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+Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories, 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: Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 21, 2006 [EBook #2597]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. SKAGG'S HUSBANDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS
+
+HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR
+
+THE PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS
+
+THE ILIAD OF SANDY BAR
+
+MR. THOMPSON'S PRODIGAL
+
+THE ROMANCE OR MADRONO HOLLOW
+
+THE POET OF SIERRA FLAT
+
+THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO RUPERT
+
+
+
+
+MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS.
+
+
+PART I--WEST.
+
+
+The sun was rising in the foot-hills. But for an hour the black mass
+of Sierra eastward of Angel's had been outlined with fire, and the
+conventional morning had come two hours before with the down coach from
+Placerville. The dry, cold, dewless California night still lingered
+in the long canyons and folded skirts of Table Mountain. Even on the
+mountain road the air was still sharp, and that urgent necessity for
+something to keep out the chill, which sent the barkeeper sleepily among
+his bottles and wineglasses at the station, obtained all along the road.
+
+Perhaps it might be said that the first stir of life was in the
+bar-rooms. A few birds twittered in the sycamores at the roadside, but
+long before that glasses had clicked and bottles gurgled in the saloon
+of the Mansion House. This was still lit by a dissipated-looking
+hanging-lamp, which was evidently the worse for having been up all
+night, and bore a singular resemblance to a faded reveller of Angel's,
+who even then sputtered and flickered in HIS socket in an arm-chair
+below it,--a resemblance so plain that when the first level sunbeam
+pierced the window-pane, the barkeeper, moved by a sentiment of
+consistency and compassion, put them both out together.
+
+Then the sun came up haughtily. When it had passed the eastern ridge it
+began, after its habit, to lord it over Angel's, sending the thermometer
+up twenty degrees in as many minutes, driving the mules to the sparse
+shade of corrals and fences, making the red dust incandescent, and
+renewing its old imperious aggression on the spiked bosses of the convex
+shield of pines that defended Table Mountain. Thither by nine o'clock
+all coolness had retreated, and the “outsides” of the up stage plunged
+their hot faces in its aromatic shadows as in water.
+
+It was the custom of the driver of the Wingdam coach to whip up his
+horses and enter Angel's at that remarkable pace which the woodcuts in
+the hotel bar-room represented to credulous humanity as the usual rate
+of speed of that conveyance. At such times the habitual expression of
+disdainful reticence and lazy official severity which he wore on the box
+became intensified as the loungers gathered about the vehicle, and only
+the boldest ventured to address him. It was the Hon. Judge Beeswinger,
+Member of Assembly, who to-day presumed, perhaps rashly, on the strength
+of his official position.
+
+“Any political news from below, Bill?” he asked, as the latter slowly
+descended from his lofty perch, without, however, any perceptible coming
+down of mien or manner.
+
+“Not much,” said Bill, with deliberate gravity. “The President o' the
+United States hezn't bin hisself sens you refoosed that seat in the
+Cabinet. The ginral feelin' in perlitical circles is one o' regret.”
+
+Irony, even of this outrageous quality, was too common in Angel's to
+excite either a smile or a frown. Bill slowly entered the bar-room
+during a dry, dead silence, in which only a faint spirit of emulation
+survived.
+
+“Ye didn't bring up that agint o' Rothschild's this trip?” asked the
+barkeeper, slowly, by way of vague contribution to the prevailing tone
+of conversation.
+
+“No,” responded Bill, with thoughtful exactitude. “He said he couldn't
+look inter that claim o' Johnson's without first consultin' the Bank o'
+England.”
+
+The Mr. Johnson here alluded to being present as the faded reveller
+the barkeeper had lately put out, and as the alleged claim notoriously
+possessed no attractions whatever to capitalists, expectation naturally
+looked to him for some response to this evident challenge. He did so
+by simply stating that he would “take sugar” in his, and by walking
+unsteadily toward the bar, as if accepting a festive invitation. To the
+credit of Bill be it recorded that he did not attempt to correct the
+mistake, but gravely touched glasses with him, and after saying “Here's
+another nail in your coffin,”--a cheerful sentiment, to which “And the
+hair all off your head,” was playfully added by the others,--he threw
+off his liquor with a single dexterous movement of head and elbow, and
+stood refreshed.
+
+“Hello, old major!” said Bill, suddenly setting down his glass. “Are YOU
+there?”
+
+It was a boy, who, becoming bashfully conscious that this epithet was
+addressed to him, retreated sideways to the doorway, where he stood
+beating his hat against the door-post with an assumption of indifference
+that his downcast but mirthful dark eyes and reddening cheek scarcely
+bore out. Perhaps it was owing to his size, perhaps it was to a certain
+cherubic outline of face and figure, perhaps to a peculiar trustfulness
+of expression, that he did not look half his age, which was really
+fourteen.
+
+Everybody in Angel's knew the boy. Either under the venerable title
+bestowed by Bill, or as “Tom Islington,” after his adopted father, his
+was a familiar presence in the settlement, and the theme of much local
+criticism and comment. His waywardness, indolence, and unaccountable
+amiability--a quality at once suspicious and gratuitous in a pioneer
+community like Angel's--had often been the subject of fierce discussion.
+A large and reputable majority believed him destined for the gallows; a
+minority not quite so reputable enjoyed his presence without troubling
+themselves much about his future; to one or two the evil predictions of
+the majority possessed neither novelty nor terror.
+
+“Anything for me, Bill?” asked the boy, half mechanically, with the air
+of repeating some jocular formulary perfectly understood by Bill.
+
+“Anythin' for you!” echoed Bill, with an overacted severity equally well
+understood by Tommy,--“anythin' for you? No! And it's my opinion there
+won't be anythin' for you ez long ez you hang around bar-rooms and spend
+your valooable time with loafers and bummers. Git!”
+
+The reproof was accompanied by a suitable exaggeration of gesture
+(Bill had seized a decanter) before which the boy retreated still
+good-humoredly. Bill followed him to the door. “Dern my skin, if he
+hezn't gone off with that bummer Johnson,” he added, as he looked down
+the road.
+
+“What's he expectin', Bill?” asked the barkeeper.
+
+“A letter from his aunt. Reckon he'll hev to take it out in expectin'.
+Likely they're glad to get shut o' him.”
+
+“He's leadin' a shiftless, idle life here,” interposed the Member of
+Assembly.
+
+“Well,” said Bill, who never allowed any one but himself to abuse
+his protege, “seein' he ain't expectin' no offis from the hands of
+an enlightened constitooency, it IS rayther a shiftless life.” After
+delivering this Parthian arrow with a gratuitous twanging of the bow to
+indicate its offensive personality, Bill winked at the barkeeper, slowly
+resumed a pair of immense, bulgy buckskin gloves, which gave his fingers
+the appearance of being painfully sore and bandaged, strode to the door
+without looking at anybody, called out, “All aboard,” with a perfunctory
+air of supreme indifference whether the invitation was heeded, remounted
+his box, and drove stolidly away.
+
+Perhaps it was well that he did so, for the conversation at once assumed
+a disrespectful attitude toward Tom and his relatives. It was more than
+intimated that Tom's alleged aunt was none other than Tom's real mother,
+while it was also asserted that Tom's alleged uncle did not himself
+participate in this intimate relationship to the boy to an extent which
+the fastidious taste of Angel's deemed moral and necessary. Popular
+opinion also believed that Islington, the adopted father, who received
+a certain stipend ostensibly for the boy's support, retained it as
+a reward for his reticence regarding these facts. “He ain't ruinin'
+hisself by wastin' it on Tom,” said the barkeeper, who possibly
+possessed positive knowledge of much of Islington's disbursements. But
+at this point exhausted nature languished among some of the debaters,
+and he turned from the frivolity of conversation to his severer
+professional duties.
+
+It was also well that Bill's momentary attitude of didactic propriety
+was not further excited by the subsequent conduct of his protege. For
+by this time Tom, half supporting the unstable Johnson, who developed
+a tendency to occasionally dash across the glaring road, but checked
+himself mid way each time, reached the corral which adjoined the Mansion
+House. At its farther extremity was a pump and horse-trough. Here,
+without a word being spoken, but evidently in obedience to some habitual
+custom, Tom led his companion. With the boy's assistance, Johnson
+removed his coat and neckcloth, turned back the collar of his shirt, and
+gravely placed his head beneath the pump-spout. With equal gravity and
+deliberation, Tom took his place at the handle. For a few moments
+only the splashing of water and regular strokes of the pump broke the
+solemnly ludicrous silence. Then there was a pause in which Johnson put
+his hands to his dripping head, felt of it critically as if it belonged
+to somebody else, and raised his eyes to his companion. “That ought
+to fetch IT,” said Tom, in answer to the look. “Ef it don't,” replied
+Johnson, doggedly, with an air of relieving himself of all further
+responsibility in the matter, “it's got to, thet's all!”
+
+If “it” referred to some change in the physiognomy of Johnson, “it” had
+probably been “fetched” by the process just indicated. The head that
+went under the pump was large, and clothed with bushy, uncertain-colored
+hair; the face was flushed, puffy, and expressionless, the eyes injected
+and full. The head that came out from under the pump was of smaller size
+and different shape, the hair straight, dark, and sleek, the face
+pale and hollow-cheeked, the eyes bright and restless. In the haggard,
+nervous ascetic that rose from the horse-trough there was very little
+trace of the Bacchus that had bowed there a moment before. Familiar
+as Tom must have been with the spectacle, he could not help looking
+inquiringly at the trough, as if expecting to see some traces of the
+previous Johnson in its shallow depths.
+
+A narrow strip of willow, alder, and buckeye--a mere dusty, ravelled
+fringe of the green mantle that swept the high shoulders of Table
+Mountain--lapped the edge of the corral. The silent pair were quick to
+avail themselves of even its scant shelter from the overpowering sun.
+They had not proceeded far, before Johnson, who was walking quite
+rapidly in advance, suddenly brought himself up, and turned to his
+companion with an interrogative “Eh?”
+
+“I didn't speak,” said Tommy, quietly.
+
+“Who said you spoke?” said Johnson, with a quick look of cunning. “In
+course you didn't speak, and I didn't speak, neither. Nobody spoke. Wot
+makes you think you spoke?” he continued, peering curiously into Tommy's
+eyes.
+
+The smile which habitually shone there quickly vanished as the boy
+stepped quietly to his companion's side, and took his arm without a
+word.
+
+“In course you didn't speak, Tommy,” said Johnson, deprecatingly. “You
+ain't a boy to go for to play an ole soaker like me. That's wot I like
+you for. Thet's wot I seed in you from the first. I sez, 'Thet 'ere boy
+ain't goin' to play you, Johnson! You can go your whole pile on him,
+when you can't trust even a bar-keep.' Thet's wot I said. Eh?”
+
+This time Tommy prudently took no notice of the interrogation, and
+Johnson went on: “Ef I was to ask you another question, you wouldn't go
+to play me neither,--would you, Tommy?”
+
+“No,” said the boy.
+
+“Ef I was to ask you,” continued Johnson, without heeding the reply, but
+with a growing anxiety of eye and a nervous twitching of his lips,--“ef
+I was to ask you, fur instance, ef that was a jackass rabbit thet jest
+passed,--eh?--you'd say it was or was not, ez the case may be. You
+wouldn't play the ole man on thet?”
+
+“No,” said Tommy, quietly, “it WAS a jackass rabbit.”
+
+“Ef I was to ask you,” continued Johnson, “ef it wore, say, fur
+instance, a green hat with yaller ribbons, you wouldn't play me, and say
+it did, onless,”--he added, with intensified cunning,--“onless it DID?”
+
+“No,” said Tommy, “of course I wouldn't; but then, you see, IT DID.”
+
+“It did?”
+
+“It did!” repeated Tommy, stoutly; “a green hat with yellow
+ribbons--and--and--a red rosette.”
+
+“I didn't get to see the ros-ette,” said Johnson, with slow and
+conscientious deliberation, yet with an evident sense of relief; “but
+that ain't sayin' it warn't there, you know. Eh?”
+
+Tommy glanced quietly at his companion. There were great beads of
+perspiration on his ashen-gray forehead and on the ends of his lank
+hair; the hand which twitched spasmodically in his was cold and clammy,
+the other, which was free, had a vague, purposeless, jerky activity, as
+if attached to some deranged mechanism. Without any apparent concern in
+these phenomena, Tommy halted, and, seating himself on a log, motioned
+his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word.
+Slight as was the act, perhaps no other incident of their singular
+companionship indicated as completely the dominance of this careless,
+half-effeminate, but self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed,
+abnormally excited man.
+
+“It ain't the square thing,” said Johnson, after a pause, with a laugh
+that was neither mirthful nor musical, and frightened away a lizard that
+had been regarding the pair with breathless suspense,--“it ain't the
+square thing for jackass rabbits to wear hats, Tommy,--is it, eh?”
+
+“Well,” said Tommy, with unmoved composure, “sometimes they do and
+sometimes they don't. Animals are mighty queer.” And here Tommy went
+off in an animated, but, I regret to say, utterly untruthful and
+untrustworthy account of the habits of California fauna, until he was
+interrupted by Johnson.
+
+“And snakes, eh, Tommy?” said the man, with an abstracted air, gazing
+intently on the ground before him.
+
+“And snakes,” said Tommy; “but they don't bite, at least not that kind
+you see. There!--don't move, Uncle Ben, don't move; they're gone now.
+And it's about time you took your dose.”
+
+Johnson had hurriedly risen as if to leap upon the log, but Tommy had
+as quickly caught his arm with one hand while he drew a bottle from his
+pocket with the other. Johnson paused, and eyed the bottle. “Ef you say
+so, my boy,” he faltered, as his fingers closed nervously around it; “say
+'when,' then.” He raised the bottle to his lips and took a long draught,
+the boy regarding him critically. “When,” said Tommy, suddenly. Johnson
+started, flushed, and returned the bottle quickly. But the color that
+had risen to his cheek stayed there, his eye grew less restless, and
+as they moved away again, the hand that rested on Tommy's shoulder was
+steadier.
+
+Their way lay along the flank of Table Mountain,--a wandering trail
+through a tangled solitude that might have seemed virgin and unbroken
+but for a few oyster-cans, yeast-powder tins, and empty bottles that had
+been apparently stranded by the “first low wash” of pioneer waves.
+On the ragged trunk of an enormous pine hung a few tufts of gray hair
+caught from a passing grizzly, but in strange juxtaposition at its foot
+lay an empty bottle of incomparable bitters,--the chef-d'oeuvre of a
+hygienic civilization, and blazoned with the arms of an all-healing
+republic. The head of a rattlesnake peered from a case that had
+contained tobacco, which was still brightly placarded with the
+high-colored effigy of a popular danseuse. And a little beyond this the
+soil was broken and fissured, there was a confused mass of roughly hewn
+timber, a straggling line of sluicing, a heap of gravel and dirt, a rude
+cabin, and the claim of Johnson.
+
+Except for the rudest purposes of shelter from rain and cold, the cabin
+possessed but little advantage over the simple savagery of surrounding
+nature. It had all the practical directness of the habitation of some
+animal, without its comfort or picturesque quality; the very birds that
+haunted it for food must have felt their own superiority as architects.
+It was inconceivably dirty, even with its scant capacity for accretion;
+it was singularly stale, even in its newness and freshness of material.
+Unspeakably dreary as it was in shadow, the sunlight visited it in
+a blind, aching, purposeless way, as if despairing of mellowing its
+outlines or of even tanning it into color.
+
+The claim worked by Johnson in his intervals of sobriety was represented
+by half a dozen rude openings in the mountain-side, with the heaped-up
+debris of rock and gravel before the mouth of each. They gave very
+little evidence of engineering skill or constructive purpose, or indeed
+showed anything but the vague, successively abandoned essays of their
+projector. To-day they served another purpose, for as the sun had heated
+the little cabin almost to the point of combustion, curling up the long
+dry shingles, and starting aromatic tears from the green pine beams,
+Tommy led Johnson into one of the larger openings, and with a sense of
+satisfaction threw himself panting upon its rocky floor. Here and there
+the grateful dampness was condensed in quiet pools of water, or in
+a monotonous and soothing drip from the rocks above. Without lay the
+staring sunlight,--colorless, clarified, intense.
+
+For a few moments they lay resting on their elbows in blissful
+contemplation of the heat they had escaped. “Wot do you say,” said
+Johnson, slowly, without looking at his companion, but abstractly
+addressing himself to the landscape beyond,--“wot do you say to two
+straight games fur one thousand dollars?”
+
+“Make it five thousand,” replied Tommy, reflectively, also to the
+landscape, “and I'm in.”
+
+“Wot do I owe you now?” said Johnson, after a lengthened silence.
+
+“One hundred and seventy-five thousand two hundred and fifty dollars,”
+ replied Tommy, with business-like gravity.
+
+“Well,” said Johnson, after a deliberation commensurate with the
+magnitude of the transaction, “ef you win, call it a hundred and eighty
+thousand, round. War's the keerds?”
+
+They were in an old tin box in a crevice of a rock above his head. They
+were greasy and worn with service. Johnson dealt, albeit his right hand
+was still uncertain,--hovering, after dropping the cards, aimlessly
+about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong nervous effort. Yet,
+notwithstanding this incapacity for even honest manipulation, Mr.
+Johnson covertly turned a knave from the bottom of the pack with such
+shameless inefficiency and gratuitous unskilfulness, that even Tommy was
+obliged to cough and look elsewhere to hide his embarrassment. Possibly
+for this reason the young gentleman was himself constrained, by way of
+correction, to add a valuable card to his own hand, over and above the
+number he legitimately held.
+
+Nevertheless, the game was unexciting, and dragged listlessly. Johnson
+won. He recorded the fact and the amount with a stub of pencil and
+shaking fingers in wandering hieroglyphics all over a pocket diary.
+Then there was a long pause, when Johnson slowly drew something from his
+pocket, and held it up before his companion. It was apparently a dull
+red stone.
+
+“Ef,” said Johnson, slowly, with his old look of simple cunning,--“ef
+you happened to pick up sich a rock ez that, Tommy, what might you say
+it was?”
+
+“Don't know,” said Tommy.
+
+“Mightn't you say,” continued Johnson, cautiously, “that it was gold, or
+silver?”
+
+“Neither,” said Tommy, promptly.
+
+“Mightn't you say it was quicksilver? Mightn't you say that ef thar was
+a friend o' yourn ez knew war to go and turn out ten ton of it a day,
+and every ton worth two thousand dollars, that he had a soft thing, a
+very soft thing,--allowin', Tommy, that you used sich language, which
+you don't?”
+
+“But,” said the boy, coming to the point with great directness, “DO you
+know where to get it? have you struck it, Uncle Ben?”
+
+Johnson looked carefully around. “I hev, Tommy. Listen. I know whar
+thar's cartloads of it. But thar's only one other specimen--the mate to
+this yer--thet's above ground, and thet's in 'Frisco. Thar's an agint
+comin' up in a day or two to look into it. I sent for him. Eh?”
+
+His bright, restless eyes were concentrated on Tommy's face now, but the
+boy showed neither surprise nor interest. Least of all did he betray
+any recollection of Bill's ironical and gratuitous corroboration of this
+part of the story.
+
+“Nobody knows it,” continued Johnson, in a nervous whisper,--“nobody
+knows it but you and the agint in 'Frisco. The boys workin' round yar
+passes by and sees the old man grubbin' away, and no signs o' color, not
+even rotten quartz; the boys loafin' round the Mansion House sees the
+old man lyin' round free in bar-rooms, and they laughs and sez, 'Played
+out,' and spects nothin'. Maybe ye think they spects suthin now, eh?”
+ queried Johnson, suddenly, with a sharp look of suspicion.
+
+Tommy looked up, shook his head, threw a stone at a passing rabbit, but
+did not reply.
+
+“When I fust set eyes on you, Tommy,” continued Johnson, apparently
+reassured, “the fust day you kem and pumped for me, an entire stranger,
+and hevin no call to do it, I sez, 'Johnson, Johnson,' sez I,' yer's a
+boy you kin trust. Yer's a boy that won't play you; yer's a chap that's
+white and square,'--white and square, Tommy: them's the very words I
+used.”
+
+He paused for a moment, and then went on in a confidential whisper,
+“'You want capital, Johnson,' sez I, 'to develop your resources, and
+you want a pardner. Capital you can send for, but your pardner,
+Johnson,--your pardner is right yer. And his name, it is Tommy
+Islington.' Them's the very words I used.”
+
+He stopped and chafed his clammy hands upon his knees. “It's six months
+ago sens I made you my pardner. Thar ain't a lick I've struck sens
+then, Tommy, thar ain't a han'ful o' yearth I've washed, thar ain't
+a shovelful o' rock I've turned over, but I tho't o' you. 'Share, and
+share alike,' sez I. When I wrote to my agint, I wrote ekal for my
+pardner, Tommy Islington, he hevin no call to know ef the same was man
+or boy.”
+
+He had moved nearer the boy, and would perhaps have laid his hand
+caressingly upon him, but even in his manifest affection there was
+a singular element of awed restraint and even fear,--a suggestion of
+something withheld even his fullest confidences, a hopeless perception
+of some vague barrier that never could be surmounted. He may have been
+at times dimly conscious that, in the eyes which Tommy raised to his,
+there was thorough intellectual appreciation, critical good-humor, even
+feminine softness, but nothing more. His nervousness somewhat heightened
+by his embarrassment, he went on with an attempt at calmness which his
+twitching white lips and unsteady fingers made pathetically grotesque.
+“Thar's a bill o' sale in my bunk, made out accordin' to law, of an ekal
+ondivided half of the claim, and the consideration is two hundred and
+fifty thousand dollars,--gambling debts,--gambling debts from me to you,
+Tommy,--you understand?”--nothing could exceed the intense cunning of
+his eye at this moment,--“and then thar's a will.”
+
+“A will?” said Tommy, in amused surprise.
+
+Johnson looked frightened.
+
+“Eh?” he said, hurriedly, “wot will? Who said anythin' 'bout a will,
+Tommy?”
+
+“Nobody,” replied Tommy, with unblushing calm.
+
+Johnson passed his hand over his cold forehead, wrung the damp ends of
+his hair with his fingers, and went on: “Times when I'm took bad ez I
+was to-day, the boys about yer sez--you sez, maybe, Tommy--it's whiskey.
+It ain't, Tommy. It's pizen,--quicksilver pizen. That's what's the
+matter with me. I'm salviated! Salviated with merkery.
+
+“I've heerd o' it before,” continued Johnson, appealing to the boy, “and
+ez a boy o' permiskus reading, I reckon you hev too. Them men as works
+in cinnabar sooner or later gets salviated. It's bound to fetch 'em some
+time. Salviated by merkery.”
+
+“What are you goin' to do for it?” asked Tommy.
+
+“When the agint comes up, and I begins to realize on this yer mine,”
+ said Johnson, contemplatively, “I goes to New York. I sez to the
+barkeep' o' the hotel, 'Show me the biggest doctor here.' He shows me.
+I sez to him, 'Salviated by merkery,--a year's standin',--how much?' He
+sez, 'Five thousand dollars, and take two o' these pills at bedtime, and
+an ekil number o' powders at meals, and come back in a week.' And I goes
+back in a week, cured, and signs a certifikit to that effect.”
+
+Encouraged by a look of interest in Tommy's eye, he went on.
+
+“So I gets cured. I goes to the barkeep', and I sez, 'Show me the
+biggest, fashionblest house thet's for sale yer.' And he sez, 'The
+biggest, nat'rally b'longs to John Jacob Astor.' And I sez, 'Show him,'
+and he shows him. And I sez, 'Wot might you ask for this yer house?' And
+he looks at me scornful, and sez, 'Go 'way, old man; you must be sick.'
+And I fetches him one over the left eye, and he apologizes, and I gives
+him his own price for the house. I stocks that house with mohogany
+furniture and pervisions, and thar we lives, you and me, Tommy, you and
+me!”
+
+The sun no longer shone upon the hillside. The shadows of the pines were
+beginning to creep over Johnson's claim, and the air within the cavern
+was growing chill. In the gathering darkness his eyes shone brightly
+as he went on: “Then thar comes a day when we gives a big spread. We
+invites govners, members o' Congress, gentlemen o' fashion, and the
+like. And among 'em I invites a Man as holds his head very high, a Man I
+once knew; but he doesn't know I knows him, and he doesn't remember me.
+And he comes and he sits opposite me, and I watches him. And he's very
+airy, this Man, and very chipper, and he wipes his mouth with a white
+hankercher, and he smiles, and he ketches my eye. And he sez, 'A glass
+o' wine with you, Mr. Johnson'; and he fills his glass and I fills mine,
+and we rises. And I heaves that wine, glass and all, right into his
+damned grinnin' face. And he jumps for me,--for he is very game, this
+Man, very game,--but some on 'em grabs him, and he sez, 'Who be you?'
+And I sez, 'Skaggs! damn you, Skaggs! Look at me! Gimme back my wife and
+child, gimme back the money you stole, gimme back the good name you
+took away, gimme back the health you ruined, gimme back the last twelve
+years! Give 'em to me, damn you, quick, before I cuts your heart out!'
+And naterally, Tommy, he can't do it. And so I cuts his heart out, my
+boy; I cuts his heart out.”
+
+The purely animal fury of his eye suddenly changed again to cunning.
+“You think they hangs me for it, Tommy, but they don't. Not much, Tommy.
+I goes to the biggest lawyer there, and I says to him, 'Salviated by
+merkery,--you hear me,--salviated by merkery.' And he winks at me,
+and he goes to the judge, and he sez, 'This yer unfortnet man isn't
+responsible,--he's been salviated by merkery.' And he brings witnesses;
+you comes, Tommy, and you sez ez how you've seen me took bad afore; and
+the doctor, he comes, and he sez as how he's seen me frightful; and the
+jury, without leavin' their seats, brings in a verdict o' justifiable
+insanity,--salviated by merkery.”
+
+In the excitement of his climax he had risen to his feet, but would have
+fallen had not Tommy caught him and led him into the open air. In
+this sharper light there was an odd change visible in his yellow-white
+face,--a change which caused Tommy to hurriedly support him, half
+leading, half dragging him toward the little cabin. When they had
+reached it, Tommy placed him on a rude “bunk,” or shelf, and stood for
+a moment in anxious contemplation of the tremor-stricken man before him.
+Then he said rapidly: “Listen, Uncle Ben. I'm goin' to town--to town,
+you understand--for the doctor. You're not to get up or move on any
+account until I return. Do you hear?” Johnson nodded violently. “I'll be
+back in two hours.” In another moment he was gone.
+
+For an hour Johnson kept his word. Then he suddenly sat up, and began
+to gaze fixedly at a corner of the cabin. From gazing at it he began to
+smile, from smiling at it he began to talk, from talking at it he began
+to scream, from screaming he passed to cursing and sobbing wildly. Then
+he lay quiet again.
+
+He was so still that to merely human eyes he might have seemed asleep
+or dead. But a squirrel, that, emboldened by the stillness, had entered
+from the roof, stopped short upon a beam above the bunk, for he saw that
+the man's foot was slowly and cautiously moving toward the floor, and
+that the man's eyes were as intent and watchful as his own. Presently,
+still without a sound, both feet were upon the floor. And then the bunk
+creaked, and the squirrel whisked into the eaves of the roof. When he
+peered forth again, everything was quiet, and the man was gone.
+
+An hour later two muleteers on the Placerville Road passed a man with
+dishevelled hair, glaring, bloodshot eyes, and clothes torn with bramble
+and stained with the red dust of the mountain. They pursued him, when
+he turned fiercely on the foremost, wrested a pistol from his grasp, and
+broke away. Later still, when the sun had dropped behind Payne's Ridge,
+the underbrush on Deadwood Slope crackled with a stealthy but continuous
+tread. It must have been an animal whose dimly outlined bulk, in the
+gathering darkness, showed here and there in vague but incessant
+motion; it could be nothing but an animal whose utterance was at once
+so incoherent, monotonous, and unremitting. Yet, when the sound came
+nearer, and the chaparral was parted, it seemed to be a man, and that
+man Johnson.
+
+Above the baying of phantasmal hounds that pressed him hard and drove
+him on, with never rest or mercy; above the lashing of a spectral whip
+that curled about his limbs, sang in his ears, and continually stung him
+forward; above the outcries of the unclean shapes that thronged about
+him,--he could still distinguish one real sound,--the rush and sweep of
+hurrying waters. The Stanislaus River! A thousand feet below him drove
+its yellowing current. Through all the vacillations of his unseated mind
+he had clung to one idea,--to reach the river, to lave in it, to swim it
+if need be, but to put it forever between him and the harrying shapes,
+to drown forever in its turbid depths the thronging spectres, to wash
+away in its yellow flood all stains and color of the past. And now he
+was leaping from boulder to boulder, from blackened stump to stump,
+from gnarled bush to bush, caught for a moment and withheld by clinging
+vines, or plunging downward into dusty hollows, until, rolling,
+dropping, sliding, and stumbling, he reached the river-bank, whereon
+he fell, rose, staggered forward, and fell again with outstretched arms
+upon a rock that breasted the swift current. And there he lay as dead.
+
+A few stars came out hesitatingly above Deadwood Slope. A cold wind that
+had sprung up with the going down of the sun fanned them into momentary
+brightness, swept the heated flanks of the mountain, and ruffled the
+river. Where the fallen man lay there was a sharp curve in the stream,
+so that in the gathering shadows the rushing water seemed to leap out of
+the darkness and to vanish again. Decayed drift-wood, trunks of trees,
+fragments of broken sluicing,--the wash and waste of many a mile,--swept
+into sight a moment, and were gone. All of decay, wreck, and foulness
+gathered in the long circuit of mining-camp and settlement, all the
+dregs and refuse of a crude and wanton civilization, reappeared for an
+instant, and then were hurried away in the darkness and lost. No wonder
+that as the wind ruffled the yellow waters the waves seemed to lift
+their unclean hands toward the rock whereon the fallen man lay, as if
+eager to snatch him from it, too, and hurry him toward the sea.
+
+It was very still. In the clear air a horn blown a mile away was heard
+distinctly. The jingling of a spur and a laugh on the highway over
+Payne's Ridge sounded clearly across the river. The rattling of harness
+and hoofs foretold for many minutes the approach of the Wingdam coach,
+that at last, with flashing lights, passed within a few feet of the
+rock. Then for an hour all again was quiet. Presently the moon, round
+and full, lifted herself above the serried ridge and looked down upon
+the river. At first the bared peak of Deadwood Hill gleamed white and
+skull-like. Then the shadows of Payne's Ridge cast on the slope slowly
+sank away, leaving the unshapely stumps, the dusty fissures, and
+clinging outcrop of Deadwood Slope to stand out in black and silver.
+Still stealing softly downward, the moonlight touched the bank and the
+rock, and then glittered brightly on the river. The rock was bare and
+the man was gone, but the river still hurried swiftly to the sea.
+
+
+“Is there anything for me?” asked Tommy Islington, as, a week after,
+the stage drew up at the Mansion House, and Bill slowly entered the
+bar-room. Bill did not reply, but, turning to a stranger who had entered
+with him, indicated with a jerk of his finger the boy. The stranger
+turned with an air half of business, half of curiosity, and looked
+critically at Tommy. “Is there anything for me?” repeated Tommy, a
+little confused at the silence and scrutiny. Bill walked deliberately
+to the bar, and, placing his back against it, faced Tommy with a look of
+demure enjoyment.
+
+“Ef,” he remarked slowly,--“ef a hundred thousand dollars down and half
+a million in perspektive is ennything, Major, THERE IS!”
+
+
+MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS.
+
+
+PART II--EAST.
+
+
+It was characteristic of Angel's that the disappearance of Johnson, and
+the fact that he had left his entire property to Tommy, thrilled the
+community but slightly in comparison with the astounding discovery that
+he had anything to leave. The finding of a cinnabar lode at Angel's
+absorbed all collateral facts or subsequent details. Prospectors from
+adjoining camps thronged the settlement; the hillside for a mile on
+either side of Johnson's claim was staked out and pre-empted; trade
+received a sudden stimulus; and, in the excited rhetoric of the “Weekly
+Record,” “a new era had broken upon Angel's.” “On Thursday last,” added
+that paper, “over five hundred dollars was taken in over the bar of the
+Mansion House.”
+
+Of the fate of Johnson there was little doubt. He had been last seen
+lying on a boulder on the river-bank by outside passengers of the
+Wingdam night coach, and when Finn of Robinson's Ferry admitted to have
+fired three shots from a revolver at a dark object struggling in the
+water near the ferry, which he “suspicioned” to be a bear, the question
+seemed to be settled. Whatever might have been the fallibility of
+his judgment, of the accuracy of his aim there could be no doubt. The
+general belief that Johnson, after possessing himself of the muleteer's
+pistol, could have run amuck, gave a certain retributive justice to this
+story, which rendered it acceptable to the camp.
+
+It was also characteristic of Angel's that no feeling of envy or
+opposition to the good fortune of Tommy Islington prevailed there. That
+he was thoroughly cognizant, from the first, of Johnson's discovery,
+that his attentions to him were interested, calculating, and speculative
+was, however, the general belief of the majority,--a belief that,
+singularly enough, awakened the first feelings of genuine respect for
+Tommy ever shown by the camp. “He ain't no fool; Yuba Bill seed thet
+from the first,” said the barkeeper. It was Yuba Bill who applied for
+the guardianship of Tommy after his accession to Johnson's claim, and on
+whose bonds the richest men of Calaveras were represented. It was
+Yuba Bill, also, when Tommy was sent East to finish his education,
+accompanied him to San Francisco, and, before parting with his charge on
+the steamer's deck, drew him aside, and said, “Ef at enny time you want
+enny money, Tommy, over and 'bove your 'lowance, you kin write; but ef
+you'll take my advice,” he added, with a sudden huskiness mitigating
+the severity of his voice, “you'll forget every derned ole spavined,
+string-halted bummer as you ever met or knew at Angel's,--ev'ry one,
+Tommy,--ev'ry one! And so--boy--take care of yourself--and--and God
+bless ye, and pertikerly d--n me for a first-class A 1 fool.” It was
+Yuba Bill, also, after this speech, glared savagely around, walked down
+the crowded gang-plank with a rigid and aggressive shoulder, picked a
+quarrel with his cabman, and, after bundling that functionary into his
+own vehicle, took the reins himself, and drove furiously to his hotel.
+“It cost me,” said Bill, recounting the occurrence somewhat later at
+Angel's,--“it cost me a matter o' twenty dollars afore the jedge the
+next mornin'; but you kin bet high thet I taught them 'Frisco chaps
+suthin new about drivin'. I didn't make it lively in Montgomery Street
+for about ten minutes,--O no!”
+
+And so by degrees the two original locaters of the great Cinnabar lode
+faded from the memory of Angel's, and Calaveras knew them no more. In
+five years their very names had been forgotten; in seven the name of the
+town was changed; in ten the town itself was transported bodily to the
+hillside, and the chimney of the Union Smelting Works by night flickered
+like a corpse-light over the site of Johnson's cabin, and by day
+poisoned the pure spices of the pines. Even the Mansion House was
+dismantled, and the Wingdam stage deserted the highway for a shorter cut
+by Quicksilver City. Only the bared crest of Deadwood Hill, as of
+old, sharply cut the clear blue sky, and at its base, as of old, the
+Stanislaus River, unwearied and unresting, babbled, whispered, and
+hurried away to the sea.
+
+
+A midsummer's day was breaking lazily on the Atlantic. There was not
+wind enough to move the vapors in the foggy offing, but where the vague
+distance heaved against a violet sky there were dull red streaks that,
+growing brighter, presently painted out the stars. Soon the brown rocks
+of Greyport appeared faintly suffused, and then the whole ashen line of
+dead coast was kindled, and the lighthouse beacons went out one by one.
+And then a hundred sail, before invisible, started out of the vapory
+horizon, and pressed toward the shore. It was morning, indeed, and some
+of the best society in Greyport, having been up all night, were thinking
+it was time to go to bed.
+
+For as the sky flashed brighter it fired the clustering red roofs of
+a picturesque house by the sands that had all that night, from open
+lattice and illuminated balcony, given light and music to the shore.
+It glittered on the broad crystal spaces of a great conservatory that
+looked upon an exquisite lawn, where all night long the blended odors
+of sea and shore had swooned under the summer moon. But it wrought
+confusion among the colored lamps on the long veranda, and startled
+a group of ladies and gentlemen who had stepped from the drawing-room
+window to gaze upon it. It was so searching and sincere in its way,
+that, as the carriage of the fairest Miss Gillyflower rolled away, that
+peerless young woman, catching sight of her face in the oval mirror,
+instantly pulled down the blinds, and, nestling the whitest shoulders in
+Greyport against the crimson cushions, went to sleep.
+
+“How haggard everybody is! Rose, dear, you look almost intellectual,”
+ said Blanche Masterman.
+
+“I hope not,” said Rose, simply. “Sunrises are very trying. Look how
+that pink regularly puts out Mrs. Brown-Robinson, hair and all!”
+
+“The angels,” said the Count de Nugat, with a polite gesture toward
+the sky, “must have find these celestial combinations very bad for the
+toilette.”
+
+“They're safe in white,--except when they sit for their pictures in
+Venice,” said Blanche. “How fresh Mr. Islington looks! It's really
+uncomplimentary to us.”
+
+“I suppose the sun recognizes in me no rival,” said the young man,
+demurely. “But,” he added, “I have lived much in the open air, and
+require very little sleep.”
+
+“How delightful!” said Mrs. Brown-Robinson, in a low, enthusiastic
+voice and a manner that held the glowing sentiment of sixteen and the
+practical experiences of thirty-two in dangerous combination;--“how
+perfectly delightful! What sunrises you must have seen, and in such
+wild, romantic places! How I envy you! My nephew was a classmate of
+yours, and has often repeated to me those charming stories you tell of
+your adventures. Won't you tell some now? Do! How you must tire of us
+and this artificial life here, so frightfully artificial, you know” (in
+a confidential whisper); “and then to think of the days when you roamed
+the great West with the Indians, and the bisons, and the grizzly bears!
+Of course, you have seen grizzly bears and bisons?”
+
+“Of course he has, dear,” said Blanche, a little pettishly, throwing
+a cloak over her shoulders, and seizing her chaperon by the arm; “his
+earliest infancy was soothed by bisons, and he proudly points to the
+grizzly bear as the playmate of his youth. Come with me, and I'll tell
+you all about it. How good it is of you,” she added, sotto voce, to
+Islington, as he stood by the carriage,--“how perfectly good it is of
+you to be like those animals you tell us of, and not know your full
+power. Think, with your experiences and our credulity, what stories you
+MIGHT tell! And you are going to walk? Good night, then.” A slim, gloved
+hand was frankly extended from the window, and the next moment the
+carriage rolled away.
+
+“Isn't Islington throwing away a chance there?” said Captain Merwin, on
+the veranda.
+
+“Perhaps he couldn't stand my lovely aunt's superadded presence. But
+then, he's the guest of Blanche's father, and I dare say they see enough
+of each other as it is.”
+
+“But isn't it a rather dangerous situation?”
+
+“For him, perhaps; although he's awfully old, and very queer. For
+her, with an experience that takes in all the available men in both
+hemispheres, ending with Nugat over there, I should say a man more or
+less wouldn't affect her much, anyway. Of course,” he laughed, “these
+are the accents of bitterness. But that was last year.”
+
+Perhaps Islington did not overhear the speaker; perhaps, if he did, the
+criticism was not new. He turned carelessly away, and sauntered out
+on the road to the sea. Thence he strolled along the sands toward the
+cliffs, where, meeting an impediment in the shape of a garden wall, he
+leaped it with a certain agile, boyish ease and experience, and struck
+across an open lawn toward the rocks again. The best society of Greyport
+were not early risers, and the spectacle of a trespasser in an evening
+dress excited only the criticism of grooms hanging about the stables, or
+cleanly housemaids on the broad verandas that in Greyport architecture
+dutifully gave upon the sea. Only once, as he entered the boundaries of
+Cliffwood Lodge, the famous seat of Renwyck Masterman, was he aware of
+suspicious scrutiny; but a slouching figure that vanished quickly in the
+lodge offered no opposition to his progress. Avoiding the pathway to
+the lodge, Islington kept along the rocks until, reaching a little
+promontory and rustic pavilion, he sat down and gazed upon the sea.
+
+And presently an infinite peace stole upon him. Except where the waves
+lapped lazily the crags below, the vast expanse beyond seemed unbroken
+by ripple, heaving only in broad ponderable sheets, and rhythmically, as
+if still in sleep. The air was filled with a luminous haze that caught
+and held the direct sunbeams. In the deep calm that lay upon the sea, it
+seemed to Islington that all the tenderness of culture, magic of wealth,
+and spell of refinement that for years had wrought upon that favored
+shore had extended its gracious influence even here. What a pampered and
+caressed old ocean it was; cajoled, flattered, and feted where it lay!
+An odd recollection of the turbid Stanislaus hurrying by the ascetic
+pines, of the grim outlines of Deadwood Hill, swam before his eyes,
+and made the yellow green of the velvet lawn and graceful foliage seem
+almost tropical by contrast. And, looking up, a few yards distant he
+beheld a tall slip of a girl gazing upon the sea,--Blanche Masterman.
+
+She had plucked somewhere a large fan-shaped leaf, which she held
+parasol-wise, shading the blond masses of her hair, and hiding her gray
+eyes. She had changed her festal dress, with its amplitude of flounce
+and train, for a closely fitting half-antique habit whose scant outlines
+would have been trying to limbs less shapely, but which prettily
+accented the graceful curves and sweeping lines of this Greyport
+goddess. As Islington rose, she came toward him with a frankly
+outstretched hand and unconstrained manner. Had she observed him first?
+I don't know.
+
+They sat down together on a rustic seat, Miss Blanche facing the sea,
+and shading her eyes with the leaf.
+
+“I don't really know how long I have been sitting here,” said Islington,
+“or whether I have not been actually asleep and dreaming. It seemed too
+lovely a morning to go to bed. But you?”
+
+From behind the leaf, it appeared that Miss Blanche, on retiring, had
+been pursued by a hideous winged bug which defied the efforts of herself
+and maid to dislodge. Odin, the Spitz dog, had insisted upon scratching
+at the door. And it made her eyes red to sleep in the morning. And she
+had an early call to make. And the sea looked lovely.
+
+“I'm glad to find you here, whatever be the cause,” said Islington, with
+his old directness. “To-day, as you know, is my last day in Greyport,
+and it is much pleasanter to say good by under this blue sky than even
+beneath your father's wonderful frescos yonder. I want to remember you,
+too, as part of this pleasant prospect which belongs to us all, rather
+than recall you in anybody's particular setting.”
+
+“I know,” said Blanche, with equal directness, “that houses are one of
+the defects of our civilization; but I don't think I ever heard the idea
+as elegantly expressed before. Where do you go?”
+
+“I don't know yet. I have several plans. I may go to South America and
+become president of one of the republics,--I am not particular which. I
+am rich, but in that part of America which lies outside of Greyport it
+is necessary for every man to have some work. My friends think I
+should have some great aim in life, with a capital A. But I was born a
+vagabond, and a vagabond I shall probably die.”
+
+“I don't know anybody in South America,” said Blanche, languidly. “There
+were two girls here last season, but they didn't wear stays in the
+house, and their white frocks never were properly done up. If you go to
+South America, you must write to me.”
+
+“I will. Can you tell me the name of this flower which I found in your
+greenhouse. It looks much like a California blossom.”
+
+“Perhaps it is. Father bought it of a half-crazy old man who came here
+one day. Do you know him?”
+
+Islington laughed. “I am afraid not. But let me present this in a less
+business-like fashion.”
+
+“Thank you. Remind me to give you one in return before you go,--or will
+you choose yourself?”
+
+They had both risen as by a common instinct.
+
+“Good by.”
+
+The cool flower-like hand lay in his for an instant.
+
+“Will you oblige me by putting aside that leaf a moment before I go?”
+
+“But my eyes are red, and I look like a perfect fright.”
+
+Yet, after a long pause, the leaf fluttered down, and a pair of very
+beautiful but withal very clear and critical eyes met his. Islington was
+constrained to look away. When he turned again, she was gone.
+
+“Mister Hislington,--sir!”
+
+It was Chalker, the English groom, out of breath with running.
+
+“Seein' you alone, sir,--beg your pardon, sir,--but there's a person--”
+
+“A person! what the devil do you mean? Speak English--no, damn it, I
+mean don't,” said Islington, snappishly.
+
+“I sed a person, sir. Beg pardon--no offence--but not a gent, sir. In
+the lib'ry.”
+
+A little amused even through the utter dissatisfaction with himself
+and vague loneliness that had suddenly come upon him, Islington, as he
+walked toward the lodge, asked, “Why isn't he a gent?
+
+“No gent--beggin' your pardin, sir--'ud guy a man in sarvis, sir. Takes
+me 'ands so, sir, as I sits in the rumble at the gate, and puts 'em
+downd so, sir, and sez, 'Put 'em in your pocket, young man,--or is it
+a road agint you expects to see, that you 'olds hup your 'ands, hand
+crosses 'em like to that,' sez he. ''Old 'ard,' sez he, 'on the short
+curves, or you'll bust your precious crust,' sez he. And hasks for you,
+sir. This way, sir.”
+
+They entered the lodge. Islington hurried down the long Gothic hall, and
+opened the library door.
+
+In an arm-chair, in the centre of the room, a man sat apparently
+contemplating a large, stiff, yellow hat with an enormous brim, that
+was placed on the floor before him. His hands rested lightly between his
+knees, but one foot was drawn up at the side of his chair in a peculiar
+manner. In the first glance that Islington gave, the attitude in some
+odd, irreconcilable way suggested a brake. In another moment he dashed
+across the room, and, holding out both hands, cried, “Yuba Bill!”
+
+The man rose, caught Islington by the shoulders, wheeled him round,
+hugged him, felt of his ribs like a good-natured ogre, shook his hands
+violently, laughed, and then said, somewhat ruefully, “And how ever did
+you know me?”
+
+Seeing that Yuba Bill evidently regarded himself as in some elaborate
+disguise, Islington laughed, and suggested that it must have been
+instinct.
+
+“And you?” said Bill, holding him at arm's length, and surveying him
+critically,--“you!--toe think--toe think--a little cuss no higher nor a
+trace, a boy as I've flicked outer the road with a whip time in agin, a
+boy ez never hed much clothes to speak of, turned into a sport!”
+
+Islington remembered, with a thrill of ludicrous terror, that he still
+wore his evening dress.
+
+“Turned,” continued Yuba Bill, severely,--“turned into a restyourant
+waiter,--a garsong! Eh, Alfonse, bring me a patty de foy grass and an
+omelette, demme!”
+
+“Dear old chap!” said Islington, laughing, and trying to put his
+hand over Bill's bearded mouth, “but you--YOU don't look exactly like
+yourself! You're not well, Bill.” And indeed, as he turned toward the
+light, Bill's eyes appeared cavernous, and his hair and beard thickly
+streaked with gray.
+
+“Maybe it's this yer harness,” said Bill, a little anxiously. “When I
+hitches on this yer curb” (he indicated a massive gold watch-chain with
+enormous links), “and mounts this 'morning star,'” (he pointed to a very
+large solitaire pin which had the appearance of blistering his whole
+shirt-front), “it kinder weighs heavy on me, Tommy. Otherwise I'm all
+right, my boy,--all right.” But he evaded Islington's keen eye, and
+turned from the light.
+
+“You have something to tell me, Bill,” said Islington, suddenly, and
+with almost brusque directness; “out with it.”
+
+Bill did not speak, but moved uneasily toward his hat.
+
+“You didn't come three thousand miles, without a word of warning, to
+talk to me of old times,” said Islington, more kindly, “glad as I would
+have been to see you. It isn't your way, Bill, and you know it. We shall
+not be disturbed here,” he added, in reply to an inquiring glance that
+Bill directed to the door, “and I am ready to hear you.”
+
+“Firstly, then,” said Bill, drawing his chair nearer Islington, “answer
+me one question, Tommy, fair and square, and up and down.”
+
+“Go on,” said Islington, with a slight smile.
+
+“Ef I should say to you, Tommy,--say to you to-day, right here, you must
+come with me,--you must leave this place for a month, a year, two years
+maybe, perhaps forever,--is there anything that 'ud keep you,--anything,
+my boy, ez you couldn't leave?”
+
+“No,” said Tommy, quietly; “I am only visiting here. I thought of
+leaving Greyport to-day.”
+
+“But if I should say to you, Tommy, come with me on a pasear to Chiny,
+to Japan, to South Ameriky, p'r'aps, could you go?”
+
+“Yes,” said Islington, after a slight pause.
+
+“Thar isn't ennything,” said Bill, drawing a little closer, and lowering
+his voice confidentially,--“ennything in the way of a young woman--you
+understand, Tommy--ez would keep you? They're mighty sweet about here;
+and whether a man is young or old, Tommy, there's always some woman as
+is brake or whip to him!”
+
+In a certain excited bitterness that characterized the delivery of
+this abstract truth, Bill did not see that the young man's face flushed
+slightly as he answered “No.”
+
+“Then listen. It's seven years ago, Tommy, thet I was working one o'
+the Pioneer coaches over from Gold Hill. Ez I stood in front o' the
+stage-office, the sheriff o' the county comes to me, and he sez, 'Bill,'
+sez he, 'I've got a looney chap, as I'm in charge of, taking 'im down to
+the 'sylum in Stockton. He'z quiet and peaceable, but the insides don't
+like to ride with him. Hev you enny objection to give him a lift on the
+box beside you?' I sez, 'No; put him up.' When I came to go and get up
+on that box beside him, that man, Tommy,--that man sittin' there, quiet
+and peaceable, was--Johnson!
+
+“He didn't know me, my boy,” Yuba Bill continued, rising and putting his
+hands on Tommy's shoulders,--“he didn't know me. He didn't know nothing
+about you, nor Angel's, nor the quicksilver lode, nor even his own name.
+He said his name was Skaggs, but I knowd it was Johnson. Thar was times,
+Tommy, you might have knocked me off that box with a feather; thar
+was times when if the twenty-seven passengers o' that stage hed found
+theirselves swimming in the American River five hundred feet below
+the road, I never could have explained it satisfactorily to the
+company,--never.
+
+“The sheriff said,” Bill continued hastily, as if to preclude any
+interruption from the young man,--“the sheriff said he had been
+brought into Murphy's Camp three years before, dripping with water, and
+sufferin' from perkussion of the brain, and had been cared for generally
+by the boys 'round. When I told the sheriff I knowed 'im, I got him to
+leave him in my care; and I took him to 'Frisco, Tommy, to 'Frisco,
+and I put him in charge o' the best doctors there, and paid his board
+myself. There was nothin' he didn't have ez he wanted. Don't look that
+way, my dear boy, for God's sake, don't!”
+
+“O Bill,” said Islington, rising and staggering to the window, “why did
+you keep this from me?”
+
+“Why?” said Bill, turning on him savagely,--“why? because I warn't a
+fool. Thar was you, winnin' your way in college; thar was YOU, risin' in
+the world, and of some account to it; yer was an old bummer, ez good ez
+dead to it,--a man ez oughter been dead afore! a man ez never denied it!
+But you allus liked him better nor me,” said Bill, bitterly.
+
+“Forgive me, Bill,” said the young man, seizing both his hands. “I know
+you did it for the best; but go on.”
+
+“Thar ain't much more to tell, nor much use to tell it, as I can see,”
+ said Bill, moodily. “He never could be cured, the doctors said, for he
+had what they called monomania,--was always talking about his wife and
+darter that somebody had stole away years ago, and plannin' revenge
+on that somebody. And six months ago he was missed. I tracked him to
+Carson, to Salt Lake City, to Omaha, to Chicago, to New York,--and
+here!”
+
+“Here!” echoed Islington.
+
+“Here! And that's what brings me here to-day. Whethers he's crazy or
+well, whethers he's huntin' you or lookin' up that other man, you must
+get away from here. You mustn't see him. You and me, Tommy, will go away
+on a cruise. In three or four years he'll be dead or missing, and then
+we'll come back. Come.” And he rose to his feet.
+
+“Bill,” said Islington, rising also, and taking the hand of his friend,
+with the same quiet obstinacy that in the old days had endeared him to
+Bill, “wherever he is, here or elsewhere, sane or crazy, I shall seek
+and find him. Every dollar that I have shall be his, every dollar that I
+have spent shall be returned to him. I am young yet, thank God, and can
+work; and if there is a way out of this miserable business, I shall find
+it.”
+
+“I knew,” said Bill, with a surliness that ill concealed his evident
+admiration of the calm figure before him--“I knew the partikler style
+of d--n fool that you was, and expected no better. Good by, then--God
+Almighty! who's that?”
+
+He was on his way to the open French window, but had started back, his
+face quite white and bloodless, and his eyes staring. Islington ran to
+the window, and looked out. A white skirt vanished around the corner of
+the veranda. When he returned, Bill had dropped into a chair.
+
+“It must have been Miss Masterman, I think; but what's the matter?”
+
+“Nothing,” said Bill, faintly; “have you got any whiskey handy?”
+
+Islington brought a decanter, and, pouring out some spirits, handed the
+glass to Bill. Bill drained it, and then said, “Who is Miss Masterman?”
+
+“Mr. Masterman's daughter; that is, an adopted daughter, I believe.”
+
+“Wot name?”
+
+“I really don't know,” said Islington, pettishly, more vexed than he
+cared to own at this questioning.
+
+Yuba Bill rose and walked to the window, closed it, walked back again
+to the door, glanced at Islington, hesitated, and then returned to his
+chair.
+
+“I didn't tell you I was married--did I?” he said suddenly, looking up
+in Islington's face with an unsuccessful attempt at a reckless laugh.
+
+“No,” said Islington, more pained at the manner than the words.
+
+“Fact,” said Yuba Bill. “Three years ago it was, Tommy,--three years
+ago!”
+
+He looked so hard at Islington, that, feeling he was expected to say
+something, he asked vaguely, “Who did you marry?”
+
+“Thet's it!” said Yuba Bill; “I can't ezactly say; partikly, though, a
+she devil! generally, the wife of half a dozen other men.”
+
+Accustomed, apparently, to have his conjugal infelicities a theme of
+mirth among men, and seeing no trace of amusement on Islington's grave
+face, his dogged, reckless manner softened, and, drawing his chair
+closer to Islington, he went on: “It all began outer this: we was coming
+down Watson's grade one night pretty free, when the expressman turns to
+me and sez, 'There's a row inside, and you'd better pull up!' I pulls
+up, and out hops, first a woman, and then two or three chaps swearing
+and cursin', and tryin' to drag some one arter them. Then it 'pear'd,
+Tommy, thet it was this woman's drunken husband they was going to put
+out for abusin' her, and strikin' her in the coach; and if it hadn't
+been for me, my boy, they'd hev left that chap thar in the road. But I
+fixes matters up by putting her alongside o' me on the box, and we drove
+on. She was very white, Tommy,--for the matter o' that, she was always
+one o' these very white women, that never got red in the face,--but she
+never cried a whimper. Most wimin would have cried. It was queer, but
+she never cried. I thought so at the time.
+
+“She was very tall, with a lot o' light hair meandering down the back of
+her head, as long as a deer-skin whip-lash, and about the color. She hed
+eyes thet'd bore you through at fifty yards, and pooty hands and feet.
+And when she kinder got out o' that stiff, narvous state she was in, and
+warmed up a little, and got chipper, by G-d, sir, she was handsome,--she
+was that!”
+
+A little flushed and embarrassed at his own enthusiasm, he stopped, and
+then said, carelessly, “They got off at Murphy's.”
+
+“Well,” said Islington.
+
+“Well, I used to see her often arter thet, and when she was alone she
+allus took the box-seat. She kinder confided her troubles to me, how her
+husband got drunk and abused her; and I didn't see much o' him, for
+he was away in 'Frisco arter thet. But it was all square, Tommy,--all
+square 'twixt me and her.
+
+“I got a going there a good deal, and then one day I sez to myself,
+'Bill, this won't do,' and I got changed to another route. Did you ever
+know Jackson Filltree, Tommy?” said Bill, breaking off suddenly.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Might have heerd of him, p'r'aps?”
+
+“No,” said Islington, impatiently.
+
+“Jackson Filltree ran the express from White's out to Summit, 'cross the
+North Fork of the Yuba. One day he sez to me, 'Bill, that's a mighty bad
+ford at the North Fork.' I sez, 'I believe you, Jackson.' 'It'll git
+me some day, Bill, sure,' sez he. I sez, 'Why don't you take the lower
+ford?' 'I don't know,' sez he, 'but I can't.' So ever after, when I
+met him, he sez, 'That North Fork ain't got me yet.' One day I was in
+Sacramento, and up comes Filltree. He sez, 'I've sold out the express
+business on account of the North Fork, but it's bound to get me yet,
+Bill, sure'; and he laughs. Two weeks after they finds his body below
+the ford, whar he tried to cross, comin' down from the Summit way. Folks
+said it was foolishness: Tommy, I sez it was Fate! The second day arter
+I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes outer the
+hotel above the stage-office. Her husband, she said, was lying sick in
+Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate. Three
+months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium
+tremems, and dies. There's folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it's
+Fate. A year after that I married her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!
+
+“I lived with her jest three months,” he went on, after a long
+breath,--“three months! It ain't much time for a happy man. I've seen
+a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that three
+months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it was a
+toss-up whether I should kill her or she me. But thar, I'm done. You are
+a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things thet, old as I am,
+three years ago I couldn't have believed.”
+
+When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat
+silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington
+asked where his wife was now.
+
+“Ask me no more, my boy,--no more. I've said my say.” With a gesture as
+of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the
+window.
+
+“You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud do me
+good. Ef you can't go with me, well and good. But go I must.”
+
+“Not before luncheon, I hope,” said a very sweet voice, as Blanche
+Masterman suddenly stood before them. “Father would never forgive me if
+in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington's friends to go in this
+way. You will stay, won't you? Do! And you will give me your arm now;
+and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will follow us into the
+dining-room and introduce you.”
+
+
+“I have quite fallen in love with your friend,” said Miss Blanche, as
+they stood in the drawing-room looking at the figure of Bill, strolling,
+with his short pipe in his mouth, through the distant shrubbery. “He
+asks very queer questions, though. He wanted to know my mother's maiden
+name.”
+
+“He is an honest fellow,” said Islington, gravely.
+
+“You are very much subdued. You don't thank me, I dare say, for keeping
+you and your friend here; but you couldn't go, you know, until father
+returned.”
+
+Islington smiled, but not very gayly.
+
+“And then I think it much better for us to part here under these
+frescos, don't you? Good by.”
+
+She extended her long, slim hand.
+
+“Out in the sunlight there, when my eyes were red, you were very anxious
+to look at me,” she added, in a dangerous voice.
+
+Islington raised his sad eyes to hers. Something glittering upon her own
+sweet lashes trembled and fell.
+
+“Blanche!”
+
+She was rosy enough now, and would have withdrawn her hand, but
+Islington detained it. She was not quite certain but that her waist
+was also in jeopardy. Yet she could not help saying, “Are you sure that
+there isn't anything in the way of a young woman that would keep you?”
+
+“Blanche!” said Islington in reproachful horror.
+
+“If gentlemen will roar out their secrets before an open window, with
+a young woman lying on a sofa on the veranda, reading a stupid French
+novel, they must not be surprised if she gives more attention to them
+than her book.”
+
+“Then you know all, Blanche?”
+
+“I know,” said Blanche, “let's see--I know the partiklar style
+of--ahem!--fool you was, and expected no better. Good by.” And, gliding
+like a lovely and innocent milk snake out of his grasp, she slipped
+away.
+
+
+To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light voices,
+the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport. It looked upon
+formless masses of rock and shrubbery, wide spaces of lawn and beach,
+and a shimmering expanse of water. It singled out particular objects,--a
+white sail in shore, a crystal globe upon the lawn, and flashed upon
+something held between the teeth of a crouching figure scaling the low
+wall of Cliffwood Lodge. Then, as a man and woman passed out from under
+the shadows of the foliage into the open moonlight of the garden path,
+the figure leaped from the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the
+shadow.
+
+It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand
+grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more
+pathetic than terrible. But the next moment the knife was stricken from
+his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that
+apparently sprang from the wall beside him.
+
+“D--n you, Masterman!” cried the old man, hoarsely; “give me fair play,
+and I'll kill you yet!”
+
+“Which my name is Yuba Bill,” said Bill, quietly, “and it's time this
+d--n fooling was stopped.”
+
+The old man glared in Bill's face savagely. “I know you. You're one
+of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his heart
+out,--let me go! Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there she is!
+there!--there!--there! Mary!” He would have screamed, but Bill placed
+his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the
+old man's glance. Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and
+Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path.
+
+“Give me my wife!” muttered the old man hoarsely, between Bill's
+fingers. “Where is she?”
+
+A sudden fury passed over Yuba Bill's face. “Where is your wife?” he
+echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding
+him there as in a vice. “Where is your wife?” he repeated, thrusting his
+grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face.
+“Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil
+that drove one man mad, that sent another to hell by his own hand, that
+eternally broke and ruined me? Where! Where! Do you ask where? In
+jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you hear?--in jail for murder,
+Johnson,--murder!”
+
+The old man gasped, stiffened, and then, relaxing, suddenly slipped,
+a mere inanimate mass, at Yuba Bill's feet. With a sudden revulsion of
+feeling, Yuba Bill dropped at his side, and, lifting him tenderly in
+his arms, whispered, “Look up, old man, Johnson! look up, for
+God's sake!--it's me,--Yuba Bill! and yonder is your daughter,
+and--Tommy!--don't you know--Tommy, little Tommy Islington?”
+
+Johnson's eyes slowly opened. He whispered, “Tommy! yes, Tommy! Sit by
+me, Tommy. But don't sit so near the bank. Don't you see how the river
+is rising and beckoning to me,--hissing, and boilin' over the rocks?
+It's gittin higher!--hold me, Tommy,--hold me, and don't let me go yet.
+We'll live to cut his heart out, Tommy,--we'll live--we'll--” His head
+sank, and the rushing river, invisible to all eyes save his, leaped
+toward him out of the darkness, and bore him away, no longer to the
+darkness, but through it to the distant, peaceful shining sea.
+
+
+
+
+HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR.
+
+
+It had been raining in the valley of the Sacramento. The North Fork
+had overflowed its banks and Rattlesnake Creek was impassable. The few
+boulders that had marked the summer ford at Simpson's Crossing were
+obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills. The up
+stage was stopped at Grangers; the last mail had been abandoned in the
+tules, the rider swimming for his life. “An area,” remarked the
+“Sierra Avalanche,” with pensive local pride, “as large as the State of
+Massachusetts is now under water.”
+
+Nor was the weather any better in the foothills. The mud lay deep on the
+mountain road; wagons that neither physical force nor moral objurgation
+could move from the evil ways into which they had fallen, encumbered the
+track, and the way to Simpson's Bar was indicated by broken-down teams
+and hard swearing. And farther on, cut off and inaccessible, rained
+upon and bedraggled, smitten by high winds and threatened by high water,
+Simpson's Bar, on the eve of Christmas day, 1862, clung like a swallow's
+nest to the rocky entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain,
+and shook in the blast.
+
+As night shut down on the settlement, a few lights gleamed through
+the mist from the windows of cabins on either side of the highway now
+crossed and gullied by lawless streams and swept by marauding winds.
+Happily most of the population were gathered at Thompson's store,
+clustered around a red-hot stove, at which they silently spat in some
+accepted sense of social communion that perhaps rendered conversation
+unnecessary. Indeed, most methods of diversion had long since been
+exhausted on Simpson's Bar; high water had suspended the regular
+occupations on gulch and on river, and a consequent lack of money and
+whiskey had taken the zest from most illegitimate recreation. Even Mr.
+Hamlin was fain to leave the Bar with fifty dollars in his pocket,--the
+only amount actually realized of the large sums won by him in the
+successful exercise of his arduous profession. “Ef I was asked,” he
+remarked somewhat later,--“ef I was asked to pint out a purty little
+village where a retired sport as didn't care for money could exercise
+hisself, frequent and lively, I'd say Simpson's Bar; but for a young man
+with a large family depending on his exertions, it don't pay.” As Mr.
+Hamlin's family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark is quoted
+rather to show the breadth of his humor than the exact extent of his
+responsibilities.
+
+Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in the
+listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement. Even the
+sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse them. Dick
+Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted
+his head, but no other one of the group indicated any interest in, or
+recognition of, the man who entered.
+
+It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's
+Bar as “The Old Man.” A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant
+of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of
+ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude
+for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He
+had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first
+notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest
+man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair.
+
+“Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar,--Jim
+Smiley,--funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest
+yarn about--”
+
+“Smiley's a ---- fool,” interrupted a gloomy voice.
+
+“A particular ---- skunk,” added another in sepulchral accents.
+
+A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced
+quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. “That's so,”
+ he said reflectively, after a pause, “certingly a sort of a skunk and
+suthin of a fool. In course.” He was silent for a moment as in painful
+contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.
+“Dismal weather, ain't it?” he added, now fully embarked on the current
+of prevailing sentiment. “Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show
+for money this season. And tomorrow's Christmas.”
+
+There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of
+satisfaction or disgust was not plain. “Yes,” continued the Old Man in
+the lugubrious tone he had, within the last few moments, unconsciously
+adopted,--“yes, Christmas, and to-night's Christmas eve. Ye see, boys,
+I kinder thought--that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you
+know--that may be ye'd all like to come over to my house to-night and
+have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn't? Don't feel
+like it, may be?” he added with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces
+of his companions.
+
+“Well, I don't know,” responded Tom Flynn with some cheerfulness.
+“P'r'aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does SHE say to
+it?”
+
+The Old Man hesitated. His conjugal experience had not been a happy one,
+and the fact was known to Simpson's Bar. His first wife, a delicate,
+pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous
+suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his
+house to expose her infidelity. On arriving, the party found the shy,
+petite creature quietly engaged in her household duties, and retired
+abashed and discomfited. But the sensitive woman did not easily recover
+from the shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty
+she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the
+closet in which he was concealed and escape with him. She left a boy of
+three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The Old Man's present wife
+had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.
+
+Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness that
+it was the “Old Man's house,” and that, invoking the Divine Power, if
+the case were his own, he would invite whom he pleased, even if in
+so doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further
+remarked, should contend against him vainly. All this delivered with a
+terseness and vigor lost in this necessary translation.
+
+“In course. Certainly. Thet's it,” said the Old Man with a sympathetic
+frown. “Thar's no trouble about THET. It's my own house, built every
+stick on it myself. Don't you be afeard o' her, boys. She MAY cut up a
+trifle rough,--ez wimmin do,--but she'll come round.” Secretly the Old
+Man trusted to the exaltation of liquor and the power of courageous
+example to sustain him in such an emergency.
+
+As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson's Bar, had not
+spoken. He now took his pipe from his lips. “Old Man, how's that yer
+Johnny gettin' on? Seems to me he didn't look so peart last time I seed
+him on the bluff heavin' rocks at Chinamen. Didn't seem to take much
+interest in it. Thar was a gang of 'em by yar yesterday,--drownded out
+up the river,--and I kinder thought o' Johnny, and how he'd miss 'em!
+May be now, we'd be in the way ef he wus sick?”
+
+The father, evidently touched not only by this pathetic picture of
+Johnny's deprivation, but by the considerate delicacy of the speaker,
+hastened to assure him that Johnny was better and that a “little fun
+might 'liven him up.” Whereupon Dick arose, shook himself, and saying,
+“I'm ready. Lead the way, Old Man: here goes,” himself led the way with
+a leap, a characteristic howl, and darted out into the night. As he
+passed through the outer room he caught up a blazing brand from the
+hearth. The action was repeated by the rest of the party, closely
+following and elbowing each other, and before the astonished proprietor
+of Thompson's grocery was aware of the intention of his guests, the room
+was deserted.
+
+The night was pitchy dark. In the first gust of wind their temporary
+torches were extinguished, and only the red brands dancing and flitting
+in the gloom like drunken will-o'-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts.
+Their way led up Pine-Tree Canyon, at the head of which a broad, low,
+bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the mountain-side. It was the home of
+the Old Man, and the entrance to the tunnel in which he worked when
+he worked at all. Here the crowd paused for a moment, out of delicate
+deference to their host, who came up panting in the rear.
+
+“P'r'aps ye'd better hold on a second out yer, whilst I go in and see
+thet things is all right,” said the Old Man, with an indifference he
+was far from feeling. The suggestion was graciously accepted, the
+door opened and closed on the host, and the crowd, leaning their backs
+against the wall and cowering under the eaves, waited and listened.
+
+For a few moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from the
+eaves, and the stir and rustle of wrestling boughs above them. Then the
+men became uneasy, and whispered suggestion and suspicion passed from
+the one to the other. “Reckon she's caved in his head the first lick!”
+ “Decoyed him inter the tunnel and barred him up, likely.” “Got him down
+and sittin' on him.” “Prob'ly bilin suthin to heave on us: stand clear
+the door, boys!” For just then the latch clicked, the door slowly
+opened, and a voice said, “Come in out o' the wet.”
+
+The voice was neither that of the Old Man nor of his wife. It was the
+voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural
+hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature
+self-assertion can give. It was the face of a small boy that looked up
+at theirs,--a face that might have been pretty and even refined but
+that it was darkened by evil knowledge from within, and dirt and hard
+experience from without. He had a blanket around his shoulders and had
+evidently just risen from his bed. “Come in,” he repeated, “and don't
+make no noise. The Old Man's in there talking to mar,” he continued,
+pointing to an adjacent room which seemed to be a kitchen, from which
+the Old Man's voice came in deprecating accents. “Let me be,” he added,
+querulously, to Dick Bullen, who had caught him up, blanket and all, and
+was affecting to toss him into the fire, “let go o' me, you d----d old
+fool, d'ye hear?”
+
+Thus adjured, Dick Bullen lowered Johnny to the ground with a smothered
+laugh, while the men, entering quietly, ranged themselves around a long
+table of rough boards which occupied the centre of the room. Johnny then
+gravely proceeded to a cupboard and brought out several articles which
+he deposited on the table. “Thar's whiskey. And crackers. And red
+herons. And cheese.” He took a bite of the latter on his way to the
+table. “And sugar.” He scooped up a mouthful en route with a small and
+very dirty hand. “And terbacker. Thar's dried appils too on the shelf,
+but I don't admire 'em. Appils is swellin'. Thar,” he concluded, “now
+wade in, and don't be afeard. I don't mind the old woman. She don't
+b'long to ME. S'long.”
+
+He had stepped to the threshold of a small room, scarcely larger than a
+closet, partitioned off from the main apartment, and holding in its dim
+recess a small bed. He stood there a moment looking at the company, his
+bare feet peeping from the blanket, and nodded.
+
+“Hello, Johnny! You ain't goin' to turn in agin, are ye?” said Dick.
+
+“Yes, I are,” responded Johnny, decidedly.
+
+“Why, wot's up, old fellow?”
+
+“I'm sick.”
+
+“How sick!”
+
+“I've got a fevier. And childblains. And roomatiz,” returned Johnny,
+and vanished within. After a moment's pause, he added in the dark,
+apparently from under the bedclothes,--“And biles!”
+
+There was an embarrassing silence. The men looked at each other, and at
+the fire. Even with the appetizing banquet before them, it seemed as if
+they might again fall into the despondency of Thompson's grocery, when
+the voice of the Old Man, incautiously lifted, came deprecatingly from
+the kitchen.
+
+“Certainly! Thet's so. In course they is. A gang o' lazy drunken
+loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen's the ornariest of all. Didn't hev
+no more sabe than to come round yar with sickness in the house and no
+provision. Thet's what I said: 'Bullen,' sez I, 'it's crazy drunk you
+are, or a fool,' sez I, 'to think o' such a thing.' 'Staples,' I sez,
+'be you a man, Staples, and 'spect to raise h-ll under my roof and
+invalids lyin' round?' But they would come,--they would. Thet's wot you
+must 'spect o' such trash as lays round the Bar.”
+
+A burst of laughter from the men followed this unfortunate exposure.
+Whether it was overheard in the kitchen, or whether the Old Man's irate
+companion had just then exhausted all other modes of expressing her
+contemptuous indignation, I cannot say, but a back door was suddenly
+slammed with great violence. A moment later and the Old Man reappeared,
+haply unconscious of the cause of the late hilarious outburst, and
+smiled blandly.
+
+“The old woman thought she'd jest run over to Mrs. McFadden's for a
+sociable call,” he explained, with jaunty indifference, as he took a
+seat at the board.
+
+Oddly enough it needed this untoward incident to relieve the
+embarrassment that was beginning to be felt by the party, and their
+natural audacity returned with their host. I do not propose to record
+the convivialities of that evening. The inquisitive reader will accept
+the statement that the conversation was characterized by the same
+intellectual exaltation, the same cautious reverence, the same
+fastidious delicacy, the same rhetorical precision, and the same logical
+and coherent discourse somewhat later in the evening, which distinguish
+similar gatherings of the masculine sex in more civilized localities and
+under more favorable auspices. No glasses were broken in the absence of
+any; no liquor was uselessly spilt on floor or table in the scarcity of
+that article.
+
+It was nearly midnight when the festivities were interrupted. “Hush,”
+ said Dick Bullen, holding up his hand. It was the querulous voice of
+Johnny from his adjacent closet: “O dad!”
+
+The Old Man arose hurriedly and disappeared in the closet. Presently he
+reappeared. “His rheumatiz is coming on agin bad,” he explained, “and
+he wants rubbin'.” He lifted the demijohn of whiskey from the table
+and shook it. It was empty. Dick Bullen put down his tin cup with
+an embarrassed laugh. So did the others. The Old Man examined their
+contents and said hopefully, “I reckon that's enough; he don't need
+much. You hold on all o' you for a spell, and I'll be back”; and
+vanished in the closet with an old flannel shirt and the whiskey. The
+door closed but imperfectly, and the following dialogue was distinctly
+audible:--
+
+“Now, Sonny, whar does she ache worst?”
+
+“Sometimes over yar and sometimes under yer; but it's most powerful from
+yer to yer. Rub yer, dad.”
+
+A silence seemed to indicate a brisk rubbing. Then Johnny:
+
+“Hevin' a good time out yer, dad?”
+
+“Yes, sonny.”
+
+“To-morrer's Chrismiss, ain't it?”
+
+“Yes, Sonny. How does she feel now?”
+
+“Better rub a little furder down. Wot's Chrismiss, anyway? Wot's it all
+about?”
+
+“O, it's a day.”
+
+This exhaustive definition was apparently satisfactory, for there was a
+silent interval of rubbing. Presently Johnny again:
+
+“Mar sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to
+everybody Chrismiss, and then she jist waded inter you. She sez thar's
+a man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man, you know, but a kind o'
+Chinemin, comes down the chimbley night afore Chrismiss and gives things
+to chillern,--boys like me. Puts 'em in their butes! Thet's what she
+tried to play upon me. Easy now, pop, whar are you rubbin' to,--thet's
+a mile from the place. She jest made that up, didn't she, jest to
+aggrewate me and you? Don't rub thar. . . . Why, dad!”
+
+In the great quiet that seemed to have fallen upon the house the sigh
+of the near pines and the drip of leaves without was very distinct.
+Johnny's voice, too, was lowered as he went on, “Don't you take on now,
+fur I'm gettin' all right fast. Wot's the boys doin' out thar?”
+
+The Old Man partly opened the door and peered through. His guests were
+sitting there sociably enough, and there were a few silver coins and a
+lean buckskin purse on the table. “Bettin' on suthin,--some little game
+or 'nother. They're all right,” he replied to Johnny, and recommenced
+his rubbing.
+
+“I'd like to take a hand and win some money,” said Johnny, reflectively,
+after a pause.
+
+The Old Man glibly repeated what was evidently a familiar formula, that
+if Johnny would wait until he struck it rich in the tunnel he'd have
+lots of money, etc., etc.
+
+“Yes,” said Johnny, “but you don't. And whether you strike it or I win
+it, it's about the same. It's all luck. But it's mighty cur'o's about
+Chrismiss,--ain't it? Why do they call it Chrismiss?”
+
+Perhaps from some instinctive deference to the overhearing of his
+guests, or from some vague sense of incongruity, the Old Man's reply was
+so low as to be inaudible beyond the room.
+
+“Yes,” said Johnny, with some slight abatement of interest, “I've heerd
+o' HIM before. Thar, that'll do, dad. I don't ache near so bad as I did.
+Now wrap me tight in this yer blanket. So. Now,” he added in a muffled
+whisper, “sit down yer by me till I go asleep.” To assure himself of
+obedience, he disengaged one hand from the blanket and, grasping his
+father's sleeve, again composed himself to rest.
+
+For some moments the Old Man waited patiently. Then the unwonted
+stillness of the house excited his curiosity, and without moving from
+the bed, he cautiously opened the door with his disengaged hand, and
+looked into the main room. To his infinite surprise it was dark and
+deserted. But even then a smouldering log on the hearth broke, and by
+the upspringing blaze he saw the figure of Dick Bullen sitting by the
+dying embers.
+
+“Hello!”
+
+Dick started, rose, and came somewhat unsteadily toward him.
+
+“Whar's the boys?” said the Old Man.
+
+“Gone up the canyon on a little pasear. They're coming back for me in a
+minit. I'm waitin' round for 'em. What are you starin' at, Old Man?” he
+added with a forced laugh; “do you think I'm drunk?”
+
+The Old Man might have been pardoned the supposition, for Dick's eyes
+were humid and his face flushed. He loitered and lounged back to the
+chimney, yawned, shook himself, buttoned up his coat and laughed.
+“Liquor ain't so plenty as that, Old Man. Now don't you git up,” he
+continued, as the Old Man made a movement to release his sleeve from
+Johnny's hand. “Don't you mind manners. Sit jest whar you be; I'm goin'
+in a jiffy. Thar, that's them now.”
+
+There was a low tap at the door. Dick Bullen opened it quickly, nodded
+“Good night” to his host, and disappeared. The Old Man would have
+followed him but for the hand that still unconsciously grasped his
+sleeve. He could have easily disengaged it: it was small, weak, and
+emaciated. But perhaps because it WAS small, weak, and emaciated, he
+changed his mind, and, drawing his chair closer to the bed, rested his
+head upon it. In this defenceless attitude the potency of his earlier
+potations surprised him. The room flickered and faded before his eyes,
+reappeared, faded again, went out, and left him--asleep.
+
+Meantime Dick Bullen, closing the door, confronted his companions. “Are
+you ready?” said Staples. “Ready,” said Dick; “what's the time?” “Past
+twelve,” was the reply; “can you make it?--it's nigh on fifty miles, the
+round trip hither and yon.” “I reckon,” returned Dick, shortly. “Whar's
+the mare?” “Bill and Jack's holdin' her at the crossin'.” “Let 'em hold
+on a minit longer,” said Dick.
+
+He turned and re-entered the house softly. By the light of the guttering
+candle and dying fire he saw that the door of the little room was open.
+He stepped toward it on tiptoe and looked in. The Old Man had fallen
+back in his chair, snoring, his helpless feet thrust out in a line with
+his collapsed shoulders, and his hat pulled over his eyes. Beside him,
+on a narrow wooden bedstead, lay Johnny, muffled tightly in a blanket
+that hid all save a strip of forehead and a few curls damp with
+perspiration. Dick Bullen made a step forward, hesitated, and glanced
+over his shoulder into the deserted room. Everything was quiet. With
+a sudden resolution he parted his huge mustaches with both hands and
+stooped over the sleeping boy. But even as he did so a mischievous
+blast, lying in wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindled the hearth,
+and lit up the room with a shameless glow from which Dick fled in
+bashful terror.
+
+His companions were already waiting for him at the crossing. Two of them
+were struggling in the darkness with some strange misshapen bulk, which
+as Dick came nearer took the semblance of a great yellow horse.
+
+It was the mare. She was not a pretty picture. From her Roman nose to
+her rising haunches, from her arched spine hidden by the stiff machillas
+of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony legs, there was not a
+line of equine grace. In her half-blind but wholly vicious white eyes,
+in her protruding under lip, in her monstrous color, there was nothing
+but ugliness and vice.
+
+“Now then,” said Staples, “stand cl'ar of her heels, boys, and up with
+you. Don't miss your first holt of her mane, and mind ye get your off
+stirrup QUICK. Ready!”
+
+There was a leap, a scrambling struggle, a bound, a wild retreat of the
+crowd, a circle of flying hoofs, two springless leaps that jarred the
+earth, a rapid play and jingle of spurs, a plunge, and then the voice of
+Dick somewhere in the darkness, “All right!”
+
+“Don't take the lower road back onless you're hard pushed for time!
+Don't hold her in down hill! We'll be at the ford at five. G'lang!
+Hoopa! Mula! GO!”
+
+A splash, a spark struck from the ledge in the road, a clatter in the
+rocky cut beyond, and Dick was gone.
+
+*****
+
+Sing, O Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse of chivalrous
+men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the
+fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack!
+she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and
+swaggering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow him in prose, afoot!
+
+It was one o'clock, and yet he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill. For
+in that time Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imperfections and
+practised all her vices. Thrice had she stumbled. Twice had she thrown
+up her Roman nose in a straight line with the reins, and, resisting bit
+and spur, struck out madly across country. Twice had she reared, and,
+rearing, fallen backward; and twice had the agile Dick, unharmed,
+regained his seat before she found her vicious legs again. And a mile
+beyond them, at the foot of a long hill, was Rattlesnake Creek. Dick
+knew that here was the crucial test of his ability to perform his
+enterprise, set his teeth grimly, put his knees well into her flanks,
+and changed his defensive tactics to brisk aggression. Bullied and
+maddened, Jovita began the descent of the hill. Here the artful Richard
+pretended to hold her in with ostentatious objurgation and well-feigned
+cries of alarm. It is unnecessary to add that Jovita instantly ran away.
+Nor need I state the time made in the descent; it is written in the
+chronicles of Simpson's Bar. Enough that in another moment, as it seemed
+to Dick, she was splashing on the overflowed banks of Rattlesnake Creek.
+As Dick expected, the momentum she had acquired carried her beyond the
+point of balking, and, holding her well together for a mighty leap, they
+dashed into the middle of the swiftly flowing current. A few moments
+of kicking, wading, and swimming, and Dick drew a long breath on the
+opposite bank.
+
+The road from Rattlesnake Creek to Red Mountain was tolerably level.
+Either the plunge in Rattlesnake Creek had dampened her baleful fire,
+or the art which led to it had shown her the superior wickedness of
+her rider, for Jovita no longer wasted her surplus energy in wanton
+conceits. Once she bucked, but it was from force of habit; once she
+shied, but it was from a new freshly painted meeting-house at the
+crossing of the county road. Hollows, ditches, gravelly deposits,
+patches of freshly springing grasses, flew from beneath her rattling
+hoofs. She began to smell unpleasantly, once or twice she coughed
+slightly, but there was no abatement of her strength or speed. By two
+o'clock he had passed Red Mountain and begun the descent to the plain.
+Ten minutes later the driver of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken and
+passed by a “man on a Pinto hoss,”--an event sufficiently notable for
+remark. At half past two Dick rose in his stirrups with a great shout.
+Stars were glittering through the rifted clouds, and beyond him, out of
+the plain, rose two spires, a flagstaff, and a straggling line of black
+objects. Dick jingled his spurs and swung his riata, Jovita bounded
+forward, and in another moment they swept into Tuttleville and drew up
+before the wooden piazza of “The Hotel of All Nations.”
+
+What transpired that night at Tuttleville is not strictly a part of this
+record. Briefly I may state, however, that after Jovita had been
+handed over to a sleepy ostler, whom she at once kicked into unpleasant
+consciousness, Dick sallied out with the bar-keeper for a tour of
+the sleeping town. Lights still gleamed from a few saloons and
+gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped before several
+closed shops, and by persistent tapping and judicious outcry roused
+the proprietors from their beds, and made them unbar the doors of their
+magazines and expose their wares. Sometimes they were met by curses, but
+oftener by interest and some concern in their needs, and the interview
+was invariably concluded by a drink. It was three o'clock before
+this pleasantry was given over, and with a small waterproof bag of
+india-rubber strapped on his shoulders Dick returned to the hotel. But
+here he was waylaid by Beauty,--Beauty opulent in charms, affluent in
+dress, persuasive in speech, and Spanish in accent! In vain she repeated
+the invitation in “Excelsior,” happily scorned by all Alpine-climbing
+youth, and rejected by this child of the Sierras,--a rejection softened
+in this instance by a laugh and his last gold coin. And then he sprang
+to the saddle and dashed down the lonely street and out into the
+lonelier plain, where presently the lights, the black line of houses,
+the spires, and the flagstaff sank into the earth behind him again and
+were lost in the distance.
+
+The storm had cleared away, the air was brisk and cold, the outlines of
+adjacent landmarks were distinct, but it was half past four before Dick
+reached the meeting-house and the crossing of the county road. To avoid
+the rising grade he had taken a longer and more circuitous road, in
+whose viscid mud Jovita sank fetlock deep at every bound. It was a
+poor preparation for a steady ascent of five miles more; but Jovita,
+gathering her legs under her, took it with her usual blind, unreasoning
+fury, and a half-hour later reached the long level that led to
+Rattlesnake Creek. Another half-hour would bring him to the creek. He
+threw the reins lightly upon the neck of the mare, chirruped to her, and
+began to sing.
+
+Suddenly Jovita shied with a bound that would have unseated a less
+practised rider. Hanging to her rein was a figure that had leaped from
+the bank, and at the same time from the road before her arose a
+shadowy horse and rider. “Throw up your hands,” commanded this second
+apparition, with an oath.
+
+Dick felt the mare tremble, quiver, and apparently sink under him. He
+knew what it meant and was prepared.
+
+“Stand aside, Jack Simpson, I know you, you d----d thief. Let me pass
+or--”
+
+He did not finish the sentence. Jovita rose straight in the air with a
+terrific bound, throwing the figure from her bit with a single shake
+of her vicious head, and charged with deadly malevolence down on the
+impediment before her. An oath, a pistol-shot, horse and highwayman
+rolled over in the road, and the next moment Jovita was a hundred
+yards away. But the good right arm of her rider, shattered by a bullet,
+dropped helplessly at his side.
+
+Without slacking his speed he shifted the reins to his left hand. But a
+few moments later he was obliged to halt and tighten the saddle-girths
+that had slipped in the onset. This in his crippled condition took some
+time. He had no fear of pursuit, but looking up he saw that the eastern
+stars were already paling, and that the distant peaks had lost their
+ghostly whiteness, and now stood out blackly against a lighter sky. Day
+was upon him. Then completely absorbed in a single idea, he forgot
+the pain of his wound, and mounting again dashed on toward Rattlesnake
+Creek. But now Jovita's breath came broken by gasps, Dick reeled in his
+saddle, and brighter and brighter grew the sky.
+
+Ride, Richard; run, Jovita; linger, O day!
+
+For the last few rods there was a roaring in his ears. Was it exhaustion
+from loss of blood, or what? He was dazed and giddy as he swept down
+the hill, and did not recognize his surroundings. Had he taken the wrong
+road, or was this Rattlesnake Creek?
+
+It was. But the brawling creek he had swam a few hours before had risen,
+more than doubled its volume, and now rolled a swift and resistless
+river between him and Rattlesnake Hill. For the first time that night
+Richard's heart sank within him. The river, the mountain, the quickening
+east, swam before his eyes. He shut them to recover his self-control. In
+that brief interval, by some fantastic mental process, the little room
+at Simpson's Bar and the figures of the sleeping father and son rose
+upon him. He opened his eyes wildly, cast off his coat, pistol, boots,
+and saddle, bound his precious pack tightly to his shoulders, grasped
+the bare flanks of Jovita with his bared knees, and with a shout dashed
+into the yellow water. A cry rose from the opposite bank as the head
+of a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling
+current, and then were swept away amidst uprooted trees and whirling
+drift-wood.
+
+*****
+
+The Old Man started and woke. The fire on the hearth was dead, the
+candle in the outer room flickering in its socket, and somebody was
+rapping at the door. He opened it, but fell back with a cry before the
+dripping half-naked figure that reeled against the doorpost.
+
+“Dick?”
+
+“Hush! Is he awake yet?”
+
+“No,--but, Dick?--”
+
+“Dry up, you old fool! Get me some whiskey QUICK!” The Old Man flew and
+returned with--an empty bottle! Dick would have sworn, but his strength
+was not equal to the occasion. He staggered, caught at the handle of the
+door, and motioned to the Old Man.
+
+“Thar's suthin' in my pack yer for Johnny. Take it off. I can't.”
+
+The Old Man unstrapped the pack and laid it before the exhausted man.
+
+“Open it, quick!”
+
+He did so with trembling fingers. It contained only a few poor
+toys,--cheap and barbaric enough, goodness knows, but bright with paint
+and tinsel. One of them was broken; another, I fear, was irretrievably
+ruined by water; and on the third--ah me! there was a cruel spot.
+
+“It don't look like much, that's a fact,” said Dick, ruefully . . . .
+“But it's the best we could do. . . . Take 'em, Old Man, and put 'em in
+his stocking, and tell him--tell him, you know--hold me, Old Man--” The
+Old Man caught at his sinking figure. “Tell him,” said Dick, with a weak
+little laugh,--“tell him Sandy Claus has come.”
+
+
+And even so, bedraggled, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm
+hanging helplessly at his side, Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar and
+fell fainting on the first threshold. The Christmas dawn came slowly
+after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of ineffable
+love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's Bar that the whole mountain
+as if caught in a generous action, blushed to the skies.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.
+
+
+She was a Klamath Indian. Her title was, I think, a compromise between
+her claim as daughter of a chief, and gratitude to her earliest white
+protector, whose name, after the Indian fashion, she had adopted. “Bob”
+ Walker had taken her from the breast of her dead mother at a time when
+the sincere volunteer soldiery of the California frontier were impressed
+with the belief that extermination was the manifest destiny of the
+Indian race. He had with difficulty restrained the noble zeal of his
+compatriots long enough to convince them that the exemption of one
+Indian baby would not invalidate this theory. And he took her to his
+home,--a pastoral clearing on the banks of the Salmon River,--where she
+was cared for after a frontier fashion.
+
+Before she was nine years old, she had exhausted the scant kindliness of
+the thin, overworked Mrs. Walker. As a playfellow of the young Walkers
+she was unreliable; as a nurse for the baby she was inefficient. She
+lost the former in the trackless depths of a redwood forest; she basely
+abandoned the latter in an extemporized cradle, hanging like a chrysalis
+to a convenient bough. She lied and she stole,--two unpardonable sins
+in a frontier community, where truth was a necessity and provisions were
+the only property. Worse than this, the outskirts of the clearing
+were sometimes haunted by blanketed tatterdemalions with whom she
+had mysterious confidences. Mr. Walker more than once regretted his
+indiscreet humanity; but she presently relieved him of responsibility,
+and possibly of bloodguiltiness, by disappearing entirely.
+
+When she reappeared, it was at the adjacent village of Logport, in
+the capacity of housemaid to a trader's wife, who, joining some little
+culture to considerable conscientiousness, attempted to instruct her
+charge. But the Princess proved an unsatisfactory pupil to even so
+liberal a teacher. She accepted the alphabet with great good-humor,
+but always as a pleasing and recurring novelty, in which all interest
+expired at the completion of each lesson. She found a thousand uses
+for her books and writing materials other than those known to civilized
+children. She made a curious necklace of bits of slate-pencil, she
+constructed a miniature canoe from the pasteboard covers of her primer,
+she bent her pens into fish-hooks, and tattooed the faces of her
+younger companions with blue ink. Religious instruction she received as
+good-humoredly, and learned to pronounce the name of the Deity with
+a cheerful familiarity that shocked her preceptress. Nor could her
+reverence be reached through analogy; she knew nothing of the Great
+Spirit, and professed entire ignorance of the Happy Hunting-Grounds.
+Yet she attended divine service regularly, and as regularly asked for a
+hymn-book; and it was only through the discovery that she had collected
+twenty-five of these volumes and had hidden them behind the woodpile,
+that her connection with the First Baptist Church of Logport ceased. She
+would occasionally abandon these civilized and Christian privileges, and
+disappear from her home, returning after several days of absence with an
+odor of bark and fish, and a peace-offering to her mistress in the shape
+of venison or game.
+
+To add to her troubles, she was now fourteen, and, according to the laws
+of her race, a woman. I do not think the most romantic fancy would have
+called her pretty. Her complexion defied most of those ambiguous similes
+through which poets unconsciously apologize for any deviation from the
+Caucasian standard. It was not wine nor amber colored; if anything, it
+was smoky. Her face was tattooed with red and white lines on one cheek,
+as if a duo-toothed comb had been drawn from cheek-bone to jaw, and, but
+for the good-humor that beamed from her small berry-like eyes and shone
+in her white teeth, would have been repulsive. She was short and stout.
+In her scant drapery and unrestrained freedom she was hardly statuesque,
+and her more unstudied attitudes were marred by a simian habit of softly
+scratching her left ankle with the toes of her right foot, in moments of
+contemplation.
+
+I think I have already shown enough to indicate the incongruity of her
+existence with even the low standard of civilization that obtained
+at Logport in the year 1860. It needed but one more fact to prove the
+far-sighted poetical sagacity and prophetic ethics of those sincere
+advocates of extermination, to whose virtues I have done but scant
+justice in the beginning of this article. This fact was
+presently furnished by the Princess. After one of her periodical
+disappearances,--this time unusually prolonged,--she astonished Logport
+by returning with a half-breed baby of a week old in her arms. That
+night a meeting of the hard-featured serious matrons of Logport was held
+at Mrs. Brown's. The immediate banishment of the Princess was demanded.
+Soft-hearted Mrs. Brown endeavored vainly to get a mitigation or
+suspension of the sentence. But, as on a former occasion, the Princess
+took matters into her own hands. A few mornings afterwards, a wicker
+cradle containing an Indian baby was found hanging on the handle of
+the door of the First Baptist Church. It was the Parthian arrow of the
+flying Princess. From that day Logport knew her no more.
+
+
+It had been a bright clear day on the upland, so clear that the ramparts
+of Fort Jackson and the flagstaff were plainly visible twelve miles away
+from the long curving peninsula that stretched a bared white arm around
+the peaceful waters of Logport Bay. It had been a clear day upon the
+sea-shore, albeit the air was filled with the flying spume and shifting
+sand of a straggling beach whose low dunes were dragged down by the long
+surges of the Pacific and thrown up again by the tumultuous trade-winds.
+But the sun had gone down in a bank of fleecy fog that was beginning to
+roll in upon the beach. Gradually the headland at the entrance of the
+harbor and the lighthouse disappeared, then the willow fringe that
+marked the line of Salmon River vanished, and the ocean was gone. A
+few sails still gleamed on the waters of the bay; but the advancing
+fog wiped them out one by one, crept across the steel-blue expanse,
+swallowed up the white mills and single spire of Logport, and, joining
+with reinforcements from the marshes, moved solemnly upon the hills. Ten
+minutes more and the landscape was utterly blotted out; simultaneously
+the wind died away, and a death-like silence stole over sea and shore.
+The faint clang, high overhead, of unseen brent, the nearer call of
+invisible plover, the lap and wash of undistinguishable waters, and the
+monotonous roll of the vanished ocean, were the only sounds. As night
+deepened, the far-off booming of the fog-bell on the headland at
+intervals stirred the thick air.
+
+Hard by the shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-hill,
+stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea and shore
+had equally contributed. It was built partly of logs and partly of
+driftwood and tarred canvas. Joined to one end of the main building--the
+ordinary log-cabin of the settler--was the half-round pilot-house of
+some wrecked steamer, while the other gable terminated in half of a
+broken whale-boat. Nailed against the boat were the dried skins of wild
+animals, and scattered about lay the flotsam and jetsam of many years'
+gathering,--bamboo crates, casks, hatches, blocks, oars, boxes, part of
+a whale's vertebrae, and the blades of sword-fish. Drawn up on the beach
+of a little cove before the house lay a canoe. As the night thickened
+and the fog grew more dense, these details grew imperceptible, and only
+the windows of the pilot-house, lit up by a roaring fire within the hut,
+gleamed redly through the mist.
+
+By this fire, beneath a ship's lamp that swung from the roof, two
+figures were seated, a man and a woman. The man, broad-shouldered and
+heavily bearded, stretched his listless powerful length beyond a broken
+bamboo chair, with his eyes fixed on the fire. The woman crouched
+cross-legged upon the broad earthen hearth, with her eyes blinkingly
+fixed on her companion. They were small, black, round, berry-like eyes,
+and as the firelight shone upon her smoky face, with its one striped
+cheek of gorgeous brilliancy, it was plainly the Princess Bob and no
+other.
+
+Not a word was spoken. They had been sitting thus for more than an
+hour, and there was about their attitude a suggestion that silence was
+habitual. Once or twice the man rose and walked up and down the narrow
+room, or gazed absently from the windows of the pilot-house, but never
+by look or sign betrayed the slightest consciousness of his companion.
+At such times the Princess from her nest by the fire followed him with
+eyes of canine expectancy and wistfulness. But he would as inevitably
+return to his contemplation of the fire, and the Princess to her
+blinking watchfulness of his face.
+
+They had sat there silent and undisturbed for many an evening in fair
+weather and foul. They had spent many a day in sunshine and storm,
+gathering the unclaimed spoil of sea and shore. They had kept these mute
+relations, varied only by the incidents of the hunt or meagre household
+duties, for three years, ever since the man, wandering moodily over the
+lonely sands, had fallen upon the half-starved woman lying in the little
+hollow where she had crawled to die. It had seemed as if they would
+never be disturbed, until now, when the Princess started, and, with the
+instinct of her race, bent her ear to the ground.
+
+The wind had risen and was rattling the tarred canvas. But in another
+moment there plainly came from without the hut the sound of voices.
+Then followed a rap at the door; then another rap; and then, before they
+could rise to their feet, the door was flung briskly open.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said a pleasant but somewhat decided contralto
+voice, “but I don't think you heard me knock. Ah, I see you did not. May
+I come in?”
+
+There was no reply. Had the battered figurehead of the Goddess of
+Liberty, which lay deeply embedded in the sand on the beach, suddenly
+appeared at the door demanding admittance, the occupants of the cabin
+could not have been more speechlessly and hopelessly astonished than at
+the form which stood in the open doorway.
+
+It was that of a slim, shapely, elegantly dressed young woman. A
+scarlet-lined silken hood was half thrown back from the shining mass of
+the black hair that covered her small head; from her pretty shoulders
+dropped a fur cloak, only restrained by a cord and tassel in her small
+gloved hand. Around her full throat was a double necklace of large white
+beads, that by some cunning feminine trick relieved with its infantile
+suggestion the strong decision of her lower face.
+
+“Did you say yes? Ah, thank you. We may come in, Barker.” (Here a shadow
+in a blue army overcoat followed her into the cabin, touched its cap
+respectfully, and then stood silent and erect against the wall.) “Don't
+disturb yourself in the least, I beg. What a distressingly unpleasant
+night! Is this your usual climate?”
+
+Half graciously, half absently overlooking the still embarrassed silence
+of the group, she went on: “We started from the fort over three hours
+ago,--three hours ago, wasn't it, Barker?” (the erect Barker touched his
+cap,)--“to go to Captain Emmons's quarters on Indian Island,--I think
+you call it Indian Island, don't you?” (she was appealing to the
+awe-stricken Princess,)--“and we got into the fog and lost our way; that
+is, Barker lost his way,” (Barker touched his cap deprecatingly,) “and
+goodness knows where we didn't wander to until we mistook your light
+for the lighthouse and pulled up here. No, no, pray keep your seat, do!
+Really I must insist.”
+
+Nothing could exceed the languid grace of the latter part of this
+speech,--nothing except the easy unconsciousness with which she glided
+by the offered chair of her stammering, embarrassed host and stood
+beside the open hearth.
+
+“Barker will tell you,” she continued, warming her feet by the fire,
+“that I am Miss Portfire, daughter of Major Portfire, commanding the
+post. Ah, excuse me, child!” (She had accidentally trodden upon the bare
+yellow toes of the Princess.) “Really, I did not know you were there. I
+am very near-sighted.” (In confirmation of her statement, she put to
+her eyes a dainty double eyeglass that dangled from her neck.) “It's a
+shocking thing to be near-sighted, isn't it?”
+
+If the shamefaced uneasy man to whom this remark was addressed could
+have found words to utter the thought that even in his confusion
+struggled uppermost in his mind, he would, looking at the bold, dark
+eyes that questioned him, have denied the fact. But he only stammered,
+“Yes.” The next moment, however, Miss Portfire had apparently forgotten
+him and was examining the Princess through her glass.
+
+“And what is your name, child?”
+
+The Princess, beatified by the eyes and eyeglass, showed all her white
+teeth at once, and softly scratched her leg.
+
+“Bob?”
+
+“Bob? What a singular name!”
+
+Miss Portfire's host here hastened to explain the origin of the
+Princess's title.
+
+“Then YOU are Bob.” (Eye-glass.)
+
+“No, my name is Grey,--John Grey.” And he actually achieved a bow where
+awkwardness was rather the air of imperfectly recalling a forgotten
+habit.
+
+“Grey?--ah, let me see. Yes, certainly. You are Mr. Grey the recluse,
+the hermit, the philosopher, and all that sort of thing. Why, certainly;
+Dr. Jones, our surgeon, has told me all about you. Dear me, how
+interesting a rencontre! Lived all alone here for seven--was it seven
+years?--yes, I remember now. Existed quite au naturel, one might say.
+How odd! Not that I know anything about that sort of thing, you know.
+I've lived always among people, and am really quite a stranger, I assure
+you. But honestly, Mr.--I beg your pardon--Mr. Grey, how do you like
+it?”
+
+She had quietly taken his chair and thrown her cloak and hood over its
+back, and was now thoughtfully removing her gloves. Whatever were the
+arguments,--and they were doubtless many and profound,--whatever the
+experience,--and it was doubtless hard and satisfying enough,--by which
+this unfortunate man had justified his life for the last seven years,
+somehow they suddenly became trivial and terribly ridiculous before this
+simple but practical question.
+
+“Well, you shall tell me all about it after you have given me something
+to eat. We will have time enough; Barker cannot find his way back
+in this fog to-night. Now don't put yourselves to any trouble on my
+account. Barker will assist?”
+
+Barker came forward. Glad to escape the scrutiny of his guest, the
+hermit gave a few rapid directions to the Princess in her native tongue,
+and disappeared in the shed. Left a moment alone, Miss Portfire took
+a quick, half-audible, feminine inventory of the cabin. “Books, guns,
+skins, ONE chair, ONE bed, no pictures, and no looking-glass!” She took
+a book from the swinging shelf and resumed her seat by the fire as the
+Princess re-entered with fresh fuel. But while kneeling on the hearth
+the Princess chanced to look up and met Miss Portfire's dark eyes over
+the edge of her book.
+
+“Bob!”
+
+The Princess showed her teeth.
+
+“Listen. Would you like to have fine clothes, rings, and beads like
+these, to have your hair nicely combed and put up so? Would you?”
+
+The Princess nodded violently.
+
+“Would you like to live with me and have them? Answer quickly. Don't
+look round for HIM. Speak for yourself. Would you? Hush; never mind
+now.”
+
+The hermit re-entered, and the Princess, blinking, retreated into the
+shadow of the whale-boat shed, from which she did not emerge even when
+the homely repast of cold venison, ship biscuit, and tea was served.
+Miss Portfire noticed her absence: “You really must not let me interfere
+with your usual simple ways. Do you know this is exceedingly interesting
+to me, so pastoral and patriarchal and all that sort of thing. I must
+insist upon the Princess coming back; really, I must.”
+
+But the Princess was not to be found in the shed, and Miss Portfire, who
+the next minute seemed to have forgotten all about her, took her place
+in the single chair before an extemporized table. Barker stood behind
+her, and the hermit leaned against the fireplace. Miss Portfire's
+appetite did not come up to her protestations. For the first time in
+seven years it occurred to the hermit that his ordinary victual might be
+improved. He stammered out something to that effect.
+
+“I have eaten better, and worse,” said Miss Portfire, quietly.
+
+“But I thought you--that is, you said--”
+
+“I spent a year in the hospitals, when father was on the Potomac,”
+ returned Miss Portfire, composedly. After a pause she continued: “You
+remember after the second Bull Run--But, dear me! I beg your pardon; of
+course, you know nothing about the war and all that sort of thing, and
+don't care.” (She put up her eye-glass and quietly surveyed his broad
+muscular figure against the chimney.) “Or, perhaps, your prejudices--But
+then, as a hermit you know you have no politics, of course. Please don't
+let me bore you.”
+
+To have been strictly consistent, the hermit should have exhibited no
+interest in this topic. Perhaps it was owing to some quality in the
+narrator, but he was constrained to beg her to continue in such phrases
+as his unfamiliar lips could command. So that, little by little, Miss
+Portfire yielded up incident and personal observation of the contest
+then raging; with the same half-abstracted, half-unconcerned air that
+seemed habitual to her, she told the stories of privation, of suffering,
+of endurance, and of sacrifice. With the same assumption of timid
+deference that concealed her great self-control, she talked of
+principles and rights. Apparently without enthusiasm and without effort,
+of which his morbid nature would have been suspicious, she sang the
+great American Iliad in a way that stirred the depths of her solitary
+auditor to its massive foundations. Then she stopped and asked quietly,
+“Where is Bob?”
+
+The hermit started. He would look for her. But Bob, for some reason,
+was not forthcoming. Search was made within and without the hut, but in
+vain. For the first time that evening Miss Portfire showed some anxiety.
+“Go,” she said to Barker, “and find her. She MUST be found; stay, give
+me your overcoat, I'll go myself.” She threw the overcoat over her
+shoulders and stepped out into the night. In the thick veil of fog that
+seemed suddenly to inwrap her, she stood for a moment irresolute, and
+then walked toward the beach, guided by the low wash of waters on the
+sand. She had not taken many steps before she stumbled over some dark
+crouching object. Reaching down her hand she felt the coarse wiry mane
+of the Princess.
+
+“Bob!”
+
+There was no reply.
+
+“Bob. I've been looking for you, come.”
+
+“Go 'way.”
+
+“Nonsense, Bob. I want you to stay with me to-night, come.”
+
+“Injin squaw no good for waugee woman. Go 'way.”
+
+“Listen, Bob. You are daughter of a chief: so am I. Your father had many
+warriors: so has mine. It is good that you stay with me. Come.”
+
+The Princess chuckled and suffered herself to be lifted up. A few
+moments later and they re-entered the hut, hand in hand.
+
+With the first red streaks of dawn the next day the erect Barker touched
+his cap at the door of the hut. Beside him stood the hermit, also just
+risen from his blanketed nest in the sand. Forth from the hut, fresh
+as the morning air, stepped Miss Portfire, leading the Princess by the
+hand. Hand in hand also they walked to the shore, and when the Princess
+had been safely bestowed in the stern sheets, Miss Portfire turned and
+held out her own to her late host.
+
+“I shall take the best of care of her, of course. You will come and see
+her often. I should ask you to come and see me, but you are a hermit,
+you know, and all that sort of thing. But if it's the correct anchorite
+thing, and can be done, my father will be glad to requite you for this
+night's hospitality. But don't do anything on my account that interferes
+with your simple habits. Good by.”
+
+She handed him a card, which he took mechanically.
+
+“Good by.”
+
+The sail was hoisted, and the boat shoved off. As the fresh morning
+breeze caught the white canvas it seemed to bow a parting salutation.
+There was a rosy flash of promise on the water, and as the light craft
+darted forward toward the ascending sun, it seemed for a moment uplifted
+in its glory.
+
+
+Miss Portfire kept her word. If thoughtful care and intelligent kindness
+could regenerate the Princess, her future was secure. And it really
+seemed as if she were for the first time inclined to heed the lessons
+of civilization and profit by her new condition. An agreeable change was
+first noticed in her appearance. Her lawless hair was caught in a net,
+and no longer strayed over her low forehead. Her unstable bust was
+stayed and upheld by French corsets; her plantigrade shuffle was limited
+by heeled boots. Her dresses were neat and clean, and she wore a double
+necklace of glass beads. With this physical improvement there also
+seemed some moral awakening. She no longer stole nor lied. With the
+possession of personal property came a respect for that of others. With
+increased dependence on the word of those about her came a thoughtful
+consideration of her own. Intellectually she was still feeble, although
+she grappled sturdily with the simple lessons which Miss Portfire set
+before her. But her zeal and simple vanity outran her discretion, and
+she would often sit for hours with an open book before her, which she
+could not read. She was a favorite with the officers at the fort, from
+the Major, who shared his daughter's prejudices and often yielded to her
+powerful self-will, to the subalterns, who liked her none the less that
+their natural enemies, the frontier volunteers, had declared war
+against her helpless sisterhood. The only restraint put upon her was the
+limitation of her liberty to the enclosure of the fort and parade; and
+only once did she break this parole, and was stopped by the sentry as
+she stepped into a boat at the landing.
+
+The recluse did not avail himself of Miss Portfire's invitation. But
+after the departure of the Princess he spent less of his time in the
+hut, and was more frequently seen in the distant marshes of Eel River
+and on the upland hills. A feverish restlessness, quite opposed to his
+usual phlegm, led him into singular freaks strangely inconsistent with
+his usual habits and reputation. The purser of the occasional steamer
+which stopped at Logport with the mails reported to have been boarded,
+just inside the bar, by a strange bearded man, who asked for a newspaper
+containing the last war telegrams. He tore his red shirt into narrow
+strips, and spent two days with his needle over the pieces and the
+tattered remnant of his only white garment; and a few days afterward
+the fishermen on the bay were surprised to see what, on nearer approach,
+proved to be a rude imitation of the national flag floating from a spar
+above the hut.
+
+One evening, as the fog began to drift over the sand-hills, the recluse
+sat alone in his hut. The fire was dying unheeded on the hearth, for
+he had been sitting there for a long time, completely absorbed in the
+blurred pages of an old newspaper. Presently he arose, and, refolding
+it,--an operation of great care and delicacy in its tattered
+condition,--placed it under the blankets of his bed. He resumed his seat
+by the fire, but soon began drumming with his fingers on the arm of his
+chair. Eventually this assumed the time and accent of some air. Then
+he began to whistle softly and hesitatingly, as if trying to recall
+a forgotten tune. Finally this took shape in a rude resemblance, not
+unlike that which his flag bore to the national standard, to Yankee
+Doodle. Suddenly he stopped.
+
+There was an unmistakable rapping at the door. The blood which had at
+first rushed to his face now forsook it and settled slowly around his
+heart. He tried to rise, but could not. Then the door was flung open,
+and a figure with a scarlet-lined hood and fur mantle stood on the
+threshold. With a mighty effort he took one stride to the door. The next
+moment he saw the wide mouth and white teeth of the Princess, and was
+greeted by a kiss that felt like a baptism.
+
+To tear the hood and mantle from her figure in the sudden fury that
+seized him, and to fiercely demand the reason of this masquerade, was
+his only return to her greeting. “Why are you here? did you steal these
+garments?” he again demanded in her guttural language, as he shook her
+roughly by the arm. The Princess hung her head. “Did you?” he screamed,
+as he reached wildly for his rifle.
+
+“I did?”
+
+His hold relaxed, and he staggered back against the wall. The Princess
+began to whimper. Between her sobs, she was trying to explain that the
+Major and his daughter were going away, and that they wanted to send her
+to the Reservation; but he cut her short. “Take off those things!” The
+Princess tremblingly obeyed. He rolled them up, placed them in the canoe
+she had just left, and then leaped into the frail craft. She would have
+followed, but with a great oath he threw her from him, and with one
+stroke of his paddle swept out into the fog, and was gone.
+
+“Jessamy,” said the Major, a few days after, as he sat at dinner with
+his daughter, “I think I can tell you something to match the mysterious
+disappearance and return of your wardrobe. Your crazy friend, the
+recluse, has enlisted this morning in the Fourth Artillery. He's a
+splendid-looking animal, and there's the right stuff for a soldier in
+him, if I'm not mistaken. He's in earnest too, for he enlists in the
+regiment ordered back to Washington. Bless me, child, another goblet
+broken; you'll ruin the mess in glassware, at this rate!”
+
+“Have you heard anything more of the Princess, papa?”
+
+“Nothing, but perhaps it's as well that she has gone. These cursed
+settlers are at their old complaints again about what they call 'Indian
+depredations,' and I have just received orders from head-quarters to
+keep the settlement clear of all vagabond aborigines. I am afraid,
+my dear, that a strict construction of the term would include your
+protegee.”
+
+The time for the departure of the Fourth Artillery had come. The night
+before was thick and foggy. At one o'clock, a shot on the ramparts
+called out the guard and roused the sleeping garrison. The new sentry,
+Private Grey, had challenged a dusky figure creeping on the glacis, and,
+receiving no answer, had fired. The guard sent out presently returned,
+bearing a lifeless figure in their arms. The new sentry's zeal, joined
+with an ex-frontiersman's aim, was fatal.
+
+They laid the helpless, ragged form before the guard-house door, and
+then saw for the first time that it was the Princess. Presently she
+opened her eyes. They fell upon the agonized face of her innocent
+slayer, but haply without intelligence or reproach.
+
+“Georgy!” she whispered.
+
+“Bob!”
+
+“All's same now. Me get plenty well soon. Me make no more fuss. Me go to
+Reservation.”
+
+Then she stopped, a tremor ran through her limbs, and she lay still. She
+had gone to the Reservation. Not that devised by the wisdom of man, but
+that one set apart from the foundation of the world for the wisest as
+well as the meanest of His creatures.
+
+
+
+
+THE ILIAD OF SANDY BAR.
+
+
+Before nine o'clock it was pretty well known all along the river that
+the two partners of the “Amity Claim” had quarrelled and separated at
+daybreak. At that time the attention of their nearest neighbor had
+been attracted by the sounds of altercations and two consecutive
+pistol-shots. Running out, he had seen, dimly, in the gray mist that
+rose from the river, the tall form of Scott, one of the partners,
+descending the hill toward the canyon; a moment later, York, the
+other partner, had appeared from the cabin, and walked in an opposite
+direction toward the river, passing within a few feet of the curious
+watcher. Later it was discovered that a serious Chinaman, cutting
+wood before the cabin, had witnessed part of the quarrel. But John was
+stolid, indifferent, and reticent. “Me choppee wood, me no fightee,”
+ was his serene response to all anxious queries. “But what did they SAY,
+John?” John did not sabe. Colonel Starbottle deftly ran over the various
+popular epithets which a generous public sentiment might accept as
+reasonable provocation for an assault. But John did not recognize them.
+“And this yer's the cattle,” said the Colonel, with some severity, “that
+some thinks oughter be allowed to testify ag'in' a White Man! Git--you
+heathen!”
+
+Still the quarrel remained inexplicable. That two men, whose amiability
+and grave tact had earned for them the title of “The Peacemakers,” in
+a community not greatly given to the passive virtues,--that these men,
+singularly devoted to each other, should suddenly and violently
+quarrel, might well excite the curiosity of the camp. A few of the more
+inquisitive visited the late scene of conflict, now deserted by its
+former occupants. There was no trace of disorder or confusion in the
+neat cabin. The rude table was arranged as if for breakfast; the pan of
+yellow biscuit still sat upon that hearth whose dead embers might have
+typified the evil passions that had raged there but an hour before. But
+Colonel Starbottle's eye--albeit somewhat bloodshot and rheumy--was more
+intent on practical details. On examination, a bullet-hole was found in
+the doorpost, and another, nearly opposite, in the casing of the window.
+The Colonel called attention to the fact that the one “agreed with” the
+bore of Scott's revolver, and the other with that of York's derringer.
+“They must hev stood about yer,” said the Colonel, taking position; “not
+mor'n three feet apart, and--missed!” There was a fine touch of pathos
+in the falling inflection of the Colonel's voice, which was not without
+effect. A delicate perception of wasted opportunity thrilled his
+auditors.
+
+But the Bar was destined to experience a greater disappointment. The two
+antagonists had not met since the quarrel, and it was vaguely rumored
+that, on the occasion of a second meeting, each had determined to kill
+the other “on sight.” There was, consequently, some excitement--and,
+it is to be feared, no little gratification--when, at ten o'clock, York
+stepped from the Magnolia Saloon into the one long straggling street of
+the camp, at the same moment that Scott left the blacksmith's shop at
+the forks of the road. It was evident, at a glance, that a meeting could
+only be avoided by the actual retreat of one or the other.
+
+In an instant the doors and windows of the adjacent saloons were filled
+with faces. Heads unaccountably appeared above the river-banks and from
+behind bowlders. An empty wagon at the cross-road was suddenly crowded
+with people, who seemed to have sprung from the earth. There was much
+running and confusion on the hillside. On the mountain-road, Mr. Jack
+Hamlin had reined up his horse, and was standing upright on the seat of
+his buggy. And the two objects of this absorbing attention approached
+each other.
+
+“York's got the sun,” “Scott'll line him on that tree,” “He's waitin'
+to draw his fire,” came from the cart; and then it was silent. But
+above this human breathlessness the river rushed and sang, and the
+wind rustled the tree-tops with an indifference that seemed obtrusive.
+Colonel Starbottle felt it, and in a moment of sublime preoccupation,
+without looking around, waved his cane behind him, warningly to all
+nature, and said, “Shu!”
+
+The men were now within a few feet of each other. A hen ran across the
+road before one of them. A feathery seed-vessel, wafted from a wayside
+tree, fell at the feet of the other. And, unheeding this irony of
+nature, the two opponents came nearer, erect and rigid, looked in each
+other's eyes, and--passed!
+
+Colonel Starbottle had to be lifted from the cart. “This yer camp is
+played out,” he said, gloomily, as he affected to be supported into
+the Magnolia. With what further expression he might have indicated his
+feelings it was impossible to say, for at that moment Scott joined the
+group. “Did you speak to me?” he asked of the Colonel, dropping his
+hand, as if with accidental familiarity, on that gentleman's shoulder.
+The Colonel, recognizing some occult quality in the touch, and some
+unknown quantity in the glance of his questioner, contented himself by
+replying, “No, sir,” with dignity. A few rods away, York's conduct
+was as characteristic and peculiar. “You had a mighty fine chance; why
+didn't you plump him?” said Jack Hamlin, as York drew near the buggy.
+“Because I hate him,” was the reply, heard only by Jack. Contrary
+to popular belief, this reply was not hissed between the lips of the
+speaker, but was said in an ordinary tone. But Jack Hamlin, who was an
+observer of mankind, noticed that the speaker's hands were cold, and
+his lips dry, as he helped him into the buggy, and accepted the seeming
+paradox with a smile.
+
+
+When Sandy Bar became convinced that the quarrel between York and Scott
+could not be settled after the usual local methods, it gave no further
+concern thereto. But presently it was rumored that the “Amity Claim” was
+in litigation, and that its possession would be expensively disputed by
+each of the partners. As it was well known that the claim in question
+was “worked out” and worthless, and that the partners, whom it had
+already enriched, had talked of abandoning it but a day or two before
+the quarrel, this proceeding could only be accounted for as gratuitous
+spite. Later, two San Francisco lawyers made their appearance in this
+guileless Arcadia, and were eventually taken into the saloons, and--what
+was pretty much the same thing--the confidences of the inhabitants. The
+results of this unhallowed intimacy were many subpoenas; and, indeed,
+when the “Amity Claim” came to trial, all of Sandy Bar that was not in
+compulsory attendance at the county seat came there from curiosity. The
+gulches and ditches for miles around were deserted. I do not propose to
+describe that already famous trial. Enough that, in the language of the
+plaintiff's counsel, “it was one of no ordinary significance, involving
+the inherent rights of that untiring industry which had developed the
+Pactolian resources of this golden land”; and, in the homelier phrase
+of Colonel Starbottle, “A fuss that gentlemen might hev settled in ten
+minutes over a social glass, ef they meant business; or in ten seconds
+with a revolver, ef they meant fun.” Scott got a verdict, from which
+York instantly appealed. It was said that he had sworn to spend his last
+dollar in the struggle.
+
+In this way Sandy Bar began to accept the enmity of the former partners
+as a lifelong feud, and the fact that they had ever been friends was
+forgotten. The few who expected to learn from the trial the origin of
+the quarrel were disappointed. Among the various conjectures, that
+which ascribed some occult feminine influence as the cause was naturally
+popular, in a camp given to dubious compliment of the sex. “My word
+for it, gentlemen,” said Colonel Starbottle, who had been known in
+Sacramento as a Gentleman of the Old School, “there's some lovely
+creature at the bottom of this.” The gallant Colonel then proceeded to
+illustrate his theory, by divers sprightly stories, such as Gentlemen of
+the Old School are in the habit of repeating, but which, from deference
+to the prejudices of gentlemen of a more recent school, I refrain from
+transcribing here. But it would appear that even the Colonel's theory
+was fallacious. The only woman who personally might have exercised
+any influence over the partners was the pretty daughter of “old man
+Folinsbee,” of Poverty Flat, at whose hospitable house--which exhibited
+some comforts and refinements rare in that crude civilization--both York
+and Scott were frequent visitors. Yet into this charming retreat York
+strode one evening, a month after the quarrel, and, beholding Scott
+sitting there, turned to the fair hostess with the abrupt query, “Do you
+love this man?” The young woman thus addressed returned that answer--at
+once spirited and evasive--which would occur to most of my fair readers
+in such an exigency. Without another word, York left the house. “Miss
+Jo” heaved the least possible sigh as the door closed on York's curls
+and square shoulders, and then, like a good girl, turned to her insulted
+guest “But would you believe it, dear?” she afterward related to an
+intimate friend, “the other creature, after glowering at me for a
+moment, got upon its hind legs, took its hat, and left, too; and that's
+the last I've seen of either.”
+
+The same hard disregard of all other interests or feelings in the
+gratification of their blind rancor characterized all their actions.
+When York purchased the land below Scott's new claim, and obliged the
+latter, at a great expense, to make a long detour to carry a “tail-race”
+ around it, Scott retaliated by building a dam that overflowed York's
+claim on the river. It was Scott, who, in conjunction with Colonel
+Starbottle, first organized that active opposition to the Chinamen,
+which resulted in the driving off of York's Mongolian laborers; it was
+York who built the wagon-road and established the express which rendered
+Scott's mules and pack-trains obsolete; it was Scott who called into
+life the Vigilance Committee which expatriated York's friend,
+Jack Hamlin; it was York who created the “Sandy Bar Herald,” which
+characterized the act as “a lawless outrage,” and Scott as a “Border
+Ruffian”; it was Scott, at the head of twenty masked men, who, one
+moonlight night, threw the offending “forms” into the yellow river, and
+scattered the types in the dusty road. These proceedings were received
+in the distant and more civilized outlying towns as vague indications
+of progress and vitality. I have before me a copy of the “Poverty Flat
+Pioneer,” for the week ending August 12, 1856, in which the editor,
+under the head of “County Improvements,” says: “The new Presbyterian
+Church on C Street, at Sandy Bar, is completed. It stands upon the lot
+formerly occupied by the Magnolia Saloon, which was so mysteriously
+burnt last month. The temple, which now rises like a Phoenix from the
+ashes of the Magnolia, is virtually the free gift of H. J. York, Esq.,
+of Sandy Bar, who purchased the lot and donated the lumber. Other
+buildings are going up in the vicinity, but the most noticeable is the
+'Sunny South Saloon,' erected by Captain Mat. Scott, nearly opposite the
+church. Captain Scott has spared no expense in the furnishing of this
+saloon, which promises to be one of the most agreeable places of
+resort in old Tuolumne. He has recently imported two new, first-class
+billiard-tables, with cork cushions. Our old friend, 'Mountain
+Jimmy,' will dispense liquors at the bar. We refer our readers to the
+advertisement in another column. Visitors to Sandy Bar cannot do better
+than give 'Jimmy' a call.” Among the local items occurred the following:
+“H. J. York, Esq., of Sandy Bar, has offered a reward of $100 for
+the detection of the parties who hauled away the steps of the new
+Presbyterian Church, C Street, Sandy Bar, during divine service on
+Sabbath evening last. Captain Scott adds another hundred for the capture
+of the miscreants who broke the magnificent plate-glass windows of the
+new saloon on the following evening. There is some talk of reorganizing
+the old Vigilance Committee at Sandy Bar.”
+
+When, for many months of cloudless weather, the hard, unwinking sun of
+Sandy Bar had regularly gone down on the unpacified wrath of these
+men, there was some talk of mediation. In particular, the pastor of the
+church to which I have just referred--a sincere, fearless, but perhaps
+not fully enlightened man--seized gladly upon the occasion of York's
+liberality to attempt to reunite the former partners. He preached an
+earnest sermon on the abstract sinfulness of discord and rancor. But
+the excellent sermons of the Rev. Mr. Daws were directed to an ideal
+congregation that did not exist at Sandy Bar,--a congregation of beings
+of unmixed vices and virtues, of single impulses, and perfectly logical
+motives, of preternatural simplicity, of childlike faith, and grown-up
+responsibilities. As, unfortunately, the people who actually attended
+Mr. Daws's church were mainly very human, somewhat artful, more
+self-excusing than self-accusing, rather good-natured, and decidedly
+weak, they quietly shed that portion of the sermon which referred to
+themselves, and, accepting York and Scott--who were both in defiant
+attendance--as curious examples of those ideal beings above referred
+to, felt a certain satisfaction--which, I fear, was not altogether
+Christian-like--in their “raking-down.” If Mr. Daws expected York and
+Scott to shake hands after the sermon, he was disappointed. But he did
+not relax his purpose. With that quiet fearlessness and determination
+which had won for him the respect of men who were too apt to regard
+piety as synonymous with effeminacy, he attacked Scott in his own house.
+What he said has not been recorded, but it is to be feared that it was
+part of his sermon. When he had concluded, Scott looked at him, not
+unkindly, over the glasses of his bar, and said, less irreverently than
+the words might convey, “Young man, I rather like your style; but when
+you know York and me as well as you do God Almighty, it'll be time to
+talk.”
+
+And so the feud progressed; and so, as in more illustrious examples, the
+private and personal enmity of two representative men led gradually to
+the evolution of some crude, half-expressed principle or belief. It was
+not long before it was made evident that those beliefs were identical
+with certain broad principles laid down by the founders of the American
+Constitution, as expounded by the statesmanlike A; or were the fatal
+quicksands, on which the ship of state might be wrecked, warningly
+pointed out by the eloquent B. The practical result of all which was the
+nomination of York and Scott to represent the opposite factions of Sandy
+Bar in legislative councils.
+
+For some weeks past, the voters of Sandy Bar and the adjacent camps had
+been called upon, in large type, to “RALLY!” In vain the great pines
+at the cross-roads--whose trunks were compelled to bear this and other
+legends--moaned and protested from their windy watch-towers. But one
+day, with fife and drum, and flaming transparency, a procession filed
+into the triangular grove at the head of the gulch. The meeting
+was called to order by Colonel Starbottle, who, having once enjoyed
+legislative functions, and being vaguely known as a “war-horse,” was
+considered to be a valuable partisan of York. He concluded an appeal for
+his friend, with an enunciation of principles, interspersed with one or
+two anecdotes so gratuitously coarse that the very pines might have been
+moved to pelt him with their cast-off cones, as he stood there. But he
+created a laugh, on which his candidate rode into popular notice; and
+when York rose to speak, he was greeted with cheers. But, to the general
+astonishment, the new speaker at once launched into bitter denunciation
+of his rival. He not only dwelt upon Scott's deeds and example, as known
+to Sandy Bar, but spoke of facts connected with his previous career,
+hitherto unknown to his auditors. To great precision of epithet and
+directness of statement, the speaker added the fascination of revelation
+and exposure. The crowd cheered, yelled, and were delighted, but when
+this astounding philippic was concluded, there was a unanimous call
+for “Scott!” Colonel Starbottle would have resisted this manifest
+impropriety, but in vain. Partly from a crude sense of justice, partly
+from a meaner craving for excitement, the assemblage was inflexible; and
+Scott was dragged, pushed, and pulled upon the platform.
+
+As his frowsy head and unkempt beard appeared above the railing, it was
+evident that he was drunk. But it was also evident, before he opened his
+lips, that the orator of Sandy Bar--the one man who could touch their
+vagabond sympathies (perhaps because he was not above appealing to
+them)--stood before them. A consciousness of this power lent a certain
+dignity to his figure, and I am not sure but that his very physical
+condition impressed them as a kind of regal unbending and large
+condescension. Howbeit, when this unexpected Hector arose from the
+ditch, York's myrmidons trembled.
+
+“There's naught, gentlemen,” said Scott, leaning forward on the
+railing,--“there's naught as that man hez said as isn't true. I was run
+outer Cairo; I did belong to the Regulators; I did desert from the army;
+I did leave a wife in Kansas. But thar's one thing he didn't charge me
+with, and, maybe, he's forgotten. For three years, gentlemen, I was
+that man's pardner!--” Whether he intended to say more, I cannot tell;
+a burst of applause artistically rounded and enforced the climax, and
+virtually elected the speaker. That fall he went to Sacramento, York
+went abroad; and for the first time in many years, distance and a new
+atmosphere isolated the old antagonists.
+
+
+With little of change in the green wood, gray rock, and yellow river,
+but with much shifting of human landmarks, and new faces in its
+habitations, three years passed over Sandy Bar. The two men, once so
+identified with its character, seemed to have been quite forgotten.
+“You will never return to Sandy Bar,” said Miss Folinsbee, the “Lily of
+Poverty Flat,” on meeting York in Paris, “for Sandy Bar is no more.
+They call it Riverside now; and the new town is built higher up on the
+river-bank. By the by, 'Jo' says that Scott has won his suit about the
+'Amity Claim,' and that he lives in the old cabin, and is drunk half his
+time. O, I beg your pardon,” added the lively lady, as a flush crossed
+York's sallow cheek; “but, bless me, I really thought that old grudge
+was made up. I'm sure it ought to be.”
+
+It was three months after this conversation, and a pleasant summer
+evening, that the Poverty Flat coach drew up before the veranda of the
+Union Hotel at Sandy Bar. Among its passengers was one, apparently a
+stranger, in the local distinction of well-fitting clothes and closely
+shaven face, who demanded a private room and retired early to rest. But
+before sunrise next morning he arose, and, drawing some clothes from his
+carpet-bag, proceeded to array himself in a pair of white duck trousers,
+a white duck overshirt, and straw hat. When his toilet was completed, he
+tied a red bandanna handkerchief in a loop and threw it loosely over his
+shoulders. The transformation was complete. As he crept softly down the
+stairs and stepped into the road, no one would have detected in him the
+elegant stranger of the previous night, and but few have recognized the
+face and figure of Henry York of Sandy Bar.
+
+In the uncertain light of that early hour, and in the change that had
+come over the settlement, he had to pause for a moment to recall where
+he stood. The Sandy Bar of his recollection lay below him, nearer the
+river; the buildings around him were of later date and newer fashion.
+As he strode toward the river, he noticed here a schoolhouse and there a
+church. A little farther on, “The Sunny South” came in view, transformed
+into a restaurant, its gilding faded and its paint rubbed off. He now
+knew where he was; and, running briskly down a declivity, crossed a
+ditch, and stood upon the lower boundary of the Amity Claim.
+
+The gray mist was rising slowly from the river, clinging to the
+tree-tops and drifting up the mountain-side, until it was caught among
+those rocky altars, and held a sacrifice to the ascending sun. At his
+feet the earth, cruelly gashed and scarred by his forgotten engines,
+had, since the old days, put on a show of greenness here and there, and
+now smiled forgivingly up at him, as if things were not so bad after
+all. A few birds were bathing in the ditch with a pleasant suggestion of
+its being a new and special provision of nature, and a hare ran into an
+inverted sluice-box, as he approached, as if it were put there for that
+purpose.
+
+He had not yet dared to look in a certain direction. But the sun was now
+high enough to paint the little eminence on which the cabin stood. In
+spite of his self-control, his heart beat faster as he raised his eyes
+toward it. Its window and door were closed, no smoke came from its adobe
+chimney, but it was else unchanged. When within a few yards of it, he
+picked up a broken shovel, and, shouldering it with a smile, strode
+toward the door and knocked. There was no sound from within. The smile
+died upon his lips as he nervously pushed the door open.
+
+A figure started up angrily and came toward him,--a figure whose
+bloodshot eyes suddenly fixed into a vacant stare, whose arms were
+at first outstretched and then thrown up in warning gesticulation,--a
+figure that suddenly gasped, choked, and then fell forward in a fit.
+
+But before he touched the ground, York had him out into the open air and
+sunshine. In the struggle, both fell and rolled over on the ground. But
+the next moment York was sitting up, holding the convulsed frame of his
+former partner on his knee, and wiping the foam from his inarticulate
+lips. Gradually the tremor became less frequent, and then ceased; and
+the strong man lay unconscious in his arms.
+
+For some moments York held him quietly thus, looking in his face. Afar,
+the stroke of a wood-man's axe--a mere phantom of sound--was all
+that broke the stillness. High up the mountain, a wheeling hawk hung
+breathlessly above them. And then came voices, and two men joined them.
+
+“A fight?” No, a fit; and would they help him bring the sick man to the
+hotel?
+
+And there, for a week, the stricken partner lay, unconscious of aught
+but the visions wrought by disease and fear. On the eighth day, at
+sunrise, he rallied, and, opening his eyes, looked upon York, and
+pressed his hand; then he spoke:--
+
+“And it's you. I thought it was only whiskey.”
+
+York replied by taking both of his hands, boyishly working them backward
+and forward, as his elbow rested on the bed, with a pleasant smile.
+
+“And you've been abroad. How did you like Paris?”
+
+“So, so. How did YOU like Sacramento?”
+
+“Bully.”
+
+And that was all they could think to say. Presently Scott opened his
+eyes again.
+
+“I'm mighty weak.”
+
+“You'll get better soon.”
+
+“Not much.”
+
+A long silence followed, in which they could hear the sounds of
+wood-chopping, and that Sandy Bar was already astir for the coming
+day. Then Scott slowly and with difficulty turned his face to York, and
+said,--
+
+“I might hev killed you once.”
+
+“I wish you had.”
+
+They pressed each other's hands again, but Scott's grasp was evidently
+failing. He seemed to summon his energies for a special effort.
+
+“Old man!”
+
+“Old chap.”
+
+“Closer!”
+
+York bent his head toward the slowly fading face.
+
+“Do ye mind that morning?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+A gleam of fun slid into the corner of Scott's blue eye, as he
+whispered,--
+
+“Old man, thar WAS too much saleratus in that bread.”
+
+It is said that these were his last words. For when the sun, which had
+so often gone down upon the idle wrath of these foolish men, looked
+again upon them reunited, it saw the hand of Scott fall cold and
+irresponsive from the yearning clasp of his former partner, and it knew
+that the feud of Sandy Bar was at an end.
+
+
+
+
+MR THOMPSON'S PRODIGAL
+
+
+We all knew that Mr. Thompson was looking for his son, and a pretty bad
+one at that. That he was coming to California for this sole object was
+no secret to his fellow-passengers; and the physical peculiarities, as
+well as the moral weaknesses, of the missing prodigal were made equally
+plain to us through the frank volubility of the parent. “You was
+speaking of a young man which was hung at Red Dog for sluice-robbing,”
+ said Mr. Thompson to a steerage passenger, one day; “be you aware of
+the color of his eyes?” “Black,” responded the passenger. “Ah,” said
+Mr. Thompson, referring to some mental memoranda, “Char-les's eyes was
+blue.” He then walked away. Perhaps it was from this unsympathetic mode
+of inquiry, perhaps it was from that Western predilection to take a
+humorous view of any principle or sentiment persistently brought before
+them, that Mr. Thompson's quest was the subject of some satire among the
+passengers. A gratuitous advertisement of the missing Charles, addressed
+to “Jailers and Guardians,” circulated privately among them; everybody
+remembered to have met Charles under distressing circumstances. Yet
+it is but due to my countrymen to state that when it was known that
+Thompson had embarked some wealth in this visionary project, but little
+of this satire found its way to his ears, and nothing was uttered in
+his hearing that might bring a pang to a father's heart, or imperil
+a possible pecuniary advantage of the satirist. Indeed, Mr. Bracy
+Tibbets's jocular proposition to form a joint-stock company to
+“prospect” for the missing youth received at one time quite serious
+entertainment.
+
+Perhaps to superficial criticism Mr. Thompson's nature was not
+picturesque nor lovable. His history, as imparted at dinner, one day, by
+himself, was practical even in its singularity. After a hard and wilful
+youth and maturity,--in which he had buried a broken-spirited wife, and
+driven his son to sea,--he suddenly experienced religion. “I got it in
+New Orleans in '59,” said Mr. Thompson, with the general suggestion
+of referring to an epidemic. “Enter ye the narrer gate. Parse me the
+beans.” Perhaps this practical quality upheld him in his apparently
+hopeless search. He had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son;
+indeed, scarcely a proof of his present existence. From his indifferent
+recollection of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify the man
+of twenty-five.
+
+It would seem that he was successful. How he succeeded was one of the
+few things he did not tell. There are, I believe, two versions of the
+story. One, that Mr. Thompson, visiting a hospital, discovered his son
+by reason of a peculiar hymn, chanted by the sufferer, in a delirious
+dream of his boyhood. This version, giving as it did wide range to the
+finer feelings of the heart, was quite popular; and as told by the Rev.
+Mr. Gushington, on his return from his California tour, never failed to
+satisfy an audience. The other was less simple, and, as I shall adopt it
+here, deserves more elaboration.
+
+It was after Mr. Thompson had given up searching for his son among the
+living, and had taken to the examination of cemeteries, and a careful
+inspection of the “cold hic jacets of the dead.” At this time he was a
+frequent visitor of “Lone Mountain,”--a dreary hill-top, bleak enough in
+its original isolation, and bleaker for the white-faced marbles by which
+San Francisco anchored her departed citizens, and kept them down in
+a shifting sand that refused to cover them, and against a fierce and
+persistent wind that strove to blow them utterly away. Against this wind
+the old man opposed a will quite as persistent,--a grizzled, hard face,
+and a tall, crape-bound hat drawn tightly over his eyes,--and so spent
+days in reading the mortuary inscriptions audibly to himself. The
+frequency of Scriptural quotation pleased him, and he was fond of
+corroborating them by a pocket Bible. “That's from Psalms,” he said,
+one day, to an adjacent grave-digger. The man made no reply. Not at all
+rebuffed, Mr. Thompson at once slid down into the open grave, with a
+more practical inquiry, “Did you ever, in your profession, come across
+Char-les Thompson?” “Thompson be d----d!” said the grave-digger,
+with great directness. “Which, if he hadn't religion, I think he is,”
+ responded the old man, as he clambered out of the grave.
+
+It was, perhaps, on this occasion that Mr. Thompson stayed later than
+usual. As he turned his face toward the city, lights were beginning
+to twinkle ahead, and a fierce wind, made visible by fog, drove him
+forward, or, lying in wait, charged him angrily from the corners of
+deserted suburban streets. It was on one of these corners that something
+else, quite as indistinct and malevolent, leaped upon him with an oath,
+a presented pistol, and a demand for money. But it was met by a will of
+iron and a grip of steel. The assailant and assailed rolled together on
+the ground. But the next moment the old man was erect; one hand grasping
+the captured pistol, the other clutching at arm's length the throat of a
+figure, surly, youthful, and savage.
+
+“Young man,” said Mr. Thompson, setting his thin lips together, “what
+might be your name?”
+
+“Thompson!”
+
+The old man's hand slid from the throat to the arm of his prisoner,
+without relaxing its firmness.
+
+“Char-les Thompson, come with me,” he said, presently, and marched his
+captive to the hotel. What took place there has not transpired, but it
+was known the next morning that Mr. Thompson had found his son.
+
+
+It is proper to add to the above improbable story, that there was
+nothing in the young man's appearance or manners to justify it. Grave,
+reticent, and handsome, devoted to his newly found parent, he assumed
+the emoluments and responsibilities of his new condition with a certain
+serious ease that more nearly approached that which San Francisco
+society lacked, and--rejected. Some chose to despise this quality as a
+tendency to “psalm-singing”; others saw in it the inherited qualities
+of the parent, and were ready to prophesy for the son the same hard
+old age. But all agreed that it was not inconsistent with the habits of
+money-getting, for which father and son were respected.
+
+And yet, the old man did not seem to be happy. Perhaps it was that
+the consummation of his wishes left him without a practical mission;
+perhaps--and it is the more probable--he had little love for the son he
+had regained. The obedience he exacted was freely given, the reform he
+had set his heart upon was complete; and yet, somehow, it did not
+seem to please him. In reclaiming his son, he had fulfilled all the
+requirements that his religious duty required of him, and yet the act
+seemed to lack sanctification. In this perplexity, he read again the
+parable of the Prodigal Son,--which he had long ago adopted for
+his guidance,--and found that he had omitted the final feast
+of reconciliation. This seemed to offer the proper quality of
+ceremoniousness in the sacrament between himself and his son; and so, a
+year after the appearance of Charles, he set about giving him a party.
+“Invite everybody, Char-les,” he said, dryly; “everybody who knows that
+I brought you out of the wine-husks of iniquity, and the company of
+harlots; and bid them eat, drink, and be merry.”
+
+Perhaps the old man had another reason, not yet clearly analyzed. The
+fine house he had built on the sand-hills sometimes seemed lonely and
+bare. He often found himself trying to reconstruct, from the grave
+features of Charles, the little boy whom he but dimly remembered in the
+past, and of whom lately he had been thinking a great deal. He believed
+this to be a sign of impending old age and childishness; but coming, one
+day, in his formal drawing-room, upon a child of one of the servants,
+who had strayed therein, he would have taken him in his arms, but the
+child fled from before his grizzled face. So that it seemed eminently
+proper to invite a number of people to his house, and, from the array
+of San Francisco maidenhood, to select a daughter-in-law. And then there
+would be a child--a boy, whom he could “rare up” from the beginning,
+and--love--as he did not love Charles.
+
+We were all at the party. The Smiths, Joneses, Browns, and Robinsons
+also came, in that fine flow of animal spirits, unchecked by any respect
+for the entertainer, which most of us are apt to find so fascinating.
+The proceedings would have been somewhat riotous, but for the social
+position of the actors. In fact, Mr. Bracy Tibbets, having naturally a
+fine appreciation of a humorous situation, but further impelled by the
+bright eyes of the Jones girls, conducted himself so remarkably as to
+attract the serious regard of Mr. Charles Thompson, who approached him,
+saying quietly: “You look ill, Mr. Tibbets; let me conduct you to your
+carriage. Resist, you hound, and I'll throw you through that window.
+This way, please; the room is close and distressing.” It is hardly
+necessary to say that but a part of this speech was audible to the
+company, and that the rest was not divulged by Mr. Tibbets, who
+afterward regretted the sudden illness which kept him from witnessing a
+certain amusing incident, which the fastest Miss Jones characterized as
+the “richest part of the blow-out,” and which I hasten to record.
+
+It was at supper. It was evident that Mr. Thompson had overlooked
+much lawlessness in the conduct of the younger people, in his abstract
+contemplation of some impending event. When the cloth was removed, he
+rose to his feet, and grimly tapped upon the table. A titter, that broke
+out among the Jones girls, became epidemic on one side of the board.
+Charles Thompson, from the foot of the table, looked up in tender
+perplexity. “He's going to sing a Doxology,” “He's going to pray,”
+ “Silence for a speech,” ran round the room.
+
+“It's one year to-day, Christian brothers and sisters,” said Mr.
+Thompson, with grim deliberation,--“one year to-day since my son
+came home from eating of wine-husks and spending of his substance on
+harlots.” (The tittering suddenly ceased.) “Look at him now. Char-les
+Thompson, stand up.” (Charles Thompson stood up.) “One year ago
+to-day,--and look at him now.”
+
+He was certainly a handsome prodigal, standing there in his cheerful
+evening-dress,--a repentant prodigal, with sad, obedient eyes turned
+upon the harsh and unsympathetic glance of his father. The youngest
+Miss Smith, from the pure depths of her foolish little heart, moved
+unconsciously toward him.
+
+“It's fifteen years ago since he left my house,” said Mr. Thompson,
+“a rovier and a prodigal. I was myself a man of sin, O Christian
+friends,--a man of wrath and bitterness” (“Amen,” from the eldest Miss
+Smith),--“but praise be God, I've fled the wrath to come. It's five
+years ago since I got the peace that passeth understanding. Have you got
+it, friends?” (A general sub-chorus of “No, no,” from the girls,
+and, “Pass the word for it,” from Midshipman Coxe, of the U. S. sloop
+Wethersfield.) “Knock, and it shall be opened to you.
+
+“And when I found the error of my ways, and the preciousness of grace,”
+ continued Mr. Thompson, “I came to give it to my son. By sea and land I
+sought him far, and fainted not. I did not wait for him to come to me,
+which the same I might have done, and justified myself by the Book of
+books, but I sought him out among his husks, and--” (the rest of the
+sentence was lost in the rustling withdrawal of the ladies). “Works,
+Christian friends, is my motto. By their works shall ye know them, and
+there is mine.”
+
+The particular and accepted work to which Mr. Thompson was alluding had
+turned quite pale, and was looking fixedly toward an open door leading
+to the veranda, lately filled by gaping servants, and now the scene of
+some vague tumult. As the noise continued, a man, shabbily dressed, and
+evidently in liquor, broke through the opposing guardians, and staggered
+into the room. The transition from the fog and darkness without to the
+glare and heat within evidently dazzled and stupefied him. He removed
+his battered hat, and passed it once or twice before his eyes, as he
+steadied himself, but unsuccessfully, by the back of a chair. Suddenly,
+his wandering glance fell upon the pale face of Charles Thompson; and
+with a gleam of childlike recognition, and a weak, falsetto laugh, he
+darted forward, caught at the table, upset the glasses, and literally
+fell upon the prodigal's breast.
+
+“Sha'ly! yo' d----d ol' scoun'rel, hoo rar ye!”
+
+“Hush--sit down!--hush!” said Charles Thompson, hurriedly endeavoring to
+extricate himself from the embrace of his unexpected guest.
+
+“Look at 'm!” continued the stranger, unheeding the admonition, but
+suddenly holding the unfortunate Charles at arm's length, in loving and
+undisguised admiration of his festive appearance. “Look at 'm! Ain't he
+nasty? Sha'ls, I'm prow of yer!”
+
+“Leave the house!” said Mr. Thompson, rising, with a dangerous look in
+his cold, gray eye. “Char-les, how dare you?”
+
+“Simmer down, ole man! Sha'ls, who's th' ol' bloat? Eh?”
+
+“Hush, man; here, take this!” With nervous hands, Charles Thompson
+filled a glass with liquor. “Drink it and go--until to-morrow--any time,
+but--leave us!--go now!” But even then, ere the miserable wretch could
+drink, the old man, pale with passion, was upon him. Half carrying him
+in his powerful arms, half dragging him through the circling crowd of
+frightened guests, he had reached the door, swung open by the waiting
+servants, when Charles Thompson started from a seeming stupor, crying,--
+
+“Stop!”
+
+The old man stopped. Through the open door the fog and wind drove
+chilly. “What does this mean?” he asked, turning a baleful face on
+Charles.
+
+“Nothing--but stop--for God's sake. Wait till to-morrow, but not
+to-night. Do not--I implore you--do this thing.”
+
+There was something in the tone of the young man's voice, something,
+perhaps, in the contact of the struggling wretch he held in his powerful
+arms; but a dim, indefinite fear took possession of the old man's heart.
+“Who,” he whispered, hoarsely, “is this man?”
+
+Charles did not answer.
+
+“Stand back, there, all of you,” thundered Mr. Thompson, to the crowding
+guests around him. “Char-les--come here! I command you--I--I--I--beg
+you--tell me WHO is this man?”
+
+Only two persons heard the answer that came faintly from the lips of
+Charles Thompson,--
+
+“YOUR SON.”
+
+
+When day broke over the bleak sand-hills, the guests had departed from
+Mr. Thompson's banquet-halls. The lights still burned dimly and coldly
+in the deserted rooms,--deserted by all but three figures, that huddled
+together in the chill drawing-room, as if for warmth. One lay in drunken
+slumber on a couch; at his feet sat he who had been known as Charles
+Thompson; and beside them, haggard and shrunken to half his size, bowed
+the figure of Mr. Thompson, his gray eye fixed, his elbows upon his
+knees, and his hands clasped over his ears, as if to shut out the sad,
+entreating voice that seemed to fill the room.
+
+“God knows I did not set about to wilfully deceive. The name I gave that
+night was the first that came into my thought,--the name of one whom
+I thought dead,--the dissolute companion of my shame. And when you
+questioned further, I used the knowledge that I gained from him to touch
+your heart to set me free; only, I swear, for that! But when you told
+me who you were, and I first saw the opening of another life before
+me--then--then--O, sir, if I was hungry, homeless, and reckless, when
+I would have robbed you of your gold, I was heart-sick, helpless, and
+desperate, when I would have robbed you of your love!”
+
+The old man stirred not. From his luxurious couch the newly found
+prodigal snored peacefully.
+
+“I had no father I could claim. I never knew a home but this. I was
+tempted. I have been happy,--very happy.”
+
+He rose and stood before the old man. “Do not fear that I shall come
+between your son and his inheritance. To-day I leave this place, never
+to return. The world is large, sir, and, thanks to your kindness, I now
+see the way by which an honest livelihood is gained. Good by. You will
+not take my hand? Well, well. Good by.”
+
+He turned to go. But when he had reached the door he suddenly came back,
+and, raising with both hands the grizzled head, he kissed it once and
+twice.
+
+“Char-les.”
+
+There was no reply.
+
+“Char-les!”
+
+The old man rose with a frightened air, and tottered feebly to the door.
+It was open. There came to him the awakened tumult of a great city, in
+which the prodigal's footsteps were lost forever.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.
+
+
+The latch on the garden gate of the Folinsbee Ranch clicked twice.
+The gate itself was so much in shadow that lovely night, that “old man
+Folinsbee,” sitting on his porch, could distinguish nothing but a tall
+white hat and beside it a few fluttering ribbons, under the pines that
+marked the entrance. Whether because of this fact, or that he considered
+a sufficient time had elapsed since the clicking of the latch for more
+positive disclosure, I do not know; but after a few moments' hesitation
+he quietly laid aside his pipe and walked slowly down the winding path
+toward the gate. At the Ceanothus hedge he stopped and listened.
+
+There was not much to hear. The hat was saying to the ribbons that it
+was a fine night, and remarking generally upon the clear outline of the
+Sierras against the blue-black sky. The ribbons, it so appeared, had
+admired this all the way home, and asked the hat if it had ever seen
+anything half so lovely as the moonlight on the summit. The hat never
+had; it recalled some lovely nights in the South in Alabama (“in the
+South in Ahlabahm” was the way the old man heard it), but then there
+were other things that made this night seem so pleasant. The ribbons
+could not possibly conceive what the hat could be thinking about. At
+this point there was a pause, of which Mr. Folinsbee availed himself to
+walk very grimly and craunchingly down the gravel-walk toward the
+gate. Then the hat was lifted, and disappeared in the shadow, and Mr.
+Folinsbee confronted only the half-foolish, half-mischievous, but wholly
+pretty face of his daughter.
+
+It was afterward known to Madrono Hollow that sharp words passed between
+“Miss Jo” and the old man, and that the latter coupled the names of one
+Culpepper Starbottle and his uncle, Colonel Starbottle, with certain
+uncomplimentary epithets, and that Miss Jo retaliated sharply. “Her
+father's blood before her father's face boiled up and proved her truly
+of his race,” quoted the blacksmith, who leaned toward the noble verse
+of Byron. “She saw the old man's bluff and raised him,” was the directer
+comment of the college-bred Masters.
+
+Meanwhile the subject of these animadversions proceeded slowly along
+the road to a point where the Folinsbee mansion came in view,--a long,
+narrow, white building, unpretentious, yet superior to its neighbors,
+and bearing some evidences of taste and refinement in the vines that
+clambered over its porch, in its French windows, and the white muslin
+curtains that kept out the fierce California sun by day, and were now
+touched with silver in the gracious moonlight. Culpepper leaned against
+the low fence, and gazed long and earnestly at the building. Then the
+moonlight vanished ghostlike from one of the windows, a material glow
+took its place, and a girlish figure, holding a candle, drew the white
+curtains together. To Culpepper it was a vestal virgin standing before
+a hallowed shrine; to the prosaic observer I fear it was only a
+fair-haired young woman, whose wicked black eyes still shone with
+unfilial warmth. Howbeit, when the figure had disappeared he stepped
+out briskly into the moonlight of the high-road. Here he took off his
+distinguishing hat to wipe his forehead, and the moon shone full upon
+his face.
+
+It was not an unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and lank and
+bilious to be altogether pleasant. The cheek-bones were prominent,
+and the black eyes sunken in their orbits. Straight black hair fell
+slantwise off a high but narrow forehead, and swept part of a hollow
+cheek. A long black mustache followed the perpendicular curves of his
+mouth. It was on the whole a serious, even Quixotic face, but at
+times it was relieved by a rare smile of such tender and even pathetic
+sweetness, that Miss Jo is reported to have said that, if it would only
+last through the ceremony, she would have married its possessor on the
+spot. “I once told him so,” added that shameless young woman; “but the
+man instantly fell into a settled melancholy, and hasn't smiled since.”
+
+A half-mile below the Folinsbee Ranch the white road dipped and was
+crossed by a trail that ran through Madrono hollow. Perhaps because it
+was a near cut-off to the settlement, perhaps from some less practical
+reason, Culpepper took this trail, and in a few moments stood among the
+rarely beautiful trees that gave their name to the valley. Even in that
+uncertain light the weird beauty of these harlequin masqueraders was
+apparent; their red trunks--a blush in the moonlight, a deep blood-stain
+in the shadow--stood out against the silvery green foliage. It was as
+if Nature in some gracious moment had here caught and crystallized the
+gypsy memories of the transplanted Spaniard, to cheer him in his lonely
+exile.
+
+As Culpepper entered the grove he heard loud voices. As he turned toward
+a clump of trees, a figure so bizarre and characteristic that it might
+have been a resident Daphne--a figure over-dressed in crimson silk
+and lace, with bare brown arms and shoulders, and a wreath of
+honeysuckle--stepped out of the shadow. It was followed by a man.
+Culpepper started. To come to the point briefly, he recognized in the
+man the features of his respected uncle, Colonel Starbottle; in the
+female, a lady who may be briefly described as one possessing absolutely
+no claim to an introduction to the polite reader. To hurry over equally
+unpleasant details, both were evidently under the influence of liquor.
+
+From the excited conversation that ensued, Culpepper gathered that
+some insult had been put upon the lady at a public ball which she had
+attended that evening; that the Colonel, her escort, had failed to
+resent it with the sanguinary completeness that she desired. I regret
+that, even in a liberal age, I may not record the exact and even
+picturesque language in which this was conveyed to her hearers. Enough
+that at the close of a fiery peroration, with feminine inconsistency
+she flew at the gallant Colonel, and would have visited her delayed
+vengeance upon his luckless head, but for the prompt interference of
+Culpepper. Thwarted in this, she threw herself upon the ground, and then
+into unpicturesque hysterics. There was a fine moral lesson, not only in
+this grotesque performance of a sex which cannot afford to be grotesque,
+but in the ludicrous concern with which it inspired the two men.
+Culpepper, to whom woman was more or less angelic, was pained and
+sympathetic; the Colonel, to whom she was more or less improper, was
+exceedingly terrified and embarrassed. Howbeit the storm was soon over,
+and after Mistress Dolores had returned a little dagger to its sheath
+(her garter), she quietly took herself out of Madrono Hollow, and
+happily out of these pages forever. The two men, left to themselves,
+conversed in low tones. Dawn stole upon them before they separated:
+the Colonel quite sobered and in full possession of his usual jaunty
+self-assertion; Culpepper with a baleful glow in his hollow cheek, and
+in his dark eyes a rising fire.
+
+
+The next morning the general ear of Madrono Hollow was filled with
+rumors of the Colonel's mishap. It was asserted that he had been invited
+to withdraw his female companion from the floor of the Assembly Ball
+at the Independence Hotel, and that, failing to do this, both were
+expelled. It is to be regretted that in 1854 public opinion was divided
+in regard to the propriety of this step, and that there was some
+discussion as to the comparative virtue of the ladies who were not
+expelled; but it was generally conceded that the real casus belli was
+political. “Is this a dashed Puritan meeting?” had asked the
+Colonel, savagely. “It's no Pike County shindig,” had responded the
+floor-manager, cheerfully. “You're a Yank!” had screamed the Colonel,
+profanely qualifying the noun. “Get! you border ruffian,” was the reply.
+Such at least was the substance of the reports. As, at that sincere
+epoch, expressions like the above were usually followed by prompt
+action, a fracas was confidently looked for.
+
+Nothing, however, occurred. Colonel Starbottle made his appearance next
+day upon the streets with somewhat of his usual pomposity, a little
+restrained by the presence of his nephew, who accompanied him, and who,
+as a universal favorite, also exercised some restraint upon the curious
+and impertinent. But Culpepper's face wore a look of anxiety quite at
+variance with his usual grave repose. “The Don don't seem to take
+the old man's set-back kindly,” observed the sympathizing blacksmith.
+“P'r'aps he was sweet on Dolores himself,” suggested the sceptical
+expressman.
+
+It was a bright morning, a week after this occurrence, that Miss Jo
+Folinsbee stepped from her garden into the road. This time the latch did
+not click as she cautiously closed the gate behind her. After a moment's
+irresolution, which would have been awkward but that it was charmingly
+employed, after the manner of her sex, in adjusting a bow under a
+dimpled but rather prominent chin, and in pulling down the fingers of
+a neatly fitting glove, she tripped toward the settlement. Small wonder
+that a passing teamster drove his six mules into the wayside ditch and
+imperilled his load, to keep the dust from her spotless garments; small
+wonder that the “Lightning Express” withheld its speed and flash to let
+her pass, and that the expressman, who had never been known to exchange
+more than rapid monosyllables with his fellow-man, gazed after her with
+breathless admiration. For she was certainly attractive. In a country
+where the ornamental sex followed the example of youthful Nature, and
+were prone to overdress and glaring efflorescence, Miss Jo's simple
+and tasteful raiment added much to the physical charm of, if it did
+not actually suggest a sentiment to, her presence. It is said that
+Euchre-deck Billy, working in the gulch at the crossing, never saw
+Miss Folinsbee pass but that he always remarked apologetically to his
+partner, that “he believed he MUST write a letter home.” Even Bill
+Masters, who saw her in Paris presented to the favorable criticism of
+that most fastidious man, the late Emperor, said that she was stunning,
+but a big discount on what she was at Madrono Hollow.
+
+It was still early morning, but the sun, with California extravagance,
+had already begun to beat hotly on the little chip hat and blue ribbons,
+and Miss Jo was obliged to seek the shade of a bypath. Here she
+received the timid advances of a vagabond yellow dog graciously, until,
+emboldened by his success, he insisted upon accompanying her, and,
+becoming slobberingly demonstrative, threatened her spotless skirt with
+his dusty paws, when she drove him from her with some slight acerbity,
+and a stone which haply fell within fifty feet of its destined mark.
+Having thus proved her ability to defend herself, with characteristic
+inconsistency she took a small panic, and, gathering her white skirts in
+one hand, and holding the brim of her hat over her eyes with the other,
+she ran swiftly at least a hundred yards before she stopped. Then she
+began picking some ferns and a few wild-flowers still spared to the
+withered fields, and then a sudden distrust of her small ankles seized
+her, and she inspected them narrowly for those burrs and bugs and snakes
+which are supposed to lie in wait for helpless womanhood. Then she
+plucked some golden heads of wild oats, and with a sudden inspiration
+placed them in her black hair, and then came quite unconsciously upon
+the trail leading to Madrono Hollow.
+
+Here she hesitated. Before her ran the little trail, vanishing at last
+into the bosky depths below. The sun was very hot. She must be very far
+from home. Why should she not rest awhile under the shade of a madrono?
+
+She answered these questions by going there at once. After thoroughly
+exploring the grove, and satisfying herself that it contained no other
+living human creature, she sat down under one of the largest trees, with
+a satisfactory little sigh. Miss Jo loved the madrono. It was a cleanly
+tree; no dust ever lay upon its varnished leaves; its immaculate shade
+never was known to harbor grub or insect.
+
+She looked up at the rosy arms interlocked and arched above her head.
+She looked down at the delicate ferns and cryptogams at her feet.
+Something glittered at the root of the tree. She picked it up; it was a
+bracelet. She examined it carefully for cipher or inscription; there was
+none. She could not resist a natural desire to clasp it on her arm,
+and to survey it from that advantageous view-point. This absorbed her
+attention for some moments; and when she looked up again she beheld at a
+little distance Culpepper Starbottle.
+
+He was standing where he had halted, with instinctive delicacy, on first
+discovering her. Indeed, he had even deliberated whether he ought not
+to go away without disturbing her. But some fascination held him to the
+spot. Wonderful power of humanity! Far beyond jutted an outlying spur of
+the Sierra, vast, compact, and silent. Scarcely a hundred yards away, a
+league-long chasm dropped its sheer walls of granite a thousand feet. On
+every side rose up the serried ranks of pine-trees, in whose close-set
+files centuries of storm and change had wrought no breach. Yet all this
+seemed to Culpepper to have been planned by an all-wise Providence as
+the natural background to the figure of a pretty girl in a yellow dress.
+
+Although Miss Jo had confidently expected to meet Culpepper somewhere
+in her ramble, now that he came upon her suddenly, she felt disappointed
+and embarrassed. His manner, too, was more than usually grave and
+serious; and more than ever seemed to jar upon that audacious levity
+which was this giddy girl's power and security in a society where all
+feeling was dangerous. As he approached her she rose to her feet, but
+almost before she knew it he had taken her hand and drawn her to a seat
+beside him. This was not what Miss Jo had expected, but nothing is so
+difficult to predicate as the exact preliminaries of a declaration of
+love.
+
+What did Culpepper say? Nothing, I fear, that will add anything to
+the wisdom of the reader; nothing, I fear, that Miss Jo had not
+heard substantially from other lips before. But there was a certain
+conviction, fire-speed, and fury in the manner that was deliciously
+novel to the young lady. It was certainly something to be courted in
+the nineteenth century with all the passion and extravagance of the
+sixteenth; it was something to hear, amid the slang of a frontier
+society, the language of knight-errantry poured into her ear by this
+lantern-jawed, dark-browed descendant of the Cavaliers.
+
+I do not know that there was anything more in it. The facts, however, go
+to show that at a certain point Miss Jo dropped her glove, and that in
+recovering it Culpepper possessed himself first of her hand and then her
+lips. When they stood up to go Culpepper had his arm around her waist,
+and her black hair, with its sheaf of golden oats, rested against the
+breast pocket of his coat. But even then I do not think her fancy was
+entirely captive. She took a certain satisfaction in this demonstration
+of Culpepper's splendid height, and mentally compared it with a former
+flame, one lieutenant McMirk, an active, but under-sized Hector, who
+subsequently fell a victim to the incautiously composed and monotonous
+beverages of a frontier garrison. Nor was she so much preoccupied but
+that her quick eyes, even while absorbing Culpepper's glances, were yet
+able to detect, at a distance, the figure of a man approaching. In an
+instant she slipped out of Culpepper's arm, and, whipping her hands
+behind her, said, “There's that horrid man!”
+
+Culpepper looked up and beheld his respected uncle panting and blowing
+over the hill. His brow contracted as he turned to Miss Jo: “You don't
+like my uncle!”
+
+“I hate him!” Miss Jo was recovering her ready tongue.
+
+Culpepper blushed. He would have liked to enter upon some details of the
+Colonel's pedigree and exploits, but there was not time. He only smiled
+sadly. The smile melted Miss Jo. She held out her hand quickly, and said
+with even more than her usual effrontery, “Don't let that man get you
+into any trouble. Take care of yourself, dear, and don't let anything
+happen to you.”
+
+Miss Jo intended this speech to be pathetic; the tenure of life among
+her lovers had hitherto been very uncertain. Culpepper turned toward
+her, but she had already vanished in the thicket.
+
+The Colonel came up panting. “I've looked all over town for you, and be
+dashed to you, sir. Who was that with you?”
+
+“A lady.” (Culpepper never lied, but he was discreet.)
+
+“D--m 'em all! Look yar, Culp, I've spotted the man who gave the order
+to put me off the floor” (“flo” was what the Colonel said) “the other
+night!”
+
+“Who was it?” asked Culpepper, listlessly.
+
+“Jack Folinsbee.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Why, the son of that dashed nigger-worshipping psalm-singing Puritan
+Yankee. What's the matter, now? Look yar, Culp, you ain't goin' back on
+your blood, ar' ye? You ain't goin' back on your word? Ye ain't going
+down at the feet of this trash, like a whipped hound?”
+
+Culpepper was silent. He was very white. Presently he looked up and said
+quietly. “No.”
+
+
+Culpepper Starbottle had challenged Jack Folinsbee, and the challenge
+was accepted. The cause alleged was the expelling of Culpepper's uncle
+from the floor of the Assembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee. This much
+Madrono Hollow knew and could swear to; but there were other strange
+rumors afloat, of which the blacksmith was an able expounder. “You see,
+gentlemen,” he said to the crowd gathered around his anvil, “I ain't
+got no theory of this affair, I only give a few facts as have come to
+my knowledge. Culpepper and Jack meets quite accidental like in Bob's
+saloon. Jack goes up to Culpepper and says, 'A word with you.' Culpepper
+bows and steps aside in this way, Jack standing about HERE.” (The
+blacksmith demonstrates the position of the parties with two old
+horseshoes on the anvil.) “Jack pulls a bracelet from his pocket and
+says, 'Do you know that bracelet?' Culpepper says, 'I do not,' quite
+cool-like and easy. Jack says, 'You gave it to my sister.' Culpepper
+says, still cool as you please, 'I did not.' Jack says, 'You lie, G-d
+d-mn you,' and draws his derringer. Culpepper jumps forward about here”
+ (reference is made to the diagram) “and Jack fires. Nobody hit. It's
+a mighty cur'o's thing, gentlemen,” continued the blacksmith,
+dropping suddenly into the abstract, and leaning meditatively on his
+anvil,--“it's a mighty cur'o's thing that nobody gets hit so often. You
+and me empties our revolvers sociably at each other over a little game,
+and the room full and nobody gets hit! That's what gets me.”
+
+“Never mind, Thompson,” chimed in Bill Masters, “there's another and a
+better world where we shall know all that and--become better shots. Go
+on with your story.”
+
+“Well, some grabs Culpepper and some grabs Jack, and so separates them.
+Then Jack tells 'em as how he had seen his sister wear a bracelet which
+he knew was one that had been given to Dolores by Colonel Starbottle.
+That Miss Jo wouldn't say where she got it, but owned up to having seen
+Culpepper that day. Then the most cur'o's thing of it yet, what does
+Culpepper do but rise up and takes all back that he said, and allows
+that he DID give her the bracelet. Now my opinion, gentlemen, is that he
+lied; it ain't like that man to give a gal that he respects anything off
+of that piece, Dolores. But it's all the same now, and there's but one
+thing to be done.”
+
+The way this one thing was done belongs to the record of Madrono Hollow.
+The morning was bright and clear; the air was slightly chill, but that
+was from the mist which arose along the banks of the river. As early
+as six o'clock the designated ground--a little opening in the madrono
+grove--was occupied by Culpepper Starbottle, Colonel Starbottle, his
+second, and the surgeon. The Colonel was exalted and excited, albeit
+in a rather imposing, dignified way, and pointed out to the surgeon the
+excellence of the ground, which at that hour was wholly shaded from the
+sun, whose steady stare is more or less discomposing to your duellist.
+The surgeon threw himself on the grass and smoked his cigar. Culpepper,
+quiet and thoughtful, leaned against a tree and gazed up the river.
+There was a strange suggestion of a picnic about the group, which was
+heightened when the Colonel drew a bottle from his coat-tails, and,
+taking a preliminary draught, offered it to the others. “Cocktails,
+sir,” he explained with dignified precision. “A gentleman, sir, should
+never go out without 'em. Keeps off the morning chill. I remember going
+out in '53 with Hank Boompirater. Good ged, sir, the man had to put on
+his overcoat, and was shot in it. Fact.”
+
+But the noise of wheels drowned the Colonel's reminiscences, and a
+rapidly driven buggy, containing Jack Folinsbee, Calhoun Bungstarter,
+his second, and Bill Masters, drew up on the ground. Jack Folinsbee
+leaped out gayly. “I had the jolliest work to get away without the
+governor's hearing,” he began, addressing the group before him with the
+greatest volubility. Calhoun Bungstarter touched his arm, and the young
+man blushed. It was his first duel.
+
+“If you are ready, gentlemen,” said Mr. Bungstarter, “we had better
+proceed to business. I believe it is understood that no apology will be
+offered or accepted. We may as well settle preliminaries at once, or
+I fear we shall be interrupted. There is a rumor in town that the
+Vigilance Committee are seeking our friends the Starbottles, and I
+believe, as their fellow-countryman, I have the honor to be included in
+their warrant.”
+
+At this probability of interruption, that gravity which had hitherto
+been wanting fell upon the group. The preliminaries were soon arranged
+and the principals placed in position. Then there was a silence.
+
+To a spectator from the hill, impressed with the picnic suggestion, what
+might have been the popping of two champagne corks broke the stillness.
+
+Culpepper had fired in the air. Colonel Starbottle uttered a low curse.
+Jack Folinsbee sulkily demanded another shot.
+
+Again the parties stood opposed to each other. Again the word was given,
+and what seemed to be the simultaneous report of both pistols rose upon
+the air. But after an interval of a few seconds all were surprised to
+see Culpepper slowly raise his unexploded weapon and fire it harmlessly
+above his head. Then, throwing the pistol upon the ground, he walked to
+a tree and leaned silently against it.
+
+Jack Folinsbee flew into a paroxysm of fury. Colonel Starbottle raved
+and swore. Mr. Bungstarter was properly shocked at their conduct.
+“Really, gentlemen, if Mr. Culpepper Starbottle declines another shot, I
+do not see how we can proceed.”
+
+But the Colonel's blood was up, and Jack Folinsbee was equally
+implacable. A hurried consultation ensued, which ended by Colonel
+Starbottle taking his nephew's place as principal, Bill Masters acting
+as second, vice Mr. Bungstarter, who declined all further connection
+with the affair.
+
+Two distinct reports rang through the Hollow. Jack Folinsbee dropped his
+smoking pistol, took a step forward, and then dropped heavily upon his
+face.
+
+In a moment the surgeon was at his side. The confusion was heightened
+by the trampling of hoofs, and the voice of the blacksmith bidding them
+flee for their lives before the coming storm. A moment more and the
+ground was cleared, and the surgeon, looking up, beheld only the white
+face of Culpepper bending over him.
+
+“Can you save him?”
+
+“I cannot say. Hold up his head a moment, while I run to the buggy.”
+
+Culpepper passed his arm tenderly around the neck of the insensible man.
+Presently the surgeon returned with some stimulants.
+
+“There, that will do, Mr. Starbottle, thank you. Now my advice is to get
+away from here while you can. I'll look after Folinsbee. Do you hear?”
+
+Culpepper's arm was still round the neck of his late foe, but his head
+had drooped and fallen on the wounded man's shoulder. The surgeon looked
+down, and, catching sight of his face, stooped and lifted him gently
+in his arms. He opened his coat and waistcoat. There was blood upon his
+shirt, and a bullet-hole in his breast. He had been shot unto death at
+the first fire.
+
+
+
+
+THE POET OF SIERRA FLAT.
+
+
+As the enterprising editor of the “Sierra Flat Record” stood at his case
+setting type for his next week's paper, he could not help hearing the
+woodpeckers who were busy on the roof above his head. It occurred to
+him that possibly the birds had not yet learned to recognize in the rude
+structure any improvement on nature, and this idea pleased him so much
+that he incorporated it in the editorial article which he was then
+doubly composing. For the editor was also printer of the “Record”;
+and although that remarkable journal was reputed to exert a power felt
+through all Calaveras and a greater part of Tuolumne County, strict
+economy was one of the conditions of its beneficent existence.
+
+Thus preoccupied, he was startled by the sudden irruption of a small
+roll of manuscript, which was thrown through the open door and fell at
+his feet. He walked quickly to the threshold and looked down the tangled
+trail which led to the high-road. But there was nothing to suggest the
+presence of his mysterious contributor. A hare limped slowly away, a
+green-and-gold lizard paused upon a pine stump, the woodpeckers ceased
+their work. So complete had been his sylvan seclusion, that he found
+it difficult to connect any human agency with the act; rather the hare
+seemed to have an inexpressibly guilty look, the woodpeckers to maintain
+a significant silence, and the lizard to be conscience-stricken into
+stone.
+
+An examination of the manuscript, however, corrected this injustice to
+defenceless nature. It was evidently of human origin,--being verse,
+and of exceeding bad quality. The editor laid it aside. As he did so he
+thought he saw a face at the window. Sallying out in some indignation,
+he penetrated the surrounding thicket in every direction, but his search
+was as fruitless as before. The poet, if it were he, was gone.
+
+A few days after this the editorial seclusion was invaded by voices of
+alternate expostulation and entreaty. Stepping to the door, the editor
+was amazed at beholding Mr. Morgan McCorkle, a well-known citizen of
+Angelo, and a subscriber to the “Record,” in the act of urging, partly
+by force and partly by argument, an awkward young man toward the
+building. When he had finally effected his object, and, as it were,
+safely landed his prize in a chair, Mr. McCorkle took off his hat,
+carefully wiped the narrow isthmus of forehead which divided his black
+brows from his stubby hair, and with an explanatory wave of his hand
+toward his reluctant companion, said, “A borned poet, and the cussedest
+fool you ever seed!”
+
+Accepting the editor's smile as a recognition of the introduction, Mr.
+McCorkle panted and went on: “Didn't want to come! 'Mister Editor don't
+went to see me, Morg,' sez he. 'Milt,' sez I, 'he do; a borned poet like
+you and a gifted genius like he oughter come together sociable!' And I
+fetched him. Ah, will yer?” The born poet had, after exhibiting signs
+of great distress, started to run. But Mr. McCorkle was down upon him
+instantly, seizing him by his long linen coat, and settled him back in
+his chair. “Tain't no use stampeding. Yer ye are and yer ye stays. For
+yer a borned poet,--ef ye are as shy as a jackass rabbit. Look at 'im
+now!”
+
+He certainly was not an attractive picture. There was hardly a notable
+feature in his weak face, except his eyes, which were moist and shy and
+not unlike the animal to which Mr. McCorkle had compared him. It was the
+face that the editor had seen at the window.
+
+“Knowed him for fower year,--since he war a boy,” continued Mr. McCorkle
+in a loud whisper. “Allers the same, bless you! Can jerk a rhyme as easy
+as turnin' jack. Never had any eddication; lived out in Missooray all
+his life. But he's chock full o' poetry. On'y this mornin' sez I to
+him,--he camps along o' me,--'Milt!' sez I, 'are breakfast ready?' and
+he up and answers back quite peert and chipper, 'The breakfast it is
+ready, and the birds is singing free, and it's risin' in the dawnin'
+light is happiness to me!' When a man,” said Mr. McCorkle, dropping his
+voice with deep solemnity, “gets off things like them, without any
+call to do it, and handlin' flapjacks over a cookstove at the same
+time,--that man's a borned poet.”
+
+There was an awkward pause. Mr. McCorkle beamed patronizingly on
+his protege. The born poet looked as if he were meditating another
+flight,--not a metaphorical one. The editor asked if he could do
+anything for them.
+
+“In course you can,” responded Mr. McCorkle, “that's jest it. Milt,
+where's that poetry!”
+
+The editor's countenance fell as the poet produced from his pocket a
+roll of manuscript. He, however, took it mechanically and glanced over
+it. It was evidently a duplicate of the former mysterious contribution.
+
+The editor then spoke briefly but earnestly. I regret that I cannot
+recall his exact words, but it appeared that never before, in the
+history of the “Record,” had the pressure been so great upon its
+columns. Matters of paramount importance, deeply affecting the material
+progress of Sierra, questions touching the absolute integrity of
+Calaveras and Tuolumne as social communities, were even now waiting
+expression. Weeks, nay, months, must elapse before that pressure would
+be removed, and the “Record” could grapple with any but the sternest of
+topics. Again, the editor had noticed with pain the absolute decline
+of poetry in the foot-hills of the Sierras. Even the works of Byron and
+Moore attracted no attention in Dutch Flat, and a prejudice seemed to
+exist against Tennyson in Grass Valley. But the editor was not without
+hope for the future. In the course of four or five years, when the
+country was settled,--
+
+“What would be the cost to print this yer?” interrupted Mr. McCorkle,
+quietly.
+
+“About fifty dollars, as an advertisement,” responded the editor with
+cheerful alacrity.
+
+Mr. McCorkle placed the sum in the editor's hand. “Yer see thet's what
+I sez to Milt, 'Milt,' sez I, 'pay as you go, for you are a borned
+poet. Hevin no call to write, but doin' it free and spontaneous like, in
+course you pays. Thet's why Mr. Editor never printed your poetry.'”
+
+“What name shall I put to it?” asked the editor.
+
+“Milton.”
+
+It was the first word that the born poet had spoken during the
+interview, and his voice was so very sweet and musical that the editor
+looked at him curiously, and wondered if he had a sister.
+
+“Milton; is that all?”
+
+“Thet's his furst name,” exclaimed Mr. McCorkle.
+
+The editor here suggested that as there had been another poet of that
+name--
+
+“Milt might be took for him! Thet's bad,” reflected Mr. McCorkle with
+simple gravity. “Well, put down his hull name,--Milton Chubbuck.”
+
+The editor made a note of the fact. “I'll set it up now,” he said. This
+was also a hint that the interview was ended. The poet and patron, arm
+in arm, drew towards the door. “In next week's paper,” said the editor,
+smilingly, in answer to the childlike look of inquiry in the eyes of the
+poet, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+The editor was as good as his word. He straight-way betook himself to
+his case, and, unrolling the manuscript, began his task. The woodpeckers
+on the roof recommenced theirs, and in a few moments the former sylvan
+seclusion was restored. There was no sound in the barren, barn-like room
+but the birds above, and below the click of the composing-rule as the
+editor marshalled the types into lines in his stick, and arrayed them in
+solid column on the galley. Whatever might have been his opinion of the
+copy before him, there was no indication of it in his face, which wore
+the stolid indifference of his craft. Perhaps this was unfortunate, for
+as the day wore on and the level rays of the sun began to pierce the
+adjacent thicket, they sought out and discovered an anxious ambushed
+figure drawn up beside the editor's window,--a figure that had sat
+there motionless for hours. Within, the editor worked on as steadily and
+impassively as Fate. And without, the born poet of Sierra Flat sat and
+watched him as waiting its decree.
+
+
+The effect of the poem on Sierra Flat was remarkable and unprecedented.
+The absolute vileness of its doggerel, the gratuitous imbecility of its
+thought, and above all the crowning audacity of the fact that it was
+the work of a citizen and published in the county paper, brought it
+instantly into popularity. For many months Calaveras had languished for
+a sensation; since the last vigilance committee nothing had transpired
+to dispel the listless ennui begotten of stagnant business and growing
+civilization. In more prosperous moments the office of the “Record”
+ would have been simply gutted and the editor deported; at present the
+paper was in such demand that the edition was speedily exhausted. In
+brief, the poem of Mr. Milton Chubbuck came like a special providence
+to Sierra Flat. It was read by camp-fires, in lonely cabins, in
+flaring bar-rooms and noisy saloons, and declaimed from the boxes of
+stagecoaches. It was sung in Poker Flat with the addition of a local
+chorus, and danced as an unhallowed rhythmic dance by the Pyrrhic
+phalanx of One Horse Gulch, known as “The Festive Stags of Calaveras.”
+ Some unhappy ambiguities of expression gave rise to many new readings,
+notes, and commentaries, which, I regret to state, were more often
+marked by ingenuity than delicacy of thought or expression.
+
+Never before did poet acquire such sudden local reputation. From the
+seclusion of McCorkle's cabin and the obscurity of culinary labors, he
+was haled forth into the glowing sunshine of Fame. The name of Chubbuck
+was written in letters of chalk on unpainted walls, and carved with a
+pick on the sides of tunnels. A drink known variously as “The Chubbuck
+Tranquillizer,” or “The Chubbuck Exalter,” was dispensed at the
+bars. For some weeks a rude design for a Chubbuck statue, made up of
+illustrations from circus and melodeon posters, representing the genius
+of Calaveras in brief skirts on a flying steed in the act of crowning
+the poet Chubbuck, was visible at Keeler's Ferry. The poet himself was
+overborne with invitations to drink and extravagant congratulations.
+The meeting between Colonel Starbottle of Siskyion and Chubbuck, as
+previously arranged by our “Boston,” late of Roaring Camp, is said to
+have been indescribably affecting. The Colonel embraced him unsteadily.
+“I could not return to my constituents at Siskyion, sir, if this hand,
+which has grasped that of the gifted Prentice and the lamented Poe,
+should not have been honored by the touch of the godlike Chubbuck.
+Gentlemen, American literature is looking up. Thank you, I will take
+sugar in mine.” It was “Boston” who indited letters of congratulations
+from H. W. Longfellow, Tennyson, and Browning, to Mr. Chubbuck,
+deposited them in the Sierra Flat post-office, and obligingly consented
+to dictate the replies.
+
+The simple faith and unaffected delight with which these manifestations
+were received by the poet and his patron might have touched the hearts
+of these grim masters of irony, but for the sudden and equal development
+in both of the variety of weak natures. Mr. McCorkle basked in the
+popularity of his protege, and became alternately supercilious or
+patronizing toward the dwellers of Sierra Flat; while the poet, with
+hair carefully oiled and curled, and bedecked with cheap jewelry and
+flaunting neck-handkerchief, paraded himself before the single hotel.
+As may be imagined, this new disclosure of weakness afforded intense
+satisfaction to Sierra Flat, gave another lease of popularity to the
+poet, and suggested another idea to the facetious “Boston.”
+
+At that time a young lady popularly and professionally known as the
+“California Pet” was performing to enthusiastic audiences in the
+interior. Her specialty lay in the personation of youthful masculine
+character; as a gamin of the street she was irresistible, as a
+negro-dancer she carried the honest miner's heart by storm. A saucy,
+pretty brunette, she had preserved a wonderful moral reputation even
+under the Jove-like advances of showers of gold that greeted her
+appearance on the stage at Sierra Flat. A prominent and delighted member
+of that audience was Milton Chubbuck. He attended every night. Every
+day he lingered at the door of the Union Hotel for a glimpse of the
+“California Pet.” It was not long before he received a note
+from her,--in “Boston's” most popular and approved female
+hand,--acknowledging his admiration. It was not long before “Boston” was
+called upon to indite a suitable reply. At last, in furtherance of his
+facetious design, it became necessary for “Boston” to call upon the
+young actress herself and secure her personal participation. To her
+he unfolded a plan, the successful carrying out of which he felt would
+secure his fame to posterity as a practical humorist. The “California
+Pet's” black eyes sparkled approvingly and mischievously. She only
+stipulated that she should see the man first,--a concession to her
+feminine weakness which years of dancing Juba and wearing trousers and
+boots had not wholly eradicated from her wilful breast. By all means, it
+should be done. And the interview was arranged for the next week.
+
+It must not be supposed that during this interval of popularity Mr.
+Chubbuck had been unmindful of his poetic qualities. A certain portion
+of each day he was absent from town,--“a communin' with natur',” as Mr.
+McCorkle expressed it,--and actually wandering in the mountain trails,
+or lying on his back under the trees, or gathering fragrant herbs and
+the bright-colored berries of the Marzanita. These and his company he
+generally brought to the editor's office, late in the afternoon,
+often to that enterprising journalist's infinite weariness. Quiet and
+uncommunicative, he would sit there patiently watching him at his work
+until the hour for closing the office arrived, when he would as quietly
+depart. There was something so humble and unobtrusive in these visits,
+that the editor could not find it in his heart to deny them, and
+accepting them, like the woodpeckers, as a part of his sylvan
+surroundings, often forgot even his presence. Once or twice, moved by
+some beauty of expression in the moist, shy eyes, he felt like seriously
+admonishing his visitor of his idle folly; but his glance falling upon
+the oiled hair and the gorgeous necktie, he invariably thought better of
+it. The case was evidently hopeless.
+
+The interview between Mr. Chubbuck and the “California Pet” took place
+in a private room of the Union Hotel; propriety being respected by
+the presence of that arch-humorist, “Boston.” To this gentleman we are
+indebted for the only true account of the meeting. However reticent
+Mr. Chubbuck might have been in the presence of his own sex, toward the
+fairer portion of humanity he was, like most poets, exceedingly voluble.
+Accustomed as the “California Pet” had been to excessive compliment, she
+was fairly embarrassed by the extravagant praises of her visitor. Her
+personation of boy characters, her dancing of the “champion jig,” were
+particularly dwelt upon with fervid but unmistakable admiration.
+At last, recovering her audacity and emboldened by the presence of
+“Boston,” the “California Pet” electrified her hearers by demanding,
+half jestingly, half viciously, if it were as a boy or a girl that she
+was the subject of his flattering admiration.
+
+“That knocked him out o' time,” said the delighted “Boston,” in his
+subsequent account of the interview. “But do you believe the d----d
+fool actually asked her to take him with her; wanted to engage in the
+company.”
+
+The plan, as briefly unfolded by “Boston,” was to prevail upon Mr.
+Chubbuck to make his appearance in costume (already designed and
+prepared by the inventor) before a Sierra Flat audience, and recite
+an original poem at the Hall immediately on the conclusion of the
+“California Pet's” performance. At a given signal the audience were to
+rise and deliver a volley of unsavory articles (previously provided by
+the originator of the scheme); then a select few were to rush on the
+stage, seize the poet, and, after marching him in triumphal procession
+through town, were to deposit him beyond its uttermost limits, with
+strict injunctions never to enter it again. To the first part of the
+plan the poet was committed, for the latter portion it was easy enough
+to find participants.
+
+The eventful night came, and with it an audience that packed the long
+narrow room with one dense mass of human beings. The “California Pet”
+ never had been so joyous, so reckless, so fascinating and audacious
+before. But the applause was tame and weak compared to the ironical
+outburst that greeted the second rising of the curtain and the entrance
+of the born poet of Sierra Flat. Then there was a hush of expectancy,
+and the poet stepped to the foot-lights and stood with his manuscript in
+his hand.
+
+His face was deadly pale. Either there was some suggestion of his fate
+in the faces of his audience, or some mysterious instinct told him of
+his danger. He attempted to speak, but faltered, tottered, and staggered
+to the wings.
+
+Fearful of losing his prey, “Boston” gave the signal and leaped upon
+the stage. But at the same moment a light figure darted from behind the
+scenes, and delivering a kick that sent the discomfited humorist back
+among the musicians, cut a pigeon-wing, executed a double-shuffle,
+and then advancing to the foot-lights with that inimitable look, that
+audacious swagger and utter abandon which had so thrilled and fascinated
+them a moment before, uttered the characteristic speech: “Wot are you
+goin' to hit a man fur, when he's down, s-a-a-y?”
+
+The look, the drawl, the action, the readiness, and above all the
+downright courage of the little woman, had its effect. A roar of
+sympathetic applause followed the act. “Cut and run while you can,” she
+whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without altering the other's
+attitude of pert and saucy defiance toward the audience. But even as she
+spoke the poet tottered and sank fainting upon the stage. Then she threw
+a despairing whisper behind the scenes, “Ring down the curtain.”
+
+There was a slight movement of opposition in the audience, but among
+them rose the burly shoulders of Yuba Bill, the tall, erect figure of
+Henry York of Sandy Bar, and the colorless, determined face of John
+Oakhurst. The curtain came down.
+
+Behind it knelt the “California Pet” beside the prostrate poet. “Bring
+me some water. Run for a doctor. Stop!! CLEAR OUT, ALL OF YOU!”
+
+She had unloosed the gaudy cravat and opened the shirt-collar of the
+insensible figure before her. Then she burst into an hysterical laugh.
+
+“Manuela!”
+
+Her tiring-woman, a Mexican half-breed, came toward her.
+
+“Help me with him to my dressing-room, quick; then stand outside and
+wait. If any one questions you, tell them he's gone. Do you hear? HE's
+gone.”
+
+The old woman did as she was bade. In a few moments the audience had
+departed. Before morning so also had the “California Pet,” Manuela,
+and--the poet of Sierra Flat.
+
+But, alas! with them also had departed the fair fame of the “California
+Pet.” Only a few, and these it is to be feared of not the best moral
+character themselves, still had faith in the stainless honor of their
+favorite actress. “It was a mighty foolish thing to do, but it'll all
+come out right yet.” On the other hand, a majority gave her full credit
+and approbation for her undoubted pluck and gallantry, but deplored that
+she should have thrown it away upon a worthless object. To elect for
+a lover the despised and ridiculed vagrant of Sierra Flat, who had not
+even the manliness to stand up in his own defence, was not only evidence
+of inherent moral depravity, but was an insult to the community. Colonel
+Starbottle saw in it only another instance of the extreme frailty of the
+sex; he had known similar cases; and remembered distinctly, sir, how a
+well-known Philadelphia heiress, one of the finest women that ever rode
+in her kerridge, that, gad, sir! had thrown over a Southern member of
+Congress to consort with a d----d nigger. The Colonel had also noticed a
+singular look in the dog's eye which he did not entirely fancy. He would
+not say anything against the lady, sir, but he had noticed--And here
+haply the Colonel became so mysterious and darkly confidential as to be
+unintelligible and inaudible to the bystanders.
+
+A few days after the disappearance of Mr. Chubbuck a singular report
+reached Sierra Flat, and it was noticed that “Boston,” who since the
+failure of his elaborate joke had been even more depressed in spirits
+than is habitual with great humorists, suddenly found that his presence
+was required in San Francisco. But as yet nothing but the vaguest
+surmises were afloat, and nothing definite was known.
+
+It was a pleasant afternoon when the editor of the “Sierra Flat Record”
+ looked up from his case and beheld the figure of Mr. Morgan McCorkle
+standing in the doorway. There was a distressed look on the face of
+that worthy gentleman that at once enlisted the editor's sympathizing
+attention. He held an open letter in his hand, as he advanced toward the
+middle of the room.
+
+“As a man as has allers borne a fair reputation,” began Mr. McCorkle
+slowly, “I should like, if so be as I could, Mister Editor, to make a
+correction in the columns of your valooable paper.”
+
+Mr. Editor begged him to proceed.
+
+“Ye may not disremember that about a month ago I fetched here what so be
+as we'll call a young man whose name might be as it were Milton--Milton
+Chubbuck.”
+
+Mr. Editor remembered perfectly.
+
+“Thet same party I'd knowed better nor fower year, two on 'em campin'
+out together. Not that I'd known him all the time, fur he war shy and
+strange at spells and had odd ways that I took war nat'ral to a borned
+poet. Ye may remember that I said he was a borned poet?”
+
+The editor distinctly did.
+
+“I picked this same party up in St. Jo., takin' a fancy to his face, and
+kinder calklating he'd runn'd away from home,--for I'm a married man,
+Mr. Editor, and hev children of my own,--and thinkin' belike he was a
+borned poet.”
+
+“Well?” said the editor.
+
+“And as I said before, I should like now to make a correction in the
+columns of your valooable paper.”
+
+“What correction!” asked the editor.
+
+“I said, ef you remember my words, as how he was a borned poet.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“From statements in this yer letter it seems as how I war wrong.”
+
+“Well!”
+
+“She war a woman.”
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO RUPERT.
+
+
+A STORY FOR LITTLE SOLDIERS.
+
+
+It was the Christmas season in California,--a season of falling rain and
+springing grasses. There were intervals when, through driving clouds and
+flying scud, the sun visited the haggard hills with a miracle, and death
+and resurrection were as one, and out of the very throes of decay a
+joyous life struggled outward and upward. Even the storms that swept
+down the dead leaves nurtured the tender buds that took their places.
+There were no episodes of snowy silence; over the quickening fields the
+farmer's ploughshare hard followed the furrows left by the latest rains.
+Perhaps it was for this reason that the Christmas evergreens which
+decorated the drawing-room took upon themselves a foreign aspect, and
+offered a weird contrast to the roses, seen dimly through the windows,
+as the southwest wind beat their soft faces against the panes.
+
+
+“Now,” said the Doctor, drawing his chair closer to the fire, and
+looking mildly but firmly at the semicircle of flaxen heads around him,
+“I want it distinctly understood before I begin my story, that I am not
+to be interrupted by any ridiculous questions. At the first one I shall
+stop. At the second, I shall feel it my duty to administer a dose of
+castor-oil, all around. The boy that moves his legs or arms will be
+understood to invite amputation. I have brought my instruments with me,
+and never allow pleasure to interfere with my business. Do you promise?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said six small voices, simultaneously. The volley was,
+however, followed by half a dozen dropping questions.
+
+“Silence! Bob, put your feet down, and stop rattling that sword. Flora
+shall sit by my side, like a little lady, and be an example to the rest.
+Fung Tang shall stay, too, if he likes. Now, turn down the gas a little;
+there, that will do,--just enough to make the fire look brighter, and to
+show off the Christmas candles. Silence, everybody! The boy who cracks
+an almond, or breathes too loud over his raisins, will be put out of the
+room?”
+
+There was a profound silence. Bob laid his sword tenderly aside, and
+nursed his leg thoughtfully. Flora, after coquettishly adjusting the
+pocket of her little apron, put her arm upon the Doctor's shoulder, and
+permitted herself to be drawn beside him. Fung Tang, the little heathen
+page, who was permitted, on this rare occasion, to share the Christian
+revels in the drawing-room, surveyed the group with a smile that was at
+once sweet and philosophical. The light ticking of a French clock on the
+mantel, supported by a young shepherdess of bronze complexion and great
+symmetry of limb, was the only sound that disturbed the Christmas-like
+peace of the apartment,--a peace which held the odors of evergreens, new
+toys, cedar-boxes, glue, and varnish in an harmonious combination that
+passed all understanding.
+
+“About four years ago at this time,” began the Doctor, “I attended
+a course of lectures in a certain city. One of the professors,
+who was a sociable, kindly man,--though somewhat practical and
+hard-headed,--invited me to his house on Christmas night. I was very
+glad to go, as I was anxious to see one of his sons, who, though only
+twelve years old, was said to be very clever. I dare not tell you how
+many Latin verses this little fellow could recite, or how many English
+ones he had composed. In the first place, you'd want me to repeat them;
+secondly, I'm not a judge of poetry, Latin or English. But there were
+judges who said they were wonderful for a boy, and everybody predicted
+a splendid future for him. Everybody but his father. He shook his head
+doubtingly, whenever it was mentioned, for, as I have told you, he was a
+practical, matter-of-fact man.
+
+“There was a pleasant party at the Professor's that night. All the
+children of the neighborhood were there, and among them the Professor's
+clever son, Rupert, as they called him,--a thin little chap, about as
+tall as Bobby there, and as fair and delicate as Flora by my side. His
+health was feeble, his father said; he seldom ran about and played with
+other boys, preferring to stay at home and brood over his books, and
+compose what he called his verses.
+
+“Well, we had a Christmas-tree just like this, and we had been laughing
+and talking, calling off the names of the children who had presents
+on the tree, and everybody was very happy and joyous, when one of the
+children suddenly uttered a cry of mingled surprise and hilarity, and
+said, 'Here's something for Rupert; and what do you think it is?'
+
+“We all guessed. 'A desk'; 'A copy of Milton'; 'A gold pen'; 'A rhyming
+dictionary? 'No? what then?'
+
+“'A drum!'
+
+“'A what?' asked everybody.
+
+“'A drum! with Rupert's name on it?'
+
+“Sure enough there it was. A good-sized, bright, new, brass-bound drum,
+with a slip of paper on it, with the inscription, 'FOR RUPERT.'
+
+“Of course we all laughed, and thought it a good joke. 'You see you're
+to make a noise in the world, Rupert!' said one. 'Here's parchment for
+the poet,' said another. 'Rupert's last work in sheepskin covers,' said
+a third. 'Give us a classical tune, Rupert,' said a fourth; and so on.
+But Rupert seemed too mortified to speak; he changed color, bit his
+lips, and finally burst into a passionate fit of crying, and left the
+room. Then those who had joked him felt ashamed, and everybody began
+to ask who had put the drum there. But no one knew, or if they did, the
+unexpected sympathy awakened for the sensitive boy kept them silent.
+Even the servants were called up and questioned, but no one could
+give any idea where it came from. And, what was still more singular,
+everybody declared that up to the moment it was produced, no one had
+seen it hanging on the tree. What do I think? Well, I have my own
+opinion. But no questions! Enough for you to know that Rupert did not
+come down stairs again that night, and the party soon after broke up.
+
+“I had almost forgotten those things, for the war of the Rebellion
+broke out the next spring, and I was appointed surgeon in one of the
+new regiments, and was on my way to the seat of war. But I had to pass
+through the city where the Professor lived, and there I met him. My
+first question was about Rupert. The Professor shook his head sadly.
+'He's not so well,' he said; 'he has been declining since last
+Christmas, when you saw him. A very strange case,' he added, giving it
+a long Latin name,--'a very singular case. But go and see him yourself,'
+he urged; 'it may distract his mind and do him good?'
+
+“I went accordingly to the Professor's house, and found Rupert lying on
+a sofa, propped up with pillows. Around him were scattered his books,
+and, what seemed in singular contrast, that drum I told you about was
+hanging on a nail, just above his head. His face was thin and wasted;
+there was a red spot on either cheek, and his eyes were very bright and
+widely opened. He was glad to see me, and when I told him where I was
+going, he asked a thousand questions about the war. I thought I had
+thoroughly diverted his mind from its sick and languid fancies, when he
+suddenly grasped my hand and drew me toward him.
+
+“'Doctor,' said he, in a low whisper, 'you won't laugh at me if I tell
+you something?'
+
+“'No, certainly not,' I said.
+
+“'You remember that drum?' he said, pointing to the glittering toy that
+hung against the wall. 'You know, too, how it came to me. A few weeks
+after Christmas, I was lying half asleep here, and the drum was hanging
+on the wall, when suddenly I heard it beaten; at first, low and slowly,
+then faster and louder, until its rolling filled the house. In the
+middle of the night, I heard it again. I did not dare to tell anybody
+about it, but I have heard it every night ever since.'
+
+“He paused and looked anxiously in my face. 'Sometimes,' he continued,
+'it is played softly, sometimes loudly, but always quickening to a
+long-roll, so loud and alarming that I have looked to see people coming
+into my room to ask what was the matter. But I think, Doctor,--I think,'
+he repeated slowly, looking up with painful interest into my face, 'that
+no one hears it but myself.'
+
+“I thought so, too, but I asked him if he had heard it at any other
+time.
+
+“'Once or twice in the daytime,' he replied, 'when I have been reading
+or writing; then very loudly, as though it were angry, and tried in that
+way to attract my attention away from my books.'
+
+“I looked into his face, and placed my hand upon his pulse. His eyes
+were very bright, and his pulse a little flurried and quick. I then
+tried to explain to him that he was very weak, and that his senses were
+very acute, as most weak people's are; and how that when he read,
+or grew interested and excited, or when he was tired at night, the
+throbbing of a big artery made the beating sound he heard. He listened
+to me with a sad smile of unbelief, but thanked me, and in a little
+while I went away. But as I was going down stairs, I met the Professor.
+I gave him my opinion of the case,--well, no matter what it was.
+
+“'He wants fresh air and exercise,' said the Professor, 'and some
+practical experience of life, sir?' The Professor was not a bad man, but
+he was a little worried and impatient, and thought--as clever people are
+apt to think--that things which he didn't understand were either silly
+or improper.
+
+“I left the city that very day, and in the excitement of battle-fields
+and hospitals, I forgot all about little Rupert, nor did I hear of him
+again, until one day, meeting an old classmate in the army, who had
+known the Professor, he told me that Rupert had become quite insane, and
+that in one of his paroxysms he had escaped from the house, and as he
+had never been found, it was feared that he had fallen in the river and
+was drowned. I was terribly shocked for the moment, as you may imagine;
+but, dear me, I was living just then among scenes as terrible and
+shocking, and I had little time to spare to mourn over poor Rupert.
+
+“It was not long after receiving this intelligence that we had a
+terrible battle, in which a portion of our army was surprised and driven
+back with great slaughter. I was detached from my brigade to ride over
+to the battle-field and assist the surgeons of the beaten division, who
+had more on their hands than they could attend to. When I reached the
+barn that served for a temporary hospital, I went at once to work. Ah,
+Bob,” said the Doctor, thoughtfully taking the bright sword from the
+hands of the half-frightened Bob, and holding it gravely before him,
+“these pretty playthings are symbols of cruel, ugly realities.
+
+“I turned to a tall, stout Vermonter,” he continued very slowly, tracing
+a pattern on the rug with the point of the scabbard, “who was badly
+wounded in both thighs, but he held up his hands and begged me to help
+others first who needed it more than he. I did not at first heed his
+request, for this kind of unselfishness was very common in the army;
+but he went on, 'For God's sake, Doctor, leave me here; there is a
+drummer-boy of our regiment--a mere child--dying, if he isn't dead now.
+Go, and see him first. He lies over there. He saved more than one life.
+He was at his post in the panic this morning, and saved the honor of the
+regiment.' I was so much more impressed by the man's manner than by the
+substance of his speech, which was, however, corroborated by the other
+poor fellows stretched around me, that I passed over to where the
+drummer lay, with his drum beside him. I gave one glance at his
+face--and--yes, Bob--yes, my children--it WAS Rupert.
+
+“Well! well! it needed not the chalked cross which my brother-surgeons
+had left upon the rough board whereon he lay to show how urgent was the
+relief he sought; it needed not the prophetic words of the Vermonter,
+nor the damp that mingled with the brown curls that clung to his pale
+forehead, to show how hopeless it was now. I called him by name. He
+opened his eyes--larger, I thought, in the new vision that was beginning
+to dawn upon him--and recognized me. He whispered, 'I'm glad you are
+come, but I don't think you can do me any good.'
+
+“I could not tell him a lie. I could not say anything. I only pressed
+his hand in mine, as he went on.
+
+“'But you will see father, and ask him to forgive me. Nobody is to blame
+but myself. It was a long time before I understood why the drum came to
+me that Christmas night, and why it kept calling to me every night, and
+what it said. I know it now. The work is done, and I am content. Tell
+father it is better as it is. I should have lived only to worry and
+perplex him, and something in me tells me this is right.'
+
+“He lay still for a moment, and then, grasping my hand, said,--
+
+“'Hark!'
+
+“I listened, but heard nothing but the suppressed moans of the wounded
+men around me. 'The drum,' he said faintly; 'don't you hear it? The drum
+is calling me.'
+
+“He reached out his arm to where it lay, as though he would embrace it.
+
+“'Listen,' he went on, 'it's the reveille. There are the ranks drawn
+up in review. Don't you see the sunlight flash down the long line of
+bayonets? Their faces are shining,--they present arms,--there comes the
+General; but his face I cannot look at, for the glory round his head. He
+sees me; he smiles, it is--” And with a name upon his lips that he had
+learned long ago, he stretched himself wearily upon the planks, and lay
+quite still.
+
+
+“That's all. No questions now; never mind what became of the drum. Who's
+that snivelling? Bless my soul, where's my pill-box?”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other
+Stories, by Bret Harte
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