, and the scattered debris of logs and
+timber floated upon its easy current. Quick to take advantage of this
+labor-saving phenomenon, the Lone Star partners sprang into the water,
+and by disentangling and directing the eddying fragments completed their
+work.
+
+“The Old Man oughter been here to see this,” said the Left Bower; “it's
+just one o' them climaxes of poetic justice he's always huntin' up. It's
+easy to see what's happened. One o' them high-toned shrimps over in the
+Excelsior claim has put a blast in too near the creek. He's tumbled the
+bank into the creek and sent the back water down here just to wash out
+our race. That's what I call poetical retribution.”
+
+“And who was it advised us to dam the creek below the race and make it
+do the thing?” asked the Right Bower, moodily.
+
+“That was one of the Old Man's ideas, I reckon,” said the Left Bower,
+dubiously.
+
+“And you remember,” broke in the Judge with animation, “I allus said,
+'Go slow, go slow. You just hold on and suthin' will happen.' And,” he
+added, triumphantly, “you see suthin' has happened. I don't want to take
+credit to myself, but I reckoned on them Excelsior boys bein' fools, and
+took the chances.”
+
+“And what if I happen to know that the Excelsior boys ain't blastin'
+to-day?” said the Right Bower, sarcastically.
+
+As the Judge had evidently based his hypothesis on the alleged fact of
+a blast, he deftly evaded the point. “I ain't saying the Old Man's head
+ain't level on some things; he wants a little more sabe of the world.
+He's improved a good deal in euchre lately, and in poker--well! he's got
+that sorter dreamy, listenin'-to-the-angels kind o' way that you can't
+exactly tell whether he's bluffin' or has got a full hand. Hasn't he?”
+ he asked, appealing to Union Mills.
+
+But that gentleman, who had been watching the dark face of the Right
+Bower, preferred to take what he believed to be his cue from him. “That
+ain't the question,” he said virtuously; “we ain't takin' this step to
+make a card sharp out of him. We're not doin' Chinamen's work in this
+race to-day for that. No, sir! We're teachin' him to paddle his own
+canoe.” Not finding the sympathetic response he looked for in the Right
+Bower's face, he turned to the Left.
+
+“I reckon we were teachin' him our canoe was too full,” was the Left
+Bower's unexpected reply. “That's about the size of it.”
+
+The Right Bower shot a rapid glance under his brows at his brother.
+The latter, with his hands in his pockets, stared unconsciously at the
+rushing waters, and then quietly turned away. The Right Bower followed
+him. “Are you goin' back on us?” he asked.
+
+“Are you?” responded the other.
+
+“No!”
+
+“NO, then it is,” returned the Left Bower quietly. The elder brother
+hesitated in half-angry embarrassment.
+
+“Then what did you mean by saying we reckoned our canoe was too full?”
+
+“Wasn't that our idea?” returned the Left Bower, indifferently.
+Confounded by this practical expression of his own unformulated good
+intentions, the Right Bower was staggered.
+
+“Speakin' of the Old Man,” broke in the Judge, with characteristic
+infelicity, “I reckon he'll sort o' miss us, times like these. We were
+allers runnin' him and bedevilin' him, after work, just to get him
+excited and amusin', and he'll kinder miss that sort o' stimulatin'. I
+reckon we'll miss it too, somewhat. Don't you remember, boys, the night
+we put up that little sell on him and made him believe we'd struck it
+rich in the bank of the creek, and got him so conceited, he wanted to go
+off and settle all our debts at once?”
+
+“And how I came bustin' into the cabin with a pan full of iron pyrites
+and black sand,” chuckled Union Mills, continuing the reminiscences,
+“and how them big gray eyes of his nearly bulged out of his head. Well,
+it's some satisfaction to know we did our duty by the young fellow even
+in those little things.” He turned for confirmation of their general
+disinterestedness to the Right Bower, but he was already striding away,
+uneasily conscious of the lazy following of the Left Bower, like a
+laggard conscience at his back. This movement again threw Union Mills
+and the Judge into feeble complicity in the rear, as the procession
+slowly straggled homeward from the creek.
+
+Night had fallen. Their way lay through the shadow of Lone Star
+Mountain, deepened here and there by the slight, bosky ridges that,
+starting from its base, crept across the plain like vast roots of its
+swelling trunk. The shadows were growing blacker as the moon began to
+assert itself over the rest of the valley, when the Right Bower halted
+suddenly on one of these ridges. The Left Bower lounged up to him, and
+stopped also, while the two others came up and completed the group.
+
+“There's no light in the shanty,” said the Right Bower in a low voice,
+half to himself and, half in answer to their inquiring attitude. The men
+followed the direction of his finger. In the distance the black outline
+of the Lone Star cabin stood out distinctly in the illumined space.
+There was the blank, sightless, external glitter of moonlight on its two
+windows that seemed to reflect its dim vacancy, empty alike of light,
+and warmth, and motion.
+
+“That's sing'lar,” said the Judge in an awed whisper.
+
+The Left Bower, by simply altering the position of his hands in his
+trousers' pockets, managed to suggest that he knew perfectly the meaning
+of it, had always known it; but that being now, so to speak, in the
+hands of Fate, he was callous to it. This much, at least, the elder
+brother read in his attitude. But anxiety at that moment was the
+controlling impulse of the Right Bower, as a certain superstitious
+remorse was the instinct of the two others, and without heeding the
+cynic, the three started at a rapid pace for the cabin.
+
+They reached it silently, as the moon, now riding high in the heavens,
+seemed to touch it with the tender grace and hushed repose of a tomb.
+It was with something of this feeling that the Right Bower softly pushed
+open the door; it was with something of this dread that the two others
+lingered on the threshold, until the Right Bower, after vainly trying
+to stir the dead embers on the hearth into life with his foot, struck a
+match and lit their solitary candle. Its flickering light revealed the
+familiar interior unchanged in aught but one thing. The bunk that
+the Old Man had occupied was stripped of its blankets; the few cheap
+ornaments and photographs were gone; the rude poverty of the bare boards
+and scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright face and
+gracious youth that had once made them tolerable. In the grim irony
+of that exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The little
+knapsack, the teacup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed, were
+gone also. The most indignant protest, the most pathetic of the letters
+he had composed and rejected, whose torn fragments still littered the
+floor, could never have spoken with the eloquence of this empty space!
+The men exchanged no words: the solitude of the cabin, instead of
+drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in selfish distrust of
+the others. Even the unthinking garrulity of Union Mills and the Judge
+was checked. A moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, his
+presence was scarcely noticed.
+
+The silence was broken by a joyous exclamation from the Judge. He had
+discovered the Old Man's rifle in the corner, where it had been at first
+overlooked. “He ain't gone yet, gentlemen--for yer's his rifle,” he
+broke in, with a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited
+falsetto. “He wouldn't have left this behind. No! I knowed it from the
+first. He's just outside a bit, foraging for wood and water. No, sir!
+Coming along here I said to Union Mills--didn't I?--'Bet your life the
+Old Man's not far off, even if he ain't in the cabin.' Why, the moment I
+stepped foot--”
+
+“And I said coming along,” interrupted Union Mills, with equally
+reviving mendacity, “Like as not he's hangin' round yer and lyin' low
+just to give us a surprise.' He! ho!”
+
+“He's gone for good, and he left that rifle here on purpose,” said the
+Left Bower in a low voice, taking the weapon almost tenderly in his
+hands.
+
+“Drop it, then!” said the Right Bower. The voice was that of his
+brother, but suddenly changed with passion. The two other partners
+instinctively drew back in alarm.
+
+“I'll not leave it here for the first comer,” said the Left Bower,
+calmly, “because we've been fools and he too. It's too good a weapon for
+that.”
+
+“Drop it, I say!” said the Right Bower, with a savage stride towards
+him.
+
+The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge with a white face
+but a steady eye.
+
+“Stop where you are!” he said collectedly. “Don't row with ME, because
+you haven't either the grit to stick to your ideas or the heart to
+confess them wrong. We've followed your lead, and--here we are! The
+camp's broken up--the Old Man's gone--and we're going. And as for the
+d----d rifle--”
+
+“Drop it, do you hear!” shouted the Right Bower, clinging to that one
+idea with the blind pertinacity of rage and a losing cause. “Drop it!”
+
+The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had seized the barrel
+with both hands. There was a momentary struggle, a flash through the
+half-lighted cabin, and a shattering report. The two men fell back from
+each other; the rifle dropped on the floor between them.
+
+The whole thing was over so quickly that the other two partners had not
+had time to obey their common impulse to separate them, and consequently
+even now could scarcely understand what had passed. It was over so
+quickly that the two actors themselves walked back to their places,
+scarcely realizing their own act.
+
+A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills looked at each other
+in dazed astonishment, and then nervously set about their former habits,
+apparently in that fatuous belief common to such natures, that they were
+ignoring a painful situation. The Judge drew the barrel towards him,
+picked up the cards, and began mechanically to “make a patience,”
+ on which Union Mills gazed with ostentatious interest, but with eyes
+furtively conscious of the rigid figure of the Right Bower by the
+chimney and the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the door. Ten
+minutes had passed in this occupation, the Judge and Union Mills
+conversing in the furtive whispers of children unavoidably but
+fascinatedly present at a family quarrel, when a light step was heard
+upon the crackling brushwood outside, and the bright panting face of
+the Old Man appeared upon the threshold. There was a shout of joy; in
+another moment he was half-buried in the bosom of the Right Bower's
+shirt, half-dragged into the lap of the Judge, upsetting the barrel,
+and completely encompassed by the Left Bower and Union Mills. With the
+enthusiastic utterance of his name the spell was broken.
+
+Happily unconscious of the previous excitement that had provoked this
+spontaneous unanimity of greeting, the Old Man, equally relieved, at
+once broke into a feverish announcement of his discovery. He painted the
+details, with, I fear, a slight exaggeration of coloring, due partly
+to his own excitement, and partly to justify their own. But he was
+strangely conscious that these bankrupt men appeared less elated with
+their personal interest in their stroke of fortune than with his own
+success. “I told you he'd do it,” said the Judge, with a reckless
+unscrupulousness of statement that carried everybody with it; “look at
+him! the game little pup.” “Oh no! he ain't the right breed, is he?”
+ echoed Union Mills with arch irony, while the Right and Left Bower,
+grasping either hand, pressed a proud but silent greeting that was half
+new to him, but wholly delicious. It was not without difficulty that he
+could at last prevail upon them to return with him to the scene of
+his discovery, or even then restrain them from attempting to carry
+him thither on their shoulders on the plea of his previous prolonged
+exertions. Once only there was a momentary embarrassment. “Then you
+fired that shot to bring me back?” said the Old Man, gratefully. In the
+awkward silence that followed, the hands of the two brothers sought
+and grasped each other, penitently. “Yes,” interposed the Judge, with
+delicate tact, “ye see the Right and Left Bower almost quarreled to see
+which should be the first to fire for ye. I disremember which did”--“I
+never touched the trigger,” said the Left Bower, hastily. With a hurried
+backward kick, the Judge resumed, “It went off sorter spontaneous.”
+
+The difference in the sentiment of the procession that once more issued
+from the Lone Star cabin did not fail to show itself in each individual
+partner according to his temperament. The subtle tact of Union Mills,
+however, in expressing an awakened respect for their fortunate partner
+by addressing him, as if unconsciously, as “Mr. Ford” was at first
+discomposing, but even this was forgotten in their breathless excitement
+as they neared the base of the mountain. When they had crossed the creek
+the Right Bower stopped reflectively.
+
+“You say you heard the slide come down before you left the cabin?” he
+said, turning to the Old Man.
+
+“Yes; but I did not know then what it was. It was about an hour and a
+half after you left,” was the reply.
+
+“Then look here, boys,” continued the Right Bower with superstitious
+exultation; “it was the SLIDE that tumbled into the creek, overflowed
+it, and helped US clear out the race!”
+
+It seemed so clear that Providence had taken the partners of the
+Lone Star directly in hand that they faced the toilsome ascent of the
+mountain with the assurance of conquerors. They paused only on the
+summit to allow the Old Man to lead the way to the slope that held their
+treasure. He advanced cautiously to the edge of the crumbling cliff,
+stopped, looked bewildered, advanced again, and then remained white and
+immovable. In an instant the Right Bower was at his side.
+
+“Is anything the matter? Don't--don't look so, Old Man, for God's sake!”
+
+The Old Man pointed to the dull, smooth, black side of the mountain,
+without a crag, break, or protuberance, and said with ashen lips:--
+
+“It's gone!”
+
+*****
+
+And it was gone! A SECOND slide had taken place, stripping the flank of
+the mountain, and burying the treasure and the weak implement that had
+marked its side deep under a chaos of rock and debris at its base.
+
+“Thank God!” The blank faces of his companions turned quickly to the
+Right Bower. “Thank God!” he repeated, with his arm round the neck of
+the Old Man. “Had he stayed behind he would have been buried too.” He
+paused, and, pointing solemnly to the depths below, said, “And thank God
+for showing us where we may yet labor for it in hope and patience like
+honest men.”
+
+The men silently bowed their heads and slowly descended the mountain.
+But when they had reached the plain one of them called out to the others
+to watch a star that seemed to be rising and moving towards them over
+the hushed and sleeping valley.
+
+“It's only the stage coach, boys,” said the Left Bower, smiling; “the
+coach that was to take us away.”
+
+In the security of their new-found fraternity they resolved to wait
+and see it pass. As it swept by with flash of light, beat of hoofs, and
+jingle of harness, the only real presence in the dreamy landscape, the
+driver shouted a hoarse greeting to the phantom partners, audible only
+to the Judge, who was nearest the vehicle.
+
+“Did you hear--DID you hear what he said, boys?” he gasped, turning to
+his companions. “No! Shake hands all round, boys! God bless you all,
+boys! To think we didn't know it all this while!”
+
+“Know what?”
+
+“Merry Christmas!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Frontier, by Bret Harte
+
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