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Kilt KitneiDt ;aiii<iu jtetitc

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
AND OTHER STORIES

BRET HARTE

Ebt Blkrrinr IStoi. CamiinBt

« •

Bt HELDS, OSGOOD & CO., JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO..

AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

AU rights reserved.

TBNTH £I>IT10N.

TAe Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

CONTENTS.

PAOI

^HB Luck of Roabino Camp 9

Mlisb .V SO

!^B OUTCl^TS OV POKBB FlAT 80

^.MlOOLBS 101

>i Tennebsbe's Pabtitbb tfr 123

^^^HB Idtl of Red Gulch 142

How Santa Glaus cahb to Simpson's Bab . . 161

The Fool of Fits Fobks 190

The Romanob of Madro!S^o Hollow .... 233
Thb Pbjncbbb Bob and hbb Fbibndb .... 255

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

There was commotion in Boaring Camp.
It could not have been a fight, for in 1850
that was not novel enough to have called to-
gether the entire settlement. The ditches
and claims were not only deserted, but " Tut-
tle's grocery " had contributed its gamblers,
who, it will be remembered, calmly contin-
ued their game the day that French Pete
and £[anaka Joe shot each other to death
over the bar in the front room. The whole
camp was collected before a rude cabin on
the outer edge of the clearing. Conversa-
tion was carried on in a low tone, but the
name of a woman was frequently repeated.
It was a name familiar enough in the camp,
— « Cherokee Sal."

Perhaps the less said of her the better.
She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a
very sinful woman. But at that time she
was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and
was just then lying in sore extremity, when

10 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP,

she most needed the ministration of her own
sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaim-
able, she was yet suffering a martyrdom
hard enough to bear even when veiled by
sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible
in her loneliness. The primal curse had
come to her in that original isolation which
must have made the punishment of the first
transgression so dreadful It was, perhaps,
part of the expiation of her sin that, at a
moment when she most lacked her sex's in-
tuitive tenderness and care, she met only the
half-contemptuous faces of her masculine as-
sociates. Yet a few of the spectators were,
I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy
Tipton thought it was *' rough on Sal," and,
in the contemplation of her condition, for a
moment rose superior to the fact that he had
an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.

It will be seen, also, that the situation was
novel. Deaths were by no means uncommon
in Koaring Cainp, but a birth was a new
thing. People had been dismissed the camp
effectively, finally, and with no possibility of
return ; but this was the first time that any-
body had been introduced ab initio. Hence
the excitement.

" You go in there. Stumpy," said a prom.

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 11

inent citizen known as ^' Kehtuck," address-
ing one of the loungers. " Go in there, and
see what you kin do. YouVe had experi-
ence in them things."

Perhaps there was a fitness in the selec-
tion. Stumpy, in other climes, had been the
putative head of two families; in fact, it
was owing to some legal informality in these
proceedings that Roaring Camp — a city of
refuge — was indebted to his company. The
crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was
wise enough to bow to the majority. The
door closed on the extempore surgeon and
midwife, and Boaring Camp sat down out-
side, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.

The assemblage numbered about a hundred
men. One or two of these were actual fugi-
tives from justice, some were criminal, and all
were reckless. Physically, they exhibited no
indication of their past lives and character.
The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with
a profusion of blonde hair ; Oakhurst, a gam-
bler, had the melancholy air and intellectual
abstraction of a Hamlet ; the coolest and
most courageous man was scarcely over five
feet in height, with a soft voice and an embar-
rassed, timid manner. The term " roughs "
applied to them was a distinction rather than

12 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of
fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have
been deficient, but these slight omissions did
not detract from their aggregate force. The
strongest man had but three fingers on his
right hand ; the best shot had but one eye.

Such was the physical aspect of the men
that were dispersed around the cabin. The
camp lay in a triangular valley, between two
hills and a river. The only outlet was k
steep trail over the summit of a hiU that
faced the cabin, now illuminated by the ris-
ing moon. The suffering woman might have
seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,
— seen it winding like a silver thread until
it was lost in the stars above.

A firjB of withered pine-boughs added so-
ciability to the gathering. By degrees the
natural levity of Roaring Camp returned.
Bets were freely offered and taken regard-
ing the result. Three to five that " Sal would
get through with it ; " even that the child
would survive ; side bets as to the sex and
complexion of the coming stranger. In the
midst of an excited discussion an exclama-
tion came from those nearest the door, and
the camp stopped to listen. Above the sway-
mg and moaning of the pines, the swift rush

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 13

of the river, and the crackling of the fire
rose a sharp, querulous cry, — a cry unlike
anything heard before in the camp. The
pines stopped moaning ; the river ceased to
rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as
if Nature had stopped to listen, too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man ! It
was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpow-
der, but, in consideration of the situation of
the mother, better counsels prevailed, and
only a few revolvers were discharged : for,
whether owing to the rude surgery of the
camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal
was sinking fast. Within an hour she had
climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led
to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring
Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not
think that the announcement disturbed them
much, except in speculation as to the fate of
the child. " Can he live now ? " was asked of
Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The
only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and
maternal condition in the settlement was an
ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness,
but the experiment was tried. It was less
problematical than the ancient treatment of
Romulus and Remus, and apparently as suc-
cessful.

14 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. •

When these details were completed, which
exhausted another hour, the door was opened,
and the anxious crowd of men, who had al-
ready f owned themselves into a queue, entered
in single file. Beside the low bunk or shelf,
on which the figure of the mother was starkly
outlined below the blankets, stood a pine
table. On this a candle-box was placed, and
within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay
the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Beside
the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was
soon indicated. " Gentlemen," said Stumpy,
with a singular mixture of authority and
€x officio complacency, — " Gentlemen will
please pass in at the front door, round the
table, and out at the back door. T^em as
wishes to contribute anything toward the
orphan will find a hat handy." The first
man entered with his hat on ; he uncovered,
however, as he looked about him, and so,
unconsciously, set an example to the next»_
In such communities good and bad actions
are catching. As the procession filed in,
comments were audible, — criticisms ad-
dressed, perhaps, rather to Stumpy, in the
character of showman: "Is that him?"
" Mighty small specimen ; " " Has n't mor 'n
got the color ; " " Ain't bigger nor a derrin-

THE LUCK OF ROaHING CAMP. 15

ger." The contributions were as character-
istic: a silver tobacco-box; a doubloon; a
navy revolver, silver mounted ; a gold speci-
men ; . a very beautifully embroidered lady's
handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler) ;
a diamond breastpin ; a diamond ring (sug-
gested by the pin, with the remark from the
giver that he '* saw that pin and went two
diamonds better ") ; a slung shot ; a Bible
(contributor not detected) ; a golden spur ;
a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to
say, were not the giver's) ; a pair of sur-
geon's shears ; a lancet ; a Bank of England
note for £b ; and about $200 in loose gold
and silver coin. During these proceedings
Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as
the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable
as that of the newly born on his right. Only
one incident occurred to break the monotony
of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent
over the candle-box half curiously, the child
turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at
his groping finger, and held it fast for a
moment. Kentuck looked foolish and em-
barrassed. Something like a blush tried to
assert itself in his weather-beaten cheek.
" The d-r-d little cuss ! " he said, as he ex-
tricated his finger, with perhaps more ten-

16 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP,

derness and care than he might have been
deemed capable of showing. He held that
finger a little apart from its fellows as he
went out, and examined it curiously. The
examination provoked the same original re-
mark in regard, to the child. In fact, he
seemed to enjoy repeating it. " He rastled
with my finger," he remarked to Tipton, hold-
ing up the member, " the d — d litde cuss !^
It was four o'clock before the camp sought
repose. A light burnt in the cabin where
the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to
bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank
quite freely, and related with great gusto his
experience, invariably ending with his char-
acteristic condemnation of the new-comer.
It seemed to relieve him of any unjust im-
plication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the
weaknesses of the nobler sex. When every-
body else had gone to bed, he walked down
to the river and whistled reflectingly. Then
he walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still
whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At
a large redwood tree he paused and retraced
his steps, and again passed the cabin. Half-
way down to the river's bank he again
paused, and then returned and knocked at
the door. It was opfened by Stumpy. '^ How

'\{

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 17

goes it?" said Kentuck, looking past Stumpy
toward the candle-box. "All serene," re-
plied Stumpy. "Anything up?" "Nothing."
There was a pause, — an embarrassing one,
— Stumpy still holding the door. Then
Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which he
held up to Stumpy. " Rastled with it, — the
d — d little cuss," he said, and retired.

The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude
sepulture as Roaring Camp afforded. After
her body had been committed to the hillside,
there was a formal meeting of the camp to
discuss what should be done with her infant.
A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and
enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in
regard to the manner and feasibility of pro-
viding for its wants at once sprang up. It
was remarkable that the argument partook
of none of those fierce personalities with
which discussions were usually conducted at
Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they
should send the child to Red Dog, — a dis-
tance of forty miles, — where female attention
could be procured. But the unlucky sug-
gestion met with fierce and unanimous oppo-
sition. It was evident that no plan which
entailed parting from their new acquisition
would for a moment be entertained. "Be-

18 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP,

sides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at
Red Dog wauld swap it, and ring in some-
body else on us." A disbelief in the honesty
of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp,
as in other places.

The introduction of a female nurse in the
camp also met with objection. It was argued
that no decent woman could be prevailed to
accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the
speaker urged that "they didn't want any
more of the other kind." This unkind allu-
sion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may
seem, was the first spasm of propriety, — the
first syxnpton. of L cs^.l 'ege/eraW
Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt
a certain delicacy in interfering with the
selection of a possible successor in office.
But when questioned he averred stoutly that
he and "Jinny" — the mammal before al-
luded to — could manage to rear the child.
There was something original, independent,
and heroic about the plan that pleased the
camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain arti-
cles were sent for to Sacramento. " Mind,"'
said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of
gold-dust into the expressman's hand,- 'the
best that can be got, — lace, you know, and
filigree-work and frills, — d — n the cost I ^'

jj THE LUCK OF SOARING CAMP. 19

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps
the invigorating climate of the mountain
camp was compensation for material defi-
I ciencies. Nature took the foundling to her
i broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of
A the Sierra foot-hills, — that air pungent with
/ balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once
' bracing and exhilarating, — he may have
^% found food and nourishment, or a subtle
^ chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime
and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the
belief that it was the latter and good nurs-
ing. " Me and that ass," he would say, " has
been father and mother to him ! Don't you,"
he would add, apostrophizing the helpless
bundle before him, " never go back on us."

By the time he was a month old the neces-
sity of giving him a name became apparent.
He had generally been known as " The Kid,"
" Stumpy's Boy," " The Coyote " (an allu-
sion to his vocal powers), and even by Ken-
tuck's endearing diminutive of "The d — d
little cuss." But these were felt to be vague
and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed
under another influence. Gamblers and ad-
venturers are generally superstitious, and
Oakhurst one day declared that the baby
had brought " the luck " to Roaring Camp.

20 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP,

It was certain that of late they had been
successful. "Luck" was the name agreed
upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater
convenience. No allusion was made to the
mother, and the father was unknown. " It 's
better," said the philosophical Oakhurst, " to
take a fresh deal all round. Call him Luck,
and start him fair." A day was accordingly
set apart for the christening. What was
meant by this ceremony the reader may imag-
ine, who has already gathered some idea of
the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp.
The master of ceremonies was one " Boston,"
a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to
promise the greatest facetiousness. This in-
genious satirist had spent two days in pre-
paring a burlesque of the Church service,
with pointed local allusions. The choir was
properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to
stand godfather. But after the procession
had marched to the grove with music and
banners, and the child had been deposited
before a mock altar; Stumpy stepped before
the expectant crowd. " It ain't my style to
spoil fim, boys," said the little man, stoutly
eying the faces around him, " but it strikes
me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar.
It 's playing it pretty low down on this yer

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 21

baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't
goin' to understand. And ef there 's going
to be any godfathers round, I 'd like to see
who 's got any better rights than me." A
silence followed Stumpy's speech. To the
credit of all humorists be it said that the
first man to acknowledge its justice was the
satirist, thus stopped of his fun. " But," said
Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
" we 're here for a christeniug, and we '11 have
it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, according
to the laws of the United States and the
State of California, so help me God." It
was the first time that the name of the Deity
had been otherwise uttered than profanely
in the camp. The form of christening was
perhaps even more ludicrous than the sat-
irist had conceived ; but, strangely en<iugh,
nobody saw it and nobody laughed. ' "Tom-
my " was christened as seriously as he would
have been under a Christian roof, and cried
abd was comforted in as orthodox fashion.

And so the work of regeneration began
in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a
change came over the settlement. The cabin
assigned to " Tommy Luck " — or " The
Luck," as he was more frequently called —
first showed signs of improvement. It was

22 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed.
Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered.
The rosewood cradle — packed eighty miles
by mule — had, in Stumpy 's way of putting
it, " sorter killed the rest of the furniture."
So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a
necessity. The men who were in the habit
of lounging in at Stumpy's to see "how
* The Luck ' got on " seemed to appreciate
the change, and, in self-defence, the rival es-
tablishment of " Tuttle's grocery " bestirred
itself, and imported a carpet and mirrors.
The reflections of the latter on the appear-
ance of Roaring Camp tended to produce
stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again,
Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon
those who aspired to the honor and privilege
of holding The Luck. It was a cruel mor-
tification to Kentuck — who, in the care-
lessness of a large nature and the habits of
frontier life, had begun to regard all gar-
ments as a second cuticle, which, like a
snake's, only sloughed off through decay —
to be debarred this privilege from certain
prudential reasons. Yet such was the sub-
tle influence of innovation, that he thercr
after appeared regularly every afternoon in
a clean shirt, and face still shining from his

ti'

u*.

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 28

ablations. Nor were moral and social san-
itary laws neglected. "Tommy," who was
supposed to spend his whole existence in a
persistent attempt to repose, must not be dis-
turbed by noise. The shouting and yelling
which had gained the camp its infelicitous
title were not permitted within hearing dis-
tance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in
whispers, or smoked with Indian gravity.
Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred
precincts, and throughout the camp a popu-
lar form of expletive, known as " D — n the
luck ! " and " Curse the luck I " was aban-
doned, as having a new personal bearing.
Vocal music was not interdicted, being sup-
^ posed to have a soothing, tranquillizing qual-
/ ity, and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War
Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's
Australian colonies, was quite popular as a
lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the
exploits of " the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in
a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged
& dying fall at the burden of each verse, " On
b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine
sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking
from side to side as if with the motion of a
ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty.
Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack

'\\

24 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

or the length of his song, — it contained
ninety stanzas, and was continued with con-
scientious deliberation to the bitter end, —
the lullaby generally had the desired effect.
At such times the men would lie at full length
Under the trees, in the soft summer twilight,
smoking their pipes and drinking in the
melodious utterances. An indistinct idea
that this was pastoral happiness pervaded
the camp. " This 'ere kind o' think," said
the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining
on his elbow, " is 'evingly." It reminded /

N^ him of Greenwich.

On the long summer days The Luck was f
usually carried to the gulch, from whence
the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken.
There, on a blanket spread over pine-boughs,
he would lie while the men were working in
the ditches below. Latterly, there was a
rude attempt to decorate this bower with
flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and gen-
erally some one would bring him a cluster
of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted
blossoms of Las Mariposas. ^The men had
suddenly awakened to the fact that there
were beauty and significance in these trifles
which they had so long trodden carelessly j|
beneath their feet. A flake of glittering

(

■

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 26

mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a
bright pebble from the bed of the creek,
became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and
strengthened, and were invariably put aside
for The Luck. It was wonderful how
many ' treasures the woods and hillsides
yielded that " would do for Tommy." Sur-
rounded by playthings such as neveip^hild
out of fairy-land had before, it is to be
hoped that Tommy was content. He ap-
peared to be serenely happy, albeit there
waa an infantine gravity about Mm, a con-
templative light in his round gray eyes, that
sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always
tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that
once, having crept beyond his " corral," —
a hedge of tessellated pine-boughs which sur-
rounded his bed, — he dropped over the
bank on his head in the soft earth, and re-
mained with his motded legs in the air in
that position for at least five minutes with
unflinching gravity. He was extricated
without a murmur. I hesitate to record the
many other instances of his sagacity, which
rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of
prejudiced friends. Some of them were not
without a tinge of superstition. " I crep' up
the bank just now," said Kentuck one day,

(■'

26 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

ih a breathless state of excitement, '^ and
dern my skin if he was n't a talking to a
jaybird as was a sittin' on his lap. There
they was, just as free and sociable as any-
thing you please, a jawin' at each other just
like two cherrybums." Howbeit, whether *!

creeping over the pine-boughs or lying lazily
on his back blinking at the leaves above
him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels
chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature
was his nurse and playfellow. For him she
would let slip between the leaves golden
shafts of simlight that fell just within his
grasp ; she would send wandering breezes to
visit him with the balm of bay and resinous
gum: to him the tall redwoods nodded fa-
miliarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees buzzed,
and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompa- ^^

niment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring
Camp. They were "flush times," — and
the luck was with them. The claims had .'

yielded enormously. The camp was jealous
of its privileges and looked suspiciously on
strangers. No encouragement was given to
immigration, and, to make their seclusion
more perfect, the land on either side of the
mountain wall that surrounded the ca^n

( ,

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, 27

they duly preempted. This, and a reputa-
tion for singular proficiency with the re-
volver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp
inviolate. . The expressman — their only
connecting link with the surrounding world
— sometimes told wonderful stories of the
camp. He would say, " They 've a street
up there in ' Roaring ' that would lay over
any street in Red Dog. They 've got vines
and flowers round their houses, and they
wash themselves twice a day. But they 're
mighty rough on strangers, and they wor-
ship an Ingin baby."

With the prosperity of the camp came
a desire for further improvement. It was
proposed to build a hotel in the following
spring, and to invite one or two decent
families to reside there for the sake of
The Luck, who might perhaps profit by fe-
male companionship. The««acrifice that this
concession to the sex cost these men, who
were fiercely skeptical in regard to its gen-
eral virtue and usefulness, can only be ac-
counted for by their affection for Tommy.
A few still held out. But the resolve coidd
not be carried into effect for three months,
and the minority meekly yielded in the hope
that something might turn up to prevent it.
And it did.

28 TBE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.

The winter of 1851 will long be remem<
bered in the foot-hills. The snow lay deep
on the Sierras, and every mountain creek
became a river, and every river a lake.
Each gorge and gulch was transformed into
a tumultuous watercourse, that descended
the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and
scattering its drift and debris along the
plain. Red Dog had been twice under wa-
ter, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned.
"Water put the gold into them gulches,"
said Stumpy, t "It 's been here once and
will be here again ! " And that night the
North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks,
and swept up the triangular valley of Roar-
ingCamp.

In the confusion of rushing water, crashing
trees, and crackling timber, and the dark-
ness which seemed to flow with the water
and blot out th^air valley, but little could
be done to collect the scattered camp. When
the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy,
nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher
up the gulch they found the body of its un-
lucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the
joy. The Luck, of Roaring Camp had dis-
appeared. They were returning with sad
hearts, when a shout from the bank recalled
them.

THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, 29

It was a relief-boat from down the river.
They had picked up, they said, a man and
an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles
below. Did anybody know them, and did
they belong here ?.

It needed but a glance to show them Ken-
tuck lying there cruelly crushed and bruised,
but still holding The Luck of Koaring Camp
in his arms. As they bent over the strangely
assorted pair they saw that the child was
cold and pulseless. " He is dead," said one.
Kentuck opened his eyes. " Dead ? " he
repeated feebly. "Yes, my man, and you
are dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the
expiring Kentuck. " Dying ! " he repeated ;
" he 's a taking me with him. Tell the boys
I 've got The Luck with me nx)w ^^ and the
strong man, clinging to the f r^l babe as a
drowning man is said to cling to a straw,
drifted away into the shadowy river that
flows forever to the unknown sea.

MUSS.

CHAPTER I.

Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to
subside in gentler undulations, and the riv-
ers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side
of a great red mountain, stands " Smith's
Pocket." Seen from the red road at sunset,
in the red light and the red dust, its white
houses look like the outcroppings of quartz
on the mountain-side. The red stage topped
with red-shirted passengers is lost to view
half a dozen times in the tortuous descent,
turning up imexpectedly in out-of-the-way
places, and vanishing altogether within a
hundred yards of the town. It is probably
owing to this sudden twist in the road that
the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket
is usually attended with a peculiar circum-
stance. Dismounting from the vehicle at the
stage-office, the too confident traveller is apt
to walk straight out of town under the im-
pression that it lies in quite another direc-

MLI88, 31

tion. It is related that one of the tunnel-
men, two miles from town, met one of these
self-reliant passengers with a carpet-bag,
umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evi-
dences of ^' civilization and refinement,"
plodding along over the road he had just
ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settle-
ment of Smith's Pocket.

An observant traveller might have found
some compensation for his disappointment -
in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There
were huge fissures on the hillside, and dis-
placements of the red soil, resembling more
the chaos of some primary elemental up-
heaval than tibe work of man ; while, half-
way down, a long flume straddled its nar-
row body and disproportionate legs over the
chasm, like an enormous fossil of some for-
gotten antediluvian. At every step smaller
ditches crossed the road, hiding in their
sallow depths unlovely streams that crept
away to a clandestine union with the great
yellow torrent below, and here and there
were the ruins of some cabin, with the chim-
ney alone left intact and the hearthstone
open to the skies.

The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its
origin to the finding of a ^' pocket " on its

82 MLI88.

site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand
dollars were taken out of it in one half -hour
by Smith. Three thousand dollars were ex-
pended by Smith and others in erecting a
flume and in tunnelling. And then Smith's
Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and
subject, like other pockets, to depletion. Al-
though Smith pierced the bowels of the
great red mountain, that five thousand dol-
lars was the first and last return of his labor.
The mountain grew reticent of its golden
secrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away
the remainder of Smith's fortune. Then
Smith went into quartz-mining; then into
quartz - milling ; then into hydraulics and
ditching, and then by easy degrees into sa-
loon-keeping. Presently it was whispered
that Smith was drinking a great deal ; then
it was known that Smith was a habitual
drunkard ; and then people began to think,
as they are apt to, that he had never been
anything else. But the settlement of Smith's
Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was
happily not dependent on the fortune of its
pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels
and found pockets. So Smith's Pocket be-
came a settlement, with its two fancy stores,
its two hotels, its one express-office, and its

MLisa. 83

two first families. Occasionally its one long
straggling street was overawed by the as-
sumption of the latest San Francisco fash-
ions, imported per express, exclusively to
the first families ; making outraged Nature,
in the ragged outline of her furrowed sur-
face, look still more homely, and putting
personal insult on that greater portion of
the population to whom the Sabbath, with a
change of linen, brought merely the neces-
sity of cleanliness, without the luxury of
adornment. Then there was a Methodist
Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a
little beyond, on the mountain-side, a grave-
yard, and then a little schoolhouse.

" The Master," as he was known to his
little flock, sat alone one night in the school-
house, with some open copy-books before
him, carefully making those bold and f uU
characters which are supposed to combine
the extremes of chirographical and moral
excellence, and had got as far as " Riches
are deceitful," and was elaborating the noun
with an insincerity of flourish that was quite
in the spirit of his text, when he heard a
gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been
busy about the roof during the day, and' the
noise did not disturb his work. But the

84 MLisa.

opening of the door, and tlie tapping con-
tinuing from the inside, caused him to look
up. He was slightly startled by the figure
of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad.
Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, un-
combed, lustteless black hair falling over
her sunburned face, her red arms and feet
streaked with the red soil, were all familiar
to him. It was Melissa Smith, — Smith's
motherless child.

" What can she want here ? " thought the
master. Everybody knew " Mliss," as she
was called, throughout the length and height
of Red Mountain. Everybody knew her as
an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovern-
able disposition, her mad freaks and lawless
character, were in their way as proverbial as
the story of her father's weaknesses, and as
philosophically accepted by the townsfolk.
She wrangled with and fought the school-
boys with keener invective and quite as
powerful arm. She followed the trails with
a woodman's craft, and the master had met
her before, miles away, shoeless, stocking-
less, and bareheaded on the mountain road.
The miners' camps along the stream supplied
her with subsistence, during these voluntary
pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but

Muaa. 85

that a larger protection had been previ'
ously extended to Mliss. The Bev. Joshua
McSnagley, " stated " preacher, had placed
her in the hotel as servant, by way of pre-
liminary refinement, and had introduced her
to his scholars at Sunday-school. But she
threw plates occasionally at the landlord,
and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms
of the guests, and created in the Sabbath-
school a sensation that was so inimical to
the orthodox dulness and placidity of that
institution that, with a decent regard for
the starched frocks and unblemished morals
of the two pink-and-white-faced children of
the first families, the reverend gentleman
had her ignominiously expelled. Such were

the antecedents and such the character of
MUss as she stood before the master. It was
shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt
hair, and bleeding feet, and asked his pity.
It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
commanded his respect.

*' I come here to-night," she said rapidly
and boldly, keeping her hard glance on his,
*' because I knew you was alone. I would n't
come here when them gals was here. I
hate 'em, and they hates me. That 's why.
You keep school, don't you ? I want to be
teached I "

36 MLI8S,

If to the shabbiness of her apparel and
uncomeliness of her tangled hair and dirty
face she had added the humility of tears,
the master would have extended to her the
usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But
with the natural, though illogical, instincts
of his species, her boldness awakened in him
something of that respect which all original
natures pay unconsciously to one another in
any grade. And he gazed at her the more
fixedly as she went on, still rapidly, her hand
on that door-latch and her eyes on his : —

" My name 's Mliss, — Mliss Smith I You
can bet your life on that. My father's
Old Smith, — Old Bummer Smith, — that 's
what 's the matter with him. Mliss Smith,
— and I 'm coming to school I '*

"Well?" said the master.

Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed,
often wantonly and cruelly, for no other
purpose than to excite the violent impulses
of her nature, the master's phlegm evidently
took her by surprise. She stopped ; she be-
gan to twist a lock of her hair between her
fingers; and the rigid line of upper lip,
drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed
and quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped,
and something like a blush struggled up to

MLI88. 87

her cheek, and tried to assert itself through
the splashes of redder soil and the sunburn
of years. Suddenly she threw herself for-
ward, calling on God to strike her dead, and
fell quite weak and helpless, with her face
on the master's desk, crying and sobbing as
if her heart would break.

The master lifted her gently, and waited
for the paroxysm to pass. When, with face
still averted, she was repeating between her
sobs the mea culpa of childish penitence, —
that " she 'd be good, she did n't mean to,"
etc., — it came to him to ask her why she had
left Sabbath-school.

Why had she left the Sabbath-school ? —
why? Oh, yes ! What did he (McSnagley)
want to tell her she was wicked for ? What
did he tell her that God hated her for? If
God hated her, what did she want to go to
Sabbath-school for ? She did n't want to be
" beholden " to anybody who hated her.

Had she told McSnagley this ?

Yes, she had.

The master laughed. It was a hearty
laugh, and echoed so oddly in the little
schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and
discordant with the sighing of the pines
without, that he shortly corrected himself

88 MLI88.

with a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere
in its way, however, and after a moment of
serious silence he asked about her father.

Her father? What father? Whose father?
What had he ever done for her ? Why did
the girls hate her ? Come now ! what made
the folks say " Old Bummer Smith's Mliss! "
when she passed ? Yes ; oh, yes ! She wished
he was dead, — she was dead, — everybody
was dead ; and her sobs broke forth anew.

The master then, leaning over her, told
her as well as he could what you or I might
have said after hearing such unnatural theo-
ries from childish lips ; only bearing in mind
perhaps better than you or I the unnatural
La U l.» ^agg^l L», W ble«ii^ feet,
and the omnipresent shadow of her drunken
father. Then raising her to her feet, he
wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding
her come early in the morning, he walked
with her down the road. There he bade her
" good-night." The moon shone brightly on
the narrow path before them. He stood and
watched the bent little figure as it staggered
down the road, and waited until it had
passed the little graveyard and reached the
curve of the hill, where it turned and stood
for a moment, a mere atom of suffering, out*

MLI8S. E9

lined against the f ar-o£P patient stars. Then
he went back to his work. But the lines
of the copy-book thereafter faded into long
parallels of never-ending road, over which
childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and
crying into the night. Then, the little school-
house seeming lonelier than before, he shut
the door and went home.

The next morning Mliss came to school.
Her face had been washed, and her coarse
black hair bore evidence of recent struggles
with the comb, in which both had evidently
suffered. The old defiant look shone occa-
sionally in her eyes, but her manner was
tamer and more subdued. Then began a
series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in
which master and pupil bore an equal part,
and which increased the confidence and sym-
pathy between them. Although obedient
under the master's eye, at times during: re-
ee«, if «.w»Kd or <ig by . fended sUght,

many a palpitating young savage, finding
himself matched with his own weapons of
torment, would seek the master with torn
jacket and scratched face, and complaints of
the dreadful Mliss. There was a serious
division among the townspeople on the sub-

40 MLI88,

ject; some threatening to withdraw their
children from such evil companionship, and
others as warmly upholding the course of the
master in his work of reclamation. Mean-
while, with a steady persistence that seemed
quite astonishing to him on looking back af-
terward, the master drew MUss gradually out
of the shadow of her past life, as though it
were but her natural progress down the nar-
row path on which he had set her feet the
moonlit night of their first meeting. Ee-
membering the experience of the evangelical
McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Sock
of Ages on which that unskilful pilot had
shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the
course of her reading, she chanced to stum-
ble upon those few words which have lifted
such as she above the level of the older, the
wiser, and the more prudent,— if she learned
something of a faith that is symbolized by
suffering, and the old light softened in her
eyes, — it did not take the shape of a lesson.
A few of the plainer people had made up a
little sum by which the ragged Mliss was
enabled to assume the garments of respect
and civilization ; and often a rough shake of
the hand and words of homely commenda-
tion from a red-shirted and burly figure sent

MLiaa, 41

a glow to the cheek of the young master,
and set him to thinking if it was altogether
deserved-
Three months had passed from the time
of their first meeting, and the .master was
sitting late one evening over the moral and
sententious copies, when there came a tap at
the door, and again Mliss stood before him.
She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and
there was nothing, perhaps, but the long
black hair and bright black eyes to remind
him of his former apparition. "Are you
busy?" she asked. "Can you come with
me ? " - and on his signifying his readiness,
in her old wilful way she said, " Come, then,
quick I "

They passed out of the door together
and into the dark road. As they entered
the town the master asked her whither she
was going. She replied, "To see my fa-
ther."

It was the first time he had heard her call
him by that filial title, or indeed anything
more than " Old Smith " or the " Old man."
It was the first time in three months that
she had spoken of him at aU, and the mas-
ter knew she had kept resolutely aloof from
him since her great change. Satisfied from

42 MLisa.

her manner that it was fruitless to ques-
tion her purpose, he passively followed. In >
out-of-the-way places, low groggeries, res-
taurants, and saloons ; in gambling-hells and
dance-houses, the master, preceded by Mliss,
came and went. In the reeking smoke and ^
blasphemous outcries of low dens, the child,
holding the master's hand, stood and anx-
iously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in
the one absorbing nature of her pursuit. *
Some of the revellers, recognizing Mliss,
called to the child to sing and dance for
them, and would have forced liquor upon her
but for the interference of the master. Oth-
ers, recognizing him, mutely made way for
them to pass. So an hour slipped by. Then
the child whispered in his ear that there was
a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed '
by the long flume, where she thought he still
might be. Thither they crossed, — a toil-
some half-hour's walk, — but in vain. They
were returning by the ditch at the abut-
ment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the
town on the opposite bank, when suddenly,
sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear
night air. The echoes caught it, and carried
it round and round Red Mountain, and set
the dogs to barking all along the streams.

ML/ 88. 43

Lights seemed to dance and move quickly
on the outskirts of the town for a few mo-
ments, the stream rippled quite audibly be-
side them, a few stones loosened themselves
from the hillside and splashed into the
stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge the
branches of the funereal pines, and then the
silence seemed to fall thicker, heavier, and
deadlier. The master turned towards Mliss
with an unconscious gesture of protection,
but the child had gone. Oppressed by a
strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail
to the riser's bed, and, jumping from boulder
to boulder, reached the base of Bed Moun-
tain and the outskirts of the village. Mid-
way of the crossing he looked up and held
his breath in awe. For high above him on
the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little
figure of his late companion crossing swiftly
in the darkness.

He climbed the bank, and, guided by a
few lights moving about a central point on
the mountain, soon found himself breathless
among a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrow-
ful men.

Out from among them the child appeared,
and, taking the master's hand, led him si-
lently before what seemed a ragged hole in

44 MLiaa,

the mountain. Her face was quite white,
but her excited manner gone, and her look
that of one to whom some long-expected
event had at last happened, — an expression
that to the master in his bewilderment
seemed almost like relief. The walls of the
cavern were partly propped by decaying
timbers. The child pointed to what ap-
peared to be some ragged, cast-off clothes
left in the hole by the late occupant. The
master approached nearer with his flaming
dip, and bent over them. It was Smith,
already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a
bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty
pocket.

CHAPTER II.

The opinion which McSnagJey expressed
in reference to a " change of heart " supposed
to be experienced by Mliss was more forci-
bly described in the gulches and tunnels.
It was thought there that Mliss had " struck
a good lead." So when there was a new
grave added to the little enclosure, and at
the expense of the master a little board and
inscription put above it, the Red Mountain
Banner came out quite handsomely, and did

MLI8S. 45

the fair thing to the memory of one of " our
oldest pioneers," alluding gracefully to that
"bane of noble intellects," and otherwise
genteelly shelving our dear brother with the
past. "He leaves an only child to mourn
his loss," says the Banner, " who is now an
exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of
the Eev. Mr. McSnagley." The Kev. Mo'
Snagley, in fact, made a strong point of
Mli&s's conversion, and, indirectly attribut-
ing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
her father, made affecting allusions in Sun-
day-school to the beneficial effects of the
" silent tomb," and in this cheerful contem-
plation drove most of the children into speech-
less horror, and caused the pink-and-white
scions of the first families to howl dismally
and refuse to be comforted.

The long dry summer eame. As each
fierce day burned itself out in little whiffs of
pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits,
and the upspringing breeze scattered its red
embers over the landscape, the green wave
which in early spring upheaved above Smith's
grave grew sere and dry and hard. In those
days the master, strolling in the little church-
yard of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes
surprised to find a few wild-flowers plucked

46 MUSB.

from the damp pine-forests scattered there,
and oftener rude wreaths himg upon the lit-
tle pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the
children loved to keep in their desks, inter-
twined with the plumes of the buckeye, the
syringa, and the wood-anemone ; and here
and there the master noticed the dark blue
cowl of the monk's-hood, or deadly aconite.
There was something in the odd association
of this noxious plant with these memorials
which occasioned a painful sensation to the
master deeper than his SBsthetic sense. One
day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of
the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine, on
a fantastic throne formed by the hanging
plumes of lifeless branches, her lap full of
grasses and pin^-burrs, and crooning to her-
self one of the negro melodies of her younger
life. Recognizing him at a distance, she
made room for him on her elevated throne,
and, with a grave assumption of hospitality
and patronage that would have been ridicu-
lous had it not been so terribly earnest, she
fed him with pine-nuts and crab-apples. The
master todk that opportunity to point out to
her the noxious and deadly qualities of the

MLiaa. 47

monk's-hood, whose dark blossoms he saw in
her lap, and extorted from her a promise not
to meddle with it as long as she remained
his pupiL This done, — as the master had
tested her integrity before, — he rested satis-
fied, and the strange feeling which had over-
come him on seeing them died away.

Of the homes that were offered Mliss when
her conversion became known, the master pre-
ferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and
kind-hearted specimen of Southwestern efflo-
rescence, known in her maidenhood as the
" Per-rairie Eose." Being one of those who
contend resolutely against their own natures,
Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacri-
fices and struggles, had at last subjugated
her naturally careless disposition to princi-
ples of "order," which she considered, in
common with Mr. Pope, as " Heaven's first
law." But she could not entirely govern the
orbits of her satellites, however regular her
own movements, and even her own " Jeemes "
sometimes collided with her. Again her old
nature asserted itself in her children. Ly-
curgus dipped into the cupboard "between
meals," and Aristides came home from school
vdthout shoes, leaving those important arti-
cles on the threshold, for the delight of a

48 MLisa.

barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia
and Cassandra were " keerless " of their
clothes. So with but one exception, how-
ever much the "Prairie Rose" might have
trimmed and pruned and trained her own
matured luxuriance, the little shoots came
up defiantly wild and straggling. That one
exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged
fifteen. She was the realization of her
mother's immaculate conception, — neat, or-
derly, and dull.

It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Mor-
pher to imagine that " Clytie " was a conso-
lation and model for Mliss. Following this
fallacy, Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the
head of Mliss when she was " bad," and set
her up before the child for adoration in her
penitential moments. It was not, therefore,
surprising to the master to hear that Clytie
was coming to school, obviously as a favor
to the master and as an example for Mliss
and others. For " Clytie " was quite a young
lady. Inheriting her mother's physical pe-
culiarities, and in obedience to the climatic
laws of the Red Moimtain region, she was
an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's
Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare,
sighed for her in April and languished in

MLiaa, 49

May. Enamored swains haunted the school-
house at the hour of dismissal. A few were
jealous of the master.

Perhaps it was this latter circumstance
that opened the master's eyes to another.
He could not help noticing that Clytie was
romantic ; that in school she required a great
deal of attention ; that her pens were uni-
formly bad and wanted fixing ; that she usu-
aUy accompanied the request with a certain
expectation in her eye that was somewhat
disproportionate to the quality of service
she verbally required; that she sometimes
allowed the curves of a round, plump white
arm to rest on his when he was writing
her copies ; that she always blushed and
flung back her blonde curls when she did
so. I don't remember whether I have stated
that the master was a young man, -^ it 's of
little consequence, however; he had been
severely educated in the school in which
Clytie was taking her first lesson, and, on the
whole, withstood the flexible curves and fac-
titious glance like the fine young Spartan
that he was. Perhaps an insufficient qual-
ity of food may have tended to this asceti-
cism. He generally avoided Clytie ; but one
evening, when she returned to the school-

50 3fLI88,

house after something she had forgotten,
and did not find it until the master walked
home with her, I hear that he endeavored
to make himself particularly agreeable, —
partly from the fact, I imagine, that his
conduct was adding gall and bitterness to
the already overcharged hearts of Clytemnes-
tra's admirers.

The morning after this affecting episode
Mliss did not come to school. Noon came,
but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the
subject, it appeared that they had left the
school together, but the wilful Mliss had
talcen another road. The afternoon brought
her not. In the evening he called on Mrs.
Morpher, whose motherly heart was reaUy
alarmed. Mr. Morpher had spent all day
in search of her, wiLut discovering a teai
that might lead to her discovery. Aristides
was summoned as a probable accomplice, but
that equitable infant succeeded in impress-
ing the household with his innocence. Mrs.
Morpher entertained a vivid impression that
the child would yet be found drowned in a
ditch, or, what was almost as terrible, mud-
died and soiled beyond the redemption of
soap and water. Sick at heart, the master
returned to the. schoolhouse. As he lit his

MLias. 51

lamp and seated himself at bis desk, he
found a note lying before him addressed to
himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed
to be written on a leaf torn from some old
memorandum -book, and, to prevent sacri-
legious trifling, had be^i sealed with six
broken wafers. Opening it almost tender-
ly, the master read as follows : —

Respected Sib, — When you read this, I am
run away. Never to come back. Never, Neveb,
NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jen-
nings, and my Amerika's Pride [a highly colored
lithograph from a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders.
But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher.
Don't you dare to. Do you know what my opin-
ion is of her: it is this, she is.perfekly disgustin.
That is all and no more at present from
Tours respectfully,

Melissa Smfth.

The master sat pondering on this strange
epistle till the moon lifted its bright face
above the distant hills, and illuminated the
trail that led to the schoolhouse, beaten
quite hard with the coming and going of
little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind,
he tore the missive into fragments and scat-
tered them along the road.

62 MLias.

At sunrise the next morning he was pick-
ing his way through the palm-like fern and
thick underbrush of the pine forest, start-
ing the hare from its form, and awakening
a querulous protest from a few dissipated
crows, who had evidently been making a
night of it, and so came to the wooded
ridge where he had once found Mliss. There
he found the prostrate pine and tasselled
branches, but the throne was vacant. As
he drew nearer, what might have been some
frightened animal started through the crack-
ling limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of
the fallen monarch, and sheltered itself in
some friendly foliage. The master, reach-
ing the old seat, found the nest still warm ;
looking up in the intertwining branches, he
met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They
gazed at each other without speaking. She
was first to break the silence.

" What do you want ? " she asked curtly.

The master had decided on a course of
action. " I want some crab-apples," he said
humbly.

" Sha' n't have 'em ! go away. Why don't
you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?" (It seemed
to be a relief to Mliss to express her con-
tempt in additional syllables to that classical

MLisa. 68

•

young woman's already long - drawn title.)
" Oh, you wicked thing 1 "

" I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten
nothing since dinner yesterday. I am fam-
ished ! " and the young man in a state of re-
markable exhaustion leaned against the tree.

Melissa's heart was touched. In the bit-
ter days of her gypsy life she had known
the sensation he so artfully simulated. Over-
come by his heart-broken tone, but not en-
tirely divested of suspicion, she said, —

" Dig under the tree near the roots, and
you '11 find lots ; but mind you don't tell ! "
(for Mliss had her hoards as well as the rats
and squirrels.)

But the master, of course, was imable to
find them ; the efiFects of hunger probably
blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At
length she peered at him through the leaves
in an elfish way, and questioned, —

" If I come down and give you some,
you 'U promise you won't touch me ? "

The master promised.

" Hope you '11 die if you do? "

The master accepted instant dissolution
as a forfeit. Mliss slid down the tree. For
a few moments nothing transpired but the
munching of the pine-nuts. " Do you feel

64 MLias. .

better ? " she asked, with some solicitude.
The master confessed to a recuperated feel-
ing, and then gravely thanking her proceeded
to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had
not gone far before she called him. He
turned. She was standing there quite white,
with tears in her widely opened orbs. The
master felt that the right moment had come.
Going up to her, he took both her hands,
and, looking in her tearful eyes, said gravely,
" Lissy, do you remember the first evening
you came to see me?"

Lissy remembered.

"You asked me if you might come to
school, for you wanted to learn something -
and be better, and I said " —

"Come," responded the child, promptly.

" What would you say if the master now
came to you and said that he was lonely
without his little scholar, and that he wanted
her to come and teaeh him to be better ? "

The child hung her head for a few mo-
ments in silence. The master waited pa-
tiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran
close to the couple, and, raising her bright
eyes and velvet f orepaws, sat and gazed at
them. A squirrel ran half-way down the
furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there
stopped.

MLI8B. 65

^' We are waiting, Lissy," said the master,
in a whisper, and the child smiled. Stirred
by a passing breeze, the tree-tops rocked,
and a long pencil of light stole through their
interlaced boughs full on the doubting face
and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she
took the master's hand in her quick way.
What she said was scarcely audible, but the
master, putting the black hair back from her
forehead, kissed her ; and so, hand in hand,
they passed out of the damp aisles and forest
odors into the open sunlit road.

CHAPTER III.

Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse
with other scholars, Mliss still retained an
offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra.
Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely
lulled in her passionate little breast. Per-
haps it was only that the round curves and
plump outline offered more extended pinch-
ing surface. But while such ebullitions were
under the master's control, her enmity occa-
sionally took a new and irrepressible form.

The master, in his first estimate of the
child's character, could not conceive that she

56 MLias.

had ever possessed a doll. But the master,
like many other professed readers of charac-
ter, was safer in d posteriori than a priori
reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was
emphatically Mliss's doll, — a smaller copy
of herself. Its unhappy existence had been
a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Mor-
pher. It had been the old-time companion of
Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks
of suffering. Its original complexion was
long since washed away by the weather and
anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked
very much as Mliss had in days past. Its
one gowii of faded stuff was dirty and rag-
ged as hers had been. Mliss had never
been known to apply to it any childish term
of endearment. She never exhibited it in
the presence of other children. It was put
severely to bed in a hoUow tree near the
schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise dur-
ing Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stem duty
to her doU, as she would to herseK, it knew
no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commend-
able impulse, bought another doll and gave
it to Mliss. The child received it gravely
and curiously. The master, on looking at it
one day, fancied he saw a slight resemblance

MLisa. 67

in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes
to Clytemnestra. It became evident before
long that Mliss had also noticed the same
resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its
waxen head on the rocks when she was
alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string
roimd its neck to and from school. At other
times, setting it up on her desk, she made
a pin-cushion of its patient and inofiFensive
body. Whether this was done in revenge of
what she considered a second figurative ob-
trusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or
whether she had an intuitive appreciation of
the rites of certain other heathens, and, in-
dulging in that "fetish" ceremony, imagined
that the original of her wax model would
pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical
question I shall not now consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the mas-
ter could not help noticing in her different
tasks the working of a quick, restless, and
vigorous perception. She knew neither the
hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood. Her
answers in class were always slightly dashed
with audacity. Of course she was not in-
fallible. But her courage and daring in
passing beyond her own depth and that of
the floundering little swimmers around her,

58 MLiaa,

in their minds outweighed aU errors of judg-
menjL J Children are not better than grown
people in tiiis respect, I fancy ; and whenever
the little red hand flashed above her desk,
there was a wondering silence, and even the
master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt
of his own experience and judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at
first amused and entertained his fancy began
to afflict him with grave doubts. He could
not but see that Mliss was revengeful, irrev-
erent, and wilful. That there was but one
better quality which pertained to her semi-
savage disposition, — the faculty of physical
fortitude and self-sacrifice; and another,
though not always an attribute of the noble
savage, — truth. Mliss was both fearless
and sincere ; perhaps in such a character the
adjectives were synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard
thinking on this subject, and had arrived at
that conclusion quite common to all who
think sincerely, that he was generally the
slave of his own prejudices, when he deter-
mined to call on the Rev. McSnagley for
advice. This decision was somewhat humil-
iating to his pride, as he and McSnagley
were not friends. But he thought of Mliss,

MLias. 59

and the evening of their first meeting ; and
perhaps with a pardonable superstition that
it was not chance alone that had guided her
wilful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps
with a complacent consciousness of the rare
magnanimity of the act, he choked back his
dislike and went to McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see
him. Moreover, he observed that the mas-
ter was looking ^^peartish," and hoped he
had got over the '^ neuralgy " and ^^ rheuma-
tiz." He himself had been troubled with
a dumb ^^ ager " since last Conference. But
he had learned to ^^ rastle and pray."

Pausing a moment to enable the master
to write hi^ certain method of curing the
dumb ^^ ager " upon the book and volume of
his brain, Mr. McSnagley proceeded to in-
quire after Sister Morpher. ^^She is an
adornment to Chris^et^^anity, and has a likely
growin' young family," added Mr. McSnag-
ley ; ^^ and there 's thafc mannerly young gal,
— so well behaved, — Miss Clytie." In fact,
Clytie's perfections seemed to affect him to
such an extent that he dwelt for several
minutes upon them. The master was doubly
embarrassed. In the first place, there was
an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all

60 MLI88,

this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was
something unpleasantly confidential in his
tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest
bom. So that the master, after a few futile
efforts to say something natural, found it
convenient to recall another engagement, and
left without asking the information required,
but in his after reflections somewhat unjustly
giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the full
benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and
pupil once more in the close communion of
old. The child seemed to notice the change
in the master's manner, which had of late
been constrained, and in one of their long
post-prandial walks she stopped suddenly,
and, mounting a stump, looked full in his
face with big, searching eyes. "You ain't
mad? " said she, with an interrogative shake
of the black braids. "No." "Nor both-
ered ? " " No." " Nor hungry ? " (Hunger
was to Mliss a sickness that might attack a
person at any moment.) i " No." " Nor
thinking of her ?" ^^^^FT whom, Lissy?"
"That white girl." (This was the latest
epithet invented by Mliss, who was a very
dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)
" No " " Upon your word ? " (A substitute

MLI88, 61

for "Hope you'll die?" proposed by the
master.) " Yes." " And sacred honor ? "
" Yes." Then Mliss gave him a fierce little
kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For
two or three days after that she conde-
scended to appear more like other children,
and be, as she expressed it, " good."

Two years had passed since the master's
advent at Smith's Pocket, and as his salary
was not large, and the prospects of Smith's
Pocket eventually becoming the capital of
the State not entirely definite, he contem-
plated a change. He had informed the
school trustees privately of his intentions,
but, educated young men of unblemished
moral character being scarce at that time, he
consented to continue his schpol term through
the winter to early spring. None else knew
of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
Duchesne, a young Creole physician, known
to the people of Wingdam as " Duchesny."
He never mentioned it to Mrs. Moi*pher,
Clytie, or any of. his scholars. His reticence
was partly the result of a constitutional in-
disposition to fuss, partly a desire to be
spared the questions and surmises of vulgar
curiosity, and partly that he never really
believed he was going to do anything before
At was done.

62 MLI8S.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was
a selfish instinct, perhaps, which made him
try to fancy bis feeling for the child was
foolish, romantic, and unpractical He even
tried to imagine that she would do better
under the control of an older and sterner
teacher. Then she. was nearly eleven, and
in a few years, by the rules of Bed Moun-
tain, would be a woman. He had done his
duty. After Smith's death he addressed
letters to Smith's relatives, and received one
answer from a sister of Melissa's mother^
Thanking the master, she stated her inten-
tion of leaving the Atlantic States for Cali-
fomia with her husband* in a few months.
This was a slight superstructure for the airy
castle which the master pictured for Mliss's
home, but it was easy to fancy that some
loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims
of kindred, might better guide her wayward
nature. Yet, when the master had read the
letter, Mliss listened to it carelessly, received
it submissively, and afterwards cut figures
out of it with her scissors, supposed to repre-
sent Clytemnestra, labelled " the white girl,"
to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon
the outer walls of the schoolhouse.

When the smumer was about spent, and

MLIBS. 63

the last harvest had been gathered in the
valleys, the master bethought him of gather-
ing in a few ripened shoots of the young
idea, and of having his harvest-home, or ex-
amination. So the savans and professionals
of Smith's Pocket were gathered to witness
that time-honored custom of placing timid
children in a constrained position, and bully-
ing them as in a witness-box. As usual in
such cases, the most audacious and self-pos-
sessed were the lucky recipients of the hon-
ors. The reader wiU imagine that in the
present instance Mliss and Clytie were pre-
eminent, and divided public attention : Mliss
with her clearness of material perception and
self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-es-
teem and saint-like correctness of deport-
ment. The other little ones were timid and
blundering. Mliss's readiness and brillian-
cy, of course, captivated the greatest number
and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's
antecedents had unconsciously awakened the
strongest sympathies of a class whose ath*
letic forms were ranged against the walls, or
whose handsome bearded faces looked in at
the windows. But Mliss's popularity was
overthrown by an imexpected circumstance.
McSnagley had invited himself, and had

64 MLisa.

been going through the pleasing entertain-
ment of frightening the more timid pupils
by the vaguest and most ambiguous questions
delivered in an impressive funereal tone;
and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and
was tracking the course of our spotted ball
through space, and keeping time with the
music of the spheres, and defining the teth-
ered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley
impressively arose. " Meelissy I ye were
speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
and the jnoYo-ments of the sun, and I think
ye said it had been a doing of it since the
creashun, eh ? " Mliss nodded a scornful
a£Birmative. "Well, war that the truth?
said McSnagley, folding his arms. " Yes,
said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips
tightly. The handsome outlines at the win-
dows peered further in the schoolroom, and a
saintly Raphael face, with blonde beard and
soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp
in the diggings, turned toward the child and
whispered, " Stick to it, Mliss ! " The rev-
erend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and
cast a compassionate glance at the master,
then at the children, and then rested his look
on Clytie. Tfiat young woman softly ele-
vated her round, white arm. Its seductive

ML18S. Bb

curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and
massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of
her humblest worshippers, worn in honor of
the occasion. There was a momentary si-
lence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink
and soft. Clytie's big eyes were very bright
and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book-
muslin rested softly on Clytie's' white, plump
shoulders. Clytie looked at the master, and
the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke
softly : —

^' Joshua commanded the sun to stand still,
and it obeyed him I " There was a low hum
of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant
expression on McSnagley's face, a grave
shadow on the master's, and a comical look
of disappointment reflected from the win-
dows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over her As-
tronomy, and then shut the book with a
loud snap. A groan burst from McSnag-
ley, an expression of astonishment from the
schoolroom, a yell from the windows, as
Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk,
with thp emphatic declaration, —

" It 's a d— n lie. I don't believe it I "

66 MLwa

CHAPTER IV.

The long wet season had drawn near its
close. Signs of spring were visible in the
swelling buds and rushing torrents. The
pine forests exhaled the fresher spicery.
The azaleas were already budding, the ceano-
thus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.
On the green upland which climbed Red
Mountain at its southern aspect the long
spike of the monkVhood shot up from its
broad-leaved stool, and once more shook its
dark-blue bells. Again the billow above
Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest
just tossed with the foam of daisies and but-
tercups. The little graveyard had gathered
a few new dwellers in the past year, and the
mounds were placed two by two by the little
paling until they reached Smith's grave, and
there there was but one. General supersti-
tion had shunned it, and the plot beside
Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards, posted
about the town, intimating that, at a certain
period, a celebrated dramatic company would
perform, for a few days, a series of «sid^
splitting*' and ^^ screaming" farces; that.

MUSS. 67

alternating pleasantly with this, there would
be some melodrama and a grand divertise-
ment, which would include singing, dancing,
etc. These annotlncements * occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and
were the theme of much excitement and
great speculation among the master's schol-
ars. The master had promised Mliss, to
whom this sort of thing was sacred and rare,
that she should go, and on that momentous
evening the master and Mliss '^ assisted."

The performance was the prevalent style
of heavy mediocrity ; the melodrama was
not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough
to excite. But ihe master, turning wearily
to the child, was astonished, and felt some-
thing like self -accusation, in noticing the
peculiar effect upon her excitable nature.
The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each
stroke of her panting little heart. Her
small passionate lips were slightly parted to
give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely
opened lids threw up and arched her black
eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal
comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss sel-
dom laughed. Nor was she discreetly af-'
fected to the delicate extremes of the corner
of a i^hite handkerchief, as was the tender-

68 MLI8S.

hearted " Clytie," who was talking with her
" feller " and ogling the master at the same
moment. But when the performance was
over, and the*green eurtkin fell on the little
stage, Mliss drew a long, deep breath, and
turned to the master's grave face with a
half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture.
Then she said, " Now take me home I " and
dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if
to dwell once more in fancy on the mimic
stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the mas-
ter thought proper to ridicule the whole per-
formance. Now he should n't wonder if
Mliss thought that the young lady who acted
so beautifully was really in earnest, and in
love with the gentleman who wore such fine
clothes. Well, if she were in love with him
it was a very unfortunate thing I " Why ? "
said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the
drooping lid. " Oh ! well, he could n't sup-
port his wife at his present salary, and pay
so much a week for his fine clothes, and then
they would n't receive as much wages if they
were married as if they were merely lovers,
— that is," added the master, " if they are
not already married to somebody else ; but
I think the husband of the pretty young

MLI8S. 69

countess takes the tickets at the door, or
pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the candles,
or does something equally refined and ele-
gant. As to the young man with nice
clothes, which are really nice now, and must
cost at least two and a half or three dollars,
not to speak of that mantle of red drugget,
which I happen to know the price of, for I
bought some of it for my room once, — as
to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty
good fellow, and if he does drink occasion-
ally, I don't think people ought to take ad-
vantage of it, and give him black eyes and
throw him in the mud. Do you? I am
sure he might owe me two dollars and a half
a long time before I would throw it up in
his face, as the fellow did the other night
at Wingdam."

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers
and was trying to look in his eyes, which the
young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss
had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself
sometimes in a species of sardonic humor,
which was equally visible in her actions
and speech. But the young man continued
in this strain until they had reached Mrs.
Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in
her maternal charge. Waiving the invita-

70 MLISS,

tion of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and
rest, and sliading his eyes with his hand to
keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren
glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of
the dramatic company, Mliss was late at
school, and the master's usual Friday after-
noon ramble was for once omitted, owing to
the absence of his trustworthy guide. As
he was putting away his books and prepar-
ing to leave the schoolhouse, a small voice
piped at his side, " Please, sir I " The master
turned, and there stood Aristides Morpher.

"Well, my little man," said the master,
impatiently, " what is it ? — quick ! "

"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that
Mliss is going to run away agin."

" What 's that, sir ? " said the master, with
that unjust testiness with which we always
receive disagreeable news.

"Why, sir, she don't stay home any
more, and ^Kerg' and me see her talking
with one of those actor fellers, and . she 's
with him now ; and please, sir, yesterday she
told ^ Kerg ' and me she could make a speech
as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and
she spouted right oflE by heart," and the lit-
tle fellow paused in a collapsed condition.

MLISS. 71

'^ What actor ? " asked the master.

^' Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair.
And gold pin. And gold chain," said the
just Aristides, putting periods for commas
to eke out his breath.

. The master put on his gloves and hat,
feeling an unpleasant tightness in his chest
and thorax, and walked out in the road.
Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavor-
ing to keep pace with his short legs to the
master's strides, when the master stopped
suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against
him. " Where were they talking ? " asked
the master, as if continuing the conversation.

" At the Arcade," said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the
master paused. '^ Run down home," said he
to the boy. ^' If Mliss is there, come to the
Arcade and tell me. If she is n't there, stay
home ; run ! " And off trotted the short-
legged Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way, — a
long, rambling building containing a bar-
room, billiard-room, and restaurant. As the
young man crossed the plaza he noticed that
two or three of the passers-by turned and
looked after him. He looked at his clothes,
took out his handkerchief and wiped his face

72 MLIS8.

before he entered the bar-room. It contained
the usual number of loungers, who stared at
him as he entered. Qne of them looked at
him so fixedly and with such a strange ex-
pression that the master stopped and looked
again, and then saw it was only his own re-
flection in a large mirror. This made the
master think that perhaps he was a little
excited, and so he took up a copy of the Red
Mountain Banner from one of the tables^
and tried to recover his composure by read-
ing the column of advertisements,

He then walked through the bar-room,
through the restaurant, and into the. billiard-
room. The child was not there. In the lat-
ter apartment a person was standing by one
of the tables with a broad-brinmied glazed
hat on his head. The master recognized him
as the agent of the dramatic company; he
had taken a dislike to him at their first meet-
ing, from the peculiar fashion of wearing his-
beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of
his search was not there, he turned to the
man with the glazed hat. He had noticed
the master, but tried that common trick
of unconsciousness, in which vulgar natures
always fail. Balancing a billiard-cue in his
hand, he pretended to play with a ball in the

MLias. « 78

centre of the table. The master stood op-
posite to him until he raised his eyes ; when
their glances met, the master walked up to
him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quar-
rel, but when he began to speak something
kept rising in his throat and retarded his
utterance, and his own voice frightened him,
it sounded so distant, low, and resonant.

" I understand," he began, " that Melissa
Smith, an orphan, and one of my scholars,
has talked with you about adopting your
profession. Is that so ? "

The man with the glazed hat leaned over
the table, and made an imaginary shot, that
sent the ball spinning round the cushions.
Then walking round the table he recovered
the ball and placed it upon the spot. This
duty discharged, getting ready for another
shot, he said, —
. " S'pose she has ? "

The master choked up again, but, squeez-
ing the cushion of the table in his gloved
hand, he went on : —

" If you are a gentleman, I have only to
tell you that I am her guardian, and respon-
sible for her career. You know as well as I
do the kind of life you offer her. As you

74 « Muas.

may learn of any one here, I have already
brought her out of an existence worse than
death, — out of the streets and the contami-
nation of vice. I am trying to do so again.
Let us talk like men. She has neither
father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you
seeking to give her an equivalent for these?"

The man with the glazed hat examined
the point of his cue, and then looked around
for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

"I know that she is a strange, wilful
girl," continued the master, " but she is bet-
ter than she was. I believe that I have some
influence over her still. I beg and hope,
therefore, that you will take no further steps
in this matter, but as a man, as a gentle-
man, leave her to me. I am willing " —
But here something rose again in the mas-
ter's throat, and the sentence remained un-
finished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking
the master's silence, raised his head with
a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud
voice, —

" Want her yourself, do you? That cock
won't fight here, young man ! "

The insult was more in the tone than the
words, more in the glance than tone, and

1 - • ^

MLISS. • 75

more in the man's instinctive nature than
all these. The best appreciable rhetoric to
this kind of animal is a blow. The master
felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous en-
ergy finding expression in the one act, he
struck the brute full in his grinning face.
The blow sent the glazed hat one way and
the cue another, and tore the glove and skin
from the master's hand from knuckle to
joint. It opened up the comers of the fel-
low's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape
of his beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a
scuffle, and the trampling of many feet.
Then the crowd parted right and left, and
two sharp quick reports followed each other
in rapid succession. Then they closed again
about his opponent, and the master was
standing alone. He remembered picking
bits of burning wadding from his coat-sleeve
with his left hand. Some one was holding
his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it
was still bleeding from the blow, but his
fingers were clenched aroimd the handle of
a glittering knife. He could not remember
when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was
Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master to

76 MLI88,

the door, but the master held bax^k, and
tried to tell him as well as he could with his
parched throat about " Mliss." " It 's all
right, my boy," said Mr. Morpher. " She 's
home ! " And they passed out into the street
together. As they walked along, Mr. Mor-
pher said that Mliss had come running into
the house a few moments before, and had
dragged him out, saying that somebody was
trying to kill the master at the Arcade.
Wishing to be alone, the master promised
Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the
agent again that night, and parted from
him, taking the road toward the school-
house. He was surprised on nearing it to
find the door open ; still more surprised to
find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted be-
fore, had, like most sensitive organizations,
a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown
out by his late adversary still rankled in his
heart. It was possible, he thought, that such
a construction might be put upon his affec-
tion for the child, which at best was foolish
and Quixotic. Besides, had she not volun-
tarily abnegated his authority and affection ?
And what had everybody else said about
her ? Why should he alone combat the opin-

MLI88, 77

ion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to
confess the truth of all they had predicted ?
And he had been a participant iii a low bar-
room fight with a common boor, and risked
his life, to prove what ? What had he
proved ? Nothing ! What would the people
say? What would his friends say? What
would McSnagley say ?

In his self-accusation the last person he
should have wished to meet was Mliss. He
entered the door, and, going up to his desk,
told the child, in a few cold words, that he
was busy, and wished to be alone* As she
rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting
down, buried his head in his hands. When
he looked up again she was still standing
there. She was looking at his face with an
anxious expression.

" Did you kill him ? " she asked.

" No I " said the master.

" That 's what I gave you the knife for ! '*
said the child, quickly.

" Gave me the knife ? " repeated the mas-
ter, in bewilderment.

" Yes, gave you the knife. I was there
under the bar. Saw you hit him. Saw you
both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave
it to you. Why did n't you stick him ? "

78 MLisa.

said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle
of the black eyes and a gesture of the little
red hand.

The master could only look his astonish-
ment.

" Yes," said Mliss. " If you 'd asked me,
I 'd told you I was off with the play-actors.
Why was I off with the play-actors? Be-
cause you would n't tell me you was going
away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doc-
tor so. I was n't a goin' to stay here alone
with those Morphers. I 'd rather die first."

With a dramatic gesture which was per-
fectly consistent with her character, she drew
from her bosom a few limp green leaves,
and, holding them out at arm's-length, said
in her quick vivid way, and in the queer
pronunciation of her old life, which she fell
into when unduly excited, —

" That 's the poison plant you said would
kill me. I '11 go with the play-actors, or
I'll eat this and die here. I don't care
which. I won't stay here, where they hate
and despise me I Neither would you let me,
if you did n't hate and despise me too 1 "

The passionate little breast heaved, and
two big tears peeped over the edge of Mliss's
eyelids, but she whisked them away with the

ML18S. 79

corner of her apron as if they had been
wasps.

^^If you lock me up In jail/' said Mliss
fiercely, " to keep me from the play-actors,
I '11 poison myself. Father killed himself,
— why should n't I ? You said a mouthful
of that root would kill me, and I always i
carry it here," and she struck her breast
with her clenched fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot be-
side Smith's grave, and of the passionate lit-
tle figure before him. Seizing her hands in
his and looking full into her truthful eyes,
he said, —

" Lissy, will you go with me ? "

The child put her arms around his neck,
and said joyfully, " Yes."

'* But now — to-night ? " *

" To-night ! "

And, hand in hand, they passed into the
road, — the narrow road * that had once
brought her weary feet to the master's door,
and which it seemed she should not tread
again alone. The stars glittered brightly
above them. For good or ill the lesson had
been learned, and behind them the school of
Bed Mountain closed upon them forever.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKEEFLAT.

As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped
into the main street of Poker Flat on the
morning of the 28d of November, 1860, he
was conscious of a change in its moral at-
mosphere sinee the preceding night. Two
or three men, conversing earnestly together,
ceased as he approached, and exchanged sig-
nificant glances. There was a Sabbath lull
in tlie air, which, in a settlement unused to
Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

Mr. OakliursVs calm, handsome face be-
trayed small concern in these indications
Whether he was conscious o£ any predispos-
ing cause was another question. " I reck-
on they 're after somebody," he reflected ;
"likely it's me." He returned to his pocket
the handkerchief with which he had been
whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat
*'^m his neat boots, and quietly discharged

s mind of any further conjecture. ,

In point of fact, Poker Flat was " after

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 81

somebody." It had lately suffered the loss
of several thousand dollars, two valuable
horses, and a prominent citizen. It was
experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,
quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of
the a<3ts that had provoked it. A secret
committee had determined to rid the town of
all improper persons. This was done perma-
nently in regard of two men who were then
hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in
the gulch, and temporarUy in the banishment
of certain other objectionable characters. I
regret to say that some of these were ladies.
It is but due to the sex, however, to state
that their impropriety was professional, and
it was only in such easily established stand-
ards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to m
in judgment.

Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that
he was included in this category. A few of
the committee had urged hanging him as a
possible example, and a sure method of re-
imbursing themselves from his pockets of the
sums he had won from them. '^ It 's agin
justice," said Jim Wheeler, " to let this yer
young man from Roaring Camp — an entire
stranger — carry away our money." But a
crude sentiment of equity residing in the

82 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.

breasts of those who had been fortunate
enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled
this narrower local prejudice.

Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with
philosophic calmness, none the less coolly
that he was aware of the hesitation of his
judges. He was too much of a gambler not
to accept fate. With him life was at best
an uncertain game, and he recognized the
usual percentage in favor of the dealer.

A body of armed men accompanied the
deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the
outskirts of th.e settlement. Besides Mr.
Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly des-
perate man, and for whose intimidation the
armed escort was intended, the expatriated
pariy consisted of a young woman famil-
iarly known as the "Duchess; " another who
had won the title of " Mother Shipton ; "
and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-rob-
ber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade
provoked no comments from the spectators,
nor was any word "uttered by the escort.
Only when th^ gulch which marked the ut-
termost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the
leader spoke briefly and to the point. The
exiles were forbidden to return at the peril
of their lives.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKEH FLAT, 88

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up
feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears
from the Duchess, some bad language from
Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of
expletives from Uncle Billy. The philo-
sophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He
listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire
to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated
statements of the Duchess that she would
die in the road, and to 'the alarming oaths
that seemed tx> be bumped out of Uncle
Billy as he rode forward. With the easy
good-humor characteristic of his class, he in-
sisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse,
" Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the
Duchess rode. But even this act did not
draw the party into any closer sympathy.
The young woman readjusted her somewhat
draggled plumes with a feeble, faded co-
quetry ; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor
of " Five Spot " with malevolence, and Un-
cle Billy included the whole party in one
sweeping anathema.

The road to Sandy Barf — a camp that,
not having as yet experienced the regen-
erating influences of Poker Flat, conse-
quently seemed to offer some invitation to
the emigrants — lay over a steep mountain

84 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.

range. It was distant a day's severe traveL
In that advanced season, the party soon
passed out of the moist, temperate regions
of the foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing
air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow
and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling
out of her saddle upon the grouiid, declared
her intention of going no farther, and the
party halted.

\ The spot was singularly wild and impres-
sive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded
on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked
granite, sloped gently toward the crest of
another precipice that overlooked the vaUey.
It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot
for a camp, had camping been advisable.
But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half
the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished,
and the party were not equipped or provis-
ioned for delay. This fact he pointed out
to his companions curtly, with a philosophic
commentary on the folly of " throwing up
their hand before the game was played out."
But they were furnished with liquor, which
in this emergency stood them in place of
food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of ^
his remonstrances, it was not long before
they were more or less under its influence.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 85

Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
state into one of stupor, the Duchess became
maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr.
Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning
against a rock, calmly surveying them.

Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It inter-
fered with a profession which required cool-
ness, impassiveness, and presence of mind,
and, in his own language, he " could n't
afford it." As he gazed at his recimibent
fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his
pariah-trade, his habits of life, his very vices,
for the first time seriously oppressed him.
He bestirred himself in dusting his black
clothes, washing his hands and face, and
other acts characteristic of his studiously
neat habits, and for a moment forgot his
annoyance. The thought of deserting his
weaker and more pitiable companions never
perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not
help feeling the want of that excitement
which, singularly enough, was most con-
ducive to that calm equanimity for which he
was notorious. I He looked at the gloomy
walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above
the circling pines around him ; at the sky,
ominously clouded ; at the valley below, al-
ready deepening into shadow. And, doing
so, suddenly he heard his own name called.

86 THE OUTCAST a OF POKER FLAT,

A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In
the fresh, open face of the new-comer Mr.
Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, other-
wise known as the "Innocent," of Sandy
Bar. He had met him some months before
over a " little game," and had, with per-
fect equanimity, won the entire fortune —
amounting to some forty dollars — of that
guileless youth. After the game was fin-
ished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful spec-
ulator behind the door and thus addressed
him : " Tommy, you 're a good little man,
but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't
try it over again." He then handed him
his money back, pushed him gently from the
room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom
Simson.

There was a remembrance of this in his

boyish and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oak-
hurst. He had started, he said, to go to
Poker Flat to seek his fortune. " Alone ? "
No, not exactly alone ; in fact (a giggle), he
had run away with Piney Woods. Did n't
Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney ? She that
used to wait on the table at the Temperance
House ? They had been engaged a long time,
but old Jake Woods had objected, and so

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, 87

they had run away, and were going to Poker
Flat to be married, and here they were. And
they were tired out, and how lucky it was
they had found a place to camp, and com-
pany. All this the Innocent delivered rap-
idly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel of
fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-tree
where she had been blushing unseen, and
rode to the side of her lover.

Mr. Oakhurst seldom ti'oubled himself with
sentiment, still less with propriety; but he
had a vague idea that the situation was not
fortunate. He retained, however, his pres-
ence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy,
who was about to say something, and Uncle
Billy was, sober enough to recognize in Mr.
Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would
not bear trifling. He then endeavored to
dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further,
but in vain. He even pointed out the fact
that there was no provision, nor means of
making a camp. But, unluckily, the Inno-
cent met this objection by assuring the party
that he was provided with an extra mule
loaded with provisions, and by the discovery
of a rude attempt at a log-house near the
trail. "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oak*
hurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the
Duchess, " and I can shift for myseliE."

88 THE OUTCASTS OF I*OKER FLAT,

Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing
foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a
roar of laughter. As it was, he felt com-
pelled to retire up the canon until he could
recover his gravity. There he confided the
joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps
of his leg, contortions of his face, and the
usual profanity. But when he returned to
the party, he found them seated by a fire —
for the air had grown strangely chill and
the sky overcast — in apparently amicable
conversation. Piney was actually talking in
an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess,
who was listening with an interest and an-
imation she had not shown for many days.
The Innocent was holding forth, apparently
with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing
into amiability. "Is this yer a d — d pic-
nic ? " said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn,
as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glan-
cing firelight, and the tethered animals in
the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled
with the alcoholic fuijies that disturbed his
brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature,
for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and
cram his fist into his mouth.

As the shadows crept slowly up the

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 89

mountain, a slight breeze rocked the tops
of the pine-trees, and moaned through their
long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin,
patched and covered with pine-boughs, was
set apart for the ladies. As the lovers
parted they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss,
so honest and sincere that, it might have
been heard above the swaying pines. The
frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother
Shipton were probably too stunned to re-
mark upon this last evidence of simplicity,
and so turned without a word to the hut.
The fire was replenished, the men lay down
before the door, and in a few minutes were
asleep.

Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. To-
ward morning he awoke benumbed and cold.
As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which
was now blowing strongly, brought to his
cheek that which caused the blood to leave
it, — snow !

He started to his feet with the intention
of awakening the sleepers, for there was no
time to lose. But turning to where Uncle
Billy had been lying, he found him gone.
A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse
to his lips. He ran to the spot where the
mules had been tethered ; they were no longer

90 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.

there. The tracks were already rapidly dis-
appearing in the snow.

The momentary excitement brought Mr.
Oakhurst back to the fire with his usual
palm. He did not waken the sleepers. The
Innocent slumbered peacefully, with a smile
on his good-humored, freckled face ; the vir-
gin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as
sweetly as though attended by celestial guard-
ians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blan-
ket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches
and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in
a whirling mist of snowflakes, that dazzled
and confused the eye. What could be seen
of the landscape appeared magically changed.
He looked over the valley, and summed
up the present and future in two words, —
" Snowed in ! "

A careful inventory of the provisions,
which, fortunately for the party, had been
stored within the hut, and so escaped the
felonious fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed
the fact that with care and prudence they
might last ten days longer. " That is," said
Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent,
" if you 're willing to board us. If you ain't
' — and perhaps you 'd better not — you can
wait till Uncle Billy gets back with pro-

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, 91

visions." For some occult reason, Mr.
Oakburst could not bring bimself to dis-
close Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered
the bypotbesis tbat be bad wandered from
tbe camp and bad accidentally stampeded
tbe animals. He dropped a warning to tbe
Ducbess and Motber Sbipton, wbo of course
knew tbe facts of tbeir associate's defection.
"Tbey'll find out tbe trutb about us all
wben tbey find out anytbing," be added, sig-
nificantly, " and tbere 's no good f rigbtening
tbem now."

Tom Simson not only put all bis worldly
store at tbe disposal of Mr. Oakburst, but
seemed to enjoy tbe prospect of tbeir en-
forced seclusion. " We '11 bave a good camp
for a week, and tben tbe snow '11 melt, and
we '11 all go back togetber." Tbe cbeerful
gayety of tbe young man and Mr. Oak-
burst's calm infected tbe otbers. Tbe Inno-
cent, witb tbe aid of pine-bougbs, extempo-
rized a tbatcb for tbe roofless cabin, and tbe
Ducbess directed Piney in tbe rearrange-
ment of tbe interior witb a taste and tact
tbat opened tbe blue eyes of tbat provincial
maiden to tbeir fullest extent. " I reckon
now you 're used to fine tbings at Poker
Flat," said Piney. Tbe Ducbess turned

92 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.

away sharply to conceal something that red-
dened her cheeks through their professional
tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney
not to " chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst
returned from a weary search for the trail,
he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed
from the' rocks. He stopped in some alarm,
and his thoughts first naturally reverted to
the whiskey, which he had prudently cachSd.
" And yet it don't somehow sound like whis-
key," said the gambler. It was not until he
caught sight of the blazing fire through the
stm blinding storm and the group around it

that he settled to the conviction that it was
" square fun."

Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cachSd his
cards with the whiskey as something de-
barred the free access of the commimity, I
cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother
Shipton's words, he " did n't say cards once "
during that evening. Haply the time was
beguiled by an accordion, produced some-
what ostentatiously by Tom Simson from
his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties
attending the manipulation of this instru-
ment, Piney Woods managed to pluck sev-
eral reluctant melodies from its keys, to an
accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT,

bone castanets. But the crowning festivitj
of the evening was reached in a rude camp-
meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining
hands; sang with great earnestness and vo-
ciferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone
and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather
than any devotional quality, caused it speed-
ily to infect the others, who at last joined in
the refrain : —

*' I *in proud to live in the service of the Lord|
And I *m bound to die in His army.'*

'The pines rocked, the storm eddied and
whirled above the miserable group, and the
flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as
if in token of the vow.

At midnight the storm abated, the rolling
clouds parted, and the stars glittered keenly
above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst,
whose professional habits had enabled him
to live on the smallest possible amount of
sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom ^im-
son, somehow managed to take upon himself
the greater part of that duty. He excused
himself to the Innocent by saying that he
had " often been a week without sleep."
"Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!"
replied Oakhurst, sententiously ; " when a
man gets a streak of luck, — nigger-luck, —

^ THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT,

he don't get tired. The luck gives in first.
Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively,
"is a mighty queer thing. All you know
about it for certain is that it 's boimd to
change. And it 's finding out when it 's
going to change that makes you. We 've
had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker
Hat, — you come along, and slap you get
into it, too. If you can hold your cards
right along, you 're all right. For," added

the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance, —

•

** * I 'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
And I 'm bound to die in His army.' "

The third day came, and the sun, looking
through the white-curtained valley, saw the
outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store
of provisions for the morning meal. It
was one of the peculiarities of that moun-
tain climate that its rays diffused a kindly
warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in
regretful commiseration of the past. But it
revealed drift on drift of snow piled high
around the hut, — a hopeless, uncharted,
trackless sea of white lying below the rocky
shores to which the castaways still clung.
Through the marvellously clear air the smoke
of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose
miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, 95

from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fast-
ness hurled in that direction a final mal-
ediction. It was her last vituperative at-
tempt, and perhaps for that reason was
invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
It did her good, she privately informed the
Duchess. " Just you go out there and cuss,
and see." She then set herself to the task
of amusing "the child," as she and the
Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney
was no chicken, but it was a soothing and
original theory of the pair thus to account
for the fact that she did n't swear and was
n't improper.

When night crept up again through the
gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose
and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn
gasps by the flickering camp-fire. But mu-
sic failed to fill entirely the aching void left
by insufficient food, and a new diversion
was proposed by Piney, story-telling. Nei-
ther Mr. Oakhurst nor his female compan-
ions caring to relate their personal experi-
ences, this plan would have failed, too, but
for the Innocent. Some months before he
had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's
ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now
proposed to narrate the principal incidents

96 THE 0UTCA8T8 OF POKER FLAT.

of that poem — having thoroughly mastered
the argument and fairly forgotten the words
— in^ the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.
And so for the rest of that night the Ho-
meric demigods again walked the earth.
Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the
winds, and the great pines in the cafion
seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of
Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet
satisfaction. Most especially was he inter-
ested^ in the fate of " Ash-heels," as the In-
nocent persisted in denominating the " swift
footed Achilles."

So with small food and much of Homer
and the accordion, a week passed over the
heads of the outcasts. The sun again for-
sook them, and again from leaden skies the
snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day
by day closer around them drew the snowy
circle, until at last they looked from their
prison over drifted walls of dazzling white,
that towered twenty f ^t above their heads.
It became more and more difficult to replen-
ish their fires, even from the fallen trees be-
side them, now half hidden in the drifts.
And yet no one complained. The lovers
turned from the dreary prospect and looked
into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr.

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, 97

Oakhurst. settled himself coolly to the losing
game before him. The Duchess, more cheer-
ful than she had been, assumed the care of
Piney. Only Mother Shipton — once the
strongest of the party — seemed to sicken
and fade. At midnight on the tenth day
she called Oakhurst to her side. " I 'm go-
ing," she said, in a voice of querulous weak-
ness, ^^ but don't say anything about it.
Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle
from under my head and open it.'* Mr.
Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother
Shipton's rations for the last week, un-
touched. " Give 'em to the child," she said,
pointing to the sleeping Piney. " You 've
starved yourself," said the gambler. " That 's
what they call it," said the woman, queru-
lously, as she lay down again, and, turning
her face to the wall, passed quietly away.

The accordion and the bones were put
aside that day, and Homer was forgotten.
When the body of Mother Shipton had been
committed to the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took
the Innocent aside and showed him a pair
of snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from
the old pack-saddle. " There 's one chance
in a hundred to save her yet," he said, point-
ing to Piney ; *' but it 's there," he added.

98 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.

pointing toward Poker Mat. " If you can
reach there in two days she 's safe." " And
you ? " asked Tom Simson. " I '11 stay
here," was the curt reply.

The lovers parted with a long embrace.
" You are not going, too ? " said the Duch-
ess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently
waiting to accompany him. '^ As far as the
cafion," he replied. He turned suddenly
and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid
face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid
with amazement.

Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It
brought the storm again and the whirling
snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the Are,
found that some one had quietly piled beside
the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.
The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them
from Piney.

The women slept but little. In the morn-
ing, looking into each other's faces, they
read their fate. Neither spoke ; but Piney,
accepting the position of the stronger, drew
near and placed her arm around the Duch-
ess's waist. They kept this attitude for the
rest of the day. That night the storm
reached its greatest fury, and, rending asun-
der the protecting pines, invaded the very
hut.

TH£ 0UTCABT8 OF POKER FLAT. 99

Toward morning they found themselves
unable to feed the fire, which gradually died
away. Ajs the embers slowly blackened, the
Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke
the silence of many hours: "Piney, can
you pray ? " " No, dear," said Piney, simply.
The Duchess, without knowing exactly why,
felt relieved, and, putting her head upon
Piney's shoulder, spoke no more. And so
reclining, the younger and purer pillowing
the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin
breast, they fell asleep.

The wind lulled as if it feared to waken
them. Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from
the long pine-boughs, flew like white-winged
birds, and settled about them as they slept.
The moon through the rifted clouds looked
down upon what had been the camp. But
all human stain, all trace of earthly travail,
was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mer-
cifully flung from above.

They slept all that day and the next, nor
did they waken when voices and footsteps
broke the silence of the camp. And when
pitying fingers brushed the snow from their
wan faces, you could scarcely have told, from
the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which
was she that had sinned. Even the law of

k J i

102 MIGGLE8.

we became dimly aware of voices. The
driver w^s_ evidently in the midst of an ex-

citing colloquy with some one in the road,
— a colloquy of which such fragments as
" bridge gone," " twenty feet of water,"
"can't pass," were occasionally distiuguish-
able above the storm. Then came a lull, and
a mysterious voice from the road shouted
the parting adjuration, —

" Try Miggles's."

We caught a glimpse of our leaders as
the vehicle slowly turned, of a horseman
vanishing through the rain, and we were evi-
dently on our way to Miggles's.

Who and where was Miggles ? The Judge,
our authority, did not remember the name,
and he knew the country thoroughly. The
Washoe traveller thought Miggles must
keep a hotel. We only knew that we were
stopped by high water in front and rear,
and that Miggles was our rock of refuge.
A teu minutes' splashing through a tangled
by-road, scarcely wide enough for the stage,
and we drew up before a barred and boarded
gate in a wide stone wall or fence about
eight feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and
evidently Miggles did not keep a hotel.

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

MIG0LE8, 108

« Higgles ! O Miggles I "

No answer.

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

^^ Migglesy ! " joined in the expressman,
persuasively. " O Miggy ! Mig ! "

But no reply came from the apparently
insensible Miggles. The Judge, who had
finally got the window down, put his head
out and propounded a series of questions,
which, if answered categorically, would have
undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery,
but which the driver evaded by replying
that '^ if we did n^t want to sit in the coach
all night, we had better rise up and sing out
for Miggles."

So we rose up and called on Miggles in
chorus ; then separately. And when we had
finished, a Hibernian feUow-passenger ivom
the roof called for " Maygells ! " whereat we
all laughed. While we were laufi^hins:, the
driver cried « Shoo ! »

We listened. To our infinite amazement
the chorus of " Miggles " was repeated from
the other side of the wall, even to the final
and supplemental " Maygells."

" Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.

" Extraordinary d — d skunk ! " roared the

104 MIGGLEB,

driver, contemptuously. " Come out of that,
Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man,
Miggles ! Don't hide in the dark ; I would
n't if I were you, Miggles," continued Yuba
Bill, now dancing about in an excess of fury.

" Miggles ! " continued the voice, " O
Miggles ! "

" My good man ! Mr. Myghail ! " said the
Judge, softening the asperities of the name
as much as possible, ^^ consider the inhospi-
tality of refusing shelter from the inclem-
ency of the weather to helpless females.
Beally, my dear sir " — But a succession
of " Miggles," ending in a burst of laughter,
drowned his voice.

Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a
heavy stone from the road, he battered down
the gate, and, with the expressman, entered
the enclosure. We followed. Nobody was
to be seen. In the gathering darkness all
that we could distinguish was that we were
in a garden — from the rose-bushes that
scattered over us a minute spray from their
dripping leaves — and before a long, ram-
bling wooden building.

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

^^No, nor don't want to," said Bill, shortly,

[

HIGGLES, 106

who felt the Pioneer Stage Company in-
sulted in his person by the contumacious
Higgles.

" But, my dear sir," expostulated the
Judge, as he thought of the barred gate.

" Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine
irony, " had n't you better go back and sit
in the coach till yer introduced ? I 'm going
in," and he pushed open the door of the
building.

A long room lighted only by the embers
of a fire that was dying on the large hearth
at its farther extremity ; the walls curiously
papered, and the flickering firelight bringing
out its grotesque pattern ; somebody sitting
in a large arm-chair by the fireplace. All
this we saw as we crowded together into the
room, after the driver and expressman.

"Hello! be you Higgles?" said Yuba
Bill to the solitary occupant.

The figure neither spoke nor stirred.
Yuba Bill walked wrathf uUy toward it, and
turned the eye of his coach-lantern upon its
face. It was a man's face, prejiiaturely old
and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which
there was that expression of perfectly gra-
tuitous solemnity which I had sometimes
seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered

106 , MJGGLES.

trom Bill's face to the lantern, and finally
fixed their gaze on that luminom object,
without further recogmtion.

Bill restrained himself with an effort.

" Miggles ! Be you deaf ? You ain't
dumb, anyhow, you know ? " HJid Yuba Bill
shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.

To our great dismay, as Bill removed his
Iiand, the venerable stranger apparently col-
lapsed, — sinking into half his size and an
nndistinguishable heap of clothing.

" Well, dem my skin ! " said Bill, look-
ing appealingly at us, and hopelessly retir-
ing from the contest.

The Judge now stepped forward, and we

lifted tlie mysterious invertebrate back into

his original position. Bill was dismissed

with the lantern to reconnoitre outside, for it

was evident that from the helplessness of this

solitary man there must be attendants near

at hand, and we all drew around the fire.

The Judge, who had regained his authority,

and had never lost his conversatiooal amia-

, — standing before us with bis back

I hearth, — charged us, as an imaginary

as follows ; —

t is evident that either our distinguished
1 here has reached that condition do-

MJ6QLES. 107

scribed by Shal^speare as ^the sere and
yellow leaf,' or has suffered some premature
abatement of his mental and physical facul-
ties. Whether he is really the Higgles " —

Here he was interrupted by " Higgles !
O Higgles ! Higglesy ! Hig I " and in fact
the whole chorus of Higgles in very much
the same key as it had once before been de-
livered unto us.

We gazed at each other for a moment
in some alarm. The Judge, in particular,
vacated his position quickly, as the voice
seemed to come directly over his shoulder.
The cause, however, was soon discovered in
a large magpie who was perched upon a
shelf over the fireplace, and who immedi-
ately relapsed into a sepulchral silence, which
contrasted singularly with his previous volu-
bility. It was imdoubtedly his voice which
we had heard in the road, and our friend in
the chair was not responsible for the discour-
tesy. Yuba Bill, who reentered the room
after an unsuccessful search, was loath to
accept the explanation, and still eyed the
helpless sitter with suspicion. He had found
a shed in which he had put up his horses,
but came back dripping and skeptical.
^^ Thar ain't nobody but him within ten mile

108 MIGGLES.

of the shanty, and that 'ar d-— d old skee-
sicks knows it."

But the faith of the majority proved to
be securely based. BUI had scarcely ceased
growling before we heard a quick step upon
the porch, the trailing of a wet skirt, the
door was flung open, and with a flash of
white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an
utter absence of ceremony or diffidence, a
young woman entered, shut the door, and,
panting, leaned back against it.

" Oh, if you please, I 'm Higgles ! "

And this was Higgles ! this bright-eyed,
full-throated young woman, whose wet gown
of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty
of the feminine curves to which it climg;
from the chestnut crown of whose head,
topped by a man's oil-skin sou'wester, to the
little feet and ankles, hidden somewhere in
the recesses of her boy's brogans, all was
grace; — this was Higgles, laughing at us,
too, in the most airy, frank, off-hand manner
imaginable.

"You see, boys," said sh^, quite out of
breath, and holding one little hand against
her side, quite unheeding the speechless dis-
comfiture of our party, or the complete de-
moralization of Yuba Bill, whose features

MI0GLE8, 109

had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous
and imbecile cheerfulness, — " you see, boys,
I was mor'n two miles away when you passed
down the road. I thought you might puU
up here, and so I ran the whole way, know-
ing nobody was home but Jim, — and —
and — I 'm out of breath — and — that lets
me out.'*

And here Higgles caught her dripping
oil-skin hat from her head, with a mischiev-
ous swirl that scattered a shower of rain-
drops over us ; attempted to put back her
hair ; dropped two hair-pains in the at-
tempt ; laughed, and sat down beside Yuba
Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on her
lap.

The Judge recovered himself first, and es-
sayed an extravagant compliment*

" I '11 trouble you for that har-pin," said
Higgles, gravely. Half a dozen hands were
eagerly stretched forward ; the missing hair-
pin was restored to its fair owner ; and
Higgles, crossing the room, looked keenly
in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes
looked back at hers with an expression we
had never seen before. Life and intelli-
gence seemed to struggle back into the rug-
ged f ace« Higgles laughed again, — it was

100 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT,

Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,
leaving them still locked in each other's
arms.

But at the head of the gulch, on one of
the largest pine-trees, they found the deuce
of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie-
knife. It bore the following, written in pen-
cil, in a firm hand : —

BENEATH THIS TRKS
LIES THE BODT

o»
JOHN OAKHURST,

Wab STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK

ON THE 23d of NOVEMBER, 1850,

AND

HANDED IN HIS CHECKS

ON THE 7th DECEMBER, 1850.

And pulseless and cold, with a derringer
by his side and a bullet in his heart, though
still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he
who was at once the strongest and yet the
weakest of the outcasts of Poker Mat.

HIGGLES.

We were eight, including the driver. We
had not spoken during the passage of the
last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy
vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled
the Judge's last poetical quotation. The tall
man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm
passed through the swaying strap and his
head resting upon it, — altogether a limp,
helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged
himself and been cut down too late. The
French lady on the back seat was asleep,
too, yet in a half-conscious propriety of at-
titude, shown even in the disposition of the
handkerchief which she held to her forehead
and which partially veiled her face. The
lady from Virginia City, travelling with her
husband, had long since lost all individual-
ity in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils, furs,
and shawls. There was no sound but the
rattling of wheels and the dash of rain upon
the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and

112 MIGGLES.

think, owing to the rare tact of Higgles in
guiding the conversation, asking all the
questions herself, yet bearing throughout a
frankness that rejected the idea of any con-
cealment on her own part ; so that we talked
of ourselves, of our prospects, of the journey,
of the weather, of each other, — of every-
thing but our host and hostess. It must be
confessed that Miggles's conversation was
never elegant, rarely grammatical, and that
at times she employed expletives the use of
which had generally been yielded to our sex.
But they were delivered with such a lighting
up of teeth and eyes, and were usually fol-
lowed by a laugh — a laugh peculiar to Hig-
gles — so frank and honest that it seemed
to clear the moral atmosphere.

Once during the meal we heard a noise
like the rubbing of a heavy body against
the outer walls of the house. This was
shortly followed by a scratching and snif-
fling at the door. " That 's Joaquin," said
Higgles, in reply to our questioning glances ;
" would you like to see him ? " Before we
could answer she had opened the door, and
disclosed a half -grown grizzly, who instantly
raised himself on his haunches, with his
£orei»w8 hanging down in the popukr at-

MIG0LE8. 118

titude of mendicancy, and looking admir-
ingly at Miggles, with a very singular resem-
blance in his manner to Yuba Bill. ^^ That 's
my watch-dog," said Miggles, in explana-
tion. ^ Oh, he don't bite," she added, as the
two lady passengers fluttered into a comer.
" Does he, old Toppy?" (the latter remark
being addressed directly to the sagacious
Joai^uin). "I tell you what, boys," contin-
ued Miggles, after she had fed and closed
the door on Ursa Minor^ " you were in big
luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round
when you dropped in to-night." "Where
was he ? " asked the Judge. " With me,"
said Miggles. " Lord love you 1 he trots
round with me nights like as if he was a

man."

We were silent for a few moments, and
listened to the wind. Perhaps we all had
the same picture before us, — of Miggles
walking through the rainy woods, with her
savage guardian at her side. The Judge, I
remember, said something about Una and
her lion; but Miggles received it, as she
did other compliments, with quiet gravity.
Whether she was altogether unconscious of
the admiration she excited, — she could
hardly have been oblivious of Yuba Bill's

114 MIGGLES.

adoration, — I know not ; but her very frank-
ness suggested a perfect sexual equality that
was cruelly humiliating to the younger mem-
bers of our party.

The incident of the bear did not add any-
thing in Miggles^s favor to the opinions of
those of her own sex who were present. In
fact, the repast over, a chillness radiated
from the two lady passengers that no pine-
boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as
a sacrifice upon the hearth could wholly
overcome. Miggles felt it ; and suddenly
declaring that it was time to "turn in,"
offered to show the ladies to their bed in an
adjoining room. "You, boys, will have to
camp out here by the fire as well as you
can," she added, " for thar ain't but the one
room."

Our sex — by which, my dear sir, I allude
of course to the stronger portion of human-
ity — has been generally relieved from the
imputation of curiosity, or a fondness for
gossip. Yet I am constrained to say that
hardly had the door closed on Miggles than
we crowded together, whispering, snickering,
smiling, and exchanging suspicions, sur-
mises, and a thousand speculations in regard
to our pretty hostess and her singular com-

MIGGLES, 116

panion. I fear that we even hustled that
imbecile paralytic, who sat like a voiceless
Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene
indifference of the Past in his passionless
eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst
of an exciting discussion the door opened
again and Miggles reentered.

But not, apparently, the same Miggles
who a few hours before had flashed upon us.
Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesi-
tated for a moment on the threshold, with a
blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left
behind her the frank fearlessness which had
charmed us a moment before. Coming into
the room, she drew a low stool beside the
paralytic's chair, sat down, drew the blan-
ket over her shoulders, and saying, " If it 's
all the same to you, boys, as we're rather
crowded, I '11 stop here to-night," took the
invalid's withered hand in her own, and
turned her eyes upon the dying fire. An
instinctive feeling that this was only pre-
monitory to more confidential relations, and
perhaps some shame at our previous curios-
ity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon
the roof, wandering gusts of wind stirred
the embers into momentary brightness, until,
in a lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly

116 MIGGLEB.

lifted up her head, and, throwing her hair
over her shoulder, turned her face upon the
group and asked, —

" Is there any of you that knows me ? "

There was no reply.

" Think again ! I lived ^at Marysville in
'63. Everybody knew me there, and every-
body had the right to know me. I kept the
Polka Saloon until I came to live with
Jim. That 's six years ago. Perhaps I 've
changed some."

The absence of recognition may have dis-
concerted her. She turned her head to the
fire again, and it was some seconds before
she again spoke, and then more rapidly : —

" Well, you see I thought some of you
must have known me. There 's no great
harm done, any way. What I was going to
say was this : Jim here " — she took his
hand in both of hers as she spoke — " used
to know me, if you did n't, and spent a heap
of money upon me. I reckon he spent all he
had. And one day — it 's six years ago this
winter — Jim came into my back room, sat
down on my sofy, like as you see him in
that chair, and never moved again without
l\elp. He was struck all of a heap, and
never seemed to know what ailed him. The

MIGGLES. 117

doctors came and said as how it was caused
all aloDg of his way of life, — for- Jim was
mighty free and wild like, — and that he
would never get better, and couldn't last
long any way. They advised me to send
him to Frisco to the hospital, for he was no
good to any one and would be a baby all his
life. Perhaps it was something in Jim's eye,
perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but
I said ' No.' I was rich then, for I was pop-
ular with everybody, — gentlemen like your-
self, sir, came to see me, — and I sold out
my business and bought this yer place, be-
cause it was sort of out of the way of travel,
you see, and I brought my baby here."

With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry,
she had, as she spoke, slowly shifted her po-
sition so as to bring the mute figure of the
ruined man between her and her audience,
hiding in the shadow behind it, as if she of-
fered it as a tacit apology for her actions.
Silent and expressionless, it yet spoke for
her ; helpless, crushed, and smitten with the
Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an in-
visible arm around her.

Hidden in the darkness, but still holding
his hand, she went on : —

^^ It was a long time before I could get

118 MIGGLES,

the hang of things about yer, for I was used
to company and excitement. I could n't get
any woman to help me, and a man I dursn't
trust ; but what with the Indians hereabout,
who 'd do odd jobs for me, and having every-
thing sent from the North Fork, Jim and I
managed to worry through. The Doctor
would run up from Sacramento once in a
while. He 'd ask to see ' Miggles's baby,'
as he called Jim, and when he 'd go away
he 'd say, ' Miggles, you 're a trump, —
God bless you ! ' and it did n't seem so
lonely after that. But the last time he was
here he said, as he opened the door to go,
' Do you know, Miggles, your baby will grow
up to be a man yet and an honor to his
mother ; but not here, Miggles, not here ! *
And I thought he went away sad, — and —
and " — and here Miggles's voice and head
were somehow both lost completely in the
shadow.

" The folks about Ij^re are very kind,"
said Miggles, after a pause, coming a little
into the light again. " The men from the
fork used to hang around here, until they
found they was n't wanted, and the women
are kind, — and don't call. I was pretty
lonely until I picked up Joaquin jn the woods

MIQGLE8. 119

yonder one day, when he was n't so high,
and taught him to beg for his dinner ; and
then thar 's Polly — that 's the magpie —
she knows no end of tricks, and makes it
quite sociable of evenings with her talk, and
so I don't feel like as I was the only living
being about the ranch. And Jim here," said
Higgles, with her old laugh again, and com-
ing quite out into the firelight, " Jim — why,
boys, you would admire to see how much he
knows for a man like him. Sometimes I
bring him flowers, and he looks at 'em just
as natural as if he knew 'em ; and times,
when we 're sitting alone, I read him those
things on the wall. Why, Lord ! " said Hig-
gles, with her frank laugh, " I 've read him
that whole side of the house this winter.
There never was such a man for reading as
Jim."

"Why," asked the Judge, "do you not
marry this man to whom you have devoted
your youthful life?"

" Well, you see,' said Higgles, " it would
be playing it rather low down on Jim to
take advantage of his being so helpless. And
then, too, if we were man and wife, now,
we 'd both know that I was hound to do
what I do now of my own accord."

120 HIGGLES.

"But you are young yet and attrsic^
tive " —

It 's getting late," said Higgles, gravely,

and you 'd better all turn in. Good-night,
boys;" and, throwing the blanket over her
head, Miggles laid herself down beside Jim's
chair, her head pillowed on the low stool that
held his feet, and spoke no more. The fire
slowly faded from the hearth; we each
sought our blankets in silence ; and pres-
ently there was no sound in the long room
but the pattering of the rain upon the roof,
and the heavy breathing of the sleepers.

It was nearly morning when I awoke from
a troubled dream. The storm had passed,
the stars were shining, and through the shut-
terless window the full moon, lifting itself
over the solemn pines without, looked into
the room. It touched the lonely figure in
the chair with an infinite compassion, and
seemed to baptize with a shining flood the
lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in
the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him
she loved. It even lent a kindly poetrj' to
the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half re-
clining on his elbow between them and his
passengers, with savagely patient eyes *keep-
ing watch and ward. And then I fell asleep,

HIGGLES, 121

and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill
standing over me, and " All aboai*d " ring-
ing in my ears.

Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but
Miggles was gone. We wandered about the
house and lingered long after the horses
were harnessed, but she did not return. It
was evident that she wished to avoid a for-
mal leave-taking, and had so left us to de-
part as we had come. After we had helped
the ladies into the coach, we returned to the
house and solemnly shook hands with the
paralytic Jim, as solemnly settling him back
into position after each hand-shake. Then
we looked for the last time around the long,
low room, at the stool where Miggles had
sat, and slowly took our seats in the waiting
coach. The whip cracked, and we were off !

But as we reached the highroad. Bill's
dexterous hand laid the six horses back on
their haunches, and the stage stopped with a
jerk. For there, on a little eminence beside
the road, stood Miggles, her hair flying, her
eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief wav-
ing, and her white teeth flashing a last
"good-by.'* We waved our hats in return.
And then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of fur-
ther fascination, madly lashed his horses for-

122 MIOGLES.

ward, and we sank back in our seats. We
exchanged not a word until we reached
the North Fork, and the stage drew up at
the Independence House. Then, the Judge
leading, we walked into the bar-room and \

took our places gravely at the bar.

" Are your glasses charged, gentlemen ? "
said the Judge, solemnly taking off his white
hat.

They were.

" Well, then, here 's to Higgles^ — GrOD

BLESS HER I "

Perhaps He had. Who knows ?

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

I DO not think that we ever knew his real
name. Our ignorance of it certainly never
gave us any social inconvenience, for at
Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were chris-
tened anew. Sometimes these appellatives
were derived from some distinctiveness of
dress, as in the case of " Dungaree Jack ; "
or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown
in " Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue
proportion of that chemical in his daily
bread ; or from some unlucky slip, as exhib-
ited in " The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffen-
sive man, who earned that baleful title by
his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term
" iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been
the beginning of a rude heraldry ; but I am
constrained to think that it was because a
man's real name in that day rested solely
upon his own unsupported statement. " Call
yourself Clifford, do you ? " said Boston, ad-
dressing a timid new-comer with infinite

124 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

scorn ; " hell is full of such Cliffords ! " He
then introduced the unfortunate man, whose
name happened to be really Clifford, as
" Jaybird Charley," — an unhallowed in-
spiration of the moment that clung to him
ever after.

But to return to Tennessee's Partner,
whom we never knew by any other than
this relative title ; that he had ever existed
as a separate and distinct individuality we
only learned later. It seems that in 1853
he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco,
ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got
any farther than Stockton. At that place
he was attracted by a young person who
waited upon the table at the hotel where he
took his meals. One morning he said some-
thing to her which caused her to smile not
unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a
plate of toast over his upturned, serious,
simple face, and to *^treat to the kitchen.
He followed her, and "emerged a few mo-
ments later, covered with more toast and
victory. That day week they were married
by a Justice of the Peace, and returned to
Poker Flat. I am aware that something
more might be made of this episode, but I
prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy

TENNESSEtra PARTNER. 125

Bar, — in the gulches and bar-rooms, —
where all sentiment was modified by a strong
sense of humor.

Of their married felicity but little is
known, perhaps for the reason that Ten-
nessee, then living with his partner, one day
took occasion to say something to the bride
on his own account, at which, it is said, she
smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated,
— this time as far as Marysville, where Ten-
nessee followed her, and where they went
to housekeeping without the aid of a Jus-
tice of the Peace. Tennessee's Partner took
the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as
was his fashion. But to everybody's sur-
prise, when Tennessee one day returned from
Marysville, without his partner's wife, —
she having smiled and retreated with some-
body else, — Tennessee's Partner was the
first man to shake his hand and greet him
with affection. The boys who had gathered in
the cafion to see the shooting were naturally
indignant. Their indignation might have
found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look
in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated
a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact,
he was a grave man, with a steady applica-
tion to practical detail which was unpleasant
in a difSculty.

126 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Ten-
nessee had grown up on the Bar. He was
known to be a gambler ; he was suspected
to be a thief. In these suspicions Tennes-
see's Partner was equally compromised ;
his continued intimacy with Tennessee after
the affair above quoted could only be ac-
counted for on the hypothesis of a copart-
nership of crime. At last Tennessee's guilt
became flagrant. One day he overtook a
stranger on his way to Red Dog. The
stranger afterward related that Tennessee
beguiled the time with interesting anecdote
and reminiscence, but illogically concluded
the interview in the following words : " And
now, young man, I '11 trouble you for your
knife, your pistols, and your money. You
see your weppings might get you into trouble
at Red Dog, and your money 's a temptation
to the evilly disposed. I think you said
your address was San Francisco. I shall
endeavor to call." It may be stated here
that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor,
which no business preoccupation could wholly
subdue.

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and
Sandy Bar made common cause against the
highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER, 127

much the same fashion as his prototype, the
grizzly. As the toils closed around him,
he made a desperate dash through the Bar,
emptying his revolver at the crowd before
the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly
Cafion ; but at its farther extremity he was
stopped by a small man on a. gray horse.
The men looked at each other a moment in
silence. Both were fearless, both self-pos-
sessed and independent, and both types of
a civilization that in the seventeenth century
would have been called heroic, but in the
nineteenth simply " reckless." " What have
you got there? — I call," said Tennessee,
quietly. " Two bowers and an ace," said
the stranger, as quietly, showing two revol-
vers and a bowie-knife. " That takes me,"
returned Tennessee ; and, with this gambler's
epigram, he threw away his useless pistol,
and rode back with his paptor.

It was a warm night. The cool breeze
which usually sprang up with the going down
of the sun behind the cAoparraZ-crested
mountain was that evening withheld from
Sandy Bar. The little canon was stifling
with heated resinous odors, and the decaying
driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sick-

128 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

ening exhalations. The feverishness of day
and its fierce passions still filled the camp.
Lights moved restlessly along the bank of
the river, striking no answering reflection
from its tawny current. Against the black-
ness of the pines the windows of the old loft
above the express-office stood out staringly
bright ; and through their curtainless panes
the loungers below could see the forms of
those who were even then deciding the fate
of Tennessee. And above all this, etched
on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, re-
mote and passionless, crowned with remoter
passionless stars.

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as
fairly as was consistent with a judge and
jury who felt themselves to some extent
obliged to justify, in their verdict, the pre-
vious irregularities of arrest and indictment.
The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but
not vengeful. The excitement and personal
feeling of the chase were over ; with Tennes-
see safe in their hands they were ready to lis-
ten patiently to any defence, which they were
already satisfied was insufficient. There be-^
ing no doubt in their own minds, they were
willing to give the prisoner the benefit of
any that might exist. Secure in the hypoth-

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 129

esis that he ought to be hanged, on gen-
eral principles, they indulged him with more
latitude of defence than his reckless hardi-
hood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared
to be more anxious than the prisoner, who,
otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim
pleasure in the responsibility he had created.
" T don*t take any hand in this yer game,"
had been his invariable but good-humored
reply to all questions. The Judge — who
was also his captor — for a moment vaguely
regretted that he had not shot him ^' on
sight," that morning, but presently dismissed
this human weakness as unworthy of the
judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was
a tap at the door, and it was said that Ten-
nessee's Partner was there on behalf of the
prisoner, he was admitted at once without
question. Perhaps the younger members of
the jury, to whom the proceedings were be-
coming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as
a relief.

F4r h^ was not, certainly, an imposing
figure. Short and stout, with a square face,
sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad
in a loose duck " jumper " and trousers
streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect
under any circumstances would have been

180 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

quaint, and was now even ridiculous. As he
stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy car-
pet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious,
from partially developed legends and in*
scriptions, that the material with which his
trousers had been patched had been orig-
inally intended for a less ambitious covering.
Yet he advanced with great gravity, and
after shaking the hand of each person in the
room with labored cordiality, he wiped his
serious, perplexed face on a red bandanna
handkerchief, a shade lighter than his com-
plexion, laid his powerful hand upon the
table to steady himself, and thus addressed
the Judge : —

" I was passin' by," he began, by way of
apology, "and I thought I 'd just step in and
see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee
thar, — my pardner. It 's a hot night. I
disremember any sich weather before on the
Bar."

He paused a moment, but nobody volun-
teering any other meteorological recollection,
he again had recourse to his pocket-hand-
kerchief, and for some moments mopped his
face diligently.

" Have you anything to say on behalf of
the prisoner?" said the Judge, finally.

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 181

" Thet 's it," said Tennessee^s Partner, in
a tone of relief. " I come yar as Tennessee's
pardner, — knowing him nigh on four year,
off and on, wet and dry, in luck and out o'
luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but
thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar
ain't any liveliness as he 's been up to, as I
don't know. And you sez to me, sez you, —
confidential-like, and between man and man,
— sez you, 'Do you know anything in his
behalf ? ' and I sez to you, sez I, — confiden-
tial-like, as between man and man, — 'What
should a man know of his pardner ? ' "

" Is this all you have to say ? " asked the
Judge impatiently, feeling, perhaps, that a
dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning
to humanize the court.

" Thet 's so," continued Tennessee's Part-
ner. " It ain't for me to say anything agin'
him. And now, what 's the case ? Here 's
Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and
doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner.
Well, what does Tennessee do ? He lays for
a stranger, and he fetches that stranger ;
and you lays for him, and you fetches him ;
and the honors is easy. And I put it to
you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you,
gentlemen all, as far-minded men, ef this
is n't so."

182 TENNESSEE* a PARTNER.

" Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting,
"have you any questions to ask this man?"

" No ! no ! " continued Tennessee's Part-
ner hastily. "I play this yer hand alone.
To come down to the bed-rock, it 's just
this: Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty
rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and
on this yer camp. And now, what 's the
fair thing ? Some would say more ; some
would say less. Here 's seventeen hundred
dollars in coarse gold and a watch, — it 's
about all my pile, — and call it square ! "
And before a hand could be raised to pre-
vent him, he had emptied the contents of
the carpet-bag upon the table.

For a moment his liffe was in jeopardy.
One or two men sprang to their feet, several
hands groped for hidden weapons, and a
suggestion to " throw him from the window "
was only overridden by a gesture from the
Judge. Tennessee laughed. And appar-
ently oblivious of the excitement, Tennes-
see's Partner improved the opportunity to
mop his face again with his handkerchief.

When order was restored, and the man
was made to understand, by the use of for-
cible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's
offence could not be condoned by money, his

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 138

face took a more serious and sanguinary
hue, and those who were nearest to him no-
ticed that his rough hand trembled slightly
on the table. He hesitated a moment as
he slowly returned the gold to the carpet-
bag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the
elevated sense of justice which swayed the
tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief
that he had not offered enough. Then he
turned to the Judge, and saying, " This yer
is a lone hand, played alone, and without
my parduer," he bowed to the jury and was
about to withdraw, when the Judge called
him back. " If you have anything to say to
Tennessee, you had better say it now." For
the first time that evening the eyes of the
prisoner and his strange advocate met. Ten-
nessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and
saying, " Euchred, old man ! " held out his
hand. Tennessee's Partner -took it in his
own, and saying, " I just dropped in as I
was passin' to see how things was gettin'
on," let the hand passively fall, and adding
that " it was a warm night," again mopped
his face with his handkerchief, and without
another word withdrew.

The two men never again met each other
alive. For the unparalleled insult of a bribe

134 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

offered to Judge Lynch — who, whether
bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least inc(Tr-
ruptible — firmly fixed in the mind of that
mythical personage any wavering'determina-
tion of Tennessee's fate ; and at the break
of day he was marched, closely guarded, to
meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.

How he met it, how cool he was, how he
refused to say anything, ' how perfect were
the arrangements of the committee, were all
duly reported, with the addition of a warn-
ing moral and example to all future evil-
doers, in the Red Dog Clarion, by its edi-
tor, who was present, and to whose vigorous
English I cheerfully refer the reader. But
the beauty of that midsummer morning, the
blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the
awakened life of the free woods and hills,
the joyous renewal and promise of Nature,
and, above all, the infinite serenity that
thrilled through each, was not reported, as
not being a part of the social lesson. And
yet, when the weak and foolish deed was
done, and a life, with its possibilities and re-
sponsibilities, had passed out of the missha-
pen thing that dangled between earth and
sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the
«un shone, as cheerily as before ; and possi-
bly the Red Dog Clarion was right.

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER, 135

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group
tkat surrounded the ominous tree. But as
they turned to disperse, attention was drawn
to the singular appearance of a motionless
donkey-cart halted at the side of 'the road.
As they approached, they at once recognized
the venerable Jenny and the two -wheeled
cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner,
— used by him in carrying dirt from his
claim ; and a few paces distant the owner of
the equipage himself, sitting under a buck-
eye tree, wiping the perspiration from his
glowing face. In answer to an inquiry,
he said he had come for the body of the
^^ diseased," ^4f it was all the same to the
committee." He did n't wish to "hurry any-
thing;" he could wait. He was not work-
ing that day ; and when the gentlemen were
done with the " diseased "he would take him.
" Ef thar is any present," he added, in his
simple, serious way, " as would care to jine
in the fun'l, they kin come." Perhaps it
was from a sense of humor, which I have
already intimated was a feature of Sandy
Bar, — perhaps it was from something even
better than that ; but two thirds of the loun-
gers accepted the invitation at once.

It was noon when the body of Tennessee

136 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

was delivered into the hands of his partner.
As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we
noticed that it contained a rough oblong box,
— apparently made from a section of sluic-
ing, — and half filled with bark and the tas-
sels of pine. The cart was further decorated
with slips of willow, and made fragrant with
buckeye-blossoms. When the body was de-
posited in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew
over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely
mounting the narrow seat in front, with his
feet upon the shafts, urged the little don-
key forward. The equipage moved slowly
on, at that decorous pace which was habit-
ual with Jenny even under less solemn cir-
cumstances. The men — half curiously, half
jestingly, but all good-humoredly — strolled
along beside the cart ; some in advance,
some a little in the rear, of the homely cat-
afalque. But, whether from the narrowing
of the road or some present sense of deco-
rum, as the cart passed on, the company fell
to the rear in couples, keeping step, and
otherwise assuming the external show of a
formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had
at the outset played a funeral march in
dumb show upon an imaginary trombone,
desisted, from a lack of sympathy and appro-

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER, 137

elation, — not having, perhaps, your true
humorist's capacity to be content with the
enjoyment of his own fun.

The way led through Grizzly Cafioi^ by
this time clothed in funereal drapery and
shadowst/ The redwoods, burying their moc-
casined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian-
file along the track, trailing an uncouth ben-
ediction from their bending boughs upon the
passing bier. A hare, surprised into help-
less inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in
the ferns by the roadside, as the cortege
went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a se-
cure outlook from higher boughs; and the
blue-jays, spreading their wings, fluttered
before them like outriders, until the outskirts
of Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary
cabin of Tennessee's Partner.

Viewed under more favorable circum-
stances, it would not have been a cheerful
place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and
unlovely outlines, the unsavory details, which
distinguish the nest-building of the Califor-
nia miner, were all here, with the dreariness
of decay superadded. A few pace^ from the
cabin there was a rough enclosure, which, in
the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's mat-
rimonial felicity, had been ttsed as a garden,

138 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

but was now overgrown with fern. As we
approached it we were surprised to find that
what we had taken for a recent attempt at
cultivation was the broken soil about an
open grave.

The cart was halted before the enclosure ;
and rejecting the offers of assistance with
the same air of simple self-reliance he had
displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner
lifted the rough coffin on his back, and de-
posited it unaided, within the shallow grave.
He then nailed down the board which served
as a lid, and mounting the little mound of
earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly
mopped his face with his handkerchief.
This the crowd felt was a preliminary to
speech; and they disposed themselves vari-
ously on stumps and boulders, and sat ex-
pectant.

" When a man," began Tennessee's Part-
ner slowly, " has been running free all day,
what 's the natural thing for him to do ?
Why, to come home. And if he ain't in
a condition to go home, what can his best
friend do ? Why, bring him home ! And
here 's Tennessee has been running free, and
we brings him home from his wandering."
He paused, and picked up a fragment of

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER, 189

quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve,
and went on : ^^ It ain't the first time that
I 've packed him on my back, as you see'd
me now. It ain't the first time that I
brought him to this yer cabin when he could
n't help himself ; it ain't the first time that I
and Jinny have waited for him on yon hill,
and picked him up and so fetched him home,
when he could n't speak, and did n't know
me. And now that it 's the last time, why "
— he paused, and rubbed the quartz gently
on his sleeve — " you see it 's sort of rough
on his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he
added abruptly, picking up his long-handled
shovel, " the fun'l 's over ; and my thanks,
and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your
trouble."

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he be-
gan to fill in the grave, turning his back
upon the crowd, that after a few moments'
hesitation gradually withdrew. As they
crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar
from view, some, looking back, thought they
could see Tennessee's Partner, his work
done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel be-
tween his knees, and his face buried in his
red bandanna handkerchief. But it was
argued by others that you could n't tell his

140 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.

face from his handkerchief at that distance ;
and this point remained undecided.

In the reaction that followed the feverish
excitement of that day, Tennessee's Partner
was not forgotten. A secret investigation
had cleared him of any complicity in Ten-
nessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of
his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point
of calling on him, and proffering various un-
couth but well-meant kindnesses. But from
that day his rude health and great strength
seemed visibly to decline ; and when the
rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-
blades were beginning to peep from the
rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he
took to his bed.

One night, when the pines beside the
cabin were swaying in the storm, and trail-
ing their slender fingers over the roof, and
the roar and rush of the swollen river were
heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his
head from the pillow, saying, " It is time
to go for Tennessee ; I must put Jinny in
the cart ; " and would have risen from his
bed but for the restraint of his attendant
Struggling, he still pursued his singular fan-
cy : " There, now, steady, Jinny, — steady,

TENNESSEE'S PARTNER, 141

old girl. How dark it is ! Look out for
the ruts, — and look out for liim, too, old
gal. Sometimes, you know, when he 's blind
drunk, he drops down right in the trail.
Keep on straight up to the pine on the top
of the hill. Thar I I told you so ! — thar he
is, — coming this way, too, — all by himself,
sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee!
Pardner ! "

And so they met.

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

Sandy was very drunk. He was lying
under an azalea bush, in pretty much the
same attitude in which he had fallen some
hours before. How long he had been lying
there he could not tell, and did n't care ; how
long he should lie there was a matter equal-
ly indefinite and uncpnsidered. A tranquil
philosophy, born of his physical condition,
suffused and saturated his moral being.

The spectacle of a drunken man, and of
this drunken man in particular, was not, I
grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red
Gulch to attract attention. Earlier in the
day some local satirist had erected a tempo-
rary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the
inscription, " Effects of McCorkle's whiskey,
— kills at forty rods," with a hand pointing
to McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine,
was, like most local satire, personal ; and
was a reflection upon the unfairness of the
process rather than a commentary upon the

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 148

•

impropriety of the result. With this face-
tious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed.
A wandering mule, released from his pack,
had cropped the scant herbage beside him,
and sniffed curiously at the prostrate man ;
a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy
which the species have for drunken men,
had licked his dusty boots, and curled him-
self up at his feet, and lay there, blinking
one eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of
dissipation that was ingenious and dog-like
in its implied flattery of the imconscious
man beside him.

Meanwhile the shadows of the pine-trees
had slowly swung around until they crossed
the road, and their trunks barred the open
meadow with gigantic parallels of black and
yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted by
the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dis-
persed in a grimy shower upon the recum-
bent man. The sun sank lower and lower,
and still Sandy stirred not. And then the
repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as
other philosophers have been, by the intru-
sion of an unphilosophical sex.

" Miss Mary," as she was known to the
little flock that she had just dismissed from
the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was

144 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

taking her afternoon walk. Observing an
unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to
pluck it, picking her way through the red
dust, not without certain fierce little shivers
of disgust and some feline circumlocution.
And then she came suddenly upon Sandy !

Of course she uttered the little staccato
cry of her sex. But when she had paid that
tribute to her physical weakness she became
overbold, and halted for a moment, — at
least six feet from this prostrate monster, —
with her white skirts gathered in her hand,
ready for flight. But neither sound nor mo-
tion came from the bush. With one little
foot she then overturned the satirical head-
board, and muttered "Beasts!" — an epithet
which probably, at that moment, conven-
iently classified in her mind the entire male
population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary,
being possessed of certain rigid notions of
her own, had not, perhaps, properly appre-
ciated the demonstrative gallantry for which
the Californian has been so justly celebrated
by his brother Californians, and had, as a
new-comer, perhaps fairly earned the repu-
tation of being " stuck up."

As she stood there she noticed, also, that

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH, 146

the slant sunbeams were beting Sandy's
head to what she judged^ ne at^ unhealthy
temperature^ ati^.tbat his hi,t wa^ lying use-
lessly 2^iicL^ side^ To pick it up and to
place^it over hfs face was a work requiring
some courage, particularly as his eyes were
open. Yet she did -it and made good her re-
treat. But she was somewhat concerned, on
looking back, to see that the hat was re-
moved, and that Sandy was sitting up and
saying something.

The truth was, that in the calm depths of
Sandy's mind he was satisfied that the rays
of the sun were beneficial and healthful;
that from childhood he had objected to lying
down in a hat ; that no people but con-
demned fools, past redemption, ever wore
hats; and that his right to dispense with
them when he pleased was inalienable. This
was the statement of his inner conscious-
ness. Unfortunately, its outward expression
was vague, being limited to a repetition of
the following formula : " Su'shine all ri' I
Wasser maar, eh ? Wass up, su'shine ? "

Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh
courage from her vantage of distance, asked
him if there was anything that he wanted.

" Wass up ? Wasser maar ? ^' continued
Sandy, in a very high key.

146 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

" Get up, you horrid man ! " said Miss
Mary, now thoroughly incensed ; " get up,
and go home."

Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six
feet high, and Miss Mary trembled. He
started forward a few paces, and then
stopped.

" Wass I ffo home for ? " he suddenly
»led, Witt gl. ,^.

" Go and take a bath," replied Miss
Mary, eying his grimy person with great
disfavor.

To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly
pidledoff his coat and vest, threw them on
the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plimg-
ing wildly forward, darted headlong over the
hill, in the direction of the river,

" Goodness Heavens ! — the man will be
drowned ! " said Miss Mary ; and then, with
feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the
schoolhouse, and locked herself in.

That night, while seated at supper with
her hostess, the blacksmith's wife, it came to
Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband
ever got drunk. " Abner," responded Mrs.
Stidger, reflectively, " let 's see I Abner has
n't been tight since last 'lection." Miss
Mary would have liked to ask if he pre-

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH, 147

ferred lying in the sun on these occasions,
and if a cold bath would have hurt him ;
but this would have involved an explana-
tion, which she did not then care to give.
So she contented herself with opening her
gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs.
Stidger, — a fine specimen of Southwestern
efflorescence, — and then dismissed the sub-
ject altogether. The next day she wrote to
her dearest friend, in Boston : ^^ I think I
find the intoxicated portion of this commu-
nity the least objectionable. I refer, my
dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
anything that could make the women toler-
able."

In less than a week Miss Mary had for-
gotten this episode, except that her after-
noon walks took thereafter, almost uncon-
sciously, another direction. She noticed,
however, that every morning a fresh clus-
ter of azalea blossoms appeared among the
flowers on her desk. This was not strange,
as her little flock were aware of her fond-
ness for flowers, and invariably kept her
desk bright with anemones, syringas, and
lupines; but on questioning them L^ one
and all professed ignorance of the azaleas.
A few days later. Master Johnny Stidger,

148 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

whose desk was nearest to the window, was
suddenly taken with spasms of apparently
gratuitous laughter, that threatened the dis-
cipline of the school. All that Miss Mary
could get from him was that some one had
been "looking in the winder." Irate and
indignant, she sallied from her hive to do
battle with the intruder. As she turned the
corner of the schoolhouse she came plump
upon the quondam drunkard, now perfectly
sober, and inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-
looking.

These facts Miss Mary was not slow to
take a feminine advantage of, in her present
humor. But it was somewhat confusing to
observe, also, that the beast, despite some
faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-
looking, — in fact, a kind of blonde Samson,
whose corn-colored silken beard apparently
had never yet known the touch of barber's
razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cut-
ting speech which quivered on her ready
tongue died upon her lips, and she contented
herself with receiving his stammering apol-
ogy with supercilious eyelids and the gath-
ered skirts of uncontamination. When she
reentered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon
the azaleas with a new sense of revelation.

. THK IDYL OF RED GULCH. 149

And then she laughed, and the little people
all laughed, and they were all unconsciously
very happy.

It was on a hot day — and not long after
this — that two short-legged boys came to
gi'ief on the threshold of the school with a
pail of water, which they had laboriously
brought from the spring, and that Miss
Mary compassionately seized the pail and
started for the spring herself. At the foot
of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a
blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently re-
lieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was
both embarrassed and angry. ^^ If you carried
more of that for yourself," she said spite-
fully, to the blue arm, without deigning to
raise her lashes to its owner, " you 'd do
better." In the submissive sUence that fol-
lowed she regretted the speech, and thanked
him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled.
Which caused the children to laugh again,
— a laugh in which Miss Mary joined, until
the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
The next day a barrel was mysteriously
placed beside the door, and as mysteriously
fiUed with fresh spring-water every morning.

Nor was this superior young person with-
out other quiet attentions. ^^ Profane Bill,"

150 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH, ^

driver of the SlumguUion Stage, widely
known in the newspapers for his ^^gal-
lantry" in invariably oflEering the box-seat
to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary
from this attention, on the ground that he
had a. habit of " cussin' on up grades," and
gave her half the coach to herself. Jack
Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently
ridden with her in the same coach, after-
ward threw a decanter at the head of a con-
federate for mentioning her name in a bar-
room. The over-dressed mother of a pupil
whose paternity was doubtful had often lin-
gered near this astute Vestal's temple, never
daring to enter its sacred precincts, but con-
tent to worship the priestess from afar.

With such unconscious intervals the mo-
notonous procession of blue skies, glittering
sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights
passed over Red Gulch. Miss Mary grew
fond of walking in the sedate and proper
woods. Perhaps she believed, with Mrs.
Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the firs
" did her chest good," for certainly her
slight cough was less frequent and her step
was firmer ; perhaps she had learned the
unending lesson which the patient pines are
never weary of repeating to heedful or list-

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 161

less ears. And so, one day, she planned a
picnic on Buckeye Hill, and took the chil-
dren with her. Away from the dusty road,
the straggling shanties, the yellow ditches,
the clamor of restless engines, the cheap
finery of shop-windows, the deeper glitter of
paint and colored glass, and the thin veneer-
ing which barbarism takes upon itself in such
localities, — what infinite relief was theirs !
The last heap of ragged rock and clay
passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed, —
how the waiting woods opened their long
files to receive them ! How the children —
perhaps because they had not yet grown
quite away from the breast of the bounteous
Mother — threw themselves face downward
on her brown bosom with uncouth caresses,
filling the air with their laughter ; and how
Miss Mary herself — felinely fastidious and
intrenched as she was in the purity of spot-
less skirts, collar, and cuffs — forgot all^ and
ran like a crested quail at the head of her
brood, until romping, laughing, and pant-
ing, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a
hat hanging by a knotted ribbon from her
throat, she came suddenly and violently, in
the heart of the forest, upon the luckless
Sandy !

152 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH,

The explanations, apologies, and not over-
wise conversation that ensued need not be
indicated here. It would seem, however,
that Miss Mary had already established
some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard.
Enough that he was soon accepted as one
of the party; that the children, with that
quick intelligence which Providence gives
the helpless, recognized a friend, and played
with his blonde beard and long silken mus-
tache, and took other liberties, — as the
helpless are apt to do. And when he had
built a fire against a tree, and had shown
them other mysteries of woodcraft, their
admiration knew no bounds. At the close
of two such foolish, idle, happy hours he
found himself lying at the feet of the school-
mistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as
she sat upon the sloping hillside, weaving
wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much
the same attitude as he had lain when first
they met. Nor was the similitude greatly
forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous
nature, that had found a dreamy exaltation
in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding
an equal intoxication in love.

I think that Sandy was dimly conscious
of this himself. I know that he longed to

THE IDYL OF RED OULCH, 163

be doing something, — slaying a grizzly,
scalping a savage, or sacrificing himself in
some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,
gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like
to present him in a heroic attitude, I stay
my hand with great difficulty at this mo-
ment, being only withheld from introducing
such an episode by a strong conviction that
it does not usually occur at such times.
And I trust that my fairest reader, who re-
members that, in a real crisis, it is always
some uninteresting stranger or unromantio
policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues,
will forgive the omission.

So they sat there, undisturbed, the wood-
peckers chattering overhead, and the voices
of the children coming pleasantly from the
hollow below. What they said matters lit-
tle. What they 'thought — which might
have been interesting — did not transpire.
The woodpeckers only learned how Miss
Mary was an orphan; how she left her
uncle's house, to come to California, for
the sake of health and independence ; how
Sandy was an orphan, too ; how he came to
California for excitement ; how he had lived
a wild life, and how he was trying to re-
form ; and other details, which, from a

154 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

woodpecker's view-point, undoubtedly must
have seemed stupid and a waste of time.
But even in such trifles was the afternoon
spent ; and when the children were again
gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
the schoolmistress well understood, took
leave of them quietly at the outskirts of the
settlement, it had seemed the shortest day
of her weary life.

As the long, dry summer withered to its
roots, the school term of Red Gulch — to
use a local euphuism — " dried up " also.
In another day Miss Mary would be free ;
and for a season, at least. Red Gulch would
know her no more. She was seated alone
in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on
her hand, her eyes half closed in one of
those day-dreams in which Miss Mary, I
fear, to the danger of school discipline, was
lately in the habit of indulging. Her lap
was full of mosses, ferns, and other wood-
land memories. She was so preoccupied
with these and her own thoughts that a
gentle tapping at the door passed unheard,
or translated itself into the remembrance
of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it
asserted itself more distinctly, she started
up with a flushed cheek and opened the

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH, 165

door. On the threshold stood a woman, the
self-assertion and audacity of whose dress
were in singular contrast to her timid, ir-
resolute bearing.

Miss Mary recognized at a glance the
dubious mother of her anonymous pupil.
Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she
was only fastidious; but as she coldly in-
vited her to enter, she half unconsciously
settled her white cuffs and collar, and
gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It
was, perhaps, for this reason that the em-
barrassed stranger, after a moment's hesi-
tation, left her gorgeous parasol open and
sticking in the dust beside the door, and
then sat down at the farther end of a long
bench. Her voice was husky as she be-
gan : —

" I heerd tell that you were goin' down to
the Bay to-morrow, and I couldn't let you
go until I came to thank you for your kind-
ness to my Tommy."

Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy,
and deserved more than the poor attention
she could give him.

" Thank you, miss ; thank ye ! " cried the
stranger, brightening even through the color
which Bed Gulch knew facetiously as her

156 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH,

" war paint," and striving, in her embarrass-
ment, to drag the long bench nearer the
schoolmistress. ^^ I thank you, miss, for
that ; and if I am his mother, there ain't a
sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him.
And if I ain't much as says it, thar ain't a
sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives than
he 's got."

Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk,
with a ruler over her shoulder, opened her
gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.

** It ain't for you to be complimented by
the like of me, I know," she went on, hur-
riedly. " It ain't for me to be comin' here,
in broad day, to do it, either ; but I come to
ask a favor, — not for me, miss, — not for
me, but for the darling boy."

Encouraged by a look in the young
schoolmistress's eye, and putting her lilac-
gloved hands together, the fingers down-
ward, between her knees, she went on, in a
low voice : —

" You see, miss, there 's no one the boy
has any claim on but me, and I ain't the
proper person to bring him up. I thought
some, last year, of sending him away to
'Frisco to school, but when they talked of
bringing a schoolma'am here I waited till I

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 167

saw you, and then I knew it was all right,
and I could keep my boy a little longer.
And oh, miss, he loves you so much ; and if
you could hear him talk abo.ut you, in his
pretty way, and if he could ask you what I
ask you now, you could n't refuse him.

" It is natural," she went on rapidly, in a
voice that trembled strangely between pride
and humility, — " it 's natural that he should
take to you, miss, for his father, when I first
knew him, was a gentleman, — and the boy
must forget me, sooner or later, — and so I
ain't a goin' to cry about that. For I come
to ask you to take my Tommy, — God bless
him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives,
— to — to — take him with you."

She had risen and caught the young girl's
hand in her own, and had fallen on her
knees beside her.

" I 've money plenty, and it 's all yours
and his. Put him in some good school,
where you can go and see him, and help
him to — to — to forget his mother. Do
with him what you like. The worst you can
do will be kindness to \9hat he will learn
with me. Only take him out of this wicked
life, this cruel place, this home of shame
and sorrow, i ou will ! I know you will, —

158 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.

won't you ? You will, — you must not, you
cannot say no I You will make him as pure,
as gentle, as yourself ; and when he has
grown up, you will tell him his father's
name, — the name that hasn't passed my
lips for years, — the name of Alexander
Morton, whom they call here Sandy ! Miss
Mary 1 — do not take your hand away I Miss
Mary, speak to me I You will take my boy ?
Do not put your face from me. I know it
ought not to look on such as me. Miss
Maryl — my God, be merciful! — she is
leaving me ! "

Miss Mary had risen, and, in the gather-
ing twilight, had felt her way to the open
window. She stood there, leaning against
the casement, her eyes fixed on the last rosy
tints that were fading from the western sky.
There was still some of its light on her pure
young forehead, on her white collar, on her
clasped white hands, but all fading slowly
away. The smppliant had dragged herself,
still on her knees, beside her.

^^ I know it takes time to consider. I
will wait here aH night ; but I cannot go
until you speak. Do not deny me now.
You will I — I see it in your sweet face, —
such a face as I have seen in my dreams.

THE IDYL OF RED QULCH. 169

I see it in your eyes, Miss Mary! — you
will take my boy I "

The last red beam crept higher, suffused
Miss Mary's eyes with something of its
glory, flickered, and faded, and went out.
The sun had set on Sed Gulch. In the twi-
light and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded
pleasantly.

^^ I will take the boy. Send him to me
to-night."

The happy mother raised the hem of Miss
Mary's skirts to her lips. She would have
buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but
she dared not. She rose to her feet.

" Does — this man — know of your inten-
tion ? " asked Miss Mary suddenly.

" No, nor cares. He has never even seen
the child to know it."

"Go to him at once, — to-night, — now!
Tell him what you have done. Tell him I
have takan his child, and tell him — he must
never see — see — the child again. Wher-
ever it may be, he must not come ; wherever
I may take it, he must not follow ! There,
go now, please, — I 'm weary, and — have
much yet to do ! "

They walked together to the door. On
the threshold the wom^n turned.

160 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH,

" Good-night ! " •

She would have fallen at Miss Mary's
feet. But at the same moment the young
girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful
woman to her own pure breast for one brief
moment, and then closed and locked the
door.

It was with a sudden sense of great re-
sponsibility that Profane Bill took the reins
of the SlumguUion Stage the next morning,
for the schoolmistress was one of his passen-
gers. As he entered the highroad, in obe-
dience to a pleasant voice from the " inside,"
he suddenly reined up his horses and re-
spectfully waited, as " Tommy " hopped out
at the command of Miss Mary.

"Not that bush, Tommy, — the next."

Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife,
and, cutting a branch from a tall azalea
bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.

"All right now?"

" AU right ! "

And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of
Red Gulch.

HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO
SIMPSON'S BAB.

It had been raining in the valley of the
Sacramento. The North Fork had over-
flowed its banks, and Rattlesnake Creek was
impassable. The few boulders that had
marked the summer ford at Simpson's Cross-
ing were obliterated by a vast sheet of
water stretching to the foot-hills. The up-
stage was stopped at Granger's ; the last
mail had been abandoned in the tules^ the
rider swimming for his life. "An area,"
remarked the Sierra Avalanche, with pen-
sive local pride, "as large as the State of
Massachusetts is now under water."

Nor was the weather any better in the
foot-hills. The mud lay deep on the moun-
tain road ; wagons that neither physical force
nor moral objurgation could move from the
evil ways into which they had fallen encum-
bered the track, and the way to Simpson's
Bar was indicated by broken-down teams

162 BANT A CLAUa AT BIMPSOIPa BAR,

and hard swearing. And farther on, cut off
and inaccessible, rained upon and bedrag-
gled*, 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 gath-
ered at Thompson's store, clustered aroimd
a red-hot stove, at which they silently spat
in some accepted sense of social communion
that perhaps rendered conversation unneces-
sary. 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 recrea-
tion. 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

BANT A C14UI9 AT SIMFSOIf'S BAR, 168

exercise of his arduous profession. ^^Ef I
was asked," he remarked somewhat later, —
^^f 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 BuUen
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 sym-
pathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude foi

164 banta CLAua at sijfpsoirs bar.

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 — fun-
niest man in the Bar ? Well, Jim was jest
telling the richest yarn about " —

" Smiley 's a fool I " interrupted a

gloomy voice.

" A particular skunk I " added an-
other in sepulchral accents.

A silence followed these positive state-
ments. 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 contempla-
tion of the unsavoriness and foUy 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 to-morrow 's Christ-

mas."

SANTA CLAUa AT SIMFSONS BAB, 165

There was a movement among the men at
this announcement, but whether of satisfac-
tion or disgust was not plain. " Yes," con-
tinued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone
he had, within the last few moments, uncon-
sciously 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 would n't ? Don't feel
like it, maybe?" he added with anxious
sympathy, peering into the faces of his com-
panions.

"Well, I don't know," responded Tom
riynn 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 wa^^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

166 BANT A CLAUS AT SIMPSON'S BAH,

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 suffi-
ciently to release her lover from the closet
in which he was concealed, and escape with
him. She left a boy of three years to com-
fort her bereaved husband. The Old Man's
present wife had been his cook. She '^^as
large, loyal, and aggressive.

Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick sug-
gested 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 Pow-
ers of Evil, he further remarked, should con-
tend against him vainly* All this delivered
with a terseness and vigor lost in this nee-
essary translation.

" In course. Certainly. Thai'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 '11 come round." Secretly the Old Man

SANTA CLAUB AT 8IMPB0NB BAR. 167

trusted to the exaltation of liquor and the
power of courageous example to sustain him
in such an emergency.

As yet, Dick BuUen, 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 did n't look so peart last time I
seed him on the bluff heavin' rocks at China-
men. Did n't seein to take much interest
in it. Thar was a gang of 'em by yar yes-
terday, — drownded out up the river, — and
I kinder thought o' Johnny, and how he 'd
miss 'em I Maybe 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 speak-
er, 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 blaz-
ing brand from the hearth. The actioti was
repeated by the rest of the party, closely f ot

168 SANTA CLAU8 AT SIMPSON'S BAB,

lowing 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 dan-
cing and flitting in the gloom like drunken
will-o'-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts.
Their way led up Pine-Tree Canon, 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 that things is all
right," said the. Old Man, with an indiffer-
ence he was far from feeling. The sugges-
tion was graciously accepted, the door opened
and closed on the host, and the crowd, lean-
ing their backs against the wall and cower-
ing 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

8ANTA CLAU8 AT 8IJfP80IP8 BAR. 169

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," '^Probly biling suthin' to heave
on us : stand clear the door, boys ! " Fop
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 wfcich only vaga-
bondage 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 re-
fined, but that it was darkened by evil knowl-
edge from within, and dirt and hard expe-
rience from without. He had a blanket
around his shoulders, and had evidently just
risen from his bed. "Come in," he re-
peated, " and don't make no noise. The
Old Man 's in there talking to mar," he con-
tinued, pointing to an adja<»ent room which
seemed to be a kitchen, from which the Old

170 BANT A ClrAUB AT SIMPSON'S BAR.

Man's voice came in deprecating accents.
*' Let me be," he added querulously to Dick
BuUen, 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 depo»-
ited 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 con-
cluded, ^^ now wade in, and don't be af eard.
/ 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, parti-
tioned off from the main apartment, and
holding in its dim recess a small bed. He

BANTA ULAUS AT SIMPSON'S BAR. 171

stood there a moment looking at the ookn*
pany, his bare feet peeping from the blan*
ket, and nodded.

" Hello, Johnny ! You ain't goin' to turn
in agin, £u*e ye ? " said Dick.

^^Yes, I are," responded Johnny decid-
edly.

" Why, wot 's up, old fellow ? "

*' I 'to sick."

« How sick ? "

" I 've got a f evier. And childblains.
And roomatiz," returned Johnny, and van-
ifthed within. After a moment's pause, he
added in the dark, apparently from under
the bed-clothes, " 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, canie deprecatingly from the kitchen.

" Certainly ! Thet '« so. In course they
is. A gang o' lazy, drunken loafers, and
that ar Dick Bullen 's the ornariest of alL
Did n't hev no more $ahe than to come round
yar, with sickness in the house and no pl*o^
vision. Thet 's what I said : ^ Bullen,' sea

172 8 ANT A CLAUa AT SIMPSOIPS BAR

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 'speet to
raise h — 11 under my roof, and invalids lyin'
roimd?' 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 fol-
lowed 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. MacFadden's for a sociable
call," he explained with jaunty indifference
as he took a seat at the board.

Oddly enough it needed this untoward in-
cident 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

8ANTA CLAUS AT aiMPSON^S BAR. 178

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 liq-
uor was uselessly spilt on the floor or table
in the scarcity of that article.

It was nearly midnight when the festivi-
ties were interrupted. " Hush I " said Dick
BuUen, holding up his hand. It was the
querulous voice of Johnny from his adjacent
closet : " Oh, dad ! "

The Old Man arose hurriedly and disap-
peared in the closet. Presently he reap-
peared. ^^ 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 embar-
rassed laugh. So did the others. The Old
Man examined their contents, and said hope-
fully, " I reckon that 's enough ; he don't
need much. You hold on, all o' you, for a

174 SANTA CLAIT8 AT SIMPSONS BAR.

gpell, and I '11 be back ; " and yanished 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 un-
der yer ; but it 's most powerful from yer to
yer. Rub yer, dad."

A silence seemed to indicate a brisk rub-
bing. Then Johnny : -— *

" Hevin' a good time out yar, dad? "

" Yes, sonny."

"To-morre/'sChrismiss,^ ain't it?"

" Yes, sonny. How does she feel now ? "

"Better. Rub a little furder down. Wot's
Chrismiss, any way ? Wot 's it all about ? "

" Oh, 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 Chris-
miss, 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' Chine-
min, comes down the chimbley night afore
Chrismiss and gives things to chiUem, —

RANT A CLAUS AT SIMPSON'S SAM. 176

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 'b a mile from the place. She jest made
that np, did n't she, jest to aggrewate me and
you ? Don't rah 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 low-
ered as he went on: ^' Don't you take on
now, for I 'm gettin' all right ^t« 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
rabbing.

^^ 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 tun-
nel, he 'd have lots of money, etc., etc.

176 8ANTA CLAU8 AT SIMPSON'S BAR.

**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 '11 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 obe-
dience, 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,

BANTJl CLAUS at filMPSOIPS BAB. 177

and by the upspringing blaze he saw the
figure of Dick Bullen sitting by the dying
embers.

" HeUo ! "

Dick started, rose, and came somewhat
unsteadily toward him.

" Whar 's the boys ? " said the Old Man.

^^Gone up the cafilon on a little ^a^ear.
They 're coming back for me in a niiinit.
I 'm waitin' round fop '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 hu-
mid 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
Bleeve 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

178 SANTA CLAUa AT SIMPS OIPS BAR.

•

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, draw-
ing 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 \nake 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 reentered 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.

BANT A CLAUS AT SIMPSON'S BAR. 179

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 res-
olution 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 chim-
ney, 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 Boman nose to her ris-
ing 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.

180 8 ANT A CLAUB AT SIMPSON'S BAR.

" Now, then," said Staples, " stand d'ar
of her heels, boy, and up with you. Don't
miss your first holt of her mane, and mind
ye get your off stirrup quick. Ready 1 "

There was a leap, a scrambling straggle,
a bound, a wild retreat of the crowd, a circle
of flying hoofs, two springless leaps that
jarred the earth, a rapid pky 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 '11 be at the ford at
five. G'lang I Hoopa ! Mula ! GO 1 "

A splash, a spark struck from the ledge
in the rpad, a clatter in the rocky cut be-
yond, and Dick was gone.

Sing, O Muse, the ride of Kichard Bul-
len ! Sing, O Muse, of chivalrous men ! the
sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery
of low churls, the fearsome ride and grue-
some perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar 1
Alack I she is dainty, this Muse ! She will
have none of this bucking brute and swag-
gering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow
him in prose, afoot !

It was one o'clock, and yet he had only

SANTA CLAU8 AT 8IMP80IPS BAR, 181

gained Rattlesnake Hill. For in that time
Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imper-
fections 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, re-
gained 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 ae-

182 SANTA CLAU8 AT SIMPSONS BAR.

quired carried her. beyond the point of balk-
ing, 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 Kattlesnake Creek to Bed
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 cross-
ing of the county road. Hollows, ditches,
gravelly deposits, patches of f reshly-spring-
ing 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 boss," — an event sufficiently
notable for remark. At half past two Dick

8AHTA CLAUa AT SIMPSON'S BAR. 183

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 Tut-
tleville, 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 conscious-
ness, Dick sallied out with the barkeeper 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 persist-
ent tapping and judicious outcry roused the
proprietors from their beds, and made them
unbar the doors of their magazines and ex-
pose 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 wa^
given over, ai^d with a i^mall waterproof bag

184 a ANT A CLAU8 AT 8lMPaOIP& BAR.

of India rubber strapped on bis 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," hap-
pily 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 land-
marks 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 vis-
cid mud Jovita sank fetlock deep at every
bound. It was a poor preparation for a
steady ascent of five miles more ; but Jo-
vita, gathering her legs under her, took it
with her usual blind, unreasoning fury, and

BANTA CLAUa AT BIMPBOIPS BAR. 185

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 the 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 sin-
gle shake of her vicious head, and charged
with deadly malevolence down on the im-
pediment 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 a* his side.

186 SANTA CLAUS AT SIMPSON'S BAR.

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 CjQ iJear of pursuit, but, look-
ing 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 wi^ upon him. Then completely ab-
sorbed in a single idea, he forgot the pain
of his wound, and, mounting again, dashed
on towards Rattlesnake Creek. But now
Jovita's breath came broken by gasps, Dick
reeled in his saddle, and brighter and
brighter grew the sky.

Bide, Richard ; run, Jovita ; linger, O
day!

For the last few rods there was a roaring
in his ears. Was it exhaustion from a 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

SANTA CLAU8 AT SIMPSON'S BAR. 187

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 inter-
val, by some fantastic mental process, the
little room ^at Simpson's Bar and the fig-
ures 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 whirUng
driftwood.

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.

188 8ANTA CLAVa AT BIMPSOJ^S BAJL

"Dick?"

" Hush ! Is he awake yet ? "

" No ; but, Dick " —

"Dry up, you old fool! Get me some
whiskey, quick I " The Old Man flew, and
returned with — an empty bottle I 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 oflf. I can't."

The Old Man unsti*apped the pack, and
laid it before the exhausted man.

" Open it, quick."

He did so with trembling fingers. It con-
tained 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 mel
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.

SANTA CLAUS AT SIMPSON^S BAR. 189

"Tell him," said Dick, with a weak little
laugh, — " tell him Sandy Claus has come."
And even so, bedraggled, ragged, imshaven
and unshorn, with one arm hanging help-
lessly at his side, Santa Clans 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 gen-
erous action, blushed to the skies.

THE FOOL OP FIVE FORKS.

He lived alone. I do not think this pe-
culiarity arose from any wish to withdraw
his foolishness from the rest of the camp,
nor was it probable that the combined wis-
dom of Five Forks ever drove him into ex-
ile. My impression is that he lived alone
from choice, — a choice he made long before
the camp indulged in any criticism of his
mental capacity. He was much given to
moody reticence, and although to outward
appearances a strong man was always com-
plaining of ill health. Indeed, one theory
of his isolation was that it afforded him bet-
ter opportunities for taking medicine, of
which he habitually consumed large quan-
tities.

His folly first dawned upon Five Forks
through the Post Office windows. He was
for a long time the only man who wrote
home by every mail, his letters being always
directed to the same person, — a woman.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 191

Now it SO happened that the bulk of the
Five Forks' correspondence was usually the
other way ; there were many letters received,
— the majority being in the female hand, —
but very few answered.

The men received them indifferently, or
as a matter of course; a few opened and
read them on the spot with a barely repressed
smile of self-conceit, or quite as frequently
glanced over them with undisguised impa-
tience. Some of the letters began with
" My dear husband," and some were never
called for. But the fact that the only regular
correspondent of Five Forks never received
any reply became at last quite notorious.
Consequently, when an envelope was received
bearing the stamp of the " Dead Letter Of-
fice," addressed to the Fool under the more
conventional title of " Cyrus Hawkins,"
there was quite a fever of excitement. I do
not know how the secret leaked out, but it
was eventually known to the camp that the
envelope contained Hawkins' own letters re-
turned. This was the first evidence of his
weakness ; any man who repeatedly wrote to
a woman who did not reply must be a fool.
I think Hawkins suspected that his folly was
known to the camp, but he took refuge in

192 TSE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

symptoms of chills and fever, wUch he at
once developed, and effected a diversion with
three bottles of Indian cholagogue and two
boxes of pills. At all events, at the end of
a week he resumed a pen, stiffened by ton-
ics, with all his old epistolatory pertinacity.
This time the letters had a new address.

In those days a popular belief obtained in
the mines that Luck particularly favored the
foolish and unscientific. Consequently, when
Hawkins struck a " pocket " in the hillside
near his solitary cabin, there was but little
surprise. ^' He will sink it all in the next
hole," was the prevailing belief, predicated
upon the usual manner in which the pos-
sessor of " nigger luck " disposed of his for-
tune. To everybody's astonishment, Haw-
kins, after taking out about eight thousand
dollars, and exhausting the pocket, did not
prospect for another. The camp then waited
patiently to see what he would do with his
money. I think, however, that it was with
the greatest difficulty their indignation was
kept from taking the form of a personal as-
sault when it became known that he had
purchased a draft for eight thousand dollars
in favor of " that woman." More than this,
it was finally whispered that the draft was

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS, 193

returned to him, as his letters had been, and
that he was ashamed to reclaim the money
at the express office. " It would n't be a
bad speckilation to go East, get some smart
gal for a hundred dollars to dress herself up
and represent that hag, and jest freeze on to
that eight thousand," suggested a far-seeing
financier. I may state here that we always
alluded to Hawkins' fair unknown as " The
Hag," without having, I am confident, the
least justification for that epithet.

That the Fool should gamble seemed emi-
nently fit and proper. That he should occa-
sionally win a large stake, according to that
popular theory which I have recorded in the
preceding paragraph, appeared also a not
improbable or inconsistent fact. That he
should, however, break the faro bank which
Mr. John Hamlin had set up in Five Forks,
and carry off a sum variously estimated at
from ten to twenty thousand dollars, and not
return the next day and lose the money at
the same table, really appeared incredible.
Yet such was the fact. A day or two passed
without anv known investment of Mr. Haw-
kins' recently acquired capital. " Ef he al-
lows to send it to that Hag," said one prom-
inent citizen, ^' suthin' ought to be done !

194 TBE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

It's jest ruinin* the reputation of this yer
camp, — this sloshin' around o' capital on
non-residents ez don't claim it I " " It 's
settin' an example o' extravagance," said
another, ^'ez is little better nor a swindle.
Thar 's mor 'n five men in this camp thet,
hearin' thet Hawkins had sent home eight
thousand dollars, must jest rise up and send
home their hard earnings, tool And then
to think thet that eight thousand was only a
bluff, after all, and thet it 's lyin' there on
call in Adams & Co.'s bank ! Well I I say
it's one o' them things a vigilance commit-
tee oughter look into ! "

When there seemed no posribUity of this
repetition of Hawkins' folly, the anxiety to
know what he had really done with his
money became intense. At last a self-ap-
pointed committee of four citizens dropped
artfully, but to outward appearances care-
lessly, upon him in his seclusion. When
some polite formalities had been exchanged,
and some easy vituperation of a backward
season offered by each of the parties, Tom
Wingate approached the subject : —

" Sorter dropped heavy on Jack Hamlin
the other night, did n't ye ? He allows you
did n't give him no show for revenge. I said

TWS FOOL OF FIVE FORKS, 195

you wasn't no such d — d fool, didn't I,
Dick?'' continued the artful Wingate, ap-
pealing to a confederate.

" Yes," said Dick promptly. " You said
twenty thousand dollars was n't goin' to be
thrown around recklessly. You said Cyrus
had suthin' better to do with his capital,"
superadded Dick, with gratuitous mendacity.
'^ I disremember now what partickler invest-
ment you said he was goin' to make with it,"
he continued, appealing with easy indiffer-
ence to his friend.

Of course Wingate did not reply, but
looked at the Fool, who, with a troubled
face, was rubbing his legs softly. After a
pause he turned deprecatingly toward his
visitors.

" Ye did n't enny of ye ever hev a sort of
tremblin' in your legs, — a kind o' shakiness
from the knee down ? Suthin'," he contin-
ued, slightly brightening with his topic, —
^* suthin' that begins like chills and yet ain't
chills. A kind o' sensation of goneness here,
and a kind o' feelin' as if you might die
suddent I When Wright's Pills don't some-
how reach the spot, and Quinine don't fetch
you?"

"Nol " said Wingate, with a curt direct-

196 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKB,

ness and the air of authoritatively respond-
ing for his friends. " No, never had. You
was speakin' of this yer investment."

"And your bowels all the time irregu-
lar!" continued Hawkins, blushing under
Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly
to his theme like a shipwrecked mariner to
his plank.

Wingate did not reply, but glanced signif-
icantly at the rest. Hawkins evidently saw
this recognition of his mental deficiency, and
said apologetically, "You was saying suthin'
about my investment ? "

"Yes," said Wingate, so rapidly as to
almost take Hawkins' breath away, — " the
investment you made in " —

" Rafferty's Ditch," said the Fool, timidly.

For a moment the visitors could only stare
blankly at each other. " Rafferty's Ditch,"
the one notorious failure of Five Forks!
Rafferty's Ditch, the impracticable scheme
of an utterly unpractical man; Rafferty's
Ditch, a ridiculous plan for taking water
that could not be got to a place where it
was n't wanted ! Rafferty's Ditch, that had
buried the fortunes of Rafferty and twenty
wretched stockholders in its muddy depths 1

** And thet 's it, is it ? " said Wingate,

THE FOOU OF FIVE FORKS. 197

after a gloomy pause. " Thet 's it ! I see
it all now, boys. That 's how ragged Pat
Rafiferty went down to San Francisco yes-
terday in store clothes, and his wife and four
children went off in a kerridge to Sacra-
mento. Thet 's why them ten workmen of
his, ez hed n't a cent to bless themselves
with, was playin' billiards last night and
eatin' isters. Thet 's whar that money kum
frum — one^ hundred dollars — to pay for
thet long advertisement of the new issue of
Ditch stock in the Times yesterday. Thet 'a
why them six strangers were booked at the
Magnolia Hotel yesterday. Don't you see

— it 's thet money and thet Fool ! "

The Fool sat silent. The visitors rose
without a word.

"Yo« never took any of them Indian
Vegetable Pills?" asked Hawkins timidly
of Wingate.

" No," roared Wingate, as he opened the
door.

" They tell me that took with the Pa^stcea

— they was out o' the P^acea when I went
to the drug store last weet"^^ they say that
took with the Panacea they always effect a
certing cure." But by this time Wingate
and his disgusted friends had retreated,

198 THE FOOL OF FI^F FORKS.

slamming the door on the Fool and his ail*
ments.

Nevertheless, in six months the whole
affair was forgotten, the money had been
spent — the " Ditch " had been purchased
by a company of Boston capitalists, fired by
the glowing description of an Eastern tour-
ist, who had spent one drunken night at
Five Forks — and I think even the mental
condition of Hawkins might haye remained
undisturbed by criticism, but for a singular
incident.

It was during an exciting political cam-
paign, when party feeling ran high, that the
irascible Captain McFadden, of Sacramento,
visited Five Forks. During a heated dis-
cussion in the Prairie Eose Saloon, words
passed between the Captain and the Honor-
able Calhoun Bungstarter, ending in a chal-
lenge. The Captain bore the infelix reputa-
tion of being a notorious duellist and a dead
shot : the Captain was unpopular ; the Cap-
tain was believed to have been sent by the
opposition for a deadly pui'pose; and the
Captain was, moreover, a stranger. I am
sorry to say that with Five Forks this lat-
ter condition did not carry the quality of
sanctity or reverence that usually obtains

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 199

among other nomads. There was conse-
quently some little hesitation when the Cap-
tain turned upon the crowd and asked for
some one to act as his friend. To every-
body's astonishment, and to the indignation
of many, the Fool stepped forward and
offered himself in that capacity. I do not
know whether Captain McFadden would
have chosen him voluntarily, but he was
constrained, in the absence of a better man,
to accept his services.

The duel never took place! The pre-
liminaries were all arranged, the spot in-
dicated, the men were present with their
seconds, there was no interruption from
without, there was no explanation or apol-
ogy passed, — but the duel did not take
place. It may be readily imagined that
these facts, which were all known to Five
Forks, threw the whole community into a
fever of curiosity. The principals, the sur-
geon, and one second left town the next day.
Only the Fool remained. He resisted all
questioning, declaring himself held in honor
not to divulge ; in short, conducted himself
with consistent but exasperating folly. It
was not until six months had passed that
Colonel Starbottle, the second of Calhoun

200 THE FOpL OF FIVE FORKS.

Bungstarter, in a moment of weakness su
perinduced by the social glass, condescended
to explain. I should not do justice to the
parties if I did not give that explanation in
the Colonel's own words. I may remark,
in passing, that the characteristic dignity
of Colonel Starbottle always became inten-
sified by stimulants, and that by the same
process all sense of humor was utterly elim-
inated.

" With the understanding that I am ad-
dressing myself confidentially to men of
honor," said the Colonel, elevating his chest
above the bar-room counter of the Prairie
Eose Saloon, "I trust that it will not be
necessary for me to protect myself from lev-
ity, as I was forced to do in Sacramento on
the only other occasion when I entered into
an explanation of this delicate affair by — er
— er — calling the individual to a personal
account — er ! I do not believe," added the
Colonel, slightly waving his glass of liquor
in the air with a graceful gesture of cour^
teous deprecation — "' knowing what I do of
the present company — that such a course
of action is required here. Certainly not —
sir — in the home of Mr. Hawkins — er — •
the gentleman who represented Mr. Bung.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 201

starter, whose conduct, ged, sir, is worthy
of praise, blank me ! "

Apparently satisfied with the gravity and
respectful attention of his listeners, Colonel
Starbottle smiled relentingly and sweetly,
closed his eyes half dreamily, as if to recall
his wandering thoughts, and began : —

"As the spot selected was nearest the
tenement of Mr. Hawkins, it was agreed that
the parties should meet there. They did so
promptly at half past six. The morning
being chilly, Mr. Hawkins extended the hos-
pitalities of his house with a bottle of Bour-
bon whiskey, of which all partook but my-
self. The reason for that exception is, I
believe, well known. It is my invariable
custom to take brandy, — a wineglass full in
a cup of strong coffee, immediately on ris-
ing. It stimulates the functions, sir, with-
out producing any blank derangement of the
nerves."

The barkeeper, to whom, as an expert, the
Colonel had graciously imparted this infor-
mation, nodded approvingly, and the Colo-
nel, amid a breathless silence, went on : —

" We were about twenty minutes in reach-
ing the spot. The ground was measured,
the weapons intfre loaded, when Mr. Bung-

202 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

starter confided to me the information that
he was unwell and in great pain I On con-
sultation with Mr. Hawkins, it appeared that
his principal in a distant part of the field
was also suffering and in great pain. The
symptoms were such as a medical man would
pronounce ^ choleraic' I say would have
pronounced, for on examination the surgeon
was also found to be — er — in pain, and, I
regret to say, expressing himself in language
unbecoming the occasion. His impression
was that some powerful drug had been ad-
ministered. On referring the question to
Mr. Hawkins, he remembered that the bot-
tle of whiskey partaken by them contained a
medicine which he had been in the habit of
taking, but which, having failed to act upon
him, he had concluded to be generally in-
efiPective, and had forgotten. His perfect
willingness to hold himself personally re-
sponsible to each of the parties, his genuine
concern at the disastrous effect of the mis-
take, mingled with his own alarm at the
state of his system, which — er — failed to
— er — respond to the peculiar qualities of
the medicine, was most becoming to him as
a man of honor and a gentleman ! After
an hour's delay, both principals being com-

TBE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 208

pletely exhausted, and abandoned by the
surgeon, who was unreasonably alarmed at
his own condition, Mr. Hawkins and I
agreed to remove our men to Markleville.
There, after a further consultation with Mr.
Hawkins, an amicable adjustment of all
difBiculties, honorable to both parties, and
governed by profound secrecy, was arranged.
I believe," added the Colonel, looking
around and setting down his glass, '^ no gen-
tleman has yet expressed himself other than
satisfied with the result."

Perhaps it was the ColoneFs manner, but
whatever was the opinion of Five Forks
regarding the intellectual display of Mr.
Hawkins in this affair, there was very little
outspoken criticism at the moment. In a
few weeks the whole thing was forgotten,
except as part of the necessary record of
Hawkins' blunders, which was already a
pretty full one. Again some later follies
conspired to obliterate the past, antil, a year
later, a valuable lead was discovered in the
" Blazing Star " Tunnel, in the hill where
he Uved, and a large sum was oflEered him
for a portion of his land on the hill-top.
Accustomed as Five Forks had become to
the exhibition of his folly, it was with aston-

204 THE FOOL OP FIVE FORKS,

ishment that they learned that he resolutely
and decidedly refused the offer. The rea-
son that he gave was still more astounding.
He was about to build I

To build a house upon property available
for mining purposes was preposterous; to
build at all, with a roof already covering
him, was an act of extravagance; to build
a house of the style he proposed was simply
madness !

Yet here were facts. The plans were
made and the lumber for the new building
was already on the ground, while the shaft
of the " Blazing Star " was being sunk be-
low. The site was, in reality, a very pictur-
esque one ; the building itself of a style
and quality hitherto unknown in Five Forks.
The citizens, at first skeptical, during their
moments of recreation and idleness gathered
doubtingly about the locality. Day by day,
in that climate of rapid growths, the build-
ing, pleasantly known in the slang of Five
Forks as "the Idiot Asylum," rose beside
the green oaks and clustering firs of Haw-
kins' Hill, as if it were part of the natural
phenomena. At last it was completed.
Then Mr. Hawkins proceeded to furnish it
with an expensiveness and extravagance of

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS, 206

outlay quite in keeping with his former
idiocy. Carpets, sofas, mirrors, and finally
a piano — the only one known in the county,
and brought at great expense from Sacrar
mento — kept curiosity at a fever heat.
More than that, there were articles and
ornaments which a few married experts de-
olared only fit for women. When the fur-
nishing of the house was complete — it had
occupied two months of the speculative and
curious attention of the camp — Mr. Haw-
kins locked the front door, put the key in
his pocket, and quietly retired to his more
humble roof, lower on the hillside !

I have not deemed it necessary to indicate
to the intelligent reader all of the theories
which obtained in Five Forks during the
erection of the building. Some of them
may be readily imagined. That "the Hag"
had by artful coyness and systematic ret-
icence at last completely subjugated the
Fool, and that the new house was intended
for the nuptial bower of the (predestined)
unhappy pair, was of course the prevailing
opinion. But when, after a reasonable time
had elapsed, and the house still remained
untenanted, the more exasperating convic-
tion forced itself upon the general mind that

206 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

the Fool had been for the third time imposed
upon. When two months had elapsed, and
there seemed no prospect of a mistress for
the new house, I think public indignation
became so strong that, had '^ the Hag " ar-
rived, the marriage would have been pub-
licly prevented. But no one appeared that
seemed to answer to this idea of an available
tenant, and all inquiry of Mr. Hawkins as
to his intention in building a house, and not
renting it or occupying it, failed to elicit
any further information. The reasons that
he gave were felt to be vague, evasive, and
unsatisfactory. He was in no hurry to
move, he said ; when he wds ready, it surely
was not strange that he should like to have
his house all ready to receive him. He was
often seen upon the veranda, of a summer
evening, smoking a cigar. It is reported
that one night the house was observed to be
brilliantly lighted from garret to basement;
that a neighbor, observing this, crept toward
the open parlor window, and, looking in,
espied the Fool accurately dressed in even-
ing costume, lounging upon a sofa in the
drawing-room, with the easy air of socially
entertaining a large party. Notwithstand-
ing this, the house was unmistakably vacant

THE FOOL OF FIVE F0RK8. 207

that evening, save for the presence of the
owner, as the witnesses afterward testified.
When this story was first related, a few
practical men suggested the theory that Mr.
Hawkins was simply drilling himself in the
elaborate duties of hospitality against a
probable event in his history. A few ven-
tured the belief that the house was haunted.
The imaginative editor of the Five Forks
^^ Record" evolved from the depths of his
professional consciousness a story that Haw-
kins' sweetheart had died, and that be regu-
larly entertained her spirit in this beauti-
fully-furnished mausoleum. The occasional
spectacle of Hawkins' tall figure pacing the
veranda on moonUght nights lent some cre-
dence to this theory, until an unlooked-for
incident diverted all speculation into an-
other channel.

It was about this time that a certain wild,
rude valley, in the neighborhood of Five
Forks, had become famous as a picturesque
resort. Travellers had visited it, and declared
that there were more cubic yards of rough
stone cliff and a waterfall of greater height
than any they had visited. Correspondents
had written it up with extravagant rhetoric
and inordinate poetical quotation. Men and

208 TEE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

women who had never enjoyed a sunset, a
tree, or a flower ; who had never appreciated
the graciousness or meaning of the yellow
sunlight that flecked their homely doorw^iys,
or the tenderness of a midsummer^s night to
whose moonlight they bared their shirt-sleeves
or their tulle dresses, came from thousands
of miles away to calculate the height of this
rock, to observe the depth of this chasm, to
remark upon the enormous size of this un-
sightly tree, and to believe with ineffable
self-complacency that they really admired
nature. And so it came to pass that, in ac-
cordance with the tastes or weaknesses of
the individual, the more prominent and sa-
lient points of the valley were christened,
and there was a " Lace Handkerchief Fall,"
and the "Tears of Sympathy Cataract,"
and one distinguished orator's " Peak," and
several " Mounts " of various noted peo-
ple, living or dead, and an " Exclamation
Point," and a " Valley of Silent Adoration."
And, in course of time, empty soda-water
bottles were found at the base of the cata-
ract, and greasy newspapers and fragments
of ham sandwiches lay at the dusty roots of
giant trees. With this, there were frequent
irruptions of closely - shaven and tightly-

TEE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 209

cravated men and delicate-faced women in
the one long street of Five Forks, and a
scampering of mules, and an occasional pro-
cession of dusty brown-linen cavalry.

A year after " Hawkins' Idiot Asylum "
was completed, one day there drifted into
the valley a riotous cavalcade of "school-
marms," teachers of the San Francisco pub-
lic schools, out for a holiday* Not severely
spectacled Minervas and chastely armed and
mailed Pallases, but, I fear for the security
of Five Forks, very human, charming, and
mischievous young women. At least, so the
men thought, working in the ditches and
tunnelling on the hillside ; and when, in the
interests of Science and the mental advance-
ment of Juvenile Posterity, it was finally set-
tled that they should stay in Five Forks two
or three days, for the sake of visiting the
various mines, and particularly the Blazing
Star Tunnel, there was some flutter of mas-
culine anxiety. There was a considerable
inquiry for " store clothes," a hopeless over-
hauling of old and disused raiment, and a
general demand for " boiled shirts " and the
barber.

Meanwhile, with that supreme audacity
and impudent hardihood of the sex when

210 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

gregarious, the school-marms rode through
the towu, admiring openly the handsome
faces and manly figures that looked up from
the ditches or rose behind the cars of ore at
the mouths of tunnels. Indeed, it is alleged
thj^t Jenny Forester, backed and supported
by seven other equally shameless young
women, had openly and publicly waved her
handkerchief to the florid Hercules of Five
Forks, — one Tom Flynn, formerly of Vir-
ginia, — leaving that good-natured but not
over-bright giant pulling his blonde mus-
taches in bashful amazement.

It was a pleasant June afternoon that
Miss Nelly Arnot, Principal of the primary
depai'tment of one of the public schools of
San Francisco, having evaded her compan-
ions, resolved to put into operation a plan
which had lately sprung up in her coura-
geous and mischief-loving fancy. With that
wonderful and mysterious instinct of her
sex, from whom no secrets of the affections
are hid and to whom all hearts are laid
open, she had heard the story of Hawkins'
folly and the existence of the " Idiot Asy-
lum." Alone, on Hawkins' Hill, she had
determined to penetrate its seclusion. Skirt-
ing the underbrush at the foot of the hill,

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 211

she managed to keep the heaviest timber
between herself and the Blazing Star Tun-
nel at its base, as well as the cabin of
Hawkins, half-way up the ascent, until, by
a circuitous route, at last she reached, un-
observed, the summit. Before her rose,
silent, darkened, and motionless, the object
of her search. Here her courage failed her,
with all the characteristic inconsequence of
her sex. A sudden fear of all the dangers
she had safely passed — bears, tarantulas,
drunken men, and lizards — came upon her.
For a moment, as she afterwards expressed
it, "she thought she should die." With
this belief, probably, she gathered three
large stones, which she could hardly lift, for
the purpose of throwing a great distance \
put two hair-pins in her mouth, and care-
fully readjusted with both hands two stray
braids of her lovely blue-black mane which
had fallen in gathering the stones. Then
she felt in the pockets of her linen duster
for her card-case, handkerchief, pocket-book,
and smelling-bottle, and, findmg them intact,
suddenly assumed an air of easy, ladylike
unconcern, went up the steps of the veranda,
and demurely pulled the front door -bell,
which she knew would not be answered.

212 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

After a decent pause, she walked around the
encompassing veranda, examining the closed
shutters of the French windows until she
found one that yielded to her touch. Here
she paused again to adjust her coquettish
hat by the mirror-like surface of the long
sash window that reflected the full length
of her pretty figure. And then she opened
the window and entered the room.

Although long closed, the house had a
smell of newness and of fresh paint that was
quite unlike the mouldiness of the conven-
tional haunted house. The bright carpets,
the cheerful walls, the glistening oil-cloths,
were quite inconsistent with the idea of a
ghost. With childish curiosity she began
to explore the silent house, at first timidly,
— opening the doors with a violent push,
and then stepping back from the threshold
to make good a possible retreat ; and then
more boldly, as she became convinced of her
security and absolute loneliness. In one of
the chambers, the largest, there were fresh
flowers in a vase, — evidently gathered that
morning; and what seemed still more re-
markable, the. pitchers and ewers were
freshly filled with water. This obliged Miss
Nelly to notice another singular fact, namely.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 213

that the house was free frofli dust, the one
most obtrusive and penetrating visitor of
Five Forks. The floors and carpets had
been recently swept, the chairs and furniture
carefully wiped and dusted. If the house
was haunted, it was possessed by a spirit
who had none of the usual indifference to
decay and mould. And yet the beds had
evidently never been slept in, the very
springs of the chair in which she sat creaked
stiffly at the novelty, the closet doors opened
with the reluctance of fresh paint and var-
nish, and in spite of the warmth, cleanliness,
and cheerfulness of furniture and decora-
tion there was none of the ease of tenancy
and occupation. As Miss Nelly afterwards
confessed, she longed to ^^ tumble things
around," aiid when she reached the parlor or
drawing-room again she could hardly resist
the desire. Particularly was she tempted
by a closed piano, that stood Qiutely against
the wall. She thought she would open it
just to see who was the maker. That done,
it would be no harm to try its tone. She
did so, with one little foot on the soft pedal.
But Miss Nelly was too good a player and
too enthusiastic a musician to. stop at half
measures. She tried it again, — this time

214 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

SO sincerely thsCt the whole house seemed
to spring into voice. Then she stopped
and listened. There was no response ; the
empty rooms seemed to have relapsed into
their old stillness. She stepped out on the
veranda ; a woodpecker recommenced his
tapping on an adjacent tree, the rattle of a
cart in the rocky gulch below the hill came
faintly up. No one was to be seen, far
or near. Miss Nelly, reassured, returned.
She again ran her fingers over the keys,
stopped, caught at a melody running in her
mind, half played it, and then threw away
all caution. Before five minutes had elapsed
she had entirely forgotten herself, and, with
her linen duster thrown aside, her straw hat
flung on the piano, her white hands bared,
and a black loop of her braided jiair hang-
ing upon her shoulder, was fairly embarked
upon a flowing sea of musical recollection.

Shqi had played perhaps half an hour,
when,f having just finished an elaborate sym-
phony and resting her hands on the keys,
she heard very distinctly and unmistakably
the sound of applause from without. In an
instant the fires of shame and indignation
leaped into ber cheeks, and she rose from
the instrument and ran to the window, only

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 215

in time to catch sight of a dozen figures in
blue and red flannel shirts vanishing hur-
riedly through the trees below.

Miss Nelly's mind was instantly made up.
I think I have already intimated that under
the stimulus of excitement she was not want-
ing in courage, and as she quietly resumed
her gloves, hat, and duster she was not,
perhaps, exactly the young person that it
would be entirely safe for the timid, embar-
rassed, or inexperienced of my sex to meet
alone. She shut down the piano, and hav-
ing carefully reclosed all the windows and
doors, and restored the house to its former
desolate condition, she stepped from the
veranda and proceeded directly to the cabin
of the unintellectual Hawkins, that reared
its adobe chimney above the umbrage, a
quarter of a mile below.

The door opened instantly to her impul-
sive knock, and the Fool of Five Forks stood
before her. Miss Nelly had never before
seen the man designated by this infelicitous
title, and as he stepped backward, in half
courtesy and half astonishment, she was for
the moment disconcerted. He was tall,
finely formed, and dark-bearded. Above
cheeks a little hollowed by care and ill health

216 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

shone a pair of hazel eyes, very large, very
gentle, but inexpressibly sad and mournful.
This was certainly not the kind of man Miss
Nelly had expected to see, yet, after her first
embarrassment had passed, the very circum-
stance, oddly enough, added to her indigna-
tion and stung her wounded pride still more
deeply. Nevertheless, the arch hypocrite
instantly changed her tactics, with the swift
intuition of her sex.

" I have come," she said, with a dazzling
smile, infinitely more dangerous than her
former dignified severity, " I have come to
ask your pardon for a great liberty I have
just taken. I believe the new house above us
on the hill is yours. I was so much pleased
with its exterior that I left my friends for a
moment below here," she continued artfully,
with a slight wave of the hand, as if indi-
cating a band of fearless Amazons without,
and waiting to avenge any possible insult
offered to one of their number, " and ven-
tured to enter it. Finding it unoccupied, as
I had been told, I am afraid I had the au-
dacity to sit down and amuse myself for a
few moments at the piano, while waiting for
my friends."

Hawkins raised his beautiful eyes to hers.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 217

He saw a very pretty girl, with frank gray
eyes glistening With excitement, with two
red, slightly freckled cheeks, glowing a little
under his eyes, with a short scarlet upper lip
turned back, like a rose leaf, over a little
line of white teeth, as she breathed somewhat
hurriedly in her nervous excitement. He
saw all this calmly, quietly, and, save for the
natural uneasiness of a shy, reticent man, I
fear without a quickening of his pulse.

" I knowed it," he said simply. " I heerd
ye as I kem up."

Miss NeUy was furious at his grammar,
his dialect, his coolness, and still more at the
suspicion that he was an active member of
her invisible claque,

"Ah," she said, still smiling, "then I
think I heard you " —

"I reckon not," he interrupted gravely.
"I didn't stay long. I found the boys
hanging round the house, and I allowed at
first I 'd go in and kinder warn you ; but
they promised to keep still, and you looked
so comfortable and wrapped up in your mu-
sic that I had n't the heart to disturb you,
and kem away. I hope," he added earnestly,
" they did n't let on ez they heerd you. They
aint a bad lot, — them Blazin' Star boys, —

218 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

though they 're a little hard at times. But
they'd no more hurt ye than they would
a — a — a cat I" continued Mr. Hawkins,
blushing with a faint apprehension of the in-
elegance of his simile.

" No ! no I " said Miss Nelly, feeling sud-
denly very angry with herself, the Fool, and
the entire male population of Five Forks.
" No ! I have behaved foolishly, I suppose,
and if they had it would have served me
right. But I only wanted to apologize to
you. You '11 find everything as you left it.
Good-day ! "

She turned to go. Mr. Hawkins began
to feel embarrassed. " I 'd have asked -ye
to sit down," he said, finally, " if it hed been
a place fit for a lady. I oughter done so,
enny way. I don't know what kept me from
it. But I ain't well. Miss. Times I get a
sort o' dumb ager, — it 's the ditches, I think,
Miss, — and I don't seem to hev my wits
about me."

Instantly Miss Arnot was all sympathy ;
her quick woman's heart was touched.

" Can I — can anything be done ? " she
asked, more timidly than she had before
spoken.

" No ! — not onless ye remember suthin'

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 219

about these pills." He exhibited a box
containing about half a dozen. '^I forget
the direction, — I don't seem to remember
much, any way, these times, — they 're Jones
Vegetable Compound. If ye 've ever took
'em ye '11 remember whether the reg'lar dose
is eight. They ain't but six here. But per-
haps ye never tuk any," he added deprecat-

" No," said Miss Nelly, curtly. She lucd
usually a keen sense of the ludicrous, but
somehow Mr. Hawkins' eccentricity only
pained her.

" Will you let me see you to the foot of
the hill? " he said again, after another em-
barrassing pause.

Miss Arnot felt instantly that such an act
would condone her trespass in the eyes of
the world. She might meet some of her
invisible admirers, or even her compan-
ions; and, with all her erratic impulses,
she was nevertheless a woman, and did not
entirely despise the verdict of convention-
ality. She smiled sweetly and assented, and
in another moment the two were lost in the
shadows of the wood.

Like many other apparently trivial acts
in an uneventful life, it was decisive. As

220 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

she expected, she met two or three of her
late applauders, whom, she fancied, looked
sheepish and embarrassed ; she met also her
companions, looking for her in some alarm,
who really appeared astonished at her escort,
and, she fancied, a trifle envious of her evi-
dent success. I fear that Miss Arnot, in
response to their anxious inquiries, did not
state entirely the truth, but, without actual
assertion, led them to believe that she had
at a very early stage of the proceeding com-
pletely subjugated this weak-minded giant,
and had brought him triumphantly to her
feet. From telling this story two or three
times she got finally to believing that she
had some foundation for it, then to a vague
sort of desire that it would eventually prove
to be true, and then to an equally vague
yearning to hasten that consummation. That
it would redound to any satisfaction of the
Fool she did not stop to doubt. That it
would cure him of his folly she was quite
confident. Indeed, there are very few of
us — men or women — who do not believe
that even a hopeless love for ourselves is
more conducive to the salvation of the lover
than a requited affection for another.

The criticism of Five Foi*ks was, as the

1 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 221

reader may imagine, swift and conclusive.
When it was found out that Miss Arnot was
, not " the Hag " masquerading as a young

and pretty girl, to the ultimate deception of
Five Forks in general and the Fool in par-
ticular, it was decided at once that nothing
but the speedy union of the Fool and the
" pretty school-marm " was consistent with
ordinary common sense. The singular good
fortune of Hawkins was quite in accordance
with the theory of bis luck as propounded
by the camp. That after " the Hag " failed
to make her appearance he should '^ strike a
lead " in his own house, without the trouble
of " prospectin'," seemed to these casuists as
a wonderful but inevitable law. To add to
these fateful probabilities. Miss Arnot fell
and sprained her ankle in the ascent of
Mount Lincoln, and was confined for some
weeks to the hotel after her companions had
departed. During this period Hawkins was
civilly but grotesquely attentive. When,
after a reasonable time had elapsed, there
still appeared to be no immediate prospect
of the occupancy of the new house, public
opinion experienced a singular change in re-
gard to its theories of Mr. Hawkins' con-
duct. " The Hag " was looked upon as a

222 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

saint-like and long-suffering martyr to the
weaknesses and inconsistency of the Fool.
That, after erecting this new house at her
request, he had suddenly " gone back " on
her ; that his celibacy was the result of a
long habit of weak proposal and subsequent
shameless rejection ; and that he was now
trying his hand on the helpless school-marm,
was perfectly plain to Five Forks. That he
should be frustrated in his attempts at any
cost was equally plain. Miss Nelly suddenly
found herself invested with a rude chivalry
that would have been amusing had it not
been at times embarrassing; that would
have been impertinent but for the almost
superstitious respect with which it was prof-
fered. Every .day somebody from Five
Forks rode out to inquire the health of the
fair patient. " Hez Hawkins bin over yer
to-day?" queried Tom Flynn, with artful
ease and indifference, as he leaned over Miss
Nelly's easy-chair on the veranda. Miss
Nelly, with a faint pink flush on her cheek,
was constrained to answer "No." "Well,
he sorter sprained his foot agin a rock yes-
terday," continued Flynn, with shameless
untruthfulness. " You mus' n't think any-
thing o' that, Miss Arnot. He '11 be over

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 223

yer to-morrer, and meantime he told me to
hand this yer bookay with his regards, and
this yer specimen ! " And Mr. Flynn laid
down the flowers he had picked en route
against such an emergency, and presented
respectfully a piece of quartz and gold which
he had taken that morning from his own
sluice-box. " Yoij mus' n't mind Hawkins'
ways, Miss Nelly," said another sympathiz-
ing miner. ^^ There ain't a better man in
camp than that theer Cy Hawkins ! — but
he don't understand the ways o' the world
with wimen. He hasn't mixed as much
with society as the rest of us," he added,
with an elaborate Chesterfieldian ease of
manner, " but he means well." Meanwhile
a few other sympathetic tunnel-men were im-
pressing upon Mr.* Hawkins the necessity of
the greatest attention to the invalid. ^^It
won't do, Hawkins," they explained, " to let
that there gal go back to San Francisco and
say that when she was sick and alone, the
only man in Five Forks under whose roof
she 'had rested, and at whose table she had
sat" — this was considered a natural but
pardonable exaggeration of rhetoric — "ever
threw off on her ; and it sha'n't be done. It
ain't the square thing to Five Forks." And

224 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

then the Fool would rush away to the val-
ley, and be received by Miss Nelly with a
certain reserve of manner that finally dis-
appeared in a flush of color, some increased
vivacity, and a pardonable coquetry. And
so the days passed ; Miss Nelly grew better
in health and more troubled in mind, and
Mr. Hawkins became more and more embar-
rassed, and Five Forks smiled and rubbed
its hands, and waited for the approaching
denouement. And then it came. But not
perhaps in the manner that Five Forks had
imagined.

It was a lovely afternoon in July that
a party of Eastern tourists rode into Five
Forks. They had just " done " the Valley
of Big Things, and there being one or two
Eastern capitalists among the party, it was
deemed advisable that a proper knowledge
of the practical mining resources of Califor-
nia should be added to their experience of
the merely picturesque in Nature. Thus
far everything had been satisfactory; the
amount of water which passed over the. Fall
was large, owing to a backward season ;
some snow still remained in the canons near
the highest peaks; they had ridden round
one of the biggest trees, and through the

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 225

prostrate trunk of another. To say that
they were delighted is to express feebly the
enthusiasm of these ladies and gentlemen,
drunk with the champagny hospitality of
their entertainers, the utter novelty of scene,
and the dry, exhilarating air of the valley.
One or two had already expressed them-
selves ready to live and die there ; another
had written a glowing account to the East-
em press, depreciating all other scenery in
Europe and America ; and under these cir-
cumstances it was reasonably expected that
Five Forks would do its duty, and equally
impress the stranger after its own fashion.

Letters to this effect were sent from San
Francisco by prominent capitalists there,
and under the able superintendence of one
of their agents, the visitors were taken in
hand, shown " what was to be seen," care-
fully restrained from observing what ought
not to be visible, and so kept in a bliss-
ful and enthusiastic condition. And so the
graveyard of Five Forks, in which but two
of the occupants had died natural deaths,
the dreary, ragged cabins on the hillsides,
with their sad-eyed, cynical, broken-spirited
occupants, toiling on, day by day, for a mis-
erable pittance and a fare that a self-respect-

226 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

ing Eastern mechanic would have scornfully
rejected, were not a part of the Eastern vis-
itors' recollection. But the hoisting works
and machinery of the Blazing Star Tunnel
Company was — the Blazing Star Tunnel
Company, whose "gentlemanly Superinten-
dent " had received private information
from San Francisco to do the "proper
thing " for the party. Wherefore the valu-
able heaps of ore in the company's works
were shown, the oblong bars of gold — ready
for shipment — were playfully offered to the
ladies who could lift and carry them away
unaided, and even the tunnel itself, gloomy,
fateful, and peculiar, was shown as part of
the experience ; and, in the noble language
of one correspondent, "the wealth of Five
Forks and the peculiar inducements that it
offered to Eastern capitalists" were estab-
lished beyond a doubt. And then occurred
a little incident which, as an unbiassed spec-
tator, I am free to say offered no induce-
ments to anybody whatever, but which, for
its bearing upon the central figure of this
veracious chronicle, I cannot pass over.

It had become apparent to one or two
more practical and sober-minded in the party
that certain portions of the Blazing Star

TBE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS. 227

Tunnel — (owing, perhaps, to the exigencies
of a flattering annual dividend) — were eco-
nomically and imperfectly " shored " and
supported, and were consequently unsafe,
insecure, and to be avoided. Nevertheless,
at a time when champagne corks were pop-
ping in dark comers, anfl enthusiastic voices
and happy laughter rang through the half-
lighted levels and galleries, there came a
suddefh and mysterious silence. A few lights
dashed swiftly by in the direction of a dis-
tant part of the gallery, and then there was
a sudden sharp issuing of orders, and a dull,
ominous rumble. Some of the visitors
turned pale — one woman fainted !

Something had happened. What? "Noth-
ing " — the speaker is fluent but uneasy —
" one of the gentlemen in trying to dislodge
a ^ specimen ' from the wall had knocked
away a support. There had been a ' cave '
— the gentleman was caught and buried be-
low his shoulders. It was all right — they 'd
get him out in a moment — only it required
great care to keep from extending the * cave.'
Did n't know his name — it was that little
man — the husband of that lively lady with
the black eyes. Eh! Hullo there! Stop
her I For God's sake ! — not that way I

228 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

She'll fall from that shaft! She'll be
killed!"

But the lively lady was already gone.
With staring black eyes, imploringly trying
to pierce the gloom, with hands and feet that
sought to batter and break down the thick
darkness, with incoherent cries and suppli-
cations, following the moving of ignis fatuus
lights ahead, she ran and ran swiftly I Kan
over treacherous foundations, ran by» yawn-
ing gulfs, ran past branching galleries and
arches, ran wildly, ran despairingly, ran
blindly, and at last ran into the arms of the
Fool of Five Forks.

In an instant she caught at his hand.
" Oh, save him ! " she cried ; " you belong
here — you know this dreadful place ; bring
me to him. Tell me where to go and what
to do, I implore you I Quick, he is dying I
Come ! "

He raised his eyes to hers, and then, with
a sudden cry, dropped the rope and crowbar
he was carrying, and reeled against the
wall. " Annie ! " he gasped, slowly, " is it

you?"

She caught at both his hands, brought
her face to his with staring eyes, murmured
"Good God, Cyrus!" and sank upon her
knees before him.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS, 229

He tried to disengage the hand that she
^ng with passionate entreaty.

" No, no ! Cyrus, you will forgive me —
you will forget the past I God has sent you
here to-day. You will come with me. You
will — you must — save him ! "

" Save who ? " cried Cyrus hoarsely.

« My husband ! "

The blow was so direct — so strong and
overwhelming — that even through her own
stronger and more selfish absorption she saw
it in the face of the man, and pitied him.

" I thought — you — knew — it ! " she
faltered. He did not speak, but looked at
her with fixed, dumb eyes. And then the
sound of distant voices and hurrying feet
started her again into passionate life. She
once more caught his hand.

" Oh, Cyrus ! hear me I If you have
loved me through all these years, you will
not fail me now. You must save him I You
can I You are brave and strong — you
always were, Cyrus! You will save him,
Cyrus, for my sake — for the sake of your
love for me I You will — I know it 1 God
bless you ! "

She rose as if to follow him, but at a ges-
ture of command she stood still. He picked

280 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS,

up the rope and crowbar slowly, and in a
dazed, blinded way that, in her agony of im-
patience and alarm, seemed protracted to
cruel infinity. Then he turned, and raising
her hand to his lips, he kissed it slowly,
looked at her again — and the next moment
was gone.

He did not return. For at the end of the
next half-hour, when they laid before her
the half-conscious, breathing body of her
husband, safe and unharmed but for ex-
haustion and some slight bruises, she learned
that the worst fears of the workmen had
been realized. In releasing him a second
" cave " had taken place. They had barely
time to snatch away the helpless body of her
husband before the strong frame of his res-
cuer, Cyrus Hawkins, was struck and smit-
ten down in his place.

For two hours he lay there crushed and
broken-limbed, with a broken beam lying
across his breast, in sight of all, conscious
and patient. For two hours they had la-
bored around him, wildly, despairingly,
hopefully, with the wills of gods and the
strength of giants, and at the end of that
time they came to an upright timber which
Tested its base upon the beam. There was

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKB, 281

a cry for axes, and one was already swing-
ing in the air, when the dying man called to
them, feebly —

" Don't cut that upright ! "

"Why?"

"It will bring down the whole gallery
with it."

" How ? "

" It 's one of the foundations of my house."

The axe fell from the workman's hand,
and with a blanched face he turned to his
fellows. It was too true. They were in the
uppermost gallery, and the "cave" had
taken place directly below the new house.
After a pause, the Fool spoke again, more
feebly.

" The lady ! — quick I "

They brought her — a wretched, fainting
creature, with pallid face and streaming
eyes — and fell back as she bent her face
above him.

** It was built for you, Annie, darling," he
said in a hurried whisper, "and has been
waiting up there for you and me all these
long days. It 's deeded to you, Annie, and
you must — live there — with him ! He
will not mind that I shall be always near
you — for it stands above — my grave 1 "

282 THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS.

And he was right. In a few minutes later,
when he had passed away, they did not move
him, but sat by his body all night, with a
torch at' his feet and head. And the next
day they walled up the gallery as a vault,
but they put no mark or any sign thereon,
trusting rather to the monument that, bright
and cheerful, rose above him in the sunlight
of the hill. For they said : " This is not an
evidence of death and gloom and sorrow, as
are other monuments, but is a sign of Life
and Light and Hope, wherefore shall all
men know that he who lies under it — is a
Fooll"

THE ROMANISE OP 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
taU 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
laidaside 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 rema;rking generally upon the
clear outline of the Sierras against the blue-
black sky. The ribbons, it so appeared,

234 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW,

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 sum-
mit. 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 pleas-
ant. The ribbons could not possibly con-
ceive 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
Ufted, and disappeared in the shadow, and
Mr. Folinsbee confronted only the half -fool-
ish, half-mischievous, but wholly pretty face
of his daughter.

It was afterwards known to Madrono Hol-
low that sharp words passed between '^ Miss
Jo" and the old man, and that the latter
coupled the names of one Culpepper Star-
bottle 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

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 235

verse of Byron. " She saw the old man's
bluff and raised him," was the direeter com-
ment of the college-bred Masters.

Meanwhile the subject of these animad-
versions 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 re-
finement 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 moon-
light. 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 ma-
terial 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 dis-
appeared he stepped out briskly into the
moonlight of the high-road* Here he took

286 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.

off his distinguishing hat to wipe his fore-
head, 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 slant-
wise 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 seri-
ous, even Quixotic face, but at times it was
relieved by a rare smile of such tender and
even pathetic sweetness, that Miss Jo is re-
ported to have said that, if it woidd 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 has n'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 ft'om some less practical
reason, Culpepper took this trail, and in a
few moments stA>d among the rarely beauti-

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 287

fill trees that gave their name to the val-
ley. 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 foli-
age. 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 exUe.

As Culpepper entered the grove, he heard
loud voices. As he turned toward a clump
of trees, a figure so bizarre and character-
istio that it might have been a resident
Daphne — a figure overdressed 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 ab-
solutely no claim to an introduction to the
polite reader. To hurry over equally un-
pleasant details, both were evidently under
the influence of liquor.

From the excited conversation that ensued,

238 ROMANCE OF MADROf^O BOLLOW.

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 pic-
turesque language in which this* was con-
veyed to her hearers. Enough that, at the
close of a fiery peroration, with feminine in-
consistency she flew at the gallant Colonel,
and would have visited her delayed ven-
geance 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 gro-
tesque 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 em-
barrassed. Howbeit the storm was soon
over, and after Mistress Dolores had re-
turned a little dagger to its sheath (her gar-
ter), she quietly took herself out of Madrofio

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 239

Hollow, and happily out of these pages for-
ever. The two men, left to themselves, con-
versed 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 bale-
ful glow in his hollow cheek, and in his dark
eyes a rising fire.

The next morning the general ear of Ma-
drofio Hollow was filled with rumors of the
Colonel's mishap. It was asserted that he
had been invited to withdraw his female com-
panion 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 con-
ceded 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 1 '^
had screamed the Colonel, profanely qualify-
ing the noun. " Get ! you border ruffian,"
was the reply. Such at least was the sub-

240 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW,

stance of the reports. As, at that sincere
epoch, expressions like the above were usu-
ally followed by prompt action, a fracas was
confidently looked for.

Nothing, however, occurred. Colonel Star-
bottle made his appearance next day upon
the streets with somewhat of his usual pom-
posity, a little restrained by the presence
of his nephew, who a^ompanied him, and
who, as a universal favorite, also exercised
some restraint upon the curious and imper-
tinent. 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
skeptical 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 mo-
ment's irresolution, which would have been
awkward but that it was charmingly em-
ployed, after the manner of her sex, in ad-
justing a bow under a dimpled but rather
prominent chin, and in pulling down the

ROMANCE OF MADROfrO HOLLOW, 241

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 dijtst from her spotless garments ;
small wondjbr 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 exam-
ple 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 crds^ng, never saw Miss Folins-
bee pass but that he always remarked apolo-
getically 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 fastid-
ious man, the late Emperor, said that she
was stunning, but a big discount on what
she was at Madrono Hollow.

242 ROMANCE OF 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 by-path. Here she re-
ceived the timid advances of a vagabond yel-
low 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 inconsist-
ency 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 woman-
hood. Then she plucked some golden heads
of wild oats, and with a sudden inspiration

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW. 248

placed them in her black hair, and then
came quite unconsciously upon the trail lead-
ing to Madrofio 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 ma-
drofio?

She answered these questions by going
there at once. After thoroughly exploring
the grove, and satisfying herself that it con-
tained 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 im-
maculate shade never was known to harbor
grub or msect.

She looked up at the rosy arms inter-
locked and arched above her head. She
looked down at the delicate ferns and cryp-
togams 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 v<> survey it from that

244 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLO W.

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 discover-
ing 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 hu-
manity ! 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 ex-
pected to meet Culpepper somewhere in
her ramble, now that he came upon her
suddenly, she felt disappointed and embar-
rassed. His manner, too, was more than
usually grave and serious, and more than

ROMANCE OF MADROJffO HOLLOW. 246

ever seemed to lar upon that audacious levity
wWch was this giddrgirl's power and se J
rity in a society where all feeling was dan-
gerous. 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 dec-
laration 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 some-
thing 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

246 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.

possessed himself first of her hand and then
her lips. When they stood up to go, Cul-
pepper 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 satis-
faction in this demonstration of Culpepper's
splendid height, and mentally compared it
with a former flame, one Lieutenant Mc-
Mirk, an active, but under-sized Hector,
who subsequently fell a victim to the in-
cautiously composed and monotonous bever-
ages 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 in-
stant 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 re-
spected uncle panting and blowing over the
hill. His brow contracted as he turned to
Miss Jo : " You don't like my uncle I "

" I hate him ! " Miss Jo was recovering
her ready tongue.

Culpepper blushed. He would have liked

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 247

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 eflfrontery, " Don't let that man get
you into any trouble. Take care of your-
self, dear, and don't let anything happen to
you."

Miss Jo intended this speech to be pa-
thetic ; the tenure of life among her lovers
had hitherto been very uncertain. Cul-
pepper turned toward her, but she had al-
ready 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 — n 'em all ! Look yar, Cidp, I 've
spotted the man who gave the order to put
me off the floor" ("flo" was what the
Colonel said) " the other night 1 "

" Who was it ? " asked Culpepper, list-
lessly.

" Jack Folinsbee."

"Who?" •

" Why, the son of that dashed niggep

248 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW,

worshipping, psalm-singing Puritan Yankee.
What 's the matter, now ? Look yar, Gulp,
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 Cul-
pepper's uncle from the floor of the As-
sembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee.
This much Madrono Hollow knew, and could
swear to ; but there were other strange ru-
mors 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 ajBfair, I only
give a few facts as have come to my knowl-
edge. Culpepper and Jack meets quite ac-
cidental 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 herey (The black-
smith demonstrates the position of the par-

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 249

ties with two old horseshoes on the anvil.)
^^ Jack pulls a bracele1> from his pocket and
says, * Do you know that bracelet ? ' Cul-
pepper 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 — n
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, drop-
ping suddenly into the abstract, and leaning
meditatively on his tovil, — " 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 I That 's
what gets me."

" Never mind, Thompson," chimed in Bill
Masters, " there 's another and a better world
where we shaU 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 Star-

260 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.

bottle. That Miss Jo would n't say where
she got it, but owned up to having seen Cul-
pepper 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 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 Star-
bottle, Colonel Starbottle, his second, and
the surgeon. The Colonel was exalted and
excited, albeit in a rather imposing, dig-
nified 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. Culpep-

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW, 251

per, 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 Colo-
nel 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 Boompointer. Good
ged, sir, the man had to put on ^s 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 joUiest work
to get away without the governor's hearing,'*
he began, addressing the group before him
with the greatest volubility. Calhoun Bung-
starter 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

252 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.

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. Col?)-
nel Starbottle uttered a low curse. John
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 in-
terval 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.

ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW. 253

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 hur-
ried 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 fur-
ther connection with the affair.

Two distinct reports rang through the
Hollow. Jack Folinsbee dropped his smok-
ing 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 tramp-
ling of hoofs, and the voice of the black-
smith bidding them flee for their Uves be-
fore 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 mo-
ment, while I run to the buggy."

254 ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW,

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 '11 look after
Folinsbee. Do you hear ? "

Culpepper's arm was still round the neck
of his late foe, but his head had dropped
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 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 Califor-
nia 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 ex-
emption of one Indian baby woidd not in-
validate 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 soant kindliness of the thin,

256 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

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 prop-
erty. Worse than this, the outskirts of the
clearing were sometimes haunted by blan-
keted tatterdemalions with whom she had
mysterious confidences. Mr. Walker more
than once regretted his indiscreet humanity ;
but she presently relieved him of respon-
sibility, and possibly of bloodguiltiness, by
disappearing entirely.

When she reappeared, it was at the ad-
jacent village of Logport, in the capacity of
housemaid to a trader's wife, who, joining
some little culture to considerable conscien-
tiousness, attempted to instruct her charge.
But the Princess proved an unsatisfactory
pupil* to even so liberal a teacher. She accept-
ed the alphabet with great good-humor, but
always as a pleasing and recurring novelty,
in which all interest expired at the comple-

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS, 257

tion 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 tat-
tooed the faces of her younger companions
with blue ink. Religious instruction she re-
ceived as good-humoredly, and learned to
pronounce the name of the' Deity with a
cheerful familiarity that shocked her precep-
tress. 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 privi-
leges, and' disappear from her home, return-
ing 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.

268 PEINCE88 BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

To add to her troubles, she was now four-
teen, 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 Cau-
casian 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 fine-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 un-
restrained freedom she was hardly statu-
esque, 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 political sagacity and prophetic
ethics of those sincere advocates of extermi-

PRINCESB BOB AND HER FRIENDS, 269

nation, 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 disap-
pearances, — 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 after-
wards, 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 Prin-
cess. From that day Logport knew her no
more.

It had been a bright, clear day on the up-
land, — 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.

260 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

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, swal-
lowed up the white mills and single spire of
Logport, and, joining with reinforcements
from the mai'shes, 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 monoto-
nous roll of the vanished ocean were the only
sounds. As night deepened, the f ar-pfiE boom-

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 261

ing of the fog-bell on the headland at inter-
vals stirred the thick air.

Hard by the shore of the bay, and half
hidden by a drifting sand-hiU, stood a low
nondescript structure, to whose composition
sea and shore had equally contributed. It
was built partly of logs and partly of drift-
wood 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-

262 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

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 nar-
row room, or gazed absently from the win-
dows 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
f ouL They had spent many a day in sim-

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 263

shine 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 dis-
turbed, untU 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, be-
fore 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
figure-head of the Goddess of Liberty,
which lay deeply embedded in the sand
on the beach, suddenly appeared at the
door, demanding admittance, the occupants

264 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

of the cabin could not have been more
speechlessly and hopelessly astonished than
at the form which stood in the open door-
way.

It was that of a slim, shapely, elegantly
dressed young woman. A scarlet-lined silk-
en * 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 neck-
lace of large white beads, that by some cun-
ning 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 sUent and erect against the wall.)
" Don't disturb yourself in the least, I beg.
What a distressingly unpleasant night 1 Is
this your usual climate ? "

Half graciously, half absently overlooking
the stiU embarrassed silence of the group,
she went on: "We started from the fort
over three hours ago, — three hours ago,

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS, 265

was n't it, Barker ? " (the erect Barker
touched his cap) — " to go to Captain Em-
mons'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 good-
ness knows where we did n't wander to until
we mistook your light for the lighthouse,
and pulled up here. No, no; pray keep
your seat, do I Keally, 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 stam-
mering, 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. J
am very near-sighted." (In confirmation of
her statement, she put to her eyes a dainty
double eyeglass that dangled from her neck.)

266 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

" It 's a shocking thing to be near-sighted,
is n'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 mo-
ment, however. Miss Portfire had apparently
forgotten him, and was examining the Prin-
cess 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 ex-
plain the origin of the Princess's title.
" Then you are Bob." (Eyeglass.)
"No, my name is Grey, — John Grey."
And he actually achieved a bow where awk-
wardness was rather the air of imperfectly
recalling a forgotten habit.

" Grey f — ah, let me see. Yes, certainly.
You are Mr. Grey, the recluse, the hermit,
the philosopher, and all that sort of thing.

phincess bob and her friends. 267

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 naturd^
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 la^t seven years, somehow they
suddenly became trivial and terribly ridicu-
lous 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."

268 PRINCE88 BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

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 1 "
She took a book from the swinging shelf
and resumed her seat by the fire as the Prin-
cess reentered 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 reentered, and the Princess,
blinking, retreated into the shadow of the
whale-boat shed, from which she did not

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 269

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 coining 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 be-
lund 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 con-
tinued : " You remember after the second
Bull Run — But, dear me 1 I beg your par-

270 PBiNCEaa bob and her friendb.

don; of course, you know nothing about
the war, and all that sort of thing, and
don't care." (She put up her eyeglass, 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 her-
mit should have exhibited no interest in this
topic. Perhaps it was owing to some qual-
ity 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 in-
cident and personal observation of the con-
test then raging; with the same half -ab-
stracted, half -unconcerned air that seemed
habitual to her, she told the stories of priva-
tion, of suffering, of endurance, and of sacri-
fice. With the same assumption of timid
deference that concealed her great self-con-
trol, she talked of principles and rights. Ap-
parently 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

PEINCE88 BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 271

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 '11 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 in wrap 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. Keaching 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."

272 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

" Listen, Bob. You are daughter of a
chief : so am I. Your father had many war-
riors : so has mine. It is good that you stay
with me. Come."

The Princess chuckled, and suffered her-
self to be lifted up. A few moments later
and they reentered 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
lield 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 an-
chorite 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."

PBINCESB BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 273

She handed him a card, which he took
mechanically.

" Good-by." /

The sail was hoisted, and the boat shoved
o£P. As the fresh morning breeze caught
the white canvas it seemed to bow a part-
ing: salutation. There was a rosy flush of
pLise on Ae water, and a« «ie Ught craft
darted forward toward the ascending sun it
seemed for a moment uplifted in its glory.

Miss Portfire kept her word. If thought-
ful care and intelligent kindness could re-
generate 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 cau&:ht
in a ni and no longer stayed 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
V\nor lied. With the possession of personal

274 PBJNCE88 BOB AKJ) HER FRIENDS.

property oame a respect for that of others.
With increased dependence, on the word of
those about her came a thoughtful consid-
eration of her own. Intellectually she Was
still feeble, although she grappled sturdily
with the simple lessons which Miss Portfire
set before her. Bui; 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 preju-
dices and often yielded to her powerful self-
will, to the subalterns, who liked her none
the less that their natural enemies, the fron-
tier volunteers, had declared war against
her helpless sisterhood. The only restraint
put upon her was the limitation of her lib-
erty 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 depar-
ture of the Princess he spent less of his time
in the hut, and was more frequently seen in
the distant marshes of Eel Biver and on the
upland hills. A feverish restlessness, quite

PEINCE88 BOB AND BER FRIENDS. 275

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 news-
paper 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. Pres-
ently he arose, and, refolding it, — an opera-
tion 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

276 PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.

assumed the time and accent of some air.
Then he began to whistle softly and hesitat
ingly, as if trying to recall a forgotten tune.
Finally this took shape in a rude resem-
blance, 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 set-
tled slowly around his heart. He tried to
rise, but could not. Then the door was
flimg 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 erected 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 refason 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 hei
roughly by the arm. The Princess hung
her head. " Did you ? " he screamed, as he
reached wildly for his rifle.

PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 277
"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 th^^t they wanted to
send her to the Reservation ; but he cut her
short. "Take off those things 1" 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 a^d return of
your wardrobe. Your crazy friend, the re-
cluse, 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, an-
other goblet broken ! You 'U ruin the mess
in glassware, at this rate ! "

278 FRINCE88 BOB AND HER FRIENDB.

" 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 headquarters to keep
the settlement clear of all vagabond aborig-
ines. I am afraid, my dear, that a strict
construction of the term would include your
protSgSe,^*

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 sen^
try. 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
L their arms. Th; new sLry's zeal, jok.ed
with an ex-frontiersman's aimT was f atd.

They laid the helpless, ragged form before
the guard-house door, and then saw for the
first time that it was the Princess. Pres-
ently she opened her eyes. They fell upon
the agonized face of her innocent slayer, but
haply without intelligence or reproach.

FRINGE 8S BOB AND HER FRIENDS. 279

" Georgy I " she whispered.

" Bob I "

"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 crea-
tures.

K^ Sttluncitie !3Mnt lories.

CHOICE BOOKS OF AMERICAN
LITERATURE

PRINTED AND BOUND IN A STYLE WHICH

AIMS TO PRESERVE THE

TRADITIONS OF ALDUS AND PICKERING.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

4 Park Street, Boston.

TIIi; RIVERSIDE ALDINE SERIES.

THE books printed by Aldus Manutius,
at the close of the fifteenth and begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, have ever
since been regarded as models of elegance,
as regards the form of type and proportion
of page ; and when Pickering, in the middle
of this century, produced books which are
recognized as the most graceful examples of
English typographic art, he followed very
closely the style formed by Aldus, adopting
his symbol of an anchor entwined by a dol-
phin.

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company,
the publishers of this American series, aim
to give the best which the printer's art in
America can produce ; and they have ven-
tured to call the series by a name which in-
dicates that it is an American variation of
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Representative works by those American
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The numbers of th . .

1 Tir ' * Ji^rles are as follows :

1. Marjorie Daw^T

Thomas ^^^T ^'^ Other Stories. By

2. Ml/ Sun ^^^^LEY Aldrich.

Dr ^ftmer in a Garden. By Chablbs

3. Fi ^^DLEY Wabneb.
vreside Travels. By James Russell

j^^^ Lowell.

The Luck of Roaring Caw/p^ and Other
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5, 6. Venetian Life. By William Dean How-
ells. In two volumes.

7. Wake Robin. By John Burroughs.

8, 9. The Blglow Papers. By James Russell
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10. Back-Log Studies. By Charles Dudley
Warner.

11, 12. Walden. By H. D. Thoreau. In two
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13. The Gray Champion^ and Other Stories.
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14. Tales of New England, By Sarah Obnb
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